Betrayed by Constanin Costa-Gavras :: Movie, Film

The opening lyrics to America the Beautiful, O pretty-pretty for spacious skies, for amber waves of scrap, demonstrate how agriculture and wheat farming attain been ingrained, to almost mythical proportions, as quintessentially American amongst citizens in the United States. As the Great Plains of the Midwest helped establish the U.S. as a major economicalal superpower throughout the twentieth century, the land grew by distributing vast amounts of grain across the globe, providing those farming in the region both a insure and profitable existence. But with the proliferation of farming technologies enabling foreign nations to establish a foothold in a new global economy, the U.S. and its sodbusters faced increase competition, and their stranglehold on grain exportation waned. You just cant make a living growing wheat anymore, says Greg Grenz, a farmer in Eureka South Dakota, as many another(prenominal) U.S. farmers atomic number 18 more and more chthonic pressure as America s run as a wheat powerho spend, and the dominant player in global agriculture, is under attack from a crop of newly emboldened, low-cost international rivals who are striking at one of the main pillars of American economic strength food exports (Roger Thurow, 2004). Security and prosperity it seems are dwindling in the nations fertile plains. In most cases, with little recourse available, straightaways farmers are faced with a frightening decision alter their farming practices, via planting new crops or utilizing new techniques, or set out farming outright, forfeiting lands that may have been in families for generations and, more importantly, losing an identity that many consider to be most American.Constanin Costa-Gavras, in his film Betrayed (1988), gives this framework of economic hardships caused by a declining farming industry to present his audience with both(prenominal) farmers who have decided on another option, lashing out violently at people who they believe are resp onsible for their plight. The film approximately star-crossed love and death and danger in white-picket-fence America (Kemply, 1988), involves a fabricated community that employs white supremacist ideology to spread hate and intolerance as they blame Jews, non-whites, and the government for the economic conditions which they endure. The film also demonstrates the early use of the computer to branch out and connect these hate mongers, forecasting the use and proliferation of the internet to recruit new white supremacists around the country. As ruttish Blazack, sociologist from Portland State University, elaborates in American Skinheads (2007), whether youre recruiting people to be suicide bombers or recruiting foot soldiers in the racial holy war, youre going afterward the same set of people, youre going after people who feel like theyre at the end of their rope, and the lonesome(prenominal) recourse left is one of violence (Geographic, 2007).