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Home Front: Culture Wars
Showtime Developing Terrorist TV Show
2004-10-05
via Fox News, NY Post
Cable channel Showtime is quietly at work on a new series about the personal lives of an Islamic terrorist cell in the United States, The Post has learned. The series — to be called "The Cell" — will be told from the view points of a group of European and American converts to Islam who are plotting terror attacks here.
That's the last time I watch anything on Showtime then.
Showtime says it realizes it is walking into a potential minefield by portraying terrorists sympathetically without pulling punches about their violent aims. HBO's "The Sopranos" and "The Wire" have found success doing that with mobsters and drug dealers. "We're trying to look into the minds of these [terrorists] and the issues driving them, beyond a black-and-white portrayal," says Showtime entertainment president Robert Greenblatt, who will decide next month whether to commit to a series.
Imaginary stories about the supposed exploits of mythical mobsters is not the same thing as glorifying terrorist scum who CHOP OFF AMERICAN HEADS FOR ALL THE WORLD TO SEE.
"The leaders of the cell look like nice, normal , cute and cuddly people you would encounter in everyday life and never know were quietly putting together a power base," he says. "Our only hesitation was sensitivity to the subject matter, which was very scary. Several plot points have already come to pass." In fact, one scene was so prophetic and volatile it had to be cut from the original script. It depicted a captured serviceman being beheaded on videotape, months before it happened in real life.
And you didn't pull the plug right then because... hello? Is this thing on?
Posted by:Chris W.

#9  Great idea! But they need to take it a step farther - combine the new terrorist show with Dan Rather's news broadcast, and add in John Edwards (no, the other one) Crossing Over show. The ratings will go through the roof! Although, the whole concept does seem vaguely familiar.
Posted by: A Jackson   2004-10-05 10:57:19 PM  

#8  I foresee a Dr. Phil episode where the good Dr. is called in by the parents of a boomer want-a-be and Dr Phil sez:

"Do you realize that your son exhibits fourteen of the seventeen characteristics of a suicide bomber? My suggestion to you is that you have him stock up on viagra cuz the 72 virgins will be waiting.”
Posted by: RN   2004-10-05 2:29:27 PM  

#7  Spoken like a true dhimmi, JC5744. Now fork over that jizya and begone, infidel.
Posted by: Seafarious   2004-10-05 2:25:07 PM  

#6  As long as it's done tastefully and with sensitivity.....
Posted by: Jorong Clort5744   2004-10-05 2:23:28 PM  

#5  Will they show Friday prayers, with the imam praying for the deaths of all Americans? Will they show the suicide bomber taking his boom vest to the tailor? Will we see the jihadi wannabees watching hours of kill pr0n, snuff films and gun sex? Will they show the late-night phone calls to Yemen, Teheran, and Saudi Arabia?

No.

They'll show a bunch of wankers sitting around whining about how unfair it all is and seething, and somehow I'll be expected to "understand".

Fat chance.
Posted by: Seafarious   2004-10-05 2:22:44 PM  

#4  Bwaaahaaaahaaaaa. Only in Hollywood would they create a series that finally calls a muslim a terrorist, while trying to remain "PC" by not making them Arabs. It's like producing a series on Nazis, just not the German ones. That's so absurd that it is funny!
Posted by: The Spitblogger   2004-10-05 1:45:36 PM  

#3  unless this was an intelligence gathering exercise - it's time to consider the press (and hollywood) combatants ...pen/sword and all that.
Posted by: 2b   2004-10-05 12:06:45 PM  

#2  You know, I at first thought the premise of a mobster seeing a shrink was interesting. But by the time Pussy was executed, I'd had enough. The end result of the show was to glamorize truly perverse violence, lives built around dehumanizing violence, warped lives that distorted the lives of anyone else they came across, like black hole of evil. I can't watch the Sopranos anymore. In a similar vein, I've found Islam to be much like the mob--you can get in, but you can't get out, not without something like a witness protection program. You will conform, or you will pay, first with limbs and then with your life. All allegiance is owed to the Ummah, who gives you life and protection. And family connections trump everything, including religious obligations.

Needless to say, I won't watch this show, either.
Posted by: longtime lurker   2004-10-05 12:04:05 PM  

#1  Of course, if they really showed a true picture of a islamic terrorist cell, CAIR would pitch a fit about stereotyping.
Posted by: Steve   2004-10-05 11:16:56 AM  

00:00