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Films

The Moral Countenance of Art

Emrys Westacott asks if we can really tell what it is that films and other art are either condemning or condoning.

In 2012 two major films, Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln and Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, provoked considerable controversy.

Few dispute the technical quality of these movies. Spielberg and Bigelow are superb directors, and the acting, staging, cinematography and screenplays, are first-rate. The controversies were not about form and style, but about content; more specifically, about the messages the films convey. Zero Dark Thirty has been accused of countenancing torture, since it suggests that the successful hunt for Osama Bin Laden benefited from a lead obtained through the use of torture.

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