Posted on 07/23/2004 3:52:43 PM PDT by MadIvan
HOLLYWOOD’S choice of bad guy can say a lot about the state of the world at any particular time. So it is interesting to note that the generic Eastern European gangster, and more specifically the Serbian War Criminal, has received a massive boost in popularity as the action movie villain du jour.
Serbian baddies turn up in Matthew Vaughn’s forthcoming drug-dealing underworld drama Layer Cake; Serbian war criminals take their place at the bargaining table (alongside Hollywood’s evil stalwarts, the Asian despot and the dour German) to bid for the ultimate super weapon in Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle Of Life.
Serbian war criminals also take over an hotel full of extreme sports enthusiasts in Extreme Ops. And, in XXX, Vin Diesel battles an Eastern European nihilist gangster called Yorgi.
The evil Serb has ousted Hollywood favourite baddies “the crazed Arab” and “the ruthless Russian Mafioso”. However, the fact that Serbian villains turn up so regularly in American films does not indicate that the influx of gangsters from Eastern Europe is perceived as a real threat by the cinema-going public. Quite the opposite.
Pre-9/11, Arab terrorists turned up regularly as baddies intent on destroying the world. That’s a bit too close for comfort to pass as entertainment now. So, when golden all-American boy Owen Wilson finds himself in dangerous territory in Behind Enemy Lines, he is pursued by Serbs in Bosnia rather than Taleban in Afghanistan.
So far as most movie fans are aware, Eastern European gangsters are only really a threat if you muscle in on their drug cartel.
The ideal Hollywood villain is one who does not remind the audience of anything that they come to the cinema to forget, such as the threat of a terrorist attack.
Don't forget the hilarious "Neo-Fascists" in the horrendous perversion of Clancy's "Sum of All Fears".
And America is a much worse place,because about 98% today's studios/writers/actors/actresses/directors are faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar left cretins,most of whom are talentless and anti-America.
Farther left than that even
Yes,but I didn't want to waste bandwidth. LOL
Too, there is ego. If movies were made showing the true heroism and sacrifice of the American Military and the American people, it would, by necessity, diminish the lustre that the "stars" have so carefully polished about themselves. Face it, if a Tom Cruise, say, played Pat Tillman, it would serve to show how UNLIKE such a man Cruise really is. They will allow no such challenge to their place as "America's Royalty", politics or no. People might start to even ask, as they did in WWII, why so many obviously healthy young men are NOT wearing uniforms in their country's time of need. Their house of egotistical cards would crumble, as they were seen for what they truly are...pampered, overpaid, self-centered, vapid phoneys.
And of course,everything you wrote is correct.The ONLY way that this can be turned around,is if people would just stop going to the movies.Unfortunately,many people just won't do that and I really don't know why.The vast majority of films ares bereft of any value at all now.None of them are even entertaining in the slightest.
I agree about all the rest. I suspect that a LARGE portion of America also does, but unfortunately, for reasons I posted above, you won't see any movies like that made.
More's the pity, too. Are we to believe that the sacrifices and gallantry of such men as Pat Tillman and countless others are unworthy of celebration in film? That the daily sacrifices and toils of the hundreds of thousands of dedicated, patriotic Soldiers and Marines are "too scary" to be shown? That their lives, losses, and incomparable heroism against savage foes will never be memorialized in America's own indiginous art form?
That's the same as saying that it all doesn't matter. And that is reason for us all to shed a tear.
True enough.
And in the movie "Sum of all Fears" the bad guys morphed from muslims into neo-fascists..
"I remember reading an article about 15 years or more ago on the phenomenon of the "vanilla terrorist" in movies."The last movie I've seen that dealt with Muslim terrorists honestly was The Siege, with Denzel Washington as an FBI agent leading the fight against a wave of bus bombings & worse. I thought it illustrated the Muslim terrorist mindset chillingly well, and for a while the movie is gripping.The phenomenon is widely discussed on movie-fan websites. It goes back to the early '90s, and affects ALL mediums' villains. Note that nowadays, even all street gangs are portrayed as "multiracial".
Of course, for the grave sin of showing islamofascists as the bad guys, they had to pay penance by throwing in an utterly unbelievable Bruce Willis as a dictatorial general who heads up the ensuing martial law & torturing of suspects.
So half of the movie I thought was very effective & thought-provoking. I guess that's as much as anyone could hope for nowadays. >:-(
To some extent I can understand why they wouldn't do this with Arab bad guys today. Japanese-Americans (& to a lesser extent German-Americans) were treated terribly during WWII, even though the vast majority of them were loyal. The propaganda movies, and even the jokes thrown in to the cartoons, were sometimes gratuitously mean to Japanese in general. So I can understand writers & producers not wanting to seem like they're encouraging people to hate all Muslims.
OTOH, if the secular left had any sense, they would hate Islam! Islam makes Christianity look positively libertine! Christianity had its Enlightenment, where it essentially had to make its peace with reason, modern science, and moral individualism. Islam had nothing like that.
BTW, I think a big reason that Hollywood was so patriotic during WWII was that Hitler violated his secret non-agression pact with Stalin (in 1941 IIRC). When this happened, the Hollywood communists decided (or were ordered by the Kremlin) to abandon their recent indifference to fascism to become "super-patriots". After all, Hitler was now making war against "us" - meaning the communists!
But this time, the Hollywood left has decided that America - the country that had finally defeated their utopian fantasy a decade ago - was really to blame for 9/11 by being so evil. Therefore, in this war, they are not with us.
There is NOTHING whatsoever "Danish" about a danish! It's a HUNGARIAN pastry called delkeral.So how come everybody isn't asking for a delkeral,but a danish now? Because during WW I,people here,in the good old US of A,were boycotting shops AND people,who even though they were born here,had ANY connection to those we weren't even at war with(we didn't get into WW I for many years)...yet.So,the yummy "danish" got a name change.
And the above is just one example.Though nobody was hauled off,as the Japanese were during WW II,to camps,their livelihoods were threaten,as were their lives.
The WW I era propaganda films went much to far.And the government did tell Hollywood to tone it down!OTOH,they did help our war efforts,unlike today's movies.
I don't know how many movies,from the '40s you've seen,but I've seen lots of them and frankly,I can't think of one,not a one,including shorts and cartoons,that ridiculed or made nasty comments about the Japanese and German people.It was ALWAYS the LEADERS and soldiers,who were made the villains and/or mocked.Though yes,the German crowds and spies were also villanized.Could you give me some examples of what you mean? Maybe AI missed those movies.
As to the studios,you've got it wrong,I fear.The studio heads and most of the actors and actresses,in the late '30s and through the '40s were NOT stinking Commies or even fellow travelers! A handful of actors and actresses were stinking commies;however,it was mostly the writers and a very few directors who were stinking Commies during that time.The studio heads fought the Commies mightily,who were trying to unionize and were behind the strikes.
If you'd like to learn more about this,I'd be more than happy to give you a book list.
It was the Princess of Wales' Regiment, wasn't it?
Great story about your Serbian guest ... and a great service, introducing foreign students to *conservative* Americans!
The next year, we had two girls for the full school year from Eastern Europe. Their area coordinator was a RAVING liberal, when we went to her house for a host family gathering, there were Rat posters ALL over the yard. Imagine that woman's face, four months later, when we showed her pictures of our girls from the county fair, and a couple of them were from the BB pistol target shooting gallery! Since meat was merely a flavoring in their home countries, they enthusiastically told the coordinator about the meal at the Chinese restaurant where we ate six different species of animals!
I really loved tweaking that woman!
I love your tag-line! I'll be eating homemade cevapcici, along with sausages, grilled pork, and other Serbian goodies, after church with my Serbian congregation tomorrow!! Mmmmmm!!!!
The professional Serb-haters, along with the much larger number of people who swallow their hateful lies, don't know what they're missing! That not only goes for Serbian food, but knowing Serbian people and their culture.
As I recall, CAiR sponsored a major "protest" against that movie--CAiR's "protests", which include nasty obscene and threatening phone calls and e-mails--may be one reason why movies with islamoNazi villains are not often made. Unfortunately, there is no effective Serbian anti-defamation organization (hopefully with a more respectful attitude than CAiR) to protest anti-Serb propaganda movies and TV programs (such as Fox's "24").
Ironically, CAiR is a fifth columnist organization that pushes the islamoNazi line. Somone should make a movie about islamist fifth-columnist subversives and their ties to terrorists and their threats to free speech, freedom of religion, and even to our tradition of jurisprudence!
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