Eye In The Sky: Audience Participation Initiation

Eye In The Sky: Audience Participation Initiation by David Edwards When I was first made aware of this film, and after seeing its rather misleading theatrical trailer at the cinema, I was taken with an overwhelming desire not to see it; all it looked like was another standard fare action film about the war on terror. However, my wife convinced me to give "Eye In The Sky" the benefit of the doubt, and off we went a month later to the pictures on a Saturday afternoon. I went into the theatre, still prepared to be cynically judgemental, but after an hour and forty five minutes or so of well crafted tension, my opinion of the film had dramatically changed. I was now convinced that what I had just watched was a slick piece of military sponsored propaganda, designed to win over audiences as to the necessity of extrajudicial killings of terrorists by drone strike, and remove political oversight from such military action. Two things happened to change my initial perception of the film since the first viewing. First, I received a response from the British Ministry Of Defence to a Freedom Of Information Act request I had overconfidently submitted, regarding their involvement in the film, convinced that I would get a breakdown of funding and technical advice. The response came back to the contrary, so after more digging and some well-given advice from a more experienced researcher, well versed in military and intelligence agency sponsorship of films, I looked at the most obvious indicator of state sponsorship, the special thanks section of the end credits. This proved that my initial speculation had been unfounded; there did not appear to be any state sponsorship of the film. This prompted my second re-assessment of my attitude towards the film. I watched the film again on DVD. This time I was amazed, through the fresher eyes of the elapsed time between viewings, I realised that "Eye In The Sky" seemed to be simultaneously pushing two agendas. The clever direction of the film portrayed an almost pantomime-esque initiation of the audience through active participation in the tension unfolding on the screen, which I realised was why I had such an averse reaction to it on the first viewing. My own personal stubbornness naturally causes me to dislike overt manipulation of this sort, but upon review, that's one of the most interesting things about this film... Here's a taste of this powerful film through its trailer (which I still maintain does not do the film one iota of justice.) EYE IN THE SKY | Official Trailer In this analysis I'd like to try and avoid too much rehashing of the plot, and instead look at the opposing themes laid out in the film. The central character driving the drone strike is Colonel Katherine Powell (played by Helen Mirren), is portrayed in stark contrast to the Kenyan Muslim Mo' Alim family of the little girl, Alia (Aisha Takow), whose character is also central to the story. Powell appears not to be maternal, preferring in her home the company of dogs over children. The introduction to her is an early start to her day, waking next to her snoring husband, and heading for her office, where she has obsessively plotted out a network of terrorist targets with interlinked threads, in a manner similar to stereotyped movie portrayals of conspiracy theorists "connecting dots". Colonel Powell can't seem to get the work/life balance right, as her office betrays her obsession with her job. In contrast to her superior, Lieutenant General Frank Benson (played by the late Alan Rickman, sadly in one his final roles) she is more masculine, and seems more driven to fulfil her role in the operation. Powell strides commandingly into the control bunker where she will spearhead the tactical control of the drone operation, whilst Benson is shown spending his time on the way to COBRA on the phone with his wife, obsessing over which doll to buy his daughter, and whether he has purchased the correct one. Essentially his role in the operation is babysitting and placating the politicians on the crisis response committee, whilst sanctioning the required military action, which emerges as the mission parameters rapidly change from a capture to a drone strike. The catalyst for this escalation to the use of deadly force, is the presence in the surveilled house, of Susan Danford/Ayesha Al-Hady (played in a non-speaking role by Lex King). Her character appears to have been the target of Powell's obsession, as she is a Western convert to Al-Shabaab, and number four on the East Africa terror watchlist. The character is an embodiment of the now defunct, jihadi convert Samantha Lethwaite aka the "White Widow" terror news narrative, a spectral media anecdote, in the vein of "Jihadi John" (who was coincidentally reported as killed by a drone strike on the same day of the November 2015 Paris terror attacks), which saw Lethwaite blamed as one of the masterminds behind the Westgate Shopping mall terror attack in Nairobi of September of 2013, and other terror attacks in East Africa. One of the many fleeting glimpses of Danford as she is identified by the US military operative based in Hawaii, and Samatha Lethwaite, the widow of a 7/7 bomber, the British media's "Jihadi convert" story of choice when reporting terrorism in East Africa, who has been tenuously linked to Al-Shabab. The reinforcement of this real world media narrative, with regards to the East African theatre of operations, could on one level reveal a possible motivation of the film. It is no secret that Africa has become an arena of covert warfare on the part of the US Africom expansion agenda, versus heavy Chinese investment in the continent. The argument for proxy warfare on the part of British and American interests has consistently been justified as the combatting of radical Islamic extremism, on a smaller scale than currently witnessed in the Middle East. Drone technology, and deployment of small units of Special Forces, working with local militia groups, mercenaries and troops, really came into its own on the continent as a tactic of projecting covert military power. This strategy, as outlined in David Axe's 2013 book "Shadow Wars : Chasing Conflict In An Era Of Peace", has become particularly effective in terms of plausible deniability. This is especially important on the political home front in the US and the UK, as in general the public remain largely unaware of such operations, even in the information age. However, the power of online information sharing is alluded to in the film, as a major factor in undermining the propaganda element of the war on terror. In one of the many tense, decisive scenes in the COBRA briefing room, minister James Willet (played by Iain Glen) chimes in, via conference call from an international arms fair, that "revolutions have been sparked by videos on youtube", when the panel is concerned about footage of the mission's collateral damage (Alia) being leaked online. This comment is of particular interest, not just because of the recent focus on When The News Stops on Hybrid Warfare. In 2012 an incendiary video, largely debunked as a hoax, was used as a smokescreen in the news narrative, in an attempt to obfuscate the immediate causes of the attack on two US compounds in Benghazi in Libya. The attacks by united militia groups, which had seized power in the failed state, following the power vacuum left by Ghaddaffi's deposition and murder, saw the death of a US ambassador, and an overnight onslaught against a nearby CIA compound on the anniversary of 9/11. The recent Michael Bay film "13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers Of Benghazi", presents a high octane portrayal of these events, with a surprisingly anti-interventionist angle. Sam Bacile's "Innocence Of Muslims", released online, was blamed as the catalyst for starting street protests in Libya, Egypt and other Muslim nations. With the simplified and incorrect media narrative of the 2011 Arab Spring as an organic protest movement still in the Western public mind, the cover story of these street protests in 2012 delayed the emergence of the sordid details of the Benghazi catastrophe, which had unfolded under the neglectful watch of then US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. To segway from the mention of a US Presidential candidate, whose campaign merits now seem to have been reduced largely to an issue of gender, the interplay of contrasting gender politics is highlighted between the terrorist controlled area of the target house, and the plethora of personnel behind the anti-terror operation. The integration seen in the military teams, the briefing room, and higher up the political ladder contrasts sharply with the Al-Shabaab gang controlled zone where women's wrists must be covered, and Alia can only study or play in her home secretly, in case the fanatics who control the area see her. The Al-Shabaab controlled area, fanatically governed by fundamentalist Sharia codes of conduct towards women. Despite not having lived in Nairobi since the 1990s, and with the consideration that a lot will have changed since I lived there, I am largely unaware of the shanty towns which surround the city being under the overt control of militia gangs, and it would seem from online research that the militant group seems to mostly hold territory in Eritrea and Somalia. As this is a film which in many respects seems to be striving for realism, the choice to place an Islamist gang controlled area so close into the city's capital does seem disingenuous, and the choice to shoot these scenes in South Africa further adds to my feelings on the dramatic license taken here. It is Alia's playing with her hula hoop, which leads the Predator drone's pilot, Steve Watts (played by Aaron Paul) to begin to doubt the viability of the mission's safety in terms of collateral damage. Watts notices his navigator Carrie Gershon (played by Phoebe Fox), smiling at the girl's innocent play, and this motivates his later concern to delay the strike to try and protect his innocent, and newly recruited colleague. Watts has already confessed to Gershon that he has only been on the job for the last two years due to student debt. He has only ever been the eye, running surveillance operations, and it is apparent with the change in mission parameters that he about to get his first kill, and in a sense be initiated into a new, but damning level of military service. His conscience, in line with that of the British politicians in the COBRA briefing room, causes him to hesitate in becoming a killer, but in contrast to the politicians, his misgivings seem to have a more moral basis than the concerns about legality on the part of the politicians. As the finger on the trigger, Watts' request for a collateral damage reassessment of the missile strike before proceeding has more impact than the initial political stalling, but the legislators use this as an opportunity for indecision. The tension of whether to proceed on all fronts of the chain of command becomes largely due to Alia's innocent positioning of her bread stall right outside the targeted compound's walls, and in almost farcical fashion, the selling of these loaves of bread baked by her mother, drives the urgency of the narrative forward. This is where the pantomime tension of the story draws the audience in, and the combination of multi agency distanced operations, the political wrangling, Powell's insistence to strike immediately and on the ground operatives attempts to directly, yet covertly intervene whilst maintaining the integrity of the mission, all add to this emotional investment and stress on the part of the audience. At points in my first viewing of the film, I found myself frustrated at the constant stalling, almost wishing the inevitable carnage to unfold, which of course is a worrying state of mind to find oneself manipulated into. That being said, I highly doubt I would be the only one who viewed these stalling moments as deeply frustrating, and almost willed the worst to happen, just so the tension could finally break. The overall narrative of "Eye In The Sky" shows what happens when capture operations go off script, and presents the rules of engagement and the chain of command as getting in the way of the business of war. The bureaucracy involved in the decision is presented as a political oversight problem, mostly due to the fact that UK citizens and an American are being targeted. Perhaps if they weren't Western nationals, all the targets would be killed without hesitation. Also an overwhelming consideration in the film is that the operation is led by the British Ministry Of Defence, and on one level could be seen as an attempt to portray the British covert drone program and its recent media exposure in a favourable light. The British system of checks and balances is portrayed as being more considerate of collateral damage issues than the seemingly indiscriminate US points based system of assessing collateral damage, as revealed by the US Secretary Of State, Ken Stanitzke (played by Michael O'Keefe). Stanitzke seems incredulous that his PR opportunity in Asia of playing table tennis has been interrupted for what he sees as an irrelevant question of legality in the face of taking out such high value terror targets. None of the British politicians, in contrast to the Americans, want to take responsibility for the decision to "prosecute the target", as they continuously punt the authorisation up their chain of command for confirmation. The British military and its heavy political oversight is portrayed as overly managerial and indecisive when presented with a public relations hot button, such as the life of a small child as a collateral damage risk. The phrase 'collateral damage' has frequently come under attack as a veiled use of politically sanitised language to make civilian casualties in warfare seem like an unfortunate byproduct, rather than a tragic loss of life. Again, this is the painful dualistic tension presented in the film. The pressure to reach a decision seems like a hinderance to saving a large amount of lives from a potential suicide bombing, but as the object of such frustration is the life of a child, the viewer finds themselves torn over the complexity of the situation. In this instance, do the lives of the many outweigh the lives of the few? Is this not the basis of the Western democratic process? It is obvious that Western populations, largely attempting to move towards a more progressive and egalitarian society, have hard realities such as this to face, everything good for a majority comes at the cost of an unfortunate minority, and pleasing everyone is next to impossible. The issue of the propaganda aspect to the War On Terror is raised in the Briefing room, in the dialogue between Benson, George Matherson (Richard McCabe), Brian Woodale (Jeremy Northam), and the profoundly irritating leftist Angela Northam (Monica Dolan). The discussion raises the dichotomy that killing a little girl could lose hearts and minds, but letting a suicide bombing go ahead would turn public opinion against Al-Shabaab. Is this what happens when it is revealed that intelligence services were watching targets before terror attacks, but did not act to prevent the attacks in time. Are some suicide bombings allowed to happen for political gain? After the second missile strike in the double tap assassination, it is the militants who are portrayed as trying to save fatally wounded Alia, transporting her to the hospital in their jeep, discarding the tactical weapon. In contrast, the British military operation is only concerned with killing their target, Danford, after their token attempts not to inflict collateral damage on the little girl fail. It does seem that the military command of the operation, resting in the hands of Powell and Benson, couldn't seem to care less for the girl's safety beyond the completion of the mission. In fact, Powell is visibly active in ensuring that the collateral damage report is doctored to give an incorrect "estimate" of 45% probability of Alia suffering a fatality just to allow her vendetta mission to take out Danford to proceed. Benson's sneering comment at Angela Northam, "I hope the fact that she's a sweet little girl is not clouding your judgement," reveals the military's attitude to what they see as extremely low collateral damage in the greater scheme of things, and in some respects, the audience begins to adopt the military's point of view. One of the Kenyan surveillance agents on ground, Jama Farah (Barkhad Abdi) uses trade as a front to infiltrate the militant controlled zone, where he compliments the technology deployed, to pilot a beetle sized drone into the target house. He is also instructed by his superior, the Kenyan Special Forces captain (Bronson Mwangi), who is deployed in a warehouse nearby with waiting Kenyan Special Forces, to try to save Alia by buying her bread. Farah's attempt to intervene and clear the area of collateral damage, leads to his exposure to the militants, when his cover becomes blown. The abandonment of an expensive piece of tech such as the beetle to carry out this intervention attempt, is portrayed as an oversight by the Kenyan Special Forces. I'm not sure if the life of a little girl over an expensive piece of hardware is realistic or not. I suspect it is not, but for the purposes of the narrative, this interesting hardware is doomed to be destroyed in the missile strike. Impressive surveillance tech: The Hummingbird drone (Left) and the Beetle Drone (right) As with many films depicting hi-tech intelligence operations, there is an element of showcasing technological capabilities, and the inclusion of the two micro-drones, one disguised as a hummingbird, and the other as a beetle, despite both being obvious computergenerated creations, raises speculation as to how advanced current surveillance technology is at this stage. Certainly DARPA has funded and developed a version of the hummingbird drone, whilst the beetle drone is still very much at the research stage, and has not been field deployed yet. Drones are frequently camouflaged to avoid their detection, as a crashed drone in Mogadishu was recently shown to have been made to look like a large bird. The following excerpt from a wired magazine article about these elements of the film's tech is of interest for further reading. "The beetle isn’t entirely accurate, since it’s using a proprietary design based on developmental technology, but Hood spoke to the developers to find out what still needs to be worked on so Eye in the Sky could depict problems accurately. “It’s not the size of the cameras, or transmitting images, or even making something mechanical fly like an insect,” he says. “The problem is battery life. So we put that in the movie, because flight and transmitting high definition imagery sucks too much juice.” ..." -K.M. Macfarland, from 'Eye In The Sky Is The Quintessential Modern War Film' (01/04/2016) The distanced interaction nature of the whole operation only has one team directly deployed in the vicinity of the target house, and up to eight different locations globally are shown to have interaction in one way or another with the decision to execute the drone strike and carry it out. The main location ultimately responsible for the guilt of killing in such a detached manner is the container acting as the drone aircraft's cockpit in Nevada, where pilot Steve Watts is the finger on the trigger, feeling the moral responsibility of the kill. The Drone "Cockpit", a container thousands of miles away from the target This is not the first film to explore remote killing in this way, with 2014s "Good Kill", starring Ethan Hawke coming immediately to mind. "Good Kill" deals with a former air force pilot, Major Thomas Egan (Ethan Hawke), now relegated to flying drones, questioning the ethics of his job, partly due to the distanced engagement from the battlefield of no longer directly flying in the war-zone airspace. His resulting depression sees his family disintegrate, and his unit's assignment to CIA targeted assassinations furthers his disconnection and ability to cope. The character's hope becomes restored when he takes the initiative and carries out an unauthorised strike on a Taliban rapist, whom he has been steadily observing in horror in between missions carrying out a string of sexual assaults on a local Afghan woman. This is the titular Good Kill of the film, as it is this act that the film's narrative attempts to portray as his bid for redemption. Another short film which portrays the difficult ethics of distanced assassinations is Duncan Jones' 2002 "Whistle", which is included as an extra on the DVD of his 2009 feature "Moon". This short film portrays a hi-tech assassin, using a satellite weapon to take out his target , getting too emotionally invested in his mark whilst carrying out the preliminary surveillance to the kill. The ethics of distance from the theatre of operations is a psychological element highlighted in the work of behavioural psychologist Stanley Milgram, whose work I explored in a previous analysis. Milgram found in his multitude of electric shock experiments, that when his subjects were placed in remote proximity from the actor they believed they were shocking under orders, their empathy which could regulate their obedience to these morally dubious orders decreased. "... our spatial relations shift from one situation to the next, and the fact that we are near or remote may have a powerful effect on the psychological processes that mediate our behaviour toward others. ... ... Obedience to destructive commands was in some degree dependant on the proximal relations between authority and subject, and any theory of obedience must take account of this fact." -Stanley Milgram, from 'Obedience to authority : An experimental view' (1974) In a video leaked by Wikileaks in 2010, entitled "collateral murder", the public were exposed to the sadistic side brought out in distanced killing. The shocking video, shown below, from the gun camera of an Apache helicopter gunship in Iraq in 2007, shows the desensitisation of the pilot robotically responding to orders to wipe out clearly delineated civilians in a combat zone. Collateral Murder - Wikileaks - Iraq It does not seem to be too much of a leap to imagine that the further distancing of drone operators from their targets, psychologically associating the operation with a computer game, could lead to an increased level of callousness towards their targets. Despite these discussed cinematic attempts to portray these types of operations as morally disturbing for the operating drone pilots, I suspect that the reality is more like the above video than the wounded operators portrayed in films such as "Eye In The Sky" or "Good Kill". The films title, "Eye In The Sky" suggests a reference to the deification of drone technology, and like some omnipresent, vengeful Old Testament God, the watcher from the heavens can be called upon to smite the enemies of the West with it's "Hellfire" missiles. The inference I glean here, is that like every army on opposing sides throughout history, the assumption is that any killing is justified through the conviction that the cause is good, with the sanction of a supreme being to assuage any questionable lapses in morality encountered on the battlefield. The Technological overlord takes its curtain bow at the film's close, and flies into the brooding, cloudy sunset In the build up to the missile strike, the audience finds themselves wishing for a deus ex machina intervention to save the life of Alia, and this pious desire is reinforced through the "God's eye view" from the drone as gradually the bread is sold, almost in the nick of time. In the final seconds before the missile hits its target, the driver of tension is the loaves of bread, and whether they get sold in time to save her, as the suicide bombers in the house literally vest up their explosive devices. The sad reality shown in the film is that Alia could have survived if it had not been for the insistence of Powell on a double tap to finish off Danford. Back in the briefing room, a distraught Angela Northam tells Benson that she is disgusted with the whole operation, Benson responds by telling her that he has seen firsthand the aftermath of many suicide bombings in an attempt to justify the greater good of the operation in saving lives. His pithy statement of "Never tell a soldier that he does not know the cost of war", is somewhat undone as he is handed the correctly purchased doll for his daughter by his aide. In Powell's operational control room, Sergeant Mushtaq Sadiq (Babou Ceesay) is forced to stick to his doctored 45% collateral damage analysis, to shore up the dodgy legal ethics of the operation, in anticipation of any blowback from the politicians with Benson in COBRA. The film closes with the psychologically scarred drone pilot and his navigator emerging from their dark trailer into the afternoon sunlight, to be greeted by their superior officer, Lieutenant Colonel Ed Walsh (Gavin Hood, the film’s Director) who tells them to get some rest and be back on duty in 12 hours. The Killers emerge into the Light This scene contains an interesting use of lens flares, which suggest a degree of esoteric initiation acquired by Watts and Gershon in light of their first kill. Walsh's left eye appears to emanate the rays of the Sun, suggesting he is an initiate of some kind of Luciferean mystery teachings The first, and most prominent of these is the obfuscation of Colonel Walsh's left eye by the Sun's light, suggesting that he is passing on validation of their initiation through this act of sacrifice in the exercise of the military's will. The large scale reports of Satanism practiced within the US military, seems to back up this subtextual Luciferean reference in these stylistic technical shots. Watts looks back at Gershon, the rainbow lens flare over his left eye (left) and the rays flood over the shocked Gershon as she follows him (right) The second is the rainbow effect of lens flares in the subsequent shot, as Watts looks back at Gershon, as both are still coming to terms with their actions, the multicoloured Qabbalistic rays fall strongest on him, with a lesser effect of them connecting him to Gershon. This would suggest lesser degrees of initiation at play filtering down to her, as he is the trigger man, the kill has been mostly his. The light on the left hand side of their bodies suggests they now walk a sinister, left hand occult path Both operators then walk through the light towards the exit of the base, with the sunlight illuminating the left sides of their bodies, suggesting that they have now taken a sinister "left hand" path of esoteric initiation through this act of taking life. Throughout the film, and on repeated viewings, I am convinced that the film presents its audience with an initiation into the complexities of the ever evolving "War On Terror". In the spirit of "revelation of the method" or even predictive programming, "Eye In The Sky" seems to be preparing the Western public for a more overt presence in Africa in this modern crusade against radical Islamism. Also at work in this process is the selling of the trope that there is a "military necessity" for acting now, to directly quote again from the film. The legal argument of extra judicial killing is presented as getting in the way of the job in hand, eliminating the terrorist threat. However, "Eye In The Sky" does frame and engender the debate between political argument and oversight in such operations versus the immediate tactical necessity of acting decisively, as in any war theatre. The flippant attitude of characters such as Powell, determined to fulfil her mission, and even the agonising by the politicians over public relations ramifications, thinly veiled as angst over legalities, betrays the neo-colonialist attitudes inherent in the "War On Terror." The choice of the filmmakers to set the action of the film, where the direct consequences of such action are felt, in a former British colony, a commonwealth country feeling the effects of a British led military operation, reinforces this point on post colonial attitudes. Another issue raised from this notion is how people become radicalised in developing countries, and what leads poor, desperate people to commit to such ideologies in defiance of such neo-colonial prejudices. There will be more terrorists continuing to be created because of the War On Terror and operations such as these. By its very nature, this 21st Century war seems to work on the basis of mutual reinforcement. As Australian comedian Steve Hughes so succinctly puts it, "What does war create? Terror."