[1173] in peace2
Re: FRIDAY MOVIE!!!
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Alan Donovan)
Fri Oct 26 17:10:49 2001
Message-ID: <3BD9D12F.3916D2FD@lcs.mit.edu>
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001 17:10:07 -0400
From: Alan Donovan <adonovan@lcs.mit.edu>
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To: Jan Outcalt <jano@MIT.EDU>
CC: Julia Steinberger <julias@MIT.EDU>, peace-list@MIT.EDU
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Jan Outcalt wrote:
>
> Hi Julia and everyone
>
> I walked out on this movie. In my humble opinion it was a piece of
> shit, total US propaganda. The "good" Arabs were the ones who pleaded
> nicely for American help and didn't "like" the Arab military types
> fighting the US. The supposed criticism against the US was basically
> that: that some American military types didn't realize there were
> people who really liked Americans, and were being victimized by the
> more ruthless Arab military types.
>
> Also it is very violent, well, if you like animals or women anyway.
> Totally gratuitous shot of a cow being blown to pieces, etc. Also
> some gross stuff against women. Someone with the side of their head
> blown off, I think--the memory is a bit vague. I walked out at that
> point.
>
> Beautifully filmed but so what.
>
> Anyway, this is my opinion.
>
> Jan
>
> Ps I did get my money back.
> Oh also, very much a macho movie in many other respects.
Um, a few thoughts:
1. this was billed as an "action" film, not as a piece of lefty
propaganda. The fact that it manages to do both, well, is I
think welcome. It got people to the cinema to see a film they
would otherwise never have wanted to watch.
2. Every single scene of violence in the film is very heavily
stylised with (I believe) the explicit purpose of trying to
convince the audience of the physical and biological details
of modern warfare. It's almost a documentary in that respect.
If you don't want to confront that kind of thing, watch The
A-Team instead.
3. What "gross stuff against women"? If you mean mysogynism,
then I don't know what scene you're talking about. If you
mean the events depicted were horrific -- that's the whole
point.
4. Every single character of the four protagonists was presented
as a different stereotype. And all four of them are shown at
the end of the film to have somehow overcome that mould. I
thought that was kinda interesting; most war films have none
of that.
(this last one contains spoilers)
5. Name a mainstream film in which the fundamental issue of middle-
eastern politics is made so explicit (one might say "rammed down
your throat"). Or one in which you feel sympathy for the Iraqi
soldier who is torturing our hero. Or the absurdity of the
out-of-place "western" items (phones, CDs, TVs, etc) in an
impoverished desert town).
Whatever the films faults (and sure, it had some) I think it's rare
that this kind of thing gets made.
--
Alan Donovan, MIT Lab. for Computer Science | adonovan@lcs.mit.edu
