Black Hawk Down: A Propaganda

Hollywood is well known for its best entertainment like movies. A certain movie never lets the
people down with the sequence accompanied with nice sounds and effects. Although, sometimes
the industry takes it too far that even historic events putting it into movie are being altered for the
sake of good entertainment and worse, leaving the people change their mind on what they
actually believe before they see the movie. Black Hawk Down is one of the movies I have seen
that definitely made me think of the events happened in the movie- which is which that was
changed by the producer that changed the story too. Black Hawk Down depicts the actual events
of the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993, in which an Army Special Forces, led by General William
Garrison, attempted to capture Somalian warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. The plan was that the
Delta Force would raid the Olympic Hotel in Mogadishu and capture Aidid and his top advisers,
and then the Army rangers would form a perimeter while the extraction force would move in and
load the prisoners into the Humvees. However, the forces faced extremely high resistance from
the local Somalis, resulting in a seventeen-hour battle, a mission that should have taken thirty
minutes.

Prior to making this movie, it is a conspiracy by the Pentagon and Hollywood to distort history
and demonize the Somali people, right when the administration is considering another invasion
of that battered and impoverished African country. The Pentagon commended director Ridley
Scott for rushing the release of this Film. The Motion Picture Association of America arranged a
private screening for senior White House advisors. "Black Hawk Down" pretends to tell the story
of what happened on Oct. 3, 1993, when tens of thousands of Somali people, most of them
civilians, fought off an attack by U.S.  Rangers and Delta Force commandos in the center of
Mogadishu. From sources Ridley Scott said that he did not came up with the project without
politic involved, which is what people often say when they subscribe to the dominant point of
view. The story he relates is the story the American people need to tell themselves.

Black Hawk Down did an excellent job with the facts by placing factual subtitles at the
beginning and end of the movie to explain the reasoning of the campaign and the results of the

1
assault. There have been other critics and it is evident that the facts, events, and the numbers in
the movie were very accurate, but not perfect; the fact that there are some inaccuracies worth
pointing out. As it is a Hollywood production, additional drama was added to the movie to help
please the masses, like personal relations and disastrous deaths. Also from the movie was a
somewhat biased view on behalf of the American soldiers, which made the Somalis look like
merciless barbaric terrorists, only wanting death upon the soldiers trying to aide them. Somalis in
Black Hawk Down speak only to condemn themselves. They displayed no emotions other than
greed and the lust for blood. The American troops display horrific wounds. They clutch photos
of their loved ones and ask to be remembered to their parents or their children as they die. The
Somalis drop like flies, killed cleanly, dispensable, and unmoored. Although, the intervention
was a humanitarian effort to help them with the mass starvation; however, the concept was
slightly dramatized by exploring the personal feelings and expression of some of the soldiers on
the issue of the Somalia crisis. The movie was also shot from the view of only the American
soldiers and did not present the stories of the civilian casualties. Despite how modern the film is,
it still has somewhat of a cultural influence, partly because the movie was created about eight
years later from the actual battle.

An influenced view should be expected since the Somalis had brutally attacked the Americans.
There were some controversies that occurred after the showing of this movie that the Somalis
who engaged with the American soldiers may have believed themselves to be responding to what
they thought as unjust American and international military tactics used against them. The film
also portrayed the delays in the rescue mobilization of UN forces as stemming on the part of
those forces at not being informed about the mission, signifying they were willing to let US
soldiers die for insignificant policies. The movie also managed to recognize the Malaysian
soldiers involved in the rescue mission and the Malaysian soldier that died during the rescue
attempt. Another factual error included the role and position of Sgt. Eversmann, the main
character of the movie, who in reality returns to base with his convoy during the day with the
prisoners. However, in the film he stays in the battle and is one of the soldiers trapped in the
night siege. Black Hawk Down concludes with one more force heading back to the city to gather
the remaining soldiers and then provides relevant facts of the results.

2
The casualties on both sides, somewhat pulling away from that biased view. It also stated an
outlook into the future which mentions the eventual death of Aidid and Gen. Garrison's
acceptance of the responsibility and later retirement. It almost gives the notion of a defeat as the
battle ends, but the subtitles save it from this and mention those details, resulting in an overall
victory with the cost of eighteen American lives.

In Black Hawk Down is the creation of a new myth of nationhood. America is casting itself
simultaneously as the world's savior and the world's victim; a sacrificial messiah, on a mission to
deliver the world from evil. This myth contains incalculable dangers for everyone else on earth.
This bloody intervention proved unsuccessful at the time, but the present US administration has
shown that it is eager to complete Bush Sr.’s unfinished business in the Middle East. Somalia is
on the list of targets in the “war against terror”. While it may be lower down the list than Iraq.

Ridley Scott’s film takes on a dark meaning in this context. Film is the most deceptive of media,
because it conveys the illusion of reality so strongly. It shows us what we think we can see or,
ideally, what a good director thinks and sees in his mind’s eye. If he does his job well that is how
we think we see the world thereafter. Ridley Scott has been employed like a political hack to
make a world audience think differently and lay the ghosts, Somali and American, of October 3,
1993.