In his continuing examination of why Hollywood's recent antiwar films have flopped (even though the old Vietnam stuff didn't), Roger L. Simon offers a very interesting explanation. The Iraq films flop because they lack the same type of passion which characterized the anti-Vietnam war films.
As Roger explains, it's a lot easier for leftists to be pro-Communist than pro-Islamist:
While the Vietnam and Iraq Wars are often equated by the liberal-left, the differences between the two are greater than the similarities, especially in the critical area of who is the adversary. For Vietnam: The evils of communism could be and were rationalized by the left as a plea for social equality in an economically unjust world. For Iraq: The evils of Islamofascism and just plain fascism are considerably harder, indeed almost impossible, to rationalize.
This problem is particularly true for Hollywood because the evils of Islamofascism - notably extreme misogyny and homophobia - are justifiably big no-nos to people in the Industry. In fact, they are close to the biggest no-nos of all for them in their daily lives. Who is worse than a sexist pig? Only a violent, murderous sexist pig who wants to take over the world. It then becomes a complex balancing act indeed to make a movie that ignores or downplays this in order to criticize the US as the larger villain. No one has been able to come close to pulling off this balancing act in a film. In fact, it may well be impossible because it is fundamentally dishonest.
I think Roger is right, and it shows in the quality of the films.
People don't want to sit through fundamental dishonesty. It's also emotionally unrewarding to go to a film expecting good guys and bad guys (after all this stuff is marketed as entertainment), only to be told that "your side" is bad, without a cogent and compelling explanation of exactly how the enemy is supposed to be good.
Would Hollywood make a film showing American troops committing atrocities against the Nazi SS in an unsympathetic light? Such things did happen; I knew a man who was present at the liberation of Dachau who personally witnessed American GIs spontaneously shooting unarmed Nazi concentration camp guards despite the fact that they had surrendered. The officers didn't stop it as fast as they might have, for they were also in a state of horror over what they found. But there's no question that shootings like that were illegal. For obvious reasons, such incidents tended not to make it into Hollywood films. They'd have flopped at the box office, and to make them during World War II would have been unthinkable. For that matter, so would a film about the deaths of innocent children during the firebombing of Dresden.
Whether war is war, and whether atrocities in Iraq are morally comparable to atrocities against the Nazis -- these issues are irrelevant to whether the general public wants to shell out money to sit through a scolding of their own country.
To the extent that entertainment becomes propaganda, it tends to lose its entertainment value. To make good propaganda, the propagandist has to be what is called a "true believer."
(Such a thing may be an oxymoron in Hollywood today.)
posted by Eric on 11.28.07 at 11:55 AM
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Hollywonk does make films that show atrocities, but they can balance the bad acts of the good guys by first showing really horrible violence on the part of the bad guys. I remember seeing "Saving Private Ryan" (under protest) many years ago in the theater. After the initial landing seen, Spielberg shows U.S. soldiers taking over a German machine gun nest. The Germans throw up their hands in surrender, and the U.S. soldiers gun them down. I made an audible gasp, but no one else seemed to see a problem. Maybe it really happened that way, and maybe I would have pulled the trigger too -- don't know, I've never been in combat. Try reading something written from the German prospective, and you will see that not all Germans were Nazis (at least my relatives weren't) (the same way not all U.S. soldiers are Republicans or Democrats), most Germans were farmers or shopkeepers and wanted to be doing other more productive things than marching on France, and many were drafted into the German army and would rather have been home with their families. But as long as people will settle for the "Cliff Notes" version of history put out by Hollywonk rather than analyzing the history for themselves, the propaganda machine will continue to be fed.
Wayne · November 28, 2007 01:47 PM
I don't particualrly like the new meme that these movies are failing because Americans don't like to see America criticised. I think most of us are very comfortable with honest self-criticism. What we don't like is crappy movies, and we don't like intellectually lazy, dishonest preaching in our crappy movies.
In context, the Private Ryan scenes were ok because we had just seen the horror that these soldiers went through to get to that machine-gun nest. They acted out of terror and rage and we can understand that. The recent crop of movies are overly simplistic, America is mischaracterized, our opponents are mischaracterized, and the movies aren't interesting.
Just as the typical liberal thinks he doesn't have to be informed because his opinions are correct anyway, these writers and producers think they don't have to make a quality product because their message is correct anyway. Make a good movie and we will watch it, even if it is critical of America.
tim maguire · November 28, 2007 05:54 PM
I thought the killing of the surrendering Germans in Saving Private Ryan was refreshingly realistic. Handing yourself over to the tender mercies of people you've been trying to kill is a dangerous thing.
Incedentally, my grandfather's brother Vic was one of the liberators of Dachau. When I was a boy he told me about killing the SS guards. He talked quietly about it, matter of factly. At first I was shocked but then I felt something else...pride. What they did that day reflected a moral understanding of the nature of justice, something sadly lacking today.
On April 29, 1945 the American troops who liberated Dachau lined up a large number of German guards against the outer wall of the concentration camp and mowed them down with .30 caliber Model 1919 Browning heavy machine guns. Judging from photographs of the event (http://www.humanitas-international.org/archive/dachau-liberation/)
a large number of the 560 camp personnel captured by the US troops were killed in this manner, although official US reports state that only 15 captured guards were killed, all of them by liberated prisoners and not by US soldiers.
Whatever the case, whether it was 15 SS men who were killed or 560, Justice was, in some small measure, served.
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Don?t bang your head!
Hollywonk does make films that show atrocities, but they can balance the bad acts of the good guys by first showing really horrible violence on the part of the bad guys. I remember seeing "Saving Private Ryan" (under protest) many years ago in the theater. After the initial landing seen, Spielberg shows U.S. soldiers taking over a German machine gun nest. The Germans throw up their hands in surrender, and the U.S. soldiers gun them down. I made an audible gasp, but no one else seemed to see a problem. Maybe it really happened that way, and maybe I would have pulled the trigger too -- don't know, I've never been in combat. Try reading something written from the German prospective, and you will see that not all Germans were Nazis (at least my relatives weren't) (the same way not all U.S. soldiers are Republicans or Democrats), most Germans were farmers or shopkeepers and wanted to be doing other more productive things than marching on France, and many were drafted into the German army and would rather have been home with their families. But as long as people will settle for the "Cliff Notes" version of history put out by Hollywonk rather than analyzing the history for themselves, the propaganda machine will continue to be fed.