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Las Movies arrives at El American. It is a new space where its host, Ignacio M. García Medina, analyzes the world of culture and entertainment: movies, video games, among others.
In this first episode, García analyzes the film The Perfect Dictatorship (La Dictadura Perfecta in Spanish), which shows the use of the media by the government to perpetuate itself in power.
The Perfect Dictatorship, the media and big tech
The Perfect Dictatorship is a 2014 Mexican film directed by Luis Estrada and is the last of a tetralogy of films by the same director – all in the key of political satirical comedy – that began in 1999 with The Law of Herod, followed by A Wonderful World (2006) and The Inferno in 2010.
Ignacio explains that there are similarities in current politics with what is presented in The Perfect Dictatorship. In fact, he brings as an example cases such as George Floyd. He assures that the media pushes the narrative they want people to believe and they do it with punctual cases and with the one with a political purpose.
“We can see it today in cases like George Floyd, where we see that they have all the media and political apparatus giving him coverage. While other cases that are the same or similar, more serious or less serious, but go against the narrative of the moment, are silenced or censored,” he said.
He also indicated that Big Tech has taken control of the information and they determine who is authorized to speak. He delved into fact checkers and how they have become a tool of control to prevent the growth of users who do not share the ideas of the prevailing narrative.
“Governments will always try, one way or another, to control the media. They will always lie. What they do is adapt to the times. Now, with the advent of the Internet, what governments have done is to sophisticate these tools of censorship and control. If at some point we saw the Internet as a way to evade censorship, the reality is that we have found that now they have technological tools to control us better than in the past.
Big media
Likewise, Garcia referred in Las Movies to George Orwell’s ideas and how today his greatest concern, which was censorship, has been overtaken by the control of the media and the imposition of a single version of the facts. “Orwell, based on his experience with communism and fascism, envisioned was a system based on outright censorship. A punishment, let’s say, of the dissident. A system that censored all information and flooded everything with propaganda.”
“You can see it today when everyone records videos with their phones, while they are edited or manipulated to show what interests them and not what interests them, completely changing the narrative,” he added.
Finally, he highlighted the importance of freedom of expression for society. He assured that freedom of expression is one of the most valuable things for citizens to maintain. “Freedom of expression entails contrasting information. Censoring freedom of expression is much more dangerous than what anyone can express.”
“It is more dangerous to censor free speech than to be offended.”
García had already written an analysis of The Perfect Dictatorship for us. You can read it here.
Ignacio Manuel García Medina, Business Management teacher. Artist and lecturer specialized in Popular Culture for various platforms. Presenter of the program "Pop Libertario" for the Juan de Mariana Institute. Lives in the Canary Islands, Spain // Ignacio M. García Medina es profesor de Gestión de Empresas. Es miembro del Instituto Juan de Mariana y conferenciante especializado en Cultura Popular e ideas de la Libertad.
Social Networks: @ignaciomgm