The most dishonest propaganda film in recent memory, this film tries to exploit every aspect of the structure and aesthetic of a good documentary to re-write the history of the crimes and profiteering of a group of fossil thieves.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The title is great. It sounds like a real mystery, something explosive. The reviews are good, overwhelming, a hit at Sundance, a real social-media viral recommendation. This should be a great film, right? Dead wrong. Full stop. And, generally, a terrible film isn't worth writing about; that is, unless its so terrible, so revolting, such an imposition on good taste and common decency that the film reveals something interesting about itself that indicates a broader social or cultural phenomenon worth discussing. That's the case with this 'film'. In fact, there are already two other posts on this blog that discuss a related point you might want to check out (The Subtle Propaganda of Homeland, The Revisionist 'Conservative' Ideology of Billions). What this film brought out is the following: there are some who seek to peddle false ideologies masked under the cover of what, on the surface, appears to be just another instance of a modern, contemporary, glossy, well-made film. These are ideological predators who prey on the belief in 'good television' that has taken place and that apply deceitful, dishonest tactics of argumentation to achieve their result: to expand the reach of their ideology by inserting it into your living room under the cover of anything else you'd allow in there, well dressed and smelling nice. Its a version of the neighbor or co-worker, or anyone else you don't know well, that you invite to your house, and who, while dining on your food and drinking your alcohol decides its the right time and place to mount a critique of the way you've decorated your house and how you live your life and then walks out, leaving you feeling embarrassed, exposed, and abused.

Dinosaur 13 starts off fine enough. Its a seemingly interesting story of how a group of for-profit private individuals found the largest intact, best-preserved T-Rex ever discovered in the badlands of North Dakota; how this group painstakingly excavated the fossils, taking every possible precaution, making upstanding fair agreements with the landowner to purchase the bones for the highest price ever offered for some fossils in the ground at that time; how the bones were taken back to their facility and delicately cleaned and worked-over to restore them; how they opened their business to all who wanted to come in the interests of science and for any other reason at all, to schools and children, to teachers. Its a story where those that found it are so emotionally attached to the bones they've found its all they can think of (as Sue says in the film: 'its funny to say, but he was really made for that dinosaur'), where an entire town has come together to plan the construction of a new museum in which to display the dinosaur and for the rejuvenation of the entire local economy based on the tourism that would surround it. Its a story where, basically, the best people on earth, with the best of intentions did everything right.

But the 'film' takes the kind of turn anyone who's seen Catfish (another boring hyped-up documentary) should expect: after maybe 30-minutes or so, we learn that, despite all this, despite everything right they've done, the big government and some cockeyed District Attorney came in with 30-agents, took possession of the fossils, launched an investigation into the practices of their fossil business, how the investigation led to the filing of 130-something counts of felony and misdemeanor charges of collecting fossils illegally on public lands, trading them internationally, lying to customs and all the rest of what is presented to us as an enormous, contrived and constructed fabrication meant only to defame and smear these good citizens working simply in the interests of their community and the service of science with their 'Institute'. Its a story that goes from good to bad, to worse, to worse, and where our spotless saints end up sentenced to 2-years in prison, convicted felons who, when the dinosaur is finally cleaned, assembled, has been auctioned off for $8million after the lying profiteering landowner disputed the agreement he'd made to sell the bones for $5000 to this 'Institute', while laughing and joking on video at the dig-site that he was fine with the deal—that after all this, he isn't even invited to Chicago for the unveiling of the dinosaur and is forced, so sadly, as we're told in what seems like a begrudged footnote to the film, to attend with the woman who found the bones, Sue. Its absolutely, the film wants us to believe, one of the greatest miscarriages of justice ever seen in this country. Simply unbelievable, an outrage. On the level of Making a Murderer, or The Jinx, a call-to-action against a great injustice.

That's what the film is, basically. The problem with all of this, with this description, with the film, is that properly critiquing it is almost impossible. That's where this stream of consciousness list of events comes from. The film is so perfectly coherent in its approach that, at one point it is unassailable: it makes perfect sense and is totally coherent and emotionally logical. But, as anyone with any real emotional sense can see almost immediately as the film begins, there is something absolutely rotten going on and there is an entirely unspoken Other to this film which is the truth of it all that fits into all its cracks and blatant dishonesties.

Take for instance the purchase price of $5000 from the landowner, the American-Indian for whom the land is held in trust. The film is very clear on this deal: it was fair, the price was the highest ever paid for a fossil from private land, it was agreed, caught on video and the rest. Its a fair deal. The problem is that the bones sold for eight million dollars at a Sotheby's auction in New York, it was the largest, most perfectly intact T-Rex specimen ever found, and was a curiosity for all of science around the world. As soon as our intrepid fossil hunter corporation finds the bones, they know what they've found, they are simply unable to contain their excitement, work their hearts out to unearth it. Its huge for them. Are we really to believe that they really think five thousand dollars for something that will transform the lives of the entire community is a fair deal. They mention at one point the five thousand is just for 'raw', unprocessed fossils, fossils whose real worth hasn't been established yet. The film makes this point very quickly. But its important, because it shows us that the deal was made, they allege, before they knew the dinosaur's real condition and value and it's a concession to its higher value and also a way for them to maintain their honesty in the deal. There's no question about it, five thousand dollars is not a fair deal. But the series never once mentions this apart from when it incoherently notes the fossil collector's comment on the auction sale price of eight million being too low, and they could've gotten more (seriously, how much cognitive dissonance can you absorb before you have an epileptic fit and vomit it all up?)

Then there's the issue that we're to believe that the government's allegation (that they have consistently poached fossils illegally from public lands and then restated the actual location of discovery as being on private land so as to make small-sum deals with landowners outside the restrictions imposed on private land deals) is all lies. We are to believe that over the course of years and hundreds of fossil finds, almost every single fossil found right at the edge of public lands was always on private land. The documentary certainly doesn't make this argument, doesn't go into any specifics, but makes general claims about it being difficult to know the location, this was a time before GPS etc. But we should also look at this suspicious claim at the opening of the film, this claim that seems somehow out of place and contrived: where they note the totally unusual presence of fog on the morning they found the bones and the fact they walked in circles before finding them. We should look at this as part of a narrative meant to substantiate the claim that fossil hunting, when you actually go out into the field, is an unpredictable venture. Its the kind of thing that any one who will support the film would cite as evidence to launch this argument about their innocence as regards the other 129-claims against them. And its the kind of thing that tells us that there's probably plenty of meat on the allegation that they committed fraud countless times (maybe not all the time) and that this was a structured part of their business model.

Then there's the issue of calling the for-profit corporation these people have established for selling fossils an 'Institute'. The purpose of this is clear: to mask the real identity of the corporation under the respectable, scientifically-focused banner of an actual institute. Its silly really, to call some garage with 3-people working in it, traveling around and selling fossils for cash profit an Institute. Absurd. But the film doesn't concede any of that. Instead, every attempt is made to represent it as an actual Institute, to show its public concern and concern for the science involved. Its a place where there's a public ledger, where no-one is refused entry to see the work taking place and the fossil. Its a place with educated, trained professionals working in the public interest to put this dinosaur on display in a new museum in town. The problem with all this is that you have to think putting the worlds best specimen on display in some for-profit shanty hastily erected around the bones for the purposes of promoting tourism to the region is the same thing as putting it into a publicly funded museum whose actual purpose is science driven and out of concern for the preservation of the earth's natural history. Would there be any difference to any other tiny for-profit tourist trap erected around some object of interest anywhere else along the highway? Would there really be an investment in the dinosaur itself beyond the most basic money needed to get it up and drawing in cash? Isn't that, as we all know today, precisely what's wrong with capitalism, with for-profit business that operates in domains of the public good? Is a private health clinic as good a public one? Don't health insurance companies deny as much coverage as they can to make billions for their investors? Isn't the entire structure of for-profit business and the system of legal accountability around them directed toward maximum profit for minimal investment? It is, even if people are still confused about this fact and refuse to see it everywhere around them where its contributing to the corrosion of the country. But that's precisely the fraud this film is attempting to perpetuate: the fiction that it is the same, that there are no differences and that private people and their down-home friendly kindness and local touch will always be better than some large, amorphous big government Other. It tells us to believe that government can never provide anything valuable to people. Its the sort of thinking that wants the schools and water privatized, that wants taxes abolished, that wants to drive on privately funded toll-roads from coast to coast, that wants to see government reduced to the point of near non-existence. Its the kind of thinking that tells us that we can never accomplish anything together unless we do it together in a corporation, that doing it together democratically in a scary thing called The Government can only lead in one direction, and one direction only: a place we don't want to go and that will trample on the rights of the Little Guy.

Its really not worth discussing this film any longer. This is the key to understanding it, though, and the key to taking a proper position on it, the position it deserves. It is bought and paid for propaganda these people--these 'fossil hunters'--have commissioned to invent an entire polemic around them and to incite some kind of political movement to support their version of reality. It is a rewrite of their history, an attempt to inscribe their false version of history into our reality. Just look how they explain the story of the cigar he smoked after being found guilty of felonies and sentenced to jail. Its disgusting, really, the level of refusal to take responsibility; but not only that, the refusal to even acknowledge what any thinking person would think when confronted with the facts presented in the film and to simply construct an alternate version on top of it, as if any serious claim to question what happened is totally inconceivable.

But this is why the film is worth thinking about: it reveals a broader sociological condition of our contemporary time: the schizophrenia that results from an attempt to perpetuate an ideology at all costs based on every dishonesty and disavowal of the truth. It is a manifestation of the criminality of ideology of our times (specifically, here, a 'conservative', right-wing ideology). And by 'criminality' is meant something very specific: it doesn't refer to this or that specific illegal activity, selling drugs or killing a person; it refers instead to the situation in which the truth of a situation (which is always personal and subjective) is denied at the expense of a fiction or some elaborate explanation that tries to tell us why what we believe is, despite that we feel and know, not correct, is a misperception. We see this everywhere now. In law, it applies to the charged person who refuses any guilt, constructs an elaborate story to evade conviction (like for instance, what we see in the equally problematic and revolting 'documentary' The Staircase), that creates a situation where the only thing that still supports innocence over and against the overwhelming preponderance of facts is the fact that innocence is still claimed, so that any judgment imposed is imposed as a real violence and arbitrary act against them. The same is true in politics where candidates such as Ted Cruz (the most disgusting, lying embodiment of evil masquerading as an upright, religious good-boy), when faced with a statement they previously made caught on video deny it was made, creating a schizophrenia around a tiny issue: does the tape lie, is it all a misrepresentation of the media? And its the same phenomenon we see in film and TV and other detritus like Dinosaur 13: like Billions, like Homeland, like The Staircase--where an ostensibly valid narrative is proposed over and against its overwhelming lack of support in reality, that leaves us in an exposed position with no opposition but vehement, emotional opposition, seemingly without means of coherent expression.

We should take this development very seriously because it indicates an implicit act of violence that becomes necessary to resolve its schizophrenic schism and irreconcilable opposition, because it isn't something that can be reasoned with. This is the ideological behavior of real criminals (for instance, with Mladic and his defiance of a role in the massacre at Srebrenica in Bosnia, shown in the documentary The Dangerous World of Doctor Dolecek) and we should take it very seriously as we contemplate the future and also how we imagine we can create that future. We should see the current campaign for president in the U.S. through this prism. Because if we think, as Hillary Clinton and the entire political establishment, seems to think, that reasoning and compromise with the most obstructionist republicans in history is still possible, and that her 'pragmatic' approach is better placed than the defiant and clear, resolute alternative vision without compromise expressed by Bernie Sanders, we are headed for certain failure. And we should see it in the becoming-common, seemingly pervasive cultural phenomenon bred from the overly developed market-logic of western capitalist economies whereby a self-fueled cynicism about life sacrifices real-life alternative possibilities that may seem too difficult, messy, or otherwise inconvenient for the simple negative pleasure of destroying something we already think to be impossible (from within the limiting experience and confining possibilities offered by our market economies).

More on this in another post, though: this has reached the limit of anything to do with the so-called Dinosaur 16.