Hugh R |
05-24-2008 07:19 PM |
Here is an excerpt from this LA Times opinion today about the Marines.
The article is in part about the racist movie director Spike Lee and his comments about how Clinton Eastwood was racist because he didn't include portrayals of black soldiers on Iwo Jima in Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima
The director was in Cannes, serving on one of the film festival's minor juries, when he took the opportunity to slam Clint Eastwood for the absence of African American characters in his critically acclaimed films on the bloodiest battle of World War II's Pacific campaign, "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters From Iwo Jima."
"He did two films about Iwo Jima back to back, and there was not one black soldier in both of those films," Lee said. "Many veterans, African Americans, who survived that war are upset at Clint Eastwood. In his vision of Iwo Jima, Negro soldiers did not exist. Simple as that. I have a different version."
You bet he does, which is why his next picture just happens to be the story of four soldiers serving in an all-black Army division in Italy. Controversy makes good publicity, and envy of Eastwood's success is an understandable, if not particularly admirable, trait.
There is, however, the small matter of history and dramatic storytelling. Putting aside the fact that there were no "soldiers" on Iwo Jima, only Marines, let's stipulate for the record that it might be hard to work too many African Americans into a story about the Japanese Imperial Army, which is what "Letters from Iwo Jima" was.
As far as "Flags of Our Fathers" goes, 900 of the 19,168 black Americans who served in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II were among the 250,000 Americans who ultimately went ashore there. All were in rigidly segregated units. Only the black Marines of the 8th Ammunition Company came ashore during the second and third waves, which would have put them on the island in time for the flag-raising that was the subject of the film.
Moreover, the fact of the matter is that looking back over Eastwood's directorial career -- including his Oscar-winning films "Unforgiven" and "Million Dollar Baby" -- there's probably no filmmaker of similar stature in Hollywood history who has so unself-consciously created central roles for actors who just happened to be African American.
Both the outbursts we heard this week belong to the era of identity politics and culture that is now thankfully fading. From the start, the insistence that race and ethnicity were central to American identity constituted an intellectual swamp that ultimately had to drain into a moral sewer. That's why its outflow -- like the remarks Lee made this week -- now strike us as bilge.
Semper Fi (1970-72, MOS 0844-Forward Observer for 175 mm guns and 8" Howitzers)
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