Tag: War

Motherhood and Monsters in ‘Under The Shadow’

With regular bombings being an everyday part of their lives, and a warhead landing in the apartment above them, the two of them live under the “shadow of war” in a very real sense. … The jinn, and the hauntings, also serve as a metaphor for Shideh’s own insecurities about motherhood.

Under the Shadow

This guest post written by Becky Kukla appears as part of our theme week on Women in Horror.

Set in the midst of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, Under the Shadow focuses on the lives of Shideh (Narges Rashidi) and her young daughter Dorsa (Avin Manshadi) living in in a small apartment in the middle of Tehran. Early on, Shideh’s husband, Iraj (Bobby Naderi), is conscripted to the frontline of the fighting, leaving Shideh and Dorsa alone. As the bombing becomes worse, and their own apartment building is struck, both of them begin to experience ghostly apparitions within the apartments, categorized by their neighbors, and by Dorsa, as jinn.

The title, Under the Shadow, refers to both the literal shadow of war that Shideh and Dora live underneath on a daily basis and the ghostly souls which begin to haunt them. With regular bombings being an everyday part of their lives, and a warhead landing in the apartment above them, the two of them live under the “shadow of war” in a very real sense. The spiritual shadows known as jinn — supernatural creatures that exist in Arab folklore and Islamic mythology and theology — lurk in doorways and in the corners of rooms, never existing as more than a ghostly figure in the corner of one’s eye. These shadows descend on Shideh and Dorsa, aggressively destroying their lives.

The jinn in Under the Shadow have a basis in myth and legend. Like ghouls and ghosts, they are fantasy figures that may or may not exist. For most of the film it’s hard to know whether the jinn are really haunting Dorsa and Shideh or whether they are manifestations of their fear concerning their current situation. Dorsa, after being told about the jinn by a young neighbor, claims that they are in the apartment several days before Shideh begins to have any experiences with them. This could be Dorsa’s grief at her father leaving and her fears about being killed — as a child she has even less control of the situation than her mother does. When Dorsa loses her beloved doll, she explains to Shideh that the spirits have taken it. Again, this could easily be attributed to Dorsa’s fear of abandonment and death.

Under the Shadow

Under the Shadow straddles a very thin line between fantasy and reality. Writer-director Babak Anvari never explicitly reveals whether the haunting of Shideh and Dorsa is real or imagined, which means that the audience is kept in confusing uncertainty as well. Anvari based his debut film on his personal experiences as a child living in Iran during the war, as well as his own childhood fears about “the ancient myth.” Contextualizing the mayhem that Dorsa and Shideh are going through (they are living in a literal war zone) helps the audience to rationalize their heightened states of fear. On the other hand, some of the events that take place cannot be explained away logically, and we (like Dorsa and Shideh) are forced to confront the terrifying thought that not only has their city been invaded, but their home may be too.

The jinn, and the hauntings, also serve as a metaphor for Shideh’s own insecurities about motherhood. In the first scene of Under the Shadow, Shideh is at university in Tehran to find out whether she will be able to return to finish her medical studies. It is revealed that she was part of the Iranian Revolution before the war, and because of her liberal attitudes, the university will not permit her to come back and graduate. She leaves, deflated and angry. Later, in the film Shideh and Iraj have a heated conversation about why Shideh wants to return to her studies, and why she cannot be satisfied with looking after her daughter. Though Dorsa and Shideh get on well for most of the film, there are moments of tension between the two. The film’s themes of motherhood, hauntings, and trauma drew comparisons to The Babadook. Shideh, as someone who used to want to be a doctor and was actively involved in the revolution, is now trapped inside her apartment building. It’s a huge shift for her, and though she doesn’t blame the birth of Dorsa outright, there seems to be some resentment there. This resentment is only worsened when Iraj leaves — he is a doctor and his skills are needed. His departure partly serves as a reminder to Shideh that she is not qualified and due to the changing role of women in Iranian society post-revolution, she may only hold the title of “mother” for the rest of her life.

Under the Shadow

Shideh is also living at a cultural crossroads. In her apartment, she exercises to Jane Fonda workout tapes, wears Western clothing, and allows her daughter to watch videos. Outside, she must dress conservatively, predominantly in a chador. At one point she reminds Dorsa not to tell the neighbors that they own a video player, as they are banned. Her life is lived in secrecy, under a different type of shadow. These inner conflicts (mother/doctor, traditional/modern) all contribute to Shideh’s frustration and assist in her slow descent into the depths of fear in her current situation.

Ultimately, Shideh feels incapable of doing what it is widely believed that mothers are supposed to do: protect their children. She is unable to protect Dorsa from the war raging in their country just as she is unable to protect her from the spirits raging in their apartment. During the height of their haunting, Shideh receives a phone call from Iraj, who begins to berate her for being a bad mother, telling her that he knew she wouldn’t be able to protect their daughter. Of course, the phone call is attributed to the jinn playing games with Shideh, but they deliberately tap into Shideh’s biggest insecurity.

Real horror is difficult to convey in film; it needs the audience to truly identify with the main characters, to feel their fear as though it is their own. Under the Shadow is a film which bleeds horror from every frame. Not only does it have a strong narrative with an excellent cast, Under the Shadow succeeds in transforming our own self-doubt into horrifying experiences. We identify with Shideh as someone who is struggling, frustrated, and fearful for the future. Whether Shideh’s fears have manifested themselves as a haunted house of horror, or whether the jinn really do exist, is almost irrelevant by the end. All we want is for Shideh and Dorsa to be safe — from both the war and the jinn. 

Becky Kukla works in factual TV by day, and by night she writes about representation in film and television, and rants about politics on twitter. You can find her at Femphile or at Film Inquiry.

The Vietnam War Through a Teen Girl’s Eyes in ‘In Country’

Sam is an underrated, if not widely unknown 1980s heroine. She serves as a symbol for America’s 1980s attempt to reconcile with its most controversial war. The 1980s experienced a boom in Vietnam War films, as the temporal distance from the war allowed filmmakers to fully deconstruct the experience. Rarely is the locus of these films a woman.

In Country

This guest post written by Caroline Madden appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s. | Spoilers ahead.

Norman Jewison’s 1989 film In Country is based on Bobbie Ann Mason’s young adult novel by the same name. The story revolves around eighteen-year-old Samantha Hughes (Emily Lloyd), a.k.a. Sam, during the summer after high school graduation in Hopewell, Kentucky. Sam struggles to understand her Vietnam veteran uncle as she tries to learn more about her father, who died in the Vietnam War before she was born. Sam’s Uncle Emmett (Bruce Willis) wrestles with the symptoms of his PTSD, but refuses to tell Sam about his triggers or experiences. She barely knows anything about her father; her mother only knew and was with him for a few months before he was sent off to war and now she rarely discusses him. Sam spends the summer trying to solve the mysteries of the Vietnam experience and the patriarchal figures in her life.

Sam is an underrated, if not widely unknown 1980s heroine. She serves as a symbol for America’s 1980s attempt to reconcile with its most controversial war. The 1980s experienced a boom in Vietnam War films, as the temporal distance from the war allowed filmmakers to fully deconstruct the experience. Rarely is the locus of these films a woman. Sam’s character manages to break through the barriers of a primarily masculine film genre. In Country uniquely explores both the female and child experience of the Vietnam War and its aftermath. This is a departure from the wide variety of films depicting the male veteran’s assimilation into post-Vietnam life, such as Born on the Fourth of July (1989) or First Blood (1982).

The exclusion of the female is central to both real life and cinematic Vietnam War narratives. As laid out in Susan Jeffords’ seminal gender study of Vietnam, The Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War, she discusses this idea of male bonding, or male collectivity. Men’s fellowship is predicated upon the segregation of the woman — they must bond together to reclaim their lost masculinity from the war. “Why don’t any of the vets I know get along with women?” Sam asks Emmett’s friend Tom. Sam hears the same mantra from various veteran characters throughout the film, “You ain’t never going to understand it. You don’t want to,” Emmett says. “Well, you weren’t there. So you can’t understand it,” says Tom. To the veterans of In Country, Sam will never share in their communal brotherhood of war and thus they must always exclude her. Sam frequently witnesses the impairment in the veteran’s post-war masculinity that keeps them from connecting and actively disengaging from women in primarily romantic and even friendly ways, such as her uncle’s rejection of Sam’s set-up with a local nurse and Tom’s inability to sexually perform.

In Country

Women in Vietnam War films are often pushed away from men who refuse to discuss the war. However, many of these characters remain passive and do not pressure them to divulge information. In Country portrays a woman as an active investigator that truly longs to understand the men’s minds. Sam constantly engages with her uncle and his friends about the war, but any of her sincere questioning about their wounds or memories are met with sarcastic jokes or proclamations that she would not understand. Just as Emmett and his friends dismiss Samantha, her father, Dwayne, also excludes her from the dead. Her friend Dawn finds a box of his letters, photographs and war memorabilia. The text of the letters revolves around soldier camaraderie, emphasizing the bonds of brotherhood. Dwayne excludes his female reader by insisting, “Don’t ask me to tell you how it is here. You don’t want to know.” This feminine segregation, a key component of most Vietnam narratives, is mobilized by all the men in In Country.

These letters begin to change Sam’s idea of her father, who was once a phantom figure in her life, now becomes idealized and heroic. Since Sam is not able to see the ramifications of Vietnam in her father’s post-war life, she can only picture him as a romantic war hero with a good heart. She pins his photograph onto her mirror and speaks to it, “You missed everything. You missed Watergate, E.T., the Bruce Springsteen concert. You were just a country boy and you never knew me.” By defining him as a ‘country boy,’ she envisions him as the embodiment of wholesome heartland America, a beacon of innocence who was harshly victimized after being thrown unwittingly into the dangers of Vietnam. The image of her father becomes as revered as that of a pop star — akin to the Bruce Springsteen posters that loom over her — an unattainable figure which exists as a pure, steadfast body of goodness that is constantly present but ultimately unreachable.

In Country

Sam mourns that her father has not only missed her entire life, but that her father never got to see what life has been like for Americans in 1980s post-Vietnam. She prioritizes Watergate, which changed American political culture forever, and iconic 1980s pop culture. Sam particularly engages with the rock icon Bruce Springsteen, whose career skyrocketed in 1984. Although his presence is more prevalent in the novel, the film still positions Springsteen as important to Sam. It is necessary to consider In Country’s engagement with the text of Springsteen’s hit song “Born in The U.S.A.,” which no doubt speaks to Sam’s observations of the Vietnam veteran’s predicament. The song discusses veterans’ disillusionment and disappointment upon returning to America after fighting its unpopular war, which Sam sees daily living with Emmett. Part of the song’s lyrics reflect his state of being, “You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much/Till you spend half your life just covering up.” Emmett has been both literally and metaphorically covering up. He fears the outside world, confining himself to the home, remaining unemployed, and refusing to work at the tire plant. He is plastered to the couch playing Pac-Man or spends his time digging a hideaway hole under the house. To Sam, Emmett is a living embodiment of Springsteen’s struggling small-town and blue-collar protagonist.

Another song off the iconic 1980s album is used non-diegetically in the film, “I’m On Fire.” The lyrics play as Sam jogs throughout the town. The lyrics, “Hey, little girl is your daddy home?/Did he go away and leave you all alone?” is an on-the-nose reference to Sam’s absent father. The amalgam of the song’s sexual nature and reference to a patriarchal figure reflects Sam’s complex sexual relationship with the significantly older Vietnam veteran Tom, who she attempts to sleep with after a dance. Tom is both an agent of her growing sexuality, as she develops into a young woman, and a platform for Sam to mediate her lost childhood role of father’s daughter, for Tom can be seen as more of a father figure than a potential boyfriend. Her connection and relationship to him can be read as a strange way for her to reconnect with her father. Sam is torn, particularly in this relation to Tom, between seeing herself as the little girl within the family she never got to have and growing up as a young woman.

In Country

In addition to understanding the Vietnam experience, In Country depicts a young woman at a crossroads in her life that many can relate to. All throughout the film, characters ask Sam if she is going to marry her boyfriend Lonnie. Her mother married her father and got pregnant at a young age, and now that Sam is freshly graduated from high school, many expect her to follow in those footsteps. Sam repeatedly tells her interrogators she has “other things on her mind.” It never occurs to them that she could have other ideas for her future, such as college or a career. Sam’s conflicts of these feminine roles are embodied in the character of Dawn, her friend that deals with an unplanned pregnancy. Dawn serves as a reflection of Sam’s alternate path, to marry Lonnie and start a family, and of the past, her mother’s young marriage and pregnancy.

Interactions with Dawn also trigger Sam’s unrest about her familial relationships. In one scene, Dawn pierces her ears and asks if her mother will be upset. Sam insists that her mother is “provincial and misguided” and brags that Emmett lets her do anything she wants to do, including let her boyfriend sleep over. Dawn responds that her father would never let her do that. Dawn’s insistence at having a protective father rubs salt in Sam’s wound about her own father’s absence. Sam does not truly celebrate her absent and misguided parental figures, (as her mother lives with her stepfather and half-sister in the city) they have left her unmoored and bereft. There are no parental figures that care enough to stop and discipline Sam from having sleepovers with her boyfriend. Sam is torn between attending college in the fall and marrying her boyfriend — two seemingly disparate feminine ideals. But overall, she is conflicted because she has never been able to see herself as a daughter within a nuclear family.

Sam’s volleying between the female roles of daughter and independent young woman and her struggle to relate to the Vietnam veterans in her life are resolved within the finale. Throughout the film, Sam had been constructing an idealized picture of her father as a perfect war hero. She obtains his war diaries from her grandparents, and their candor causes her to confront the reality of his wartime experiences and his ultimate humanity. The diaries describe his unremorseful killings of the Vietnamese enemy. Up until now, the letters she has read have only been of fraternizing with his war buddies or fantasizing about home. It never occurred to Sam that her father had to kill, the equation of murder and war was far from her mind as she envisioned her heroic father fighting for his country. Sam spent the majority of the film trying to determine why the Vietnam veterans she knows are so troubled, what happened over there to cause their problems. But when the truth of Vietnam is exposed to her through her father’s experience, she recoils, frightened and upset. It tarnishes her sainted image of the innocent ‘country boy.’ As Sam reveals this to Emmett, he finally unloads the memories that he has been keeping inside, the wounds in which he spent the film “covering up.”  The uncovering of these wounds allows Sam to recognize just how Vietnam’s turmoil affected those she loves, unraveling the romantic notions of her father while allowing her to fully support her troubled uncle. Through this confession, the Vietnam veteran’s feminine exclusion, regulated through silence and hostility, is finally closed off.

In Country

In the final scene, Sam and Emmett travel to the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial. Sam leaves a portrait of herself at her father’s spot on the wall. At the end of one of his letters, Dwayne said he wanted to see a picture of his child. This gesture allows her closure in the lack of connection she felt to him. Now, Dwayne is able to “see” the picture of his child, fulfilling his wish and thereby “acknowledging” her as his daughter. This allows Sam to fully heal and move on. We learn that she decides to attend college in the fall, pursuing her passion for higher education instead of others’ wishes for her to become a young housewife.

What is important about In Country is that it depicts a 1980s female protagonist with agency who carves out a path for herself, makes choices amidst the confusion and pressures of dominant ideologies and complex relationships. Sam Hughes is neither iconic nor well-remembered, but she should be. In Country depicts perhaps the most delicate time in a woman’s life: the transition from girl to young woman. Furthermore, it places the feminine experience within the canon of the Vietnam veteran film, a genre in which male narratives are overwhelmingly present and female characters are often reduced to largely invisible or supporting characters.

Caroline Madden has a BFA in Acting from Shenandoah Conservatory and is currently an MA Cinema Studies student at Savannah College of Art and Design. Other writing can be found on Screenqueens, Pop Matters, and her blog Cinematic Visions. Film and Bruce Springsteen are two of her most favorite things.

‘American Sniper’: We Can Kill It for You Wholesale

This cowboy motif is no accident, as it connects this film to the old John Ford Westerns and the nostalgia some folks feel about John Wayne flicks and the mythology of good white cowboys fighting off savage Indians who were keeping good white settlers from utilizing this “wilderness” that would become the U.S.A. Dehumanizing non-whites is the foundation for creating this nation. It’s the glue that holds apple pies and hot dogs together.

American Sniper poster. Starring Bradley Cooper.
American Sniper poster. Starring Bradley Cooper.

 

On Sept. 11, 2001, I was on the West Coast, living in the mountains of Southern Cali and preparing to go to work. A co-worker came running into our office screaming that the Twin Towers had fallen. Mind you, we were on West Coast time, and by the time I saw the attacks on television, the networks were on replay mode and editing footage deemed too gruesome for viewers.

Gathered around the one tiny TV in another office, my co-workers and I stared in disbelief, and the one thing I said out loud was something I remembered Malcolm X saying about chickens coming home to roost. “This is payback for something folks,” I said to them. While my co-workers were the flag-waving Patriotic types, I was already shaping this assault on American soil as retaliation for the untold dirt our military and government had done for years to countries who didn’t uphold our global agenda. This caused some ruffled feathers between me and some of my colleagues. It was a surreal moment. Our Pearl Harbor for the new millennia.

Looking back at the Sept. 11 attacks, it shouldn’t surprise me why American Sniper was such a big hit with the patriotic ‘muricah crowd.  It is the military chicken soup of the soul cinema experience. It is propaganda of the highest order for viewers who need the Matrix blue pill to live with the lie of America’s War on Terror.

Men are war.
Men are war.

 

What makes American Sniper a disappointing viewing experience is not the ahistorical nature of the film, but quite frankly its generic storytelling. It’s downright boring. I may not agree with the politics of a film in order to enjoy it, but dammit, I have to be engaged with the content and its characters. The only time American Sniper really held my total interest was the appearance of a villainous character named Mustafa (played by Sammy Sheik), another sniper from Syria who we learn was a medal winning sharpshooter in the Olympics. He is for all intents and purposes Chris Kyle’s Arab counterpart. Sammy Sheik is riveting to watch in the brief moments we see him, although he never speaks. (Sidenote: every Arab character is a bad guy in this movie. There are no grays or complexity at all. Men, women, and children are all portrayed as evil, conniving, and dangerous. The idea that they could be defending their country from the cowboy antics of American soldiers is never even hinted at.)

Sammy Sheik as "Mustafa" and the only compelling character to hold my interest.
Sammy Sheik as “Mustafa” and the only compelling character to hold my interest.

 

Bradley Cooper’s portrayal of Chris Kyle as a good ole boy going off to defend American citizens from the new Boogie-Men-of-the-Moment is pretty cut and dry. Usually Cooper is quite engaging to watch with his big baby blues and mega-watt smile. But here he’s not captivating at all, despite his eagerness to be serious and Oscar-worthy. His Kyle comes off as a big dumb reactionary bloke trying to find his manhood through “masculine” pursuits like bronco busting in rodeos and later a trumped up war (lest we forget, the excuse for bludgeoning Iraq was because U.S. intel claimed there was proof of W.M.D.’s—Weapons of Mass Destruction. There were no W.M.D.’s, and the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, but I digress). This cowboy motif is no accident, as it connects this film to the old John Ford Westerns and the nostalgia some folks feel about John Wayne flicks and the mythology of good white cowboys fighting off savage Indians who were keeping good white settlers from utilizing this “wilderness” that would become the U.S.A. Dehumanizing non-whites is the foundation for creating this nation. It’s the glue that holds apple pies and hot dogs together.

The original "Savages" that Cowboys fought. Actually Native people defending their land and liberty.
The original “Savages” that Cowboys fought. Actually Native people defending their land and liberty.

 

The new Wild West of the east. Actually American weapons of mass destruction.
The new Wild West of the east. Actually American weapons of mass destruction.

 

Clint Eastwood, a veteran of old school cowboy flicks and the poster boy for conservative old boy politics, paints American Sniper as another addition to that long line of wild west nostalgia in contemporary war cinema. Unfortunately the script tells us nothing new or insightful about the American psyche in relation to war today. As it stands, the simplistic plot of American Sniper tells us what we already know. Men are war, and American men thrive on it under the guise of Democracy and helping other countries liberate themselves from tyranny–by ironically (maybe intentionally) becoming the new tyranny in places we are supposed to be helping. Every generation, America creates new evil henchmen: Native Americans on the frontier, The Yellow Peril, Red Scare Russians, Black people and Civil Rights, Communist Cuba, and renegade North Korea. Since the 90s and our first trumped-up invasion of Iraq, the Arab world is the new thing that goes bump in the night. Our penchant for war only teaches us that xenophobia and colonialism never went away. We just dress them up with new language like insurgents and failing diplomacy.

Kyle’s indoctrination into war comes when he sees the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Kenya on television, and he only feels bad when he learns some Americans were killed. When the Twin Towers drop, he is gung ho to go to war. Not to protect people, but really, just to have something to do. Before the war, Kyle appears aimless, searching for a purpose. War gives him purpose. He gets married because that seems to be what he is supposed to do. He goes through life following a script pre-written for him. There are obligatory flashback scenes to show his stern father and the simplistic philosophy he was raised to believe in. That there is evil in the world at all times. That there are three types of people in the world: Wolves, sheep, and sheepdogs. And of course, a real man uses a gun and beats the crap out of people. Kyle internalizes these ideals, and carries them with him throughout the rest of his life.

New marriage, but already thinking of battle. Chris and Taya get married. (Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller)
New marriage, but already thinking of battle. Chris and Taya get married. (Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller)

 

The introduction of his wife, Taya (Sienna Miller), adds no meat to the story. She is regulated to being the good wife, the baby maker, the nagging spouse crying on the phone with an infant swinging off her breasts. (Let me say that the fake animatronic baby was creepy as hell and so distracting.) Although it probably wasn’t intended in the writing, you get the impression that Kyle preferred to be away from home not because he wanted to be a war hero, but because being a husband/father was a real drag for him.

Kill shot. Marc (Luke Grimes) and Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper)
Kill shot. Marc (Luke Grimes) and Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper)

 

We are taken through Kyle’s four tour of duties, and each tour builds Kyle up as the sniper with the most kills. There are two scenes, one in the very beginning of the movie, and one later on, where Kyle is faced with the task of killing a child or not. These scenes are meant to show a moral dilemma, but they rang false to me because if someone is the deadliest sniper in American military history, they didn’t get that high body count by worrying about shooting children. There are no children in the Arab world according to this story. Just little insurgents ready to make war.

The "bad guys" in the sniper crosshairs. In America they would be considered Patriots for fighting back.
The “bad guys” in the sniper crosshairs. In America they would be considered Patriots for fighting back.

 

In the theater that I watched the film, a rotund older white gentleman (probably retired military by his crew cut) was actually rooting for Kyle to shoot a child. Because all the Arabs in the movie were considered “savages,” I have no doubt that Kyle never questioned or worried about assassinating children. They weren’t Americans, and therefore not human. (In real life, Chris Kyle bragged about shooting 30 Black people right after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. He bragged about killing fellow American citizens who I’m sure he didn’t view as human. His Katrina shootings were said to be a lie he made up, but his lies spoke volumes about his character. So his fictional quandary regarding Arab children rang false to me because we are never shown a man who questions anything ever. He’s just an unthinking workhorse used by the military.)

The concept of showing a man who just goes along with the war machine could be enhanced dramatically by having side characters who offer a different viewpoint. Unfortunately, we never spend too much time with side characters.  The one character who does begin to question the meaning of this war, Marc ( Luke Grimes—who needs to be in more movies), barely registers a blip on Kyle’s radar of understanding. The plot drags on for over two hours until there’s a stand-off between Kyle and Mustafa. By then, when he’s about to get his ass handed to him by death, Kyle calls his wife and says he finally wants to come home. Not because war has changed his consciousness or philosophy, but because he’s losing a skirmish that he created by not following orders. He went rogue, it backfired, and now he wants out. That was the realest moment in the entire film. Not heroic, just honest human self-preservation.

Snipers in Ferguson, Missouri, their crosshairs on American citizens .
Snipers in Ferguson, Missouri, their crosshairs on American citizens.

 

This is U.S. terrorism. Snipers against Americans.
This is U.S. terrorism. Snipers against Americans.

 

Watching an audience root for snipers to kill humans defending their right to exist on their own land reminded me of images of American snipers here in the states pointing guns at Black American citizens  and their supporters protesting murders by cops in the United States. This same audience that cheered the heroics of Bradley Cooper as Chris Kyle probably cheered the actions of police forces on American streets aiming gun sights on folks with extra melanin. Cognitive dissonance is entrenched in the Patriotic American psyche. It allows Americans to rally around American Sniper, turning it into a blockbuster, while ignoring the home grown terrorism white Americans perpetuated against Black Americans that was depicted in the film Selma. I saw Americans of all colors streaming in to view Selma. American Sniper was vanilla heavy. Not a big surprise to me. Because, history.

Director Clint Eastwood claims he made an anti-war film. He didn't.
Director Clint Eastwood claims he made an anti-war film. He didn’t.

 

Clint Eastwood made spurious claims that American Sniper is an anti-war film. This disingenuous claim falls flat given the simplistic story-line, and the film’s ending dripping with flag waving from real-life  footage of Kyle’s funeral. Had Eastwood really wanted to impress upon an audience the agonies of war, then he would be better off showing actual wounded veterans recovering from the various body traumas they come home with. A lot of flag-waving might become less vigorous when we see war up close and personal. Americans don’t know war. Not really. We watch it on TV like video games. We don’t sleep, eat, go to work, or go to school worrying about unmanned drones and bombs falling out of the sky from some hopped up dudebro with a military computer joystick thousands of miles away.

Unlike the rest of the world, Americans are spared from these continuous horrors and daily PTSD. We are coddled like babies, and this coddling has made us immature children in regards to war. So we deserve a movie like American Sniper. The only message it gives us (like it did Chris Kyle in real life), is that the war you perpetuate abroad will come back to haunt you in another form. Chickens coming home to roost indeed.

No one likes seeing the bodies coming home in movies or in real life.
No one likes seeing the bodies coming home in movies or in real life.

 

 

Self-Sacrifice in ‘Casablanca’: Not Just for the Men

But what stands out among all this entertainment, what makes ‘Casablanca’ feel like a better movie than say, ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ are the stirring emotions of self-sacrifice. And discussions of the capital-G Greatness of ‘Casablanca’ are often centered on masculine concepts of nobility. Despite all his regular protests that he won’t “stick his neck out,” Rick Does the Right Thing and gives the letters of transit to his love Ilsa and her husband (and major player in the Czech resistance) Victor Laszlo. For the good of the world.

And perhaps as a feminist I should take issue with how Rick appears to decide for Ilsa what she is going to do with her life—where to live, which man to be with. But throughout the movie, Ilsa chooses to be with Laszlo, from abandoning Rick at the train station in Paris to threatening him with a gun to get the letters of transit. Rick’s big speech at the end just reconfirms the rightness of her own decisions.

Thank goodness for Casablanca, an unquestionable answer to give when asked the loaded question “what’s your favorite movie?”

 

Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in an iconic image from 'Casablanca'
Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in an iconic image from Casablanca

As Roger Ebert put it, “Casablanca is The Movie. There are greater movies. More profound movies. Movies of greater artistic vision or artistic originality or political significance…” but it doesn’t matter. I’ve never met a person who doesn’t love Casablanca, and I’m not sure I care to.

Casablanca is one of those movies that “has it all”: sweeping romance, scathing political commentary, pristine dialogue (every third line is a famous quotation), surprising amounts of humor (“What watch?” “Ten watch.” “Such much?” “You will get along beautiful in America”).

But what stands out among all this entertainment, what makes Casablanca feel like a better movie than say, Raiders of the Lost Ark, are the stirring emotions of self-sacrifice. And discussions of the capital-G Greatness of Casablanca are often centered on masculine concepts of nobility. Despite all his regular protests that he won’t “stick his neck out,” Rick Does the Right Thing and gives the letters of transit to his love Ilsa and her husband (and major player in the Czech resistance) Victor Laszlo. For the good of the world.

Ilsa
Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman)

And perhaps as a feminist I should take issue with how Rick appears to decide for Ilsa what she is going to do with her life—where to live, which man to be with. But throughout the movie, Ilsa chooses to be with Laszlo, from abandoning Rick at the train station in Paris to threatening him with a gun to get the letters of transit. Rick’s big speech at the end just reconfirms the rightness of her own decisions.

Ilsa and her husband Victor Laszlo
Ilsa and her husband Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid)

It’s not just, as Sally Albright puts it, a practical decision, choosing “to be first lady of Czechloslovakia” over “living in Casablanca married to a man who runs a bar.” Ilsa chooses to be the proverbial Great Woman behind Great Man Victor Laszlo, even though it means choosing an admiring love over a passionate one. She knows, well before Rick tells her, that she is what keeps Laszlo going. Ilsa’s self-sacrifice shouldn’’ be swept away by focus on Rick’s sudden shift back to acting noble.

Annina (Joy Page)
Annina (Joy Page)

A minor subplot also sees Rick’s goodness overshadowing hard choices made by women. One of the first times we see Rick act nobly is when Annina, a Bulgarian newlywed, considers having sex with Captain Renault in order to obtain the exit visas they cannot afford. Annina is distraught by the idea of breaking her marriage vows and exchanging sex for escape, but is desperate enough that she’s nearly decided to do it as she seeks Rick’s absolution. Rick chooses to make it irrelevant by letting her husband win at his roulette table. Again, Rick’s minor intervention distracts from the great personal sacrifice a woman makes in the face of the horrible circumstances of Nazi-occupied Europe.

It’s all right that Rick’s noble actions get the most attention, as he is the main character. I just wish to highlight that the women of Casablanca also choose to set aside First World Problems to address World War II problems. We must celebrate the nobility and selflessness of Ilsa and Annina alongside Laszlo and Rick.

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who must keep in mind she is not threatened by Nazis as she waits, and waits, and waits for a visa extension. 

 

Miyazaki’s Swan Song ‘The Wind Rises’

Hayao Miyazaki is one of the most renowned animators alive. He brought us visually arresting, pro-woman, environmentalist tales like ‘Princess Mononoke’ and ‘Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.’ He brought us lush tales of magic and mythology, like ‘Spirited Away’ and ‘Howl’s Moving Castle,’ with young women as protagonists and other women as focal, powerful characters throughout. Miyazaki now insists that his latest animated film, ‘The Wind Rises’ (‘Kaze Tachinu’), will be his last.

"The Wind Rises" poster
“The Wind Rises” poster

Written by Amanda Rodriguez
Spoiler Alert

Hayao Miyazaki is one of the most renowned animators alive. He brought us visually arresting, pro-woman, environmentalist tales like Princess Mononoke and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. He brought us lush tales of magic and mythology, like Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle, with young women as protagonists and other women as focal, powerful characters throughout. Miyazaki now insists that his latest animated film, The Wind Rises (Kaze Tachinu), will be his last.

The film felt like a goodbye with its insistence that artists can only be creative and productive for 10 years, its somber outlook, and the way in which it concluded at the end of a major era in Japanese history (Japan’s defeat in World War II). The Wind Rises also features one of Miyazaki’s rare male protagonists, Jirô Horikoshi (a fictionalized version of the eponymous historical aeronautical engineer who designed Japan’s model “Zero” fighter plane); I suspect this is because Miyazaki identifies with Jirô and his dreams that are too big and too pure for this world.

Jiro Dream Pilot
“Airplanes are beautiful, cursed dreams, waiting for the sky to swallow them up.”

 

Considering Miyazaki’s focus on the centrality of female characters throughout his career, The Wind Rises is disappointing in its lack of developed female characters. There’s really only Jirô’s loud and pushy but soft-hearted little sister, Kayo, who grows up to be a doctor. Jirô’s encouragement of her medical school dreams and the achievement of a peripheral female character’s big dreams in the 1940’s are a bit too subtle to consider feminist, but it’s a welcome nod nonetheless. Nahoko is Jirô’s tragic love interest who has loved him completely and selflessly since he rescued her as a girl from the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923. Though we know Nahoko loves painting, French poetry, and Jirô, there is little else that we know about her beyond that. She exists solely to love and support Jirô and to humanize him in a way that none of his other relationships do.

Nahoko and Jirô meet by a picturesque spring
Nahoko and Jirô meet by a picturesque spring

 

Though The Wind Rises is (as to be expected) beautiful, it is overly sentimental. Jirô’s reunion with a woman who he helped many years ago only to fall in love with her only to have her be tragically ill was a bit too neat of an unrealistic package designed to give magic and wonder to the external life of a young man who mainly lived within his own head. Not only that, but the ethereal quality of dreams is the heart of the film, insisting that we must make our beautiful dreams a reality no matter what the consequences, no matter how the world may pervert those dreams. This is particularly true of Jirô’s innocent desire to design planes that is warped and manipulated to serve his country’s wartime needs. As a member of the country who heinously dropped two atomic bombs on Japan during World War II, I find this particular theme questionable. Though I valued a glimpse of history from Japan’s perspective, which the US rarely sees, I would have been extremely uncomfortable had I been watching a tale about the creation of the atom bomb and how it was a beautiful dream that life distorted, a dream with deadly real life applications for which the dreamer takes little responsibility. We only know that Jiro and his dreamland mentor, the Italian Caproni, would prefer to design planes that weren’t used for war, but they do so anyway and without question.

Building a war plane
Building a war plane

 

This leads me to my final critique of the film. The war and the purpose of the planes that Jirô builds are, strangely, non-issues. The Wind Rises is an oddly apolitical nationalistic film that laments Japan’s poverty, inability to innovate due to economic challenges, and the pain of pride for being a country technologically left behind. The motivations for the war are never discussed. No one is pro-war or anti-war. The film seems to be asserting that Japan’s involvement in World War II was due to a sense of honor rather than conviction or even political profit. Japan, like Jirô, is, instead a little country with a big dream. Miyazaki’s blasé approach to the war does not measure up to the clear-cut environmentalist stance he takes in many of his other films.

Jiro stands before his failed plane prototype
Jirô stands before his failed plane prototype

 

While Miyazaki continues to deliver breathtaking animated scenes and a sense of wonder and magic, The Wind Rises disappoints on a thematic level with its lack of engagement or curiosity about Japan’s involvement in World War II or an artist’s responsibility for their creations. The borderline cloying saccharine sentimentality along with the lack of strong female characters we’ve come to expect from Miyazaki leave me hoping The Wind Rises is not his swan song, that he will make just one more film that rivals, if not surpasses, the masterpieces he has already given us.

Read also Howl’s Moving Castle and Male Adaptations of Female Work, Princess Mononoke Has No Desire to Marry A Prince, Miyazaki Month: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Miyazaki Month: Howl’s Moving Castle, Miyazaki Month: Spirited Away, Miyazaki Month: Princess Mononoke, Animated Children’s Films: Spirited Away

Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

Eva Green’s Artemisia Disappoints in ‘300: Rise of an Empire’

Most disturbing is the message the film conveys (or fails to convey) about rape and war. Artemisia herself presides over the sacking of Athens, during which we see several Athenian women stripped, raped, and hacked to death with short blades. Does Artemisia see this as suitable retribution? Does the memory of her mother’s suffering cause her to feel any empathy for these women? We do not know, because she makes no comment. This was a huge missed opportunity.

Written by Andé Morgan.

300: Rise of an Empire isn’t a movie about conflict – it is conflict.

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300: Rise of an Empire (300: ROAE) was released Friday, about seven years after the original film…and that’s going to be it for historical accuracy, because there is precious little in the movie.

The film was directed by Noam Murro, and the screenplay was written by Zack Snyder. Snyder also wrote and directed the original film, 300 (2006), and is the writer/director responsible for Sucker Punch (2011) and Man of Steel (2013). The events in 300: ROAE take place before, during, and after the Battle of Thermopylae depicted in the first film, and again represent creative interpretations of key battles of the Greco-Persian wars, namely, the naval battles of Salamis and Artemisium.

Sullivan Stapleton is Themistokles, an Athenian politician-soldier who ascends to power after killing Persian Emperor Darius I at the Battle of Marathon. Rodrigo Santoro and Lena Headey reprise their respective roles as Xerxes, the so-called god-king of Persia, and Gorgo, Queen of Sparta. Eva Green plays Artemisia, commander of Persia’s naval forces and advisor to Xerxes.

Eva Green as Artemisia.
Eva Green as Artemisia.

300 was groundbreaking. Memorable elements, like the highly stylized costumes and CGI sets, the gratuitous slow motion violence, or Gerard Butler’s beard, have been adapted or satirized in many subsequent works. Unlike the imitators, however, 300: ROAE can lay direct claim to the production design of the first film. So, how has the 300 look fared after eight years?

Well, it turns out that the sequel is not as original as the original.

Everything about 300: ROAE seems bloated. The plot is more complex, which is fine, but the pacing is a tad slow; even the action sequences drag on. The characters have more dialogue, but not much more depth. Themistokles is slightly more well rounded than Gerard Butler’s Leonidas, and Xerxes gets a backstory (daddy issues and something about an evil hermit spa).

The battle setpieces are expanded. We get wider views of Sparta and Athens, and the backgrounds hold more detail. Unfortunately, this realism runs counter to what made 300 so awesome; it was the lack of detail and the claustrophobic camera work that made 300 seem more like a dream or a hallucination than a typical swords-and-sandals blockbuster.

And the blood…oh, the blood.

The original film could be accurately described as bloody, but the sequel is blood-drenched. Ridiculously so. The slow motion decapitations and hydraulic blood-sprays in 300 were a perfect fit for the stylized violence-as-art motif of the first film, but the violence in 300: ROAE is just hokey. Think Mighty Morphin Power Rangers instead of high art.

Indeed.
OK, I will, just put down the sword!

The historic Artemisia is a fascinating figure. Artemisia I of Caria, (aka Queen Artemisia of Halicarnassus) was a Greek and the daughter of a Persian magistrate. Her husband was also a ruler; when he died, Artemisia took his throne. During the Greco-Persian war, she contributed several ships to Xerxes’ already massive navy. After distinguishing herself in combat during the battle of Artemisium, an impressed Xerxes praised her skills as a tactician and asked for her advice. The Athenians were quite upset about being beaten by a woman and offered a reward to the man who could capture her alive (so that she could be “shown her place,” I speculate).

By comparison, Snyder’s Artemisia seems to lack the inherent strength of the historical Artemisia. Instead, she exists as a damaged mechanism of vengeance. In 300: ROAE, Artemisia’s family is killed (her mother raped first) in front of her eyes by a group of Greek soldiers. Afterwards, the soldiers rape Artemisia and keep her captive as a sexual appliance in a ship’s hold. These scenes are disturbing, as they should be. Particularly so is the scene where we see the eight-year-old Artemisia (played by 10-year-old Caitlin Carmichael) battered, in chains, and surrounded by a gang of leering men.

Young Artemisia looks on while her family is slaughtered.
Young Artemisia looks on while her family is slaughtered.

Several years later, a catatonic Artemisia is thrown out, like refuse, onto the docks. She’s found by one of King Darius’ kindly warlords,* who takes her in and teaches her the art of war. Eventually, her immense skill as a warrior gains her Darius’ favor. After the king dies from the injury given by the hand of Themistokles during the Battle of Marathon, Artemisia manipulates the grief-ridden Xerxes (who is not at all giant or golden at this point) into disregarding his father’s dying advice by renewing the war with the Greeks. She’s also responsible for planting the “god-king” delusion in Xerxes mind. The resulting dynamic is that Xerxes recognizes his need for Artemisia’s skill, but resents her for it, and for being Darius’ favorite.

Snyder gives us a break from the bloodshed and atrocity by inserting a sex scene between the two main battles. Upset by the failures of her sub-commanders, Artemisia summons Themistokles to her chambers under the pretense of negotiation. Her true intent is to persuade him to defect. She sees his skill as almost equal to her own – between the two of them, Persia would be unstoppable. Themistokles is not having it, however, so Artemisia resorts to seduction.

Wikipedia doesn't have anything on a Themistocles-Artemisia rendezvous.
Wikipedia doesn’t have anything on a Themistocles-Artemisia rendezvous.

The rough sex scene that follows is kind of rapey, and given Artemisia’s background, I found it uncomfortable to watch (it didn’t help that Stapleton and Green lacked chemistry and seemed a bit embarrassed to be in scene themselves). Other commentators have pointed to the fact that Artemisia both initiates and ends the act as evidence of her power, and note that it’s often unclear during the scene who is coercing who. While Artemisia has more depth than the typical fighting fuck toy (FFT), towards the end of the scene the male gaze of the camera puts Green’s breasts front and center and lingers there longer than would be necessary to establish her fearlessness. Artemisia’s costumes are also somewhat impractical and sexualized, but, to be fair, there were one or two men in the film who seemed under-dressed for the weather.

The merits of the sex scene are debatable, but I argue that sexual assault does, unfortunately, define Artemisia. As Kate Conway noted in this 2012 piece for xoJane, rape as backstory is a common trope (e.g., Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I Spit on Your Grave) and it is often utilized by lazy writers attempting to quickly add some depth and motivation to a female character. Often, this woman is a vengeful, violent, female action character (VFAC), i.e., a “badass.” Artemisia is certainly vengeful and violent; in the film, she orders executions and suicide bombings and does quite a bit of skull-cleaving.

A predilection towards violence usually causes critics to reflexively deem a VFAC a “feminist” character. While seemingly directly opposed to the women in refrigerators trope, VFACs often end up as sidekicks or props for the main male character to use to further his own glory. In this way, VFACs usually have the equivalent effect of enforcing, rather than transcending, traditional gender roles. Additionally, VFACs are often killed off as subtle or overt punishment for their perceived masculinity (e.g., the Olga Kurkulina’s Mother Russia in Kick-Ass 2).

Surprisingly, none of the characters in the film comment on the discrepancy between Artemisia’s gender and skills as did the historical Xerxes. After the actual Battle of Salamis, according to Polyaenus, Xerxes said of Artemisia, “O Zeus, surely you have formed women out of man’s materials, and men out of woman’s.” Even Green herself seems to have internalized traditional gender stereotypes. At the red carpet premier last week, Variety quotes Green saying about Artemisia, “She’s so extreme, she doesn’t tolerate people who doesn’t [sic] follow her orders, she has no patience—completely irreverent. She’s a man.”

Unfortunately, during that interview Green also perpetuated the crazy woman stereotype, saying, “I wish I could fight like her or have the courage that she has, but she’s on the edge. She’s crazy.” A similar quote from Green in a USA Today piece reads, “She is a psychopath. I am so far from this in real life.” That article also exemplified the frustrating focus that many reviews have placed on Green’s physical appearance and clothing in the film, rather than on the development or historical context of the character.

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Lena Headey as Queen Gorgo

Queen Gorgo gets more screen time and much more dialogue in 300: ROAE than in the original. However, much of this dialogue is straightforward exposition. The first fifteen minutes of the film are essentially a voice over – Gorgo giving us the film’s elevator speech. While on screen, Gorgo’s dialogue revolves around either worrying about her husband or mourning her husband. Her presence as a combatant as the Spartan cavalry rides in at the end of the film is welcome. Although – as with Artemisia – her motivation is vengeance rather than ideology or pure lust for conquest. While Gorgo is certainly a strong character, her impact on the narrative is minor.

Most disturbing is the mixed message the film conveys about rape and war. We’re shown several graphic scenes depicting the rape and murder of women as natural consequences of war in the ancient world, but Snyder must have been aware that they are just as common today. While narrating Artemisia’s backstory, Themistokles blandly states that it was his fellow Greeks who raped and murdered her mother, but he has no aversion to admitting this. Even more disconcerting, Artemisia herself presides over the sacking of Athens, during which we see several Athenian women stripped, raped, and hacked to death with short blades. Does Artemisia see this as suitable retribution? Does the memory of her mother’s suffering cause her to feel any empathy for these women? We do not know, because she makes no comment. This was a huge missed opportunity.

Similarly, just as Carmichael’s portrayal enables us to feel something of the pain experienced by the young Artemisia as she watched atrocity befall her family, we can also feel the pain experienced by Calisto (Jack O’Connell) as he witnessed Artemisia’s arrow pierce his father, Scyllius’ (Callan Mulvey) heart. Yet, despite what we see, underneath the talk of glory and freedom there is no coherent discussion of the futility of war and no allusion to the mental and physical scars left on the combatants.

Artemisia’s death scene articulates the film’s conflicted non-commentary on rape and war. Bloody, beaten, and anticipating the imminent arrival of the Spartan ships, we see Artemisia on her knees in front Themistokles, the point of his sword at her throat. Rather than accept Themistocles offer of escape, Artemisia chooses death. She feigns attack, and Themistokles stabs her through her lower abdomen. In excruciating detail, we see the sword sawing back and forth through her body. As she pulls Themistokles close, we see an almost orgasmic look cross her face.

While some have interpreted this scene as positive, her refusal to flee or to submit to capture a final example of her autonomy and self-determination, I argue that it instead serves as a capstone, an indirect culmination of the sexual assaults of her childhood, and a direct, forced (by Themistokles) culmination of the sex act that she had earlier delayed in her chambers.

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300: ROAE is not a feminist movie, and that is not surprising given the film’s genre. The film fails the Bechdel Test; Gorgo and Artemisia never share a scene nor speak to other women. Snyder’s Artemisia is ultimately a construct of typical VFAC tropes and, despite a skilled and enthusiastic portrayal by Green, doesn’t do the historical Artemisia justice. Moreover, it’s disappointing that Snyder, having chosen rape as a shortcut to an interesting character, didn’t take the opportunity to also provide relevant commentary on the contemporary use of rape as a tool of war.

If you’re looking for buckets of blood, CGI naval battles, and fancy costumes, check it out. If you were hoping for an authentic adaption of the story of one of the ancient world’s most interesting women, you’ll be better off to stay home and curl up with a copy of The Histories instead.

*Coincidentally, the same warlord that Leonidas introduced to the bottom of a pit in the original film while saying the now infamous line, “Watch your step!”

Andé Morgan lives in Tucson, Arizona, where they write about culture, race, politics, and LGBTQ issues. Follow them @andemorgan.

A Study of a Singular Woman: A Review of ‘White Material’

‘White Material’ is about Maria Vial, a white Frenchwoman striving, in the face of mounting hostilities, to secure the coffee plantation she manages. French troops are assigned to evacuate their nationals but she refuses to leave the land she considers home. Superbly played by Isabelle Huppert, Maria is a profoundly complex character. Whether hanging on to the back of a bus heaving with humanity, or applying red lipstick as the world around her goes up in flames, her tenacity is shown to be incontestable and remarkable.

White Material, 2009
White Material, 2009

 

Written by Rachael Johnson

Claire Denis has made remarkable films about both French colonial Africa and the immigrant experience in post-colonial France. In White Material (2009), Denis returns to the continent, to an unnamed, post-colonial, Francophone country in the throes of civil war. Interestingly, the script was co-written with French author Marie NDiaye. Although of different race, background and generation, both the writer and director have a close connection with French-speaking Africa and an intimate understanding of otherness: Parisian-born Denis grew up in colonial Senegal and Cameroon while Franco-Senegalese NDiaye was born and raised in France.

A singular presence
A singular presence

 

White Material is about Maria Vial, a white Frenchwoman striving, in the face of mounting hostilities, to secure the coffee plantation she manages. French troops are assigned to evacuate their nationals but she refuses to leave the land she considers home. Superbly played by Isabelle Huppert, Maria is a profoundly complex character. Whether hanging on to the back of a bus heaving with humanity, or applying red lipstick as the world around her goes up in flames, her tenacity is shown to be incontestable and remarkable. Maria is, however, a deluded single-minded woman. Her flaws are rooted in both her privileged white European background and singular personality. She may feel an attachment to African soil- indeed, she feels she belongs to the country- but we know that her struggle to save “her” coffee plantation shows supreme self-interest. She shows concern for a worker’s sick child but disregards the fears of those fleeing her plantation. Equally revealing is her willingness to let her employees stay in unpardonable living quarters.

Claire Denis
Claire Denis

 

Maria’s dismissal of the concerns of others, particularly those of her ex-husband, André (Christopher Lambert), and refusal to acknowledge the dangers encircling her adolescent son, Manuel (Nicolas Duvauchelle), may strike the viewer as unrealistic. This capacity for denial is improbable but may also mask a racist assumption: namely, the belief that her white skin will protect her. The viewer is encouraged to read Maria’s commitment as a white fantasy of belonging and possession. This post-colonial white woman may have had a romantic relationship with the local mayor, and may be contemptuous of other whites, but her mindset is considerably colonial. Note that Denis does not judge her central character in an obvious way. Her approach is to observe rather than condemn. It is up to the individual viewer to interpret Maria.

The film is primarily about the position of white people in Africa. The expression “white material” refers both to white people and their possessions. It is wittily employed by the local radio DJ who provides sharp political comment on the conflict: “As for the white material, the party’s over. No more cocktails on shaded verandahs while we sweat water and blood. They’re deserting. They’re right to run scared.” Although Maria’s extraordinary energy and audacity are constantly highlighted, Denis appears to underline that her very presence on African soil is incongruous. This is accentuated by the striking image of her pale-skinned, red-haired character standing, all by herself, on a dirt road in a pale pink dress. Maria is presented as an idiosyncratic anachronism. As it did for the European colonial male in the past, Africa, for Maria, represents opportunity and romantic self-realization. She asks the Boxer, a wounded rebel leader holding up on the land (Isaach de Bankolé), “How could I show courage in France? It would be absurd…I’d slack off, get too comfortable.” Interestingly, it is the Frenchmen of White Material who embody white European decline. Her ex-husband is in debt to the mayor, Cherif, her father-in-law (Michel Subor) aged and ailing, and her son slothful and unstable. Degraded by child soldiers, the latter self-destructs in disturbing ways.

Co-writer Marie NDiaye
Co-writer Marie NDiaye

 

It is to both the child soldiers of the land–“the fearless young rascals”–and Marie that Denis dedicates her film. The former are portrayed as children. We see them play with toys in Maria’s home and we also see their throats slashed by government forces as they bathe and sleep. Although Maria’s commitment to the soil is emphasized, the director’s sympathies rest with the orphaned child soldiers. Their tragic fate is portrayed in an unsettling, heart-breaking manner.

The representation of African political unrest in White Material is troubling, however. The country in question is never named and nor is the viewer given a background to the war. This universalizes the African conflict experience and, unhelpfully, portrays the continent’s wars as incomprehensible, colossal nightmares. The filmmaker’s impressionistic, elliptical approach is problematic too. Africa still needs to be demystified in the Western popular imagination. The continent’s diversity is extraordinary–as the writer and filmmaker undoubtedly know–and, as any thoughtful student of modern African history knows, its wars are invariably politically engineered and highly calculated and organized.

Child soldier
Child soldier

 

The narrative approach of White Material also serves to generalize the contemporary European expatriate white experience in post-colonial Africa. It may seem obvious but the global audience needs to be reminded that there are many different kinds of expatriates across the continent–of all races and socio-economic backgrounds–as well as white expatriates–and citizens–who are not colonial in their mentality. White Material is specifically about privileged white people who still farm African land in a post-colonial French-speaking country. Further, one may question whether a family so singular can represent the French post-colonial mindset. Manuel’s fate is, to be honest, quite bizarre. The apocalyptic resolution befits a classical tragedy but it is frankly absurd. If it is meant as a searing condemnation of the colonial mentality–and I hope and trust it is- the message is lost in all the strangeness.

Troubled son
Troubled son

 

Razor-sharp remarks about European exploitation of black Africans ring true in White Material. The DJ mocks those “who rip us off and use our land to grow mediocre coffee that we’d never drink.” However, both the script and story lack clarity. What to make of Cherif’s remarks about Maria’s son, Manuel? He observes: “Extreme blondness brings bad luck. It cries out to be pillaged. Blue eyes are troublesome. This is his country. He was born here. But it doesn’t like him.” The remarks are striking but somewhat cryptic. They have political intent and resonance in the sense that they force Maria to confront her whiteness. She is reminded that her ancestors were not African. These somewhat obscure words also appear to indicate a belief that whiteness is somewhat demonized in the popular black African imagination. This is worrying as they arguably serve to reinforce Western associations of Africa with superstition. The character of the rebel leader, the Boxer, is, equally, opaque. Before finding refuge, The Boxer roams the scarred land on an abandoned horse like a kind of phantom. Suffering a stomach wound, he also appears to symbolize African stoicism. The portrait is, therefore, a somewhat mythic one.

Under pressure
Under pressure

 

White Material thankfully lacks the exoticism of Hollywood films about Africa. This is unsurprising, of course, considering the filmmaker’s background. Nor does it adopt a didactic approach. Although not without interesting ideas and striking images, it ultimately, though, does not provide great insight into African politics or conflict. Due perhaps to its obliqueness and opaqueness, White Material is neither sufficiently stirring nor powerful. It is an interesting rather than impressive work by the veteran director. What is unusual about White Material, however, is that it has a single-minded, risk-taking, ideologically dubious, deeply flawed complex female character at its center. What’s more, it elicits important discussions about white European femininity and entitlement.

 

‘The Book Thief’: Stealing Hearts and Minds

Liesel, unlike so many young heroines, resists romance—from her friend Rudy’s early problematic insistence and then throughout the remainder of the movie. Instead of being positioned in relationship to romantic partners, she has three male best friends—Rudy, Max and Hans (Papa)—as well as two females of great importance to her life, Rosa (Mama) and Ilsa Hermann (the mayor’s wife who, transgressively, supplyies Liesel with books). As for Liesel, like her futuristic counterpart, Katniss Everdeen, she is a life-saving heroine and inspirational rebel.

The Book Thief
The Book Thief

 

This cross-post by Natalie Wilson previously appeared at the Ms. Magazine Blog and appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.

Though the film The Book Thief is narrated by Death (as is the book) and takes place during World War II—an era particularly riddled with death—the movie brims with life. A large part of this is due to the amazing young actress Sophie Nélisse who plays the protagonist, Liesel Meminger. It is not often that we get complex, brave female characters, especially ones who are not interested first and foremost either in romance or motherhood.

Liesel, unlike so many young heroines, resists romance—from her friend Rudy’s early problematic insistence and then throughout the remainder of the movie. Instead of being positioned in relationship to romantic partners, she has three male best friends—Rudy, Max and Hans (Papa)—as well as two females of great importance to her life, Rosa (Mama) and Ilsa Hermann (the mayor’s wife who, transgressively, supplyies Liesel with books). As for Liesel, like her futuristic counterpart, Katniss Everdeen, she is a life-saving heroine and inspirational rebel.

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Sophie Nelisse as Liesel in The Book Thief

 

While I disagree with the The New York Times review, which likened the book to “Harry Potter and the Holocaust,” I have to concur with some of the suggestions the comparison implies, such as the importance of friendship, the love of whimsy and the existence of villainous persons that threaten all of humanity. The Book Thief has no wizards though; instead, its narrative rests on the shoulders of young Liesel, orphaned at the outset and taken in by a seemingly shrewish foster mother of the Disney wicked-stepmother-as witch variety. While Rosa is somewhat softened into a more likeable character by the end of the book, the film takes her character transformation in a more feminist direction, suggesting she was merely playing the part of shrew in order to protect the family during the tyrannical times in which they live.

Similarly, Hans, who at first comes off as too quick with the wives-are-such-a-nuisance type of comments, is revealed in the film to also be playing the role of a husband who bemoans his nagging wife, mocking her whenever the chance arises. As such, the two characters play out the role of a bickering married couple so as not to draw attention to their family or house. Here, the film hints at the social roles we are forced to occupy in order to not be singled out, to not be “other.” In so doing, it nods to the fluidity of identity and the ability to resist even the most tyrannical regimes via daily acts of transgression.

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Sophie Nelisse as Liesel in The Book Thief

 

Rudy also commits rebellious acts. On the one hand, as the book notes, he is “not the junior misogynistic type of boy at all,” something that has for too long been a norm of boyhood. On the other, his hero is the African American Olympic runner Jesse Owens—the man who refused to shake Hitler’s hand, though this direct political detail in the book is unfortunately not included in the film. The movie, does, however insist that racism is learned, and that Rudy has not learned it, as when his father tells him exasperatedly, “You can’t go around painting yourself black” when he does so in order to feel like Jessie Owens as he runs a race.

Similarly, though Death narrates the book, many of the characters refuse to give in to the death and destruction around them. Instead, they turn the toughest of times into opportunities for empathy and kindness—or, figuratively, to take the graveness out of death. Indeed, two of the book’s at the center of the narrative are very grave indeed, one being The Grave Digger’s Handbook and the other Hitler’s Mein Kampf. With one, Liesel learns to read; with the other, she learns to write. Thus books infused with death are used to give life to Liesel’s story and, more broadly, books, literacy and storytelling offer vital opportunities for transgression in an age of book burning.

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Geoffrey Rush as Hans and Sophie Nelisse as Liesel

 

That Liesel’s story is made possible by Max painstakingly painting the pages of Mein Kampf white, so as to create a “blank” journal in which Liesel can write is also key. Firstly, it visually negates Hitler’s heinous manifesto of hate, erasing his words with thick paint. Secondly, as the paint is white, it nods to the white Aryan supremacy promoted by Hitler and others in a way that suggests whiteness need not be the privileged, oppressive category it has been for so long. It can be, as indicated by Rudy—the white boy who paints himself black—covered over to tell a different story. Thirdly, the fact that Liesel uses the now-blank pages to write The Book Thief over the hidden words of Hitler suggests not that we “whitewash” history, but that we use what is at our disposal to make this often all-too-ugly world more bearable.

Reviews of the film thus far have been very mixed, with the most common criticism being that it’s  too slow and long. For contemporary audiences, this critique has some merit. However, the critique could just as well be directed at audiences, and the film industry at large, for its penchant towards action-packed, special-effects focused, razzle-dazzle types of films. Not everything need be in 3D or filled with explosions to be entertaining. I fear for the slow death of classic films that unfold via complex characters, quiet moments and the multifaceted feelings they bring forth in the viewer. On this count, The Book Thief gives me hope.

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Movie still from The Book Thief

 

Directed by Brian Percival (who directed several episodes of the similarly classy Downton Abbey), the film holds a special appeal for book lovers, centering as it does on the power of a good book and how literacy changes lives and words shape our existence.

It also gives me hope that perhaps we are undergoing what Melissa Silverstein of Women and Hollywood calls “A Female Revolution at the Box Office.” Says Silverstein,

It is so rare to see a full-on, beautiful shot of a young woman to open a film. And from that first moment, this young woman just commands the screen and leads this film in every way.

Though Silverstein is referring to Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, the same can be said of Nélisse: She is the heart of the film, bringing the character of Liesel to life in a haunting and mesmerizing way.

If you can steal two hours and five minutes from holiday shopping and parties to see this film, I urge you to do so. Though different from Catching Fire, its talented lead actress and its emotional message might very well burn their way into your heart.

 

Natalie Wilson, PhD is a literature and women’s studies scholar, blogger, and author. She teaches at Cal State San Marcos and specializes in areas of gender studies, feminism, feminist theory, girl studies, militarism, body studies, boy culture and masculinity, contemporary literature, and popular culture. She is author of the blogs Professor, what if …? and Seduced by Twilight. She is a proud feminist mom of two feminist kids (one daughter, one son) and is an admitted pop-culture junkie. Her favorite food is chocolate.

 

 

Foreign Film Week: Remembering, Forgetting and Breaking Through in the Female Narrative of ‘Hiroshima mon amour’



Written by Leigh Kolb


Hiroshima mon amour debuted in 1959, 14 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed. Alain Resnais’ first feature film explores memory, forgetting and tragedy on an individual and worldwide scale, largely through the lens of Elle (“Her”), played by Emmanuelle Riva.

While Resnais had signed on to do a documentary about the atomic bomb, he concluded that it should be fictional and “that the impact of Hiroshima would be refracted through the viewpoint of a foreign woman,” according to critic Kent Jones. Resnais wanted Marguerite Duras, a French writer and later film director, to write the screenplay. 
Duras’ command of literature, dialogue and feminist sensibilities resonate in the film (Duras was nominated for an Academy Award for the screenplay). Hiroshima mon amour, which grounds itself in the brief affair of a French woman and a Japanese man (Lui, “Him,” played by Eiji Okada) in Hiroshima, is as much about the growth and healing of an individual in a partnership as it is about nations healing after the second World War. 
Marguerite Duras wrote the screenplay, a stream-of-consciousness conversation with a focus on the feminine.

This juxtaposition of the feminine (love, emotion, peace) and the masculine (war, possession, destruction) shows that neither exists in a vacuum. 

The first section of the film shows Elle and Lui’s naked bodies intertwined, and their dialogue–dominated by her thoughts–is accompanied by increasingly awful footage of the aftermath of the bomb. She talks about how she visited the museum in Hiroshima: “… the reconstructions, for lack of anything else… the explanations, for lack of anything else.” She looked at the photographs and the scorched metal. She says, “What else can a tourist do but weep? I’ve always wept over Hiroshima’s fate.” As she “remembers,” Lui interjects that she remembers nothing, that she knows nothing and that there was nothing for her to weep over.

Elle was a young woman in occupied France (Nevers) when she learned the bomb dropped. Lui was fighting in the war, and his family was in Hiroshima. As the narrative unfolds and Elle comes to terms with her past, her youth and madness that she had in Nevers was due to her intense love with a German soldier–the enemy–who was killed right before they were set to leave together.

Lui’s story doesn’t seem as important as hers. We know he’s married (they both are), and that he’s a successful architect and involved in politics. His role in the film is that of a lover, of course, a pursuer and a listener. 

Elle, fighting Lui’s claims that she doesn’t know anything about Hiroshima, stresses that she does know. She says she knew that women risked giving birth to “monsters,” men risked becoming sterile, huge amounts of food had to be thrown away and that the “principle of inequality” kept advancing–between races and classes. He tells her she knows nothing, but we hear her concern with the traditionally feminine, even feminist, cultural and human ramifications of this new warfare. 

Her memory and knowledge, from a French perspective, also symbolizes the difficulties that others have in attempting to remember and to understand tragedies on foreign soil. 

When this introductory collage of words and images ends, the couple’s faces are shown, laughing in bed. They are individuals now, not just ideas. 

He asks, “What did Hiroshima mean to you in France?” 

She answers, “The end of war. I mean, completely.” She couldn’t believe they did it and that they succeeded. 

“The whole world rejoiced, and you rejoiced with it,” he says. 

Elle and Lui share passion and memory.

Their conversations, although heavy, are rooted in a desire and growing love for one another. The beginning conversation sounds uncomfortable since Lui is denying Elle’s memory and understanding, but they weave themselves together and her memories become lucid as the story unfolds. And Lui listens and falls deeper in love with her.

This prevailing theme of memory and understanding, and the limitations of both, are a product of a unique film production–Japanese and French companies and crews produced it, and the producers demanded that one star be French and the other Japanese. Even the production of the film highlights this partnership and what can be possible when cultures partner. Resnais and Duras, the creative team, show the great power of giving creative license to both the masculine and feminine.  
Elle is in Hiroshima acting in a film about “peace,” and when Lui finds her on set, they are filming actors protesting with signs about nuclear testing and photos from after Hiroshima. Much like the setting of Hiroshima itself, these scenes provide a backdrop to the individual love affair of a couple while reminding the audience of worldwide pain and tragedy.
Elle describes her memory of her past in Nevers (after Lui asks her about it). When she first asks why he asked about Nevers, Lui says he understands that she “was young, and didn’t belong to anyone in particular. I somehow understand that you began to be who you are today.”

She fell in love with a German soldier, and he was killed. She stayed by his cold body while the cathedral bells celebrated the liberation of Nevers (again, showing the complex perspectives of victory for some and tragedy for others). Her family is shunned since she was a “disgrace,” and her head is shaved. When she screams, she’s locked in the cellar until she becomes “reasonable,” and her mother sends her to Paris.

When she arrives in Paris, Hiroshima is “in all the papers.” She says, “Fourteen years have passed–I still remember the pain a little bit, but one day  I will no longer remember it. At all. Nothing.”

Lui asks if her husband knows this story, and she says no. “So I’m the only one?” he asks, and she replied that he is. He is elated, and embraces her. His possession of her memories signifies a deepening of their relationship and a new found trust. That, or he’s simply happy to have something of hers that only he possesses.
In an internal dialogue after leaving Lui (who begs her to stay), Elle speaks to her German lover, and says that she’s found another impossible love, and that she’s told her story. She is terrified of forgetting him.
Elle splashes water on her face and she is reborn after telling the story of her “youth” and “madness” in love.
When she and Lui walk the streets together and her thoughts dominate the narrative, scenery from France and Japan flash back and forth, confusing time and place. Elle says, “I meet you. I remember you. This city was tailor-made for love. You fit my body like a glove. Who are you? You’re destroying me. I was hungry. Hungry for infidelity, for adultery, for lies and for death. I always have been. I had no doubt you’d cross my path one day…”
She is attracted to and comforted by Lui, but her journey is much more introspective. He continuously chases after her, but she knows that “staying is more impossible than leaving.”
Her climactic thought is “Silly little girl who died of love in Nevers–I relinquish you into oblivion.”
She doesn’t really, though, nor should she.
They visit a cafe late at night (Casablanca, a clear nod to another film of “impossible love”), and the sun  begins to rise overhead. Lui follows Elle back to her hotel room. She cries, “I’ll forget you! I’m forgetting you already!” This is a threat and a mournful realization all at once. She says, slowly, “Hiroshima,” and he covers her mouth. “Hiroshima,” she repeats. “That’s your name.
“Yes, that’s my name,” he says. “And your name is Nevers. Nevers in France.”
The sweeping narrative begins with discussion of place, of warfare and mass casualties narrows in on a couple, and a woman’s struggle with remembering, forgetting and mourning her past. At the end, they are again representative of their places in the world, and a complex, difficult history.
Hiroshima mon amour, as a cornerstone film in the French New Wave movement of the late 1950s and 1960s, offers us no answers or prescriptions for life. Instead, we are left aching–both for the “impossible” romance and the pain and emptiness of modern war.
The beginning of the film inundates us with images from after the bomb. As we drift farther into the narrative and farther away from those horrifying images, we forget what we saw. We forget the horrors. Hiroshima mon amour forces us to reflect on the power of memory, and more so, the power of forgetting.
Throughout the film, the relationship between the masculine and the feminine, remembering and forgetting and dealing with war from different perspectives tugs and pulls at Elle and Lui and at the audience. At the end, the impossible is made penetrable by accepting and absorbing these complex relationships all at once.

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Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri. 

‘Red Dawn’: How Not Crying Will Defeat Communism

Wolverines!
In Hollywood action flicks, hypermasculinity is a key tool for survival. The folks who have zombie-apocalypse bunkers and piles of military-grade weapons last longer – if they never cry. It’s reinforced in Red Dawn, the 1984 movie starring Patrick Swayze and directed by John Milius.
Milius’s Red Dawn adoringly plays with the premise of an occupied U.S. What if the Russians, Cubans and Nicaraguans successfully invaded? Apparently they would start with rural middle-America and send paratroopers to attack a high school. While this may not seem like a practical strategy (considering the U.S. is large both in actual size and military might) it actually works out pretty well for the invaders of Red Dawn.
This movie romanticizes unexpectedly-skilled kids forfeiting life and well-being for country and vengeance. A group of teens become guerilla warriors and name their group after their high school mascot: the Wolverines! (I feel compelled to put an exclamation point after each use of “Wolverines!,” because I am pretty sure yelling is part of the official pronunciation.) This movie looks like how an eighth-grader might conceive war: its premise is grand, unrealistic and the values are oversimplified and packed with hormones.
And, guess what? This jacked-up fantasy is being redone. There’s a new Red Dawn on the horizon. Dan Bradley, who is known mostly for his stunt coordination work, is redoing the film that was the first to get a PG-13 rating. (Aimed at kids, yet rife with violence.) While I want to jump on the ridiculous 2012 trailer, I have to go back and explain why it’s even more ridiculous to produce now, considering the badness of the original Red Dawn.
To start: Milius’s Red Dawn was already absurd when it came out in 1984. Sure we had just warmed up from the Cold War. But, the idea that the Cuban army would be occupying a small U.S. town and launch its first attack on a high school: this movie was made to be laughed at. If it had merit it would be that it’s an excellent satire of nationalism. Unfortunately, that merit is based on wishful imagination on my part.
Wrapped up tight in that too-sincere-nationalism is tradition and subsequently: traditional gender roles. But, what’s interesting is its push for hypermasculinity – not just for the boys in the film, but also for the girls. So, while there are “when men were men” attitudes, the stereotypical role of women are cut out even for the female characters. I guess there’s not a lot of room for femininity in spastic red-blooded propaganda flicks.
Yes, the Wolverines! are equal-opportunity in their stereotypically male stoicism and aggression. They don’t discriminate between genders when it comes to muddy survivalist tactics and the refusal to cry, ever.
The boys’ dad (Harry Dean Stanton) tells them to not even think about crying.
Crying was very specifically pointed out as an action not to be taken by survivors. When the main characters of the film Jed and Matt Eckert (Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen) find their Dad (Harry Dean Stanton) in a prison camp he imparts advice that is repeated throughout. He doesn’t give them tips on how to survive, or even a trying-to-be-poignant call to cling to hope. Instead the boys’ dad tells them, “I don’t want either one of you to ever cry for me again. Don’t ever do it. Not as long as you live.” I am sure that’s the most important thing he could have told his kids who were hiding in the mountains from an invading army. Don’t worry. Mr. Eckert follows this up with a prolonged “Avenge me!”
Again, Red Dawn fails at practicality. But, it wins at perpetuating a narrative of strength via glamorized old-school warrior manhood.
I want to address the women of Red Dawn. But, frankly it’s hard to talk about any of the characters in the movie. There’s just not a whole lot of character development. Erica (Lea Thompson) and Toni (Jennifer Grey) join up with the boys after hiding from would-be-assaulting enemy forces. We actually meet the girls as their guardians reveal them by pulling up a hatch in the floor. The two have been hidden and we first see them as they are crouched, looking upward and eager to melt into the bland multi-personed-character of Wolverines!
Toni and Erica (Jennifer Grey and Lea Thompson) in Red Dawn
Toni gets pretty much no development. She laughs and carries an assault rifle – like the rest of the group. She blends into the steely amalgam. Toni doesn’t stand out, but neither do the boys, really.
Erica on the other hand gets one of the few lines acknowledging gender difference. Matt (are we surprised that it’s Sheen’s character who says this?) tells Erica she should do the dishes. Erica reacts viscerally and says, “You wash it! We’re never doing your washing again! Me and her is as good as any of you!” She also (spoiler alert) gets to be one of the few remaining survivors. This was the 80s after all, a time when we were celebrating women’s equality, but that equality looked a lot like redistributing stereotypical masculinity.
So from Milius’s Red Dawn we learn that the key to being a successful militia is having seemingly endless access to big-ole weapons and suppressing emotion. This is very possibly true. What’s makes the premise not-so-likely is that a high school quarterback, his visiting-home brother and their buddies would probably not have the aforementioned weapons, the skills to use them and the ability to root out emotion. What is even less likely, is that Cuban and Nicaraguan armies could make their way across the U.S. and successfully invade because they had magical Russian weapon technology. It’s hilariously unrealistic. But, the old premise might be more believable than what’s coming next.
Not only are we sticking to a pretty ridiculous idea (except now it’s North Korea who’s the even-more-unlikely invader), it looks like this round of Red Dawn could come with an extra dose of unnecessary sex appeal. One thing to appreciate about Milius’s Red Dawn was that, while there was a creepy crush thrown in, the movie didn’t go out of its way to exploit romance. Milius was too busy with gratuitous violence.
But, in Bradley’ Red Dawn trailer we have clean made-up characters and obvious moments of sexy-slow-motion-kissing time. It’s not clear exactly how gender will play a role in the upcoming redo. But, with rapid cuts to gunfire, explosions and car wrecks – it seems like hyper-violence inspired masculinity will probably continue to play a role.

Red Tails: Historic, Entertaining, Altogether Lacking Women…and Why that Is Okay

Red Tails (2012)

I don’t see movies in the theatre very often. I know, for someone who co-founded and writes for a film site to say that is tantamount to treason. But, it’s true: there has to be a good reason for me to plunk down ten bucks (I’m a starving writer, friends!) to sit in a movie theatre and put up with texting & talking teens and coughing & sneezing strangers, when I’d usually rather be in the comfort of my own living room.
Here are some examples of what brings me to the theatre:

  • A movie is nominated for some serious awardage.
  • A movie tells a story about women (other than ladies getting hitched), or is told by women.
  • A movie’s cinematography demands the big-screen, public experience.
  • My movie dollars are political speech.

It’s for the last two reasons that I saw Red Tails last weekend in the theatre. First, a whiz-bang action movie involving fighter pilots in WWII is definitely more fun in the theatre than on my couch. It’s the kind of movie in which you want the crowd’s gasps and applause at moments of high tension and release. You want the visceral experience of flight and fear, loss and victory. Second, since Red Tails is the first big-budget Hollywood action movie featuring an all-Black cast—and is both written and directed by Black men—I wanted to help send movie executives a message. See, as I pointed out last week in a preview post, producer George Lucas couldn’t get any company to distribute it—they feared the film would have no foreign market (which is where Hollywood currently makes a huge portion of its revenues). It took Lucas decades to bring the film from idea to reality.
So, the story behind the film means a lot to me. In case I’m not perfectly clear, it’s a damn shame that in 2012 Hollywood is too fearful, too conservative, too—frankly—racist to embrace a film about bona fide World War II heroes who happen to be Black. And don’t give me that argument that movies about the Tuskegee Airmen have already been made.
But on to the actual movie, and to a pleasant surprise. 
Although “action” isn’t my favorite genre, I can say without reservation that I really enjoyed Red Tails. Even though there are no women in the movie, aside from an Italian love interest and a brief appearance by her mother (the two speak to each other in untranslated Italian, but it’s safe to assume they talk about a man, so the movie fails the Bechdel Test)—more on that later. The movie is exciting, entertaining, funny at moments, deeply sad at others, and altogether engaging. Plus, as it’s based on the real experience of the Tuskegee Airmen, you might learn something while being entertained (although U.S. moviegoers are often portrayed as only wanting the latter, I suspect most of us actually want both). 
Cuba Gooding, Jr. as Major Emanuelle Stance, sans pipe
The style of the movie is an homage to ‘40s and ‘50s hokey action flicks, so you get some corny lines (and some hilarious white-dude dialogue–imagine in a robotic voice: “I sure hope we meet up with those Red Tails again.”), stock characters, clear lines between good and evil, and affected performances—especially from Cuba Gooding, Jr. and His Pipe. Even if you’re not familiar with the movies being imitated, nothing stands out as particularly peculiar and, compared with the majority of Hollywood action flicks, the movie—even though it’s about war and defeating the German military—is rather innocent. Innocent in the way that you kind of hope young men the world over will watch it, and pass on some others.
Now, let me say more about why I’m okay with this movie—and with writing about it on a site that focuses on women in media and almost daily reports on how woefully underrepresented women are—leaving out women. It’s true that some movies are about men—particularly films about men in historic wars who are in combat positions. That’s not to say that war doesn’t strongly impact women, but for the majority of the 20th century, combat was done by men. Do we already have a plethora of films about men in combat? Yes, of course. But there are still untold stories, and although anyone familiar with the history of Black men in the U.S. should know about the Tuskegee Airmen, the sad fact remains that it’s not an often-told story in the nation’s history. Further, including women in this movie (again, there is a female love interest who appears in a rather common and predictable storyline) would detract—and distract—from the central story. If a sequel is, in fact, made—and it takes place when the men return home and are treated as second-class citizens in the country they fought for—it should include women. 
Further, if you compare this action movie with basically any other action movie in recent memory, one important element is missing: rampant misogyny. Perhaps the film would’ve been betraying its style if it included the kind of talk and images about women that are so common today, but in this regard it was completely refreshing. My feminist ire wasn’t raised a single time (though the romantic subplot might’ve drawn an eye roll). Perhaps that reveals more about me than the actual film, but the basic respect for women, even when they were almost completely absent, was a relief.
As happy as I am that Red Tails was made and did well its opening weekend (landing at the number 2 box office spot), it does bother me a bit that the historic element of the making of the film—with its Black writers, director, and stars—was all in the name of war propaganda. That’s not to belittle or reduce the accomplishments of the real-life Tuskegee Airmen. But the politics of it all reminds me a bit of The Hurt Locker. More specifically, director Katherine Bigelow was the first woman to win a Best Director Academy Award (and only the fourth woman ever nominated), but she had to make a very masculine and male-centered war film to achieve that level of respect and acclaim. Would a movie about another subject receive the same amount of attention and box-office success as Red Tails?
cast of Red Tails
Red Tails is far from the first film to feature a Black cast, but as someone on Twitter asked us, is it the first all-Black film that white people care about? In other words, we as a culture are very good at making period pieces and then looking at them, with self-righteousness, shaking our heads at how foolish and awful people were back then, and simultaneously congratulating ourselves for being so much better. But, more often than not, “back then” looks more like “present day” than most of us want to admit. (One recent outrageous example: in Newt Gingrich’s South Carolina primary victory speech last weekend, one crowd member reportedly shouts “String him up!” in reference to our current U.S. President.) 
We should absolutely honor the heroes of our past, like the Tuskegee Airmen, but let’s not forget heroes like them exist today and have to face different but still very real demons when they come home. I, for one, would like to see more of those movies.
Rotten Tomatoes ranks Red Tails as Rotten, with a 33% rating (although the audience rating is a positive 73%). What did you think of the movie?

Top 10 in 2011: Why Should Men Care? An Interview with Matt Damon

Readers, you really really love Matt Damon. That’s the only reason we can figure for this little post, featuring a video of Damon explaining his involvement in the PBS Women, War and Peace series, being #2 in 2011. Perhaps, though, it’s not just Damon’s presence, but how succinctly he explains the importance of men’s involvement in so-called women’s issues. (But we really really like him, too.)
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Matt Damon narrating Women, War, and Peace

At Bitch Flicks, we’re featuring reviews of the five-part PBS documentary Women, War & Peace—all by the fabulous Megan Kearns—the first of which we published on October 19th. (Megan’s review of Part Two will appear later today.) Matt Damon narrates the series, and he was interviewed about his participation, explaining why he wanted to be a part of the event and why men should care about how war impacts women, especially when rape is used as a weapon of war. I’m posting the video of the 4-minute interview, but it’s also linked to above (just in case).