What You See Is What You … See

Jodie Foster exudes such determination, and the movie “Contact” raises such subtle and intriguing questions that it’s tempting to forgive this movie its transgressions.

In fact, it’s one of those movies I would like to see a second and maybe a third time so I can look for its flaws and think more about some of its commentary on life.

That’s high praise from me for this type of film. I may be one of the few people in North America who chafes at the “X-Files” sort of sci-fi; I know I am the only such contrarian in my own household. Everyone else loves it. I don’t.

“Contact,” though, seemed to me to have a lot of rich comments on American culture and some wonderfully subtle, in fact almost spiritual, suggestions about the nature of being. I liked the movie, liked it a lot, and I suspect it is a movie I will want to rent at home several times a few years from now.

Because I liked it so much and thought it had so much to offer, I am a little reluctant to climb on board the bandwagon about how dangerous and unacceptable a couple of its techniques are. The first outrage is its use of the image and words of President Clinton. There is something terribly wrong with taking a sitting president and manipulating film and words so that he becomes a character in a story.

This technique of photographic manipulation was one thing in “Forrest Gump,” where all sorts of historical figures - including presidents - were made participants in the process. At least there, the real people so manipulated were former presidents.

It is true enough, for the most part, that “Contact” does not parody the president. That’s what a Warner Bros. publicist, Charlotte Kandel, said in trying to assuage the anxieties of the White House.

To create this kind of fiction, though, about a real-life, currently functioning president is to carry image-making and the mingling of reality and fiction to a new, scary level. Any editor of print or film these days has to know how much potential there is for manipulation of photography in a way that is downright dangerous.

There was a case last year of a candidate being inserted into a photograph in which he had not appeared. I fear we will see more and more political and propaganda uses of such techniques and that it will be harder and harder to assure that they are benign.

Back when the United States undertook its moon landing, a West Virginia paper carried the story of local reaction, including the skepticism of some of the mountain people.

As I remember it, the paper told of this interview: “How do we know they went to the moon?” one lady asked. “They could have just gone to Wheeling or something, and said they went to the moon.” Moviemakers and still photographers both have entered a brave new world.

The president is right to complain. Warner Bros. arrogated to itself the right to use the president’s words and image for its own purposes. And as technology keeps pushing this door wider open, I think we had better worry about what we are doing to create images more real and potentially more dangerous than reality. I for one don’t want to spend the rest of my life waiting for the Warner Bros. publicist to reassure me, case by case, that each such liberty is done in a way that is totally benign.

The president is pretty much in the public domain for the rest of his or her life. Even Bill Clinton, though, ought to have some kind of copyright on the expropriation of his words by those who can manipulate the medium.

The film raises one other issue that may be a bit arcane for many non-journalists. But shouldn’t we worry at least a bit about the cameo appearances by real-life TV journalists to give credibility to the drama? Maybe I’m hopelessly old-fashioned, but I am bothered by the idea of that kind of use of even the TV talking heads.

OK, so it’s the ‘90s. I’d still like to believe there are some limits.

As I said in the beginning, I’m a considerable admirer of Jodie Foster and of this movie. It’s tempting to say I’d follow her anywhere. I’m not so sure, though, that this movie doesn’t take movie-makers and public figures very deep indeed into a hopeless swamp where image and reality get more and more blurred. These techniques worry me.

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