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Why is this film so important in its depiction of outdated and corrosive white conservative male values?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.
Leftism is a tribe like Cherokee, Navajo and Sioux...???
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.
Are they giving degrees in Cliches on the reservation?
Sexy veneer? This isn’t Body Heat....it’s a %^*£?¥ WAR MOVIE you hypersensitive knee jerker!
Governor Palin’s husband and children are all just as “native American” as this goomer and they loved Chris Kyle.
What this joker did not include in his diatribe is that Native Americans are included in the scenes, as broad spectrum ground pounding Marines... who DO respect Native Americans rather profoundly.
Or that in essence Eastwood has created an “anti-war” movie in the sense that.... “you will not waste our manpower on your NWO exploits with a continuous war on terror” Use effective selective power and eliminate the caliphate, or DONT GO. That is the message. That, and that we had better take real good care of our wounded military— with great encompassing compassion. It was that, which got Kyle killed by a traumatized veteran who also killed his best friend (quite odd to have a VA psych recommend taking PTSD soldiers to the rifle range— little too much memories that could not be repressed). And a great great waste of Kyle’s life.
And that was enough to know the rest is a pile of crap.
Leftists get to be bigoted, self-righteous and trendy all at the same time.
I don’t think we’re allowed to question, criticize, or speak jestingly of any utterance of a Native American Person.
We are to sit quietly and listen. Then, when the speaker’s gaze drops from the smoke-hole, we can leave. After depositing a small gift in the bowl.
Must be one of those peaceful Redskins that don’t get all crazy on firewater and go an scalp every Whiteman then rape and enslave every the remaining women while slaughtering the children and eating their livers raw.
Indeed. And there are countless Native Americans currently serving and who have bravely served in the past in our armed forces. But many of them didn't receive art degrees at Dartmouth so I guess they don't count.
He is probably P.O’d that Billy Dixon did his famous shot at Adobe Walls and toppled a Kiowa at almost a mile.
One other comment. The hero in this film is a MAN, a man with man’s feelings and stoicism of the West. That is a theme running through Eastwood’s last 4 films, including Gran Torino.
Instead of the gelded, ball-less, she-males that the bitchy politically pushed feminazis want our society to reduce the American male, pushed on the other side by the homo agenda— reduced to eliminate all semblence of the nuclear family with natural roles of a mother and a father. The Comintern at work to divide us as families and as a nation. Great work, libs.
And Eastwood is a genius.
I’d like one of the lunatics on the left to tell me exactly why they hate it.
I have a good idea that it is because it’s shows American pride, American pro military, and shooting bad muslims.
Of course they will never say this and so they have to find other excuses, but there are many of them who just follow like the cult they are.
Just another liberal bandwagon passenger. They get their marching orders, wind ‘em up, and off they go. They said nothing of the liberal movies produced about the wars.
There is no homosexuality, no cross dressing or girlie men and they can’t stand that.
The Palins are all enrolled tribal members as well (except Sarah of course), from Todd through Iraq vet Track, through Trig, and even the grand kids, and they loved the movie, and the man himself.
Just said the same in so many words. they are a cult who have to have their marching orders and cannot think for themselves.
I feel...tickled.
“Damn evil white male from an open-minded, tolerant and DIEverse liberal” ping.
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