Posted on 01/26/2015 5:07:08 PM PST by Drew68
I was looking forward to seeing American Sniper. I took my brown Native high school-aged son to see it. I’m a fan of Clint Eastwood’s acting and directing, and his Sniper is a beautifully shot and directed action packed flick. But after his film, I spent the hour’s drive home explaining to my son why I thought the movie was dangerous and corrosive to the American people.
This is a tense war movie that looks great. But just underneath the film’s sexy veneer is a shockingly racist ideology of hate and death that is advanced by the white male sniper Chris Kyle.
Kyle is the ideological descendant of Custer and the Seventh Cavalry. He belongs to an elite white male cadre of swinging dick meat eaters who will solve the problems of invaded brown people with a bullet. Iraqi and Syrian combatants are called “fuckin’ savages.” Direct statements of racism and death may or may not reflect the realities of the modern U.S. military. But they do give rise to false dichotomies that dehumanize the enemy and make it kinda fun, cool and necessary to kill them.
For the moment, Sniper is the fave mascot of the reactionary right wing of white America. Its visual beauty softens the harsh fact that the movie glorifies death, racism, hatred, religious prejudice, sexism, colonialism and moral corrosion. It presents some great ideas about caring for and protecting the people of your tribe. If you’re a white Christian American, that is. Women, minorities, kids, Muslims need not apply. They’re part of the bullet-to-the-head fix.
Why is this film so important in its depiction of outdated and corrosive white conservative male values? Because it is a time of great change and social movement in the world. The time of white American male rule and hegemony is coming to an end. And American wingnuts don’t like it one bit.
A classic function of horror and sci-fi movies is to code racially and socially taboo stories in the guise of fantasy. Sniper follows this formula. It’s a snapshot into the psyche of a retrograde white conservative male patriarchy. It lets us glimpse its fears and desires (loss of power and male potency) as well as its hopes and desires (white men will kill their way back to the top).
Americans as a whole are too ignorant of the country’s past colonial violence against Native and African Americans and current world affairs to really question uncomplicated black, brown and white narratives of war. The audience largely clapped at the end of the movie.
This is potentially a time for great social change and growth in America and the world. Dated stories of white male privilege and uber violence are divisive and corrosive to this positive change.
It’s up to us as Indigenous Peoples and as Americans to question simplified stories glorifying violence and racism and sexism. It’s time to educate ourselves about the violence of this country’s past, and to come together as a people to build a stronger, inclusive and more unified America.
Mateo Romero is an enrolled tribal member at Cochiti Pueblo. Born in the Bay Area, he completed his BA at Dartmouth College and his MFA in painting at UNM. He is an award -winning artist who has exhibited both nationally and internationally. A former SAR Dubin Fellow, Romero lives in Pojoaque Pueblo with his potter wife Melissa Talachy, and their sons Rain and River. He shows his paintings at Blue Rain Gallery in Santa Fe.
Funny, when I was growing up the idea of war was to kill the enemy no matter what color they were, or if they were "fuckin' savages"...which they are.
Well, when the world needs saving from the horrors of statism, that's who it usually comes down to. :)
Did they not teach Mateo irony at Dartmouth?
My B.S. detector is going off. This guy didn’t go because he loves Eastwood movies - he went to write a hit piece.
***Americans as a whole are too ignorant of the country’s past colonial violence against Native and African Americans ***
Obviously the author of this hit piece has been hitting the Peyote and gourd juice before he wrote this.
There has NEVER been a war between Anglo whites and the Cochiti people.
Yep, that's me. Fightin' Whitey ... When we get all worked up, whole CONTINENTS burn. Don't forget it, jackass.
Iraqi and Syrian combatants are called “fuckin’ savages.”
That's because they are. Good Lord ... what has happened to the sons of Geronimo and Tecumseh?
Muslims
That's right, ya candy-ass bimbo. We're protecting YOU from the deranged followers of Mad Mo ... even if you're too damn dumb to appreciate it.
Born in the Bay Area, he completed his BA at Dartmouth College and his MFA in painting at UNM.
Houston, we have a problem ...
He says this like it's something bad.
He who talks race first is the racist. (that’s where I stopped reading also)
Mateo has been hitting the firewater again.
The boy can’t be much of an Indian if he had to go to Dartmouth to learn how to paint pictures. All of the Indians I know used nature and the outdoors as their classrooms. A Santa Fe Art Gallery? This guy is an artsy fartsy, tea and croissant Starbucks Indian.
Who are these brown people he is talking about?
I don’t consider Iraqis and Syrians brown any more than Italians or Greeks.
I don’t consider Spaniards brown.
The author is an idiot.
Sounds like he's describing islam
Does Mateo drink a lot? That’s a sad thing.
The movie doesn’t make me wanna smite anyone but this guy sure does.
If this in fact does come to pass, the author will rue the day.
... country’s past colonial violence against Native and African Americans
He ignores the violence perpetrated by "Native" Americans against other "Native" Americans, and the fact that those Africans sold into the slave trade were so sold by other Africans or Muslim Arabs.
One of my ancestors had a skirmish with Tecumseh and some of his warriors when they attacked a Frontier church in the early 1790s.
Expect, sooner or later, that some lefty author will write that the story of Chris Kyle was all fabricated and that he voted for Obama, twice.
Dumbass didn’t study history at Dartmouth, that’s for sure. Custer didn’t hate the Indians and they didn’t hate him. He almost lost his commission in DC protesting the forced movement back to the reservations that ended up getting him killed, and the abuses of the Indian Agents, one of whom was Grant’s brother.
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