I am aware of that and I realize that it is doubly true in my case because much of my WW2 movie watching was filtered through German television. However I would expect some of that material to be visible today, just as it is i the other cases you mentioned.
As I said, that wasn’t the problem. I think it is an inane cartoonish movie glorifying war while hiding behind superficially gritty visuals. Naturalistic idealism. That’s what kitsch is.
Personally I dislike the movie for the way it depicted the British (though I might be confusing it with some scenes in Band of Brothers). But for a war film I think it did a decent job un-glorifying the war while still being a movie people would want to see. I know I never want to make an opposed landing on a beach after watching it, and am reinforced in my opinion that I’d rather not have other people do it.
Any suggestions?
It might have glorified warriors, but it hardly made war seem glorious. It made war seem terrifying and cruel and bloody. Or that’s how I took it.
“In real life, however, Muslims accounted for just 6 percent of actual FBI terrorist suspects during that time period.”
That’s for the US I presume. What are the numbers world wide? Pakistan seems to average one suicide bomber per day and has for a long time and I cannot imagine even a middling percentage of those are white Anglo-Saxons or indeed anything but radical Muslims…
Since the IRA cut way back on random killings and bombings, I will bet the demographics in the totality of things around the world will show the majority of suicide/terrorist attacks are from radicalized Muslims.
But if the facts (real facts with real sources) say otherwise, I’ll be the first to retract that statement.
I am not sure why my previous comment was flagged, but it is worth pointing out that film and TV might be reflecting public anxieties and reactions to current events.
We were at war with the Nazis for less than four years, and they provided the fictional villains for decades afterwards. We have been in military conflict with Islamic extremists for over 15 years. And whatever the risks in the US, people here are affected by what happens in London, Paris, and the Philippines. When someone blows up a Church in Egypt, we see the video almost immediately.
594 more people were killed during the attacks on 9/11 than during the attack on Pearl Harbor.
But there are a lot of very positive portrayals, at least of Arabic characters. Tony Shalhoub and Rami Malek pretty much always portray positive characters.
No, that’s not worth pointing out.
What is worth pointing out is that media strongly influence and shape public anxieties and reactions to current events. And that’s why Hollywood’s flood of racist depictions of Arabs/Muslims (the topic that you keep trying to white-knight this thread away from) is also worth pointing out.
I wish I could remember the name of the movie I saw a few years ago. It was in arabic, set during an election, and the protagonist was a middle-aged woman sent to the sticks as a poll-taker, with a soldier as her driver/bodyguard. It was a truly excellent film, great story, visuals, acting, and an almost Jaques Tati-like use of sound design. Anyone here remember what it was called?
It is true that tight control on news and entertainment can contribute greatly towards people’s beliefs and attitudes. That is the whole point of propaganda.
But even with strong control of the narrative, people tend to see through it. That was true even before the internet. Ms. Sarkeesian’s theory is that negative views of Islam are driven primarily by Hollywood stereotypes and biased news coverage. I think that is inaccurate. I think people are much more influenced by what is actually going on in the world. Unless you can manage to suppress reporting of such events, people are going to be more influenced by seeing Ebba Ackerland dead in pieces on the road than they are by a seeing films with relatable Islamic characters. Although plenty of such films exist, and some filmmakers have gone so far as to substitute Islamic villains in the original book for less controversial villains.
At this rate, France is looking promising…
Ra’ye Makhfi
Right, but the issue then is “could Hollywood ever do that, thinking that nobody could possibly identify with said characters” (because of course, they’re not “american” or well, you know, not “real” americans).
The problem goes back to “why does Hollywood generally seem to think that playing to a disproportionate white audience/mindset is good?”. I mean, the USA is becoming more brown. People (Gasp!) have interracial babies! Not every Asian is a doctor or scientist of some sort (well, I am, but maybe I was going to be an artist for a brief moment in undergrad…). There’s a lingering racism in Hollywood that paints any non-stereotypical view as “exotic” or the exception. (and yeah, I know that’s not every film, but to paint with a broad sweeping brush). When was the last time you saw the main character of a cop buddy film being a muslim? When was the subject of a RomCom an Asian man?
Maybe he’s just a fan of Joyce.
While these are certainly dramatized movie scenes, I just have to wonder, do you ever look around in the world, watch the news or study history? These things are happening on a weekly basis as we speak.
I distinctly remember that the first season of 24 had bad guys from the Balkans (far and away the best season of the show). It was filmed in 2001 before the Trade Center went down. Is it any coincidence that every season after that featured brown bad guys?
What the video fails to mention is that the rise of brown bad guys is directly correlated with September 11. Well, I don’t actually have any statistics for this, but I do remember noticing that for most of the 80s and 90s bad guys tended to be Soviet if they had names and Vietnamese if they didn’t.
It seems to me that the nationality, race, religion of Hollywood bad guys tend to be whoever has most recently injured the American psyche.
Secret Ballot was the English language title.
If you really want this sort of enlightenment, you could easily seek out films from the Muslim world about the everyday life of middle-class women. There should be quite a few of those. (Not necessarily from Saudi Arabia though. Cinema there is just getting on its feet, so there haven’t been that many releases yet.)
It’s a silly gif, but I’m being serious. It’s been a long time since my film studies classes, but I’m not sure it’s an either/or proposition. Media does react to current events and fears about them. In the horror genre, concerns about atomic testing gave rise to giant monster movies like Godzilla and Them! So Max isn’t entirely wrong that film can hold up a mirror to our own anxieties. But Milliefink isn’t wrong either. Hollywood’s got a really nasty habit of stereotyping ethnicities and nationalities, and that can shape people’s attitudes. We need to stay aware of that. We need to look at media with a critical eye, and educate ourselves about our world and the people we share it with, so we don’t just go along with what other people (moviemakers, FOX News, etc.) decide to tell us. We need to make up our own minds, and stand up for what’s right. I certainly don’t believe that making every bad guy a Muslim is a good thing. I’d gladly welcome more positive diversity in movies. I think we’re starting to get it, but we’ve also got a lot further to go before we get there. And we aren’t going to get anything better unless we call attention to what’s going on, demand something different, and support the media that does better represent the reality of diversity.
::steps down off soapbox::
To think I clicked Comment to post “Lol Delta Force is based on an actual hijacking by Muslims so of course it has bad brown people in it, and this small discrepancy means we can ignore the rest of the thesis 
” ironically, but here you are instead.
It has (probably) little to do with the Muslim issue, but after seeing the new Black Panther trailer, it makes me happy that Marvel & DC, at least, have seemingly realized “gosh! playing to audiences that aren’t primarily white males is a good idea!”
