16. "that's so facile. I'm ashamed of you." In response to In response to 14
If you do something and you know that it will have a given effect, even if that given effect was not your *main* purpose in doing the thing, you can't be said to be entirely innocence of the second effect.
My downstairs neighbor played her music at top volume at times ranging from 1 to 3 AM on weeknights. I *finally* got her to turn it down some, and at one point she said to me very haughtily, "I never intended to disturb you."
Well, obviously, she wasn't playing the music so loudly that it would wake me up and vibrate my floors ONLY in order to wake me up and vibrate my floors. Obviously she was doing it in order to have a more thorough experience of the music herself. But since she knew that it would wake me up and vibrate my floors, didn't she have a responsibility to moderate the volume?
That's what I mean about the double effect.
If Stone knows that jingoistic emotions will be roused by his film, and if he knows that the result of those emotions has in the past been a war of aggression on people not involved in the events of September 2001, how much responsibility does he bear if his film has the effect that I (and doubtless others) expect? How much innocence can he claim or can you claim on his behalf, if enquiring minds can already connect the dots?