If ever you needed a reminder as to how much Hollywood still really, really hates Muslims, look no further than the opening of Beirut, in which Jon Hamm delivers a jaw-droppingly reductive “summation” of the situation in Lebanon circa the 1970s in which millennia of rich history are written off as nothing but a chain of ethnic groups backstabbing one another. If you need further reminders, you can watch… the rest of the film, which could have been written by Jack Shaheen’s most curdled rage nightmares.
Actual Lebanese people have almost zero representation in the story, which is an excuse for serious Americans doing their serious statecraft and doing their best to dance with the savage Arabs. Ignore anyone who claims Tony Gilroy’s script is good – references to Mason Skiles (Hamm’s character) as a onetime protégé of Henry Kissinger as meant to demonstrate how damn good he is at diplomating,...
Actual Lebanese people have almost zero representation in the story, which is an excuse for serious Americans doing their serious statecraft and doing their best to dance with the savage Arabs. Ignore anyone who claims Tony Gilroy’s script is good – references to Mason Skiles (Hamm’s character) as a onetime protégé of Henry Kissinger as meant to demonstrate how damn good he is at diplomating,...
- 1/24/2018
- by Daniel Schindel
- The Film Stage
A remake of the 1984 film swaps Soviets for North Koreans. But really, it's all about America's fear of China
The fact that the 1984 cold war film Red Dawn has been remade is more than just another sign of Hollywood declining into pastiche and repetition. It shows that, in a moment of deep capitalist crisis, the Red Peril is back.
The original version depicted American kids engaging in guerrilla resistance against a Soviet invasion. The twist this time is that the invading army in the new Red Dawn was Chinese, but has been digitally changed in post-production to North Korean. The ostensible reason for this switch is that the film-makers didn't want to alienate the Chinese market. More likely it's because North Korea is an old-style, comfortable communist threat, distant from the Us both ideologically and culturally, whereas 21st-century China is altogether too close to home.
The first Red Dawn was...
The fact that the 1984 cold war film Red Dawn has been remade is more than just another sign of Hollywood declining into pastiche and repetition. It shows that, in a moment of deep capitalist crisis, the Red Peril is back.
The original version depicted American kids engaging in guerrilla resistance against a Soviet invasion. The twist this time is that the invading army in the new Red Dawn was Chinese, but has been digitally changed in post-production to North Korean. The ostensible reason for this switch is that the film-makers didn't want to alienate the Chinese market. More likely it's because North Korea is an old-style, comfortable communist threat, distant from the Us both ideologically and culturally, whereas 21st-century China is altogether too close to home.
The first Red Dawn was...
- 11/24/2012
- by Mark Fisher
- The Guardian - Film News
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