Play the "Is Scantron reading too much into things" game!
posted by to scranton at 10:04 PM
Thursday, May 24, 2007
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6 Comments:
I hate to feed your cryptic post urge here, but explain, wise man.
Saw this, know what you're saying. Lenin's Tomb also has written up on this in his usual snarky but cutting fashion. You're not alone in your madness, at the very least.
Well, when '300' came out I read a lot into it (as many did) about East vs. West, freedom vs. despotism, etc. At the end of the day it was just a movie and most people going to see it didn't think the way I did abt it, but I thought it was truly awful and I expected an army recruiter to be waiting outside to sign people up ("freedom isn't free", as they even manage to sneak into the movie script).
Now, with Rambo, things are looking really heavy-handed. There's the whole "humanitarian intervention" angle, ("it's more like a genocide" one character says), and Rambo stays all isolationist for a bit, until the good priest teaches him to be an "instrument of peace" or something and he goes apeshit on some Asians. I'm surprised they're not just terrorists because Rambo typically goes up against our big enemy of the time (in Rambo 2 and 3 it was Vietnamese adn Russian commies, respectively, and in Rambo 3 he even aids the mujahadeen in Afghanistan!)
So, ultimately it's ephemera, but when I saw the preview I just thought, "Well, this is very plainly and simply a propaganda film for humanitarian intervention." I'm wondering if others had the same response (by sherief's post it looks as though some did) or if, as the title says, I'm just reading way too much into things.
Cause if it's not obviously propaganda, maybe I should just, like, take a big chill pill, you know?
From the preview, however, there's nothing to suggest Rambo is engaging in a humanitarian mission. Unless he brings down the Burmese Junta -- which I have no doubt he is capable of doing -- this appears to be a simple search and destroy mission. Rather than equate it with, say, the need to continue the mission in Iraq for humanitarian purposes, it seems to me to be more along the line of the First Barbary War. Rambo is Decatur, Tripoli is some place in Burma, and the Barbary Pirates are "some Asians." Another way to put it: rather than Bush's regime change phase, I'm more reminded of his mouth-full-of-food "Yo Blair!" moment: get the Burmese to "knock it off."
I think it's ironic that 'First Blood', the book which the first Rambo movie was based on, was written as an anti-war book. And it has nothing to do with all the subsequent Rambo movies...It would be an understatement to say that the message David Morrell had when he was writing it has been distorted. But on the other hand, is it really still shocking that Hollywood functions as a propaganda machine for the govt? This has been the case in nearly all times of war, and, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it common knowledge at this point that movies like 'Black Hawk Down' and whatnot receive federal funding? But besides being jaded, Scantron, I definitely see your point. I would probably spend a lot more time reading into/getting irate over these types of things if I had to endure American commercials and advertising.
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