A Review of Schindler’s List and Responses to Issues Addressed by Richard Wolin and H. R. Shapiro

Reel Whirled Peas



After watching Schindler’s List in preparation for this assignment, I am ashamed to say it was my first time viewing the film. I recall the subject controversies surrounding it upon its release in 1993, and then the cinematic accolades that followed, including the Academy Award for Best Picture. But for me the subject was just too horrible to think about, and I conveniently kept putting off its viewing on the grounds that such an important subject and film deserved my full attention, and I wasn’t quite ready. I have now watched it twice, over two days, and both times it shook me.

Between viewings, I read reviews of the film by Richard Wolin, and H.R. Shapiro. In addressing the film’s depiction of Amon Goeth, the SS commandant of the Plaszow facilities, Wolin warns the reader not to assume that the Final Solution to eradicate Judaism was solely the work of pathological figures. “By pathologizing Nazi crimes”, he writes, “we spare ourselves the distasteful thought that, were it not for the avid participation of people very much like ourselves, the whole enterprise would have foundered early on” (my emphasis). His observation is right on target. It confirms my continuous thought throughout the film: Why are all those people abetting these crimes? And, it provides a basis of explanation for my reticence in watching the film before now.

Wolin writes “None of the evil perpetrated by the Nazis would have been possible without the support and cooperation, on a truly massive scale, of ‘ordinary men’”. In the film, those “ordinary men” are everywhere. In at least two scenes, Wehrmacht soldiers tousled the hair or pinched the cheeks of young Jewish boys in an affectionate way, both in the course of perpetrating some violence on the adults. There were construction workers building the barracks in the first scene of Goeth’s wickedness, when he ordered the shooting of the construction supervisor. A German officer executes her, and none of the workers seem to notice. I caught myself wondering what would I do if I were on the scaffolding, part of a work detail to build an unjust prison, seeing the brutality. I don’t know.

Wolin goes on to list those “…men and women throughout Europe who either stood to profit from the Jews so-called ‘disappearance,’ or who, more often, just did not care.” The other profiteers that Schindler tried to engage in his plan to “buy” the Jews’ safety were men of power and influence, yet none in the movie could be convinced to help. A few years ago documentation surfaced that implicated Deutsche Bank and some Swiss banks, claiming that they had benefited from the theft of Jewish property by the Nazis, and that they had made little effort to return the assets to their rightful owners. They paid reparations.

And there were those who just did not care. In a scene showing a wealthy Jewish couple being evicted from their large apartment (the one Schindler would inhabit), Poles are screaming epithets and throwing rocks at the displaced, who wander toward the Krakow ghetto. You sense the animosity many working class Poles must have felt toward the Jews. What caused widespread anti-Semitism? Perhaps it was jealousy toward the Jews for their education, business acumen, and relative affluence. In any case, many Europeans apparently cared little about the fate of the Jews.

H.R. Shapiro suggested that many Jews cared little about the fate of other Jews.

Shapiro contends that Spielberg made a film that “does not tell the whole story of the vast majority of Jews, but only a small elite who were part of the Nazi apparatus”. Schindler’s Jews were members, family, and associates of the Krakow Judenrat, the Jewish Council empowered to implement Nazi policies. Shapiro is highly critical of the Councils, suggesting that without their organization and leadership the number of Jewish deaths would have been far less than the 4.5 to 6 million estimated. He further claims that many in the Judenrate, along with the Nazi-Jewish police and enforcement squads, exploited their position for material gain. In the movie, Goldberg lands a Jewish policeman position early in film, and suggests to Pfefferberg that he do the same, implying to his fellow black marketer that profit could be made. Goldberg’s enterprising eventually pays off as Schindler begins providing trinkets to him, through Stern, for moving certain workers into the ceramic factory.

Shapiro makes an interesting point, and his assertion that many Jews today look contemptuously on the Judenrate as self-serving Nazi collaborators is probably true. I do not think, however, that everyone who served did so with avaricious intent. In Holocaust: An End to Innocence, Seymour Rossel admits that bribery and smuggling became part and parcel of ghetto life. But he also describes the Judenrat’s responsibilities for watching over the community’s health and sanitation, and for running and staffing the clinics and hospitals. Rossel suggests that like any other kind of bureaucracy there are bad leaders and good leaders. The leader of the Lodz Judenrat, Chaim Rumkowski, was a power-hungry Nazi collaborator who wielded king-like authority over the lives and deaths of 160,000 Jews until the Nazis put him on the last train out if the Lodz ghetto in 1944. He was, after all, a Jew. Rossel contrasts Rumkowski with Czerniakow of Warsaw and Rotfeld of Lvov, both Judenrat heads, who each committed suicide rather than decide their people’s fates.

A major part of their job was to assign work in ghetto factories and elsewhere. In the movie, Stern used his influence and Schindler’s money to insure the right people, (Shapiro would say the “privileged Jews”) showed up on the right work manifest. This was often the case where the worker had no particular skills – a certain death sentence absent Stern’s intervention. Shapiro suggests that for each “privileged Jew” benefiting from an association with the Judenrat, another, perhaps more qualified but less connected, was shipped out for special treatment. I found nothing in the movie to refute that assertion.

And yet, as you watch the film, you pull for the characters you meet. This brings me to my third topic.

Wolin asserts that Schindler, Goeth, and Stern are the only characters developed in the movie. The Jews are seen as “…tragic victims and servile accommodators. But they are devoid of personality. They are the film’s supernumeraries and huddled masses, waiting to be saved.” I strongly disagree with that statement. Although each character has limited time on screen, the sum of his or her dialogue, expressions, and interactions with the surroundings develops the character enough for the film viewer to connect with them. Early in the film, Pfefferberg surreptitiously removes his gold star and wanders into the Catholic Church to discuss smuggling with the other black marketers. In a short dialogue, we see that he clearly is a tough businessman. A moment later Schindler approaches him, and Pfefferberg’s facial expressions and body language perfectly reflect a savvy man sizing up a situation. While the others slither away, Pfefferberg goes with his instinct and begins a business relationship that ultimately saves his life. He becomes Schindler’s contact to the black market.

Later, stolen glances between Pfefferberg and wife Mila indicate a deep affection for one another. During the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto, Pfefferberg is nearly being caught in the sewers, and afterward comes face to face with Goeth. We are not surprised to see the hustler once more close the sale, pretending to be a nebbish sycophant following orders to clear the street of debris. Later he escapes the trains because he is Goeth’s mechanic. He operates, and survives, around the edges.

Goldberg is another survivor, preferring to work from the inside as opposed to Pfefferberg’s outside. Helen Hirsch, the woman whose only wish is for a small list of rules to follow that will guarantee her safety. The movie depicts the maternal fortitude of Chaja Dresner, and the faithfulness and industriousness of Rabbi Lewartow. In each case the actors created individuals.


Reading each movie review allowed me to focus more closely on specific details as I watch the film a second time. Wolin made two other excellent points not addressed in this paper: The Nazis’ irrational compulsion to annihilate the Jews, and the modern reliance on visual media to get information. I felt Shapiro was harsh in his assessment of the Judenrate, but privilege was clearly at work among the Schindler Jews. However, the issues of fairness, collaboration, bribery, and compromise all come down to this quote from Stern to Schindler: “There will be generations because of what you did.”


Source:
Rossel, Seymour, Holocaust: An End to Innocence, Copyright 2003 by Seymour Rossel
http://www.rossel.net/Holocaust07.htm

Racism, Warlords, and Oil in Black Hawk Down

Reel Whirled Peas:



The sight of blood and gore does not bother me too much. I worked my way through college doing odd jobs at a funeral home. Having said that, I rarely watch films that are violent because I suspect there will be acts of cruelty and injustice that will offend my sensibilities. For that reason, I never before watched Black Hawk Down, Ridley Scott’s film based on Mark Bowden’s documented series that appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer. I remembered seeing the CNN footage of the Somalis dragging the body of a slain American soldier through the street, and being angry that they would do that to someone over there to help them. When the film came out in 2002, I decided not to relive that anger. But my summer courses have set me on a path toward a personal glasnost, and learning the truth about America’s actions on October 3, 1993 is another step toward being de-Fox News-ified.

The film was released on an accelerated schedule not long after 9/11, ostensibly to cash in on the rising tide of patriotism. Larry Chin, Associate Editor of Online Journal and vitriolic critic of all things Republican and military, said that the film was an example of “(Hollywood) being true to its post 9/11 government-sanctioned role as US war propaganda headquarters”. That seems like an odd thing for him to suggest, because Hollywood has traditionally been a bastion of anti-war liberalism. Rather than pandering to the military I believe the early release was motivated by good old-fashioned greed. Emotionally emasculated Americans wanted images of heroism and military might, and despite the ambiguity of the operation’s outcome, most viewers came away feeling good about the bravery of the soldiers.

But the timing of the film’s release aside, several critics point to problems with the depictions of the events and characters, three of which this paper will explore: The film’s racist tone, its characterization of General Aideed, and the influence of American oil companies to prompt former President Bush to commit U.S. troops to Somalia in the first place.

At first glance the film certainly looks to be a race war between whites and blacks. I counted one black and one Hispanic soldier among the troops sent in to execute the operation. The long shots of angry Somalis marching up the streets, the roving bands of marauding militias, black children and women aiding in the destruction of honorable white soldiers. Chin describes the images as a series of racist subtexts: “Americans are good and they hate us for no reason”, “they are ungrateful”, “they are black”, “they are Muslims”.

I think his assessment is harsh. The fact is that Somalis are the enemy in this film, and Somalis are black. The film establishes that the central neighborhood where the firefight took place was a stronghold of General Aideed. The film does not address the basis for the animosity Aideed’s followers feel toward Americans, but it shows crowded streets of lawlessness, where automatic weapons are openly sold (and tested) on the street. None of the critics refuted that description of the Bakara Market. In his review, David Perry says the film implies that everyone in Somalia was loyal to Aideed and antagonistic toward the U.S. Yet, as General Garrison is laying out the operation he says that the convoys will pass first through a couple of friendly neighborhoods. Then, as the convoys finally leave the battle zone, soldiers on foot are met by Somali children who lead them down the street past a throng of non-antagonistic residents. “Friendly” Somalis are on screen very briefly, but in showing them the filmmakers attempt to convey that not all Somalis/Blacks/Muslims were participants in the hostilities.

Mickey Kaus, on the other hand, points out the racism inherent in statements about the casualties of the battle. The filmmakers list the names of the 18 killed in the firefight – correction – the 18 Americans killed – overlooking the 400-500 Somali men, women and children who died. There seems to be acceptance, says Kaus, by the military and the movie’s viewers, of an “exchange ratio” of perhaps 25 Somalis deaths for each American death. I think Kaus is right. Regretfully, as I watched the movie I tried keeping track of the number of American casualties, but was only mindful of two Somali killings: The boy who inadvertently shoots his father, and the woman who picks up the weapon of a Somali just killed. I guess there is always prejudice when pulling for one’s side.

The only description the film provides for Mohammad Farah Aideed is that he is “the most powerful of warlords, (who) rules the capital Mogadishu. He seizes international food shipments at the ports. Hunger is his weapon. The world responds. Behind a force of 20,000 U.S. Marines, food is delivered and order is restored. April 1993. Aideed waits until the Marines withdraw, and then declares war on the remaining U.N. peacekeepers. In June, Aideed’s militia ambush and slaughter 24 Pakistani soldiers, and begin targeting American personnel.” Kaus confirms those facts, although he implies that the events are taken out of context. Then in the opening scene, we see some of Aideed’s militia open fire on a crowd of unarmed civilians trying to get grain from a Red Cross food shipment. The militia has claimed the shipment as the property of Aideed. That incident cannot be found in literature, according to Kaus.

Clearly, Aideed is characterized as an evil man, a fair target of the U.S. Army. In Kaus’s article he quotes a Wall Street Journal review as saying that the film’s producer insisted that Aideed be “unmistakably portrayed as a Hitler-like figure responsible for thousands of killings.” The audience is left with the impression that this is a madman, bent on killing Somalis and relief workers alike. But is the characterization fair and accurate?

Aideed was a onetime favorite of pro-Western President Mohammad Siad Barre. In his summary of the events leading to October 3, Karamatullah K. Ghori describes Aideed as having “imbibed a lot of India in him” during his five years as Somali Ambassador to India. He returned to Somalia against Barre’s wishes, and proceeded to become one of the President’s chief “tormentors”. Civil war broke out across Somalia, as Aideed and other warlords sought to overthrow the corrupt government of Barre, whose business dealings with American oil companies made him rich but did little for the Somali people. Barre was overthrown in January 1991, and Aideed, the recognized leader of the militarily superior Habr Gidr [Hawiye] clan, eventually assumed control of most of Mogadishu.

The U.N. wanted peace among the warring clans, as well as a coalition government. According to Kaus, Aideed believed his clan had earned the right to rule the country, a position that was untenable to the U.N., and particularly to U.N. head Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who was a supporter of Barre. The U.N., whose initial foray into the country was for humanitarian aid, undertook a series of actions designed to weaken Aideed’s hold on power. In 2004 article, Somalia: The Long Struggle for National Unity, Jabril Sanei says Aideed interpreted the U.N.’s actions as trying to divide Somalia along tribal lines, for him an act of imperialism. When the U.N. raided Aideed’s radio station in June 1993, Aideed’s United Somali Congress (USC) militia responded by brutally killing the Pakistani soldiers. That action prompted U.N. security head James Howe to call in the U.S. Special Forces to hunt down and arrest Aideed.

An operation conducted by the U.S. on July 12, 1993 resulted in the deaths of 50-70 Habr Gidr [Hawiye] clan elders and intellectuals, meeting to discuss Aideed’s response to the U.N. Chin states that the missile attack was retribution for the killing of the Pakistanis, and that many of the clan leaders killed were moderates promoting a peaceful settlement. The operation resulted in the clan declaring war on the U.S., and spurred other clans to join ranks with the USC. That is why, Kaus points out, it looks as though nearly everyone in Mogadishu rallies against the soldiers on October 3.

I believe Aideed was a bad guy, but warlords are supposed to be bad guys. In most civil wars ruthless and oftentimes brutal leaders lead opposing factions. Kaus points out that the U.S. cooperates with brutal warlords today in Afghanistan. The film’s suggestion that Aideed was unique in his villainy owes more to creating an unsavory film enemy than to reality. After all, a month or so after President Clinton called back the Army Rangers the U.N. convened a peace conference in Ethiopia and reversed its position on Aideed. Instead, according to Sanei, the U.N. tried to bring him together with other clan leaders to form a central government. By the end of 1994, Aideed appointed himself president and formed a government representative of all the clans in Somalia. I do not know whether other warlords in Somalia were more brutal, but it is clear that others may have been more accommodating to the West.

That leads us to our third issue, this one raised in the readings: Was American participation prompted by protecting American oil interests?

According to Sanei, Barre seized power in a military coup in 1969, and by 1974 the U.S. was providing military aid to prop up his government. War with Ethiopia resulted in an economic and social crisis in 1980, and opposition to Barre’s autocratic and corrupt government intensified. Barre undertook a series of indiscriminate and brutal reprisals aimed at quelling the opposition, but instead the West, who became horrified by the brutal regime, began pulling their aid. In the mid-1980s Barre began selling drilling rights to American oil companies. In The Oil Factor in Somalia, reporter Mark Fineman obtained documents that said that 2/3 of Somalia had been allocated among four companies, and that “industry sources said the companies holding the rights to the most promising concessions are hoping that the Bush Administration's decision to send U.S. troops to safeguard aid shipments to Somalia will also help protect their multimillion-dollar investments there (my emphasis).”

Both Chin and Ghori point to oil as the former President Bush’s motivation to send 20,000 troops on a humanitarian mission to Somalia in the last month of his term. When Bush was Reagan’s vice president he spoke of finding alternative oil sources to reduce reliance on politically volatile Mideast oil. Ghori suggests that lame-duck Bush sent the troops to eventually restore Somali leadership sympathetic to the West in order to “lubricate (his sons’) passage into high-stakes politics by obliging his powerful friends.” Conoco, one of the four firms holding the rights, made significant investments in finding oil in Somalia, their decision to do so based on a World Bank assessment that oil was there. Cononco’s investment was significant enough that, according to Fineman, they stayed in Mogadishu through the two-year civil war and allowed their headquarters to be a de facto embassy in the days preceding the arrival of the Marines in December 1992. Throughout the American intervention, Conoco provided logistical and facilitation support to the military’s humanitarian mission. Clearly, oil played a role in the U.S. involvement.

Is it reasonable to believe that Bush had ulterior motives in sending the troops? His coziness with the industry and the odd timing of his actions do seem suspicious. The question is whether Bush, or any administration for that matter, would have committed the troops for wholly humanitarian reasons. In the years before the Soviet collapse, protecting U.S. business interests and humanitarianism could be neatly packaged with anti-communism and made palatable to most Americans. But in those days just after the fall of communism, altruism got trickier. With troops just recently home from Desert Storm, and the economy reeling, a commitment of 20,000 Marines for a humanitarian cause may have struck many Americans concerned with huge budget deficits as excessive. For twelve years Republicans promoted an agenda of pro-business initiatives and reductions in domestic social programs. For Bush to stem that tide with a single act would be out of character. While I believe it’s possible for America to commit selfless acts of humanity, the 1992 situation in Somalia was not one of those times.

In summary, the movie was not consciously racist, but American viewers should certainly reflect on their feelings after seeing the film. Aideed, a warrior fighting a civil war, was a bad guy, but not in the absolute way depicted by the film. And, sadly, George Herbert Walker Bush did commit humanitarian troops with an eye on protecting U.S. business interests.

Sources:

Course readings

Bowden, Mark, “Black Hawk Down”, a series of investigative reports appearing in the Philadelphia Inquirer, November 16 – December 14, 1997 http://inquirer.philly.com/packages/somalia/nov16/rang16.asp

CNN Presents Black Hawk Down: A Modern Story of War http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/presents/shows/blackhawk/interactive/the.story/frameset.exclude.html

Harrison, Eric film review Black Hawk Down http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ae/movies/reviews/1216070.html

The Destruction of Neutrality – Cambodia in The Killing Fields

Reel Whirled Peas



For me, the most troubling thing about studying contemporary issues, through film or other media, is that it reminds me of the bottomless capacity of human beings to inflict pain and death on others. What occurs in the hearts of men who remorselessly kill children and the defenseless? And, how can there be so many likeminded people bent on the destruction of millions of others?

Those questions arose again as I watched The Killing Fields, Roland Jaffe’s film adaptation of the true story of a 1970s American news reporter and his Cambodian partner. The movie is full of moral conflicts and outrages, of the indelicate balancing of suffering and ideology, and of the destruction of neutrality, both political and moral. There was plenty of blame to go around for the sequence of events that eventually led to the deaths of as much as 1/3 of the entire population.

Some of the blame must be directed at the U.S., for its “secret war” in Cambodia beginning in 1969.The action in the film begins in August 1973, when New York Times foreign correspondent Sydney Schanberg returning to Cambodia just after the U.S. Congress had determined that U.S. bombings in Cambodia were illegal and the military was directed to stop. By that time, it’s been estimated that the U.S. had dropped over 500,000 tons, or $7 billion worth of bombs on Cambodia since 1969.

Despite Cambodia’s official position of neutrality in the U.S. – Viet Nam War, Norodom Sihanouk, the erstwhile king and head of state, began allowing the Vietcong to use border villages and ports to hide from American and South Vietnamese ground troops, store ammunition, receive armament shipments from Russia and China, and plan guerilla attacks. Gen. Creighton Abrams, the senior officer in charge of American troops in Viet Nam, sought and received approval from President Nixon to begin the secret bombings directed at Viet Cong in March 1969. The New York Times broke the story of the secret bombings two months later. Soon after, Sihanouk, while in France, was replaced by General Lon Nol following a vote in the general assembly. The U.S. supported the ascendancy of Lon Nol who supported the U.S. and was a strong anti-communist but a weak leader and strategist. His government was corrupt, and his support of U.S. intrusion into Cambodia made Lon Nol extremely unpopular. Once again, the U.S. government, with its almost fanatic anti-communism foreign policy, had supported a weak exploitative head of state.

The carpet bombings, as is often the case, resulted in killing innocents in addition to the intended targets. In The Banyan Tree: Untangling Cambodian History, Bruce Sharp describes a wedding processional that wandered into a B-52 target zone near the village of Saang. Hundreds were killed. And, just after Schanberg’s return a B-52 crew “mistakenly” dropped its entire ordinance on the village of Neak Luong, killing 137 and wounding 205. This occurred after the ban on bombing Cambodia was imposed by Congress. The exact number of civilian casualties is unknown, with estimates ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. Such occurrences, combined with Lon Nol’s unpopularity and the reemergence of Sihanouk as a supporter of the communists, led tens of thousands of Cambodians to support the Khmer Rouge, who overthrew Lon Nol and assumed the seat of government in 1975.

Some of the blame for the catastrophe in Cambodia has to be directed at the foreign press covering the events. In the film, Sydney Schanberg, safely back in the U.S., is asked in an interview whether the press had a role in the ascendancy of the Khmer Rouge. The interview followed Schanberg’s acceptance of an award, maybe it was his Pulitzer, for his and Dith Pran’s reporting of events. I thought it was an interesting, and troubling question, and his response was unsatisfactory. He admits that the press underestimated the communists, but that the real culprit was the $7 billion in bombs that the U.S. dropped.

I believe the press was obligated to report the secret actions of the U.S. government and the corruption of the Lon Nol regime. But where does the press draw the line in deciding if disclosure may result in greater atrocities than the event they are reporting? In his review of Vietnam Chronicles: The Abrams Tapes 1968-1972 Nathan Alexander observes that Abrams viewed the press as his main opponent. “His struggles will be less in securing hamlets, than conveying the significance of this to the American public”, he writes. The confrontation between Schanberg and the military attaché early in the film shows the mistrust each has for the other. According to Alexander, the military began feeling hamstrung by the media, electing not to undertake certain initiatives because the media will stir up the anti-war forces back home. This was true of our actions in Cambodia, where a lack of popular support here for Lon Nol and our military may have diminished our capacity to keep the Khmer Rouge from gaining control.

Is it reasonable to assume that they should have done a better job reporting on the actions of the Khmer Rouge? In the film, Pran, Sydney, the driver and two other journalists are rousted from their vehicle and might have been killed were it not for Pran’s intercessory skills. They saw the brutality of the communists first hand. In their rush to trumpet the sins, and there were many, of the U.S. and Lon Nol, they, in Schanberg’s words, underestimated the brutality of the Khmer Rouge.

War correspondents are a strange group. They make a living off the suffering of people ravaged by conflict. There is another scene that takes place just after Schanberg receives his award, when he runs into Al Rockoff, the news photographer that served in Cambodia with Schanberg. Rockoff rebukes Schanberg, saying that he abandoned Dith Pran because the he was more interested in the Pulitzer Prize. That may not have been the case, but many correspondents become inured to the suffering surrounding the story, and in Cambodia I think that was true. Schanberg certainly agonized about Pran’s fate, but we see no evidence that he was remorseful about the driver who had served him for at least 3 years. At the beginning of the film, Schanberg refers to Cambodia as a place that he came to love and to pity. I think the word “pity” sums up his feelings correctly.

And, finally, blame must be put on the leadership of the Khmer Rouge. By 1972, the Khmer Rouge had built an army nearly 50,000 strong, perhaps 20 times as large as they were in the late 1960s. Their leader, Pol Pot (a nom de guerre), followed an extreme version of Marxism that he learned as a student in Paris. For him, the revolution superceded everything, including, or rather especially, human life. The favorite saying of the Khmer Rouge was “To preserve you is no gain, to destroy you is no loss”.

Pol Pot envisioned a Kampuchea – he changed the name following their victory – that would be completely rural and self-sufficiently agrarian. As soon as they assumed power, the Angkar – the government organization of the Khmer Rouge- forced hundreds of thousands out of the cities. Sharp describes how hospitals were emptied, with many dying in the transition. Families were forced to flee with a moments notice. People were identified as either “old people”, those from the countryside loyal to the communists, or “new people”, those from the cities, particularly professors, doctors, and nearly anyone with education. The Angkar wanted to eliminate anyone with the intellectual capability to rebel.

Their methods of elimination were not quite as efficient as, say, the Hitler’s Nazis, but efficient enough to lead to between 2 and 3 million deaths from 1975-1979. Most of those deaths resulted from systematic starvation, but hundreds of thousands of victims were shot, bludgeoned, burned, suffocated, impaled or disemboweled. The movie accurately depicts accounts I found in other sources. There was great brutality and cruelty in their destruction. Children as young as 12 or so, young girls, teenage boys, and middle aged men all partake in the killing in the film. Eventually, Pol Pot, like Stalin 40 years before, realized the only remaining threat were those he had trusted most, and, again like Stalin, he set about to purge the ranks of the Angkar. Despite being deposed by the Vietnamese in 1979, Pol Pot, despite leading one of the most ruthless regimes in the 20th century, still maintained a role in Cambodian politics until just before his death in 1998.

As for blame, I watched Sam Waterston as Schanberg deliver Sydney’s award acceptance speech several times. It was an indictment on the U.S. Government’s unholy bombing and invasion of Cambodia, but the substance of his ridicule could apply to all those involved in the Cambodian catastrophe: “…when decisions…were made…after they considered their options…and they concerned themselves with many things…great power conflicts, and collapsing dominoes…looking tough and dangerous. They had domestic concerns as well…. keeping secrets…and not ignoring self-interests in their own careers. The only thing they were not concerned with were the Cambodians themselves, not the society, and not the country, except in the abstract as instruments.”

So I return to the question of how such atrocities are perpetrated by so many. A reviewer of the film says we cannot “…dismiss The Killing Fields as more mysterious Asians mistreating each other, and Westerners, for their own inscrutable reasons. We must face their actions as the natural consequences of modern war and fanatical ideology…” (my emphasis) www.cambodian.com/dithpran/film.htm. Having experienced neither, I am still not sure how one gives up his humanity.
Background Sources:

Alexander, Nathan, review of Vietnam Chronicles: The Abrams Tapes 1968-1972
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article4430.html

Canby, Vincent Screen: Tale of Death and Life of a Cambodian http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.html?title1=&title2=KILLING%20FIELDS%2C%20THE%20%28MOVIE%29&reviewer=Vincent%20Canby&v_id=27323&partner=Rotten%20Tomatoes

Ebert, Roger Film Review The Killing Fields http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19840101/REVIEWS/401010352/1023

Film Review The Killing Fields
http://www.cambodian.com/dithpran/film.htm

Internet Movie Database
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087553/

Sharp Bruce, The Banyan Tree: Untangling Cambodian History
http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/banyan1.htm

Wikipedia Cambodia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodia

Fitzcarraldo - An Allegory of Colonialism

Reel Whirled Peas



Roger Ebert wrote “Werner Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo” is one of the great visions of the cinema, and one of the great follies”. Vincent Canby says “(It) may well be a madman’s dream, but it’s also a fine, quirky, fascinating movie. It’s a stunning spectacle, an adventure-comedy not quite like any other, and the most benign movie ever made about 19th century capitalism running amok”.

The film is full of wonderful images of Amazonian colonialism at the turn of the 20th century. Spanish rubber barons have put tens of thousands of Indians to work tapping, emulsifying and blocking the rubber from hundreds of square miles of trees. The center of the rubber trade, Manaus, Brazil becomes, according to the manager of the world-class opera house there, the wealthiest city in the world.

In fact, the film opens showing that very opera house, where Enrico Caruso and a very mannish Sarah Bernhardt are performing a Verdi opera (actually, Bernhardt is lip-syncing). This performance is the reason Brian Sweeny Fitzgerald and his brothel-owning mistress, Molly, have traveled 1,200 miles down the Amazon from the jungle village of Iquitos, Peru. Fitzgerald is called Fitzcarraldo by Indians unable to pronounce Fitzgerald. Fitzcarraldo undertakes several business ventures, all of them failures, in order to raise the money needed to build an opera house in Iquitos. He decides to farm rubber, but the only land available is inaccessible due to deadly rapids and equally deadly headhunting tribes. Fitzcarraldo, using his admiring Molly’s money, buys a large steamboat. He figures he can take an alternative river into the jungle, and then transport the boat over a mountain to the other river, far above the angry rapids. That adventure is heart of the story, and for me it’s an allegory of colonialism.

Fitzcarraldo has a dream of bringing European culture to the remote world, and making some money doing it. For him, culture is European opera, and for opera he proselytizes with the same vigor as Christian missionaries. He is a man of ideas, but needs to surround himself with workers to execute his vision. Fitzcarraldo’s first hire is a Dutchman, a fellow European who can be trusted, to captain his ship. Then he hires the cook, a drunken native who can translate the languages. The cook serves as Fitzcarraldo’s liaison with the crew, a rag-tag group of Indians. A large, powerful Indian mechanic comes with the boat, compliments of the boat’s seller, Don Aquillino, a rubber baron who wants to be kept apprised of Fitzcarraldo’s progress. The roster is set, looking very much like a standard colony: European adventurer/entrepreneur, his white general manager, his native lackey, a spy, and a crew occasionally on the verge of rebellion.

The boat heads upstream, toward the next frontier, much to the chagrin of the crew. Soon the unseen headhunters surround them, and the crew jump ship, leaving Fitzcarraldo and his three main hands to fend for themselves. Fitzcarraldo finds a way to connect with the natives. He displays something new and interesting to them – his recordings of Caruso. They are intrigued by the music, and the boat, which is far grander than anything seen before. The colonizer has put a spell on the natives, and, rather than killing the intruders, the natives agree to work for him. They help him transport the boat over the mountain. When two young Indians are accidentally killed, the Indians stop work for some time, causing Fitzcarraldo to worry that they will quit for good, leaving him with a boat halfway up a mountain and no workforce to complete the task. Or, even worse, that they may rebel, and kill the remaining crew. Those are anxieties faced by the colonizers as well.

Settlers were able to control their colonized natives in a number of ways. Often, control came by force. In other cases it came through monetary compensation. Fitzcarraldo had neither device. However, he learned, through the cook/interpreter, that the tribe held dear a legend about a “great white god”, who would calm the rapids and lead them to a place of peace. Fitzcarraldo exploited this myth, and with it he held sway over this tribe that held his life in their hands.

Together, the crew and the tribe transported the boat over the mountain, with the kind of cooperation necessary in every successful colonial venture. After they got the boat to the other river, there was a grand celebration, everyone taking equal pleasure in the achievement. As Fitzcarraldo and the crew slept the next morning, the Indians cut the boat from its moorings, and sent it toward the rapids, essentially an act of liberation. The boat ran the rapids, and arrived, badly damaged but floating, back where it started. The jungle again belonged to the natives. The colonizers moved on to other things.

Fitzcarraldo sold the boat back to Don Aquillino, securing enough profit to hire the opera company to perform one time on the boat as it passes along the coast of Iquitos. Fitzcarraldo is satisfied. He has brought opera to the jungle.

Missing: Horman v. United States of America

Reel Whirled Peas



Re: Horman v. United States of America, et.al

As attorney for the Defendants, I want to address the primary accusations presented by Mrs. Horman and her attorneys.
First, the United States government, through its agents in Chile, Ambassador Nathaniel Davis, Chief Military Liaison Ray Davis, and Consul Fred Purdy, was complicit in the arrest and execution of her husband, Charles Horman, on or around September 18, 1973. Mrs. Horman asserts that the Chilean police arrested her husband shortly after the successful coup by General Pinochet on September 11, and that Charles Horman’s subsequent execution at the National Stadium in Santiago could not have happened without the consent of the U.S. government.

We agree with Mrs. Horman that Charles Horman was arrested in the days following the coup, and that he was subsequently executed at the direction of the Chilean Nation Police at the National Stadium on September 18. Charles Horman’s father, Ed Horman, received that information from a staffer at the Ford Foundation, and Embassy personnel confirmed it through the Chilean government. This admission by General Pinochet’s government was not initially forthcoming to our Embassy. They admitted executing Charles Horman only after our Embassy presented them with the information Ed Horman had ascertained. In this regard, the Chilean government misled us.

Mrs. Horman contends that her husband was arrested because he “knew too much”, a reference to his alleged observation of U.S. military assets in the area during a brief trip to Vina Del Mar in the days preceding the coup. It has been documented that the U.S. put economic pressure on the Allende government, and provided some funding to alternative parties, for the purpose of providing a level playing field in anticipation of the 1976 Chilean general elections. Our efforts were not designed to overthrow Allende’s government, but rather to allow alternative politics to develop. America was not directly involved in the coup, but there is evidence that our efforts to balance the political debate in Chile inadvertently empowered General Pinochet.

The attorneys for Mrs. Horman point to a 1976 Washington Post interview with Rafael Gonzalez, a Chilean security official who was later indicted for Mr. Horman’s murder. Gonzalez indicated that Horman was executed because he “knew too much”, and that an American official was present when the decision was made to kill him. According to Ambassador Davis, the basis of Gonzalez’s statement was that the alleged American was wearing American shoes. Mr. Gonzalez’s interview was conducted in the Italian Embassy, and there are indications that he was seeking asylum in a number of countries, ostensibly to distance himself from the act for which he is now indicted. There is not credible evidence supporting his assertion of U.S. involvement in Horman’s death.

Mrs. Horman’s attorneys also point to a recently de-classified 1976 memo written by staffers to Harry Schlaudeman, a high-ranking State Department official in the Latin American division. The memo describes the Horman killing as “bothersome”, and the staff indicated that Congress, the press, academia, and the Horman family all believed the State Department to be negligent or complicit in Horman’s death. The memo then goes on to say that the writers did not have an accurate accounting of the events surrounding Horman’s death. However, the writers were persuaded that the government of Chile were sufficiently threatened by Horman, and felt he could be killed with little negative reaction from the U.S. We believe the last statement indicates Chile’s naiveté, that because of Horman’s leftist ideology the U.S. would not pursue a full accounting of his death. It does not mean, as the plaintiff’s attorneys would have you believe, that there would be no reaction because of U.S. complicity. On the next point, however, we agree that a case can be made that our Embassy failed to protect Mr. Horman.

Mr. Horman, and Frank Teruggi, another American executed shortly after the coup, both worked for Fin, a left-leaning news clipping service, and their pro-Allende politics may have made them a natural target for the junta. Knowing that, the Embassy should have located them and extended protection. The Embassy should be criticized for failing to do so in a timely manner, but that failure does not constitute complicity in their murders. There is simply no hard evidence to indicate that State Department personnel had any hand in Mr. Horman’s death.

Patrice Lumumba - An Alternative Ending

Reel Whirled Peas



Patrice Lumumba, former President of the Republic of Socialist Congo, Dies in Exile
July 17, 2006

Johannesburg, South Africa (Reuters) - Patrice Emery Lumumba, who ruled the Republic of Socialist Congo (RSC) from 1961-1989, died yesterday in Johannesburg, where he has lived since being deposed following a civil war in 1989. He was 81.

Lumumba, a former beer salesman in what is now Kinshasa, founded the Congolese National Movement, the first political party that sought members from all Congolese tribes, in 1958. Although looked upon as a troublemaker by the Belgian government, Lumumba had broad popularity, and his party won big in the Congo’s first elections in May 1960. Lumumba formed a coalition government with political rival and first president Joseph Kasavubu, a rocky relationship that ended in December 1960 when Lumumba ousted Kasavubu with the help of the Soviet Union, and changed the name of the country to the Republic of Socialist Congo (RSC).

Next, Lumumba turned his sights on Katanga, the resource-rich southern province that seceded from the Congolese government shortly after independence. Katanga was supported in their move for independence by Belgium and the United States who were uncomfortable with Lumumba’s relationship with the Soviets. Lumumba declared war on Katanga, and his bitter enemy, Katanga president Moise Tshombe, in February 1961.

The four-year war that followed is a textbook example of the proxy wars undertaken by the United States and Soviet Union in the 1960s. Lumumba’s populist socialism was pitted against the economic elitism of Tshombe. The RSC army, led by General Joseph Mobutu, and supported by Soviet advisers and materiel, overthrew and subsequently executed Tshombe, whose chief supporter, the United States, had begun reallocating its resources to the Vietnam War.

Once he reunited RSC and Katanga, Lumumba moved quickly to nationalize industry, especially Katanga’s lucrative mining operations. Lumumba worked hard to incorporate the country’s many tribes into a unified government, and a strong world economy in the late 1960s contributed to a period of relative prosperity for RSC as commodities prices rose. Lumumba began assuming a more neutral Cold War position, and started courting western European capital as he set out plans for further modernizing the infrastructure, economy, and education system of the RSC.

During the early 1970s he chaired several pan-Africa initiatives on trade and education. But as the world slid into recession in 1973 Western investment disappeared throughout Africa, especially in RSC. With the economy in a shambles, the modernization initiatives shelved, and unemployment at an all-time high, the army, still under the direction of Joseph Mobutu, attempted a coup in January 1974. Lumumba was unable to arouse the support of the Soviets, who were unhappy with his recent shift toward the West. Help came from the other side of the Cold War, as the U.S., seeking to reestablish its global influence as the Vietnam disaster wound down, believed Lumumba was preferable to a Ugandan-style military dictatorship. The coup was put down, and Mobutu was executed.

Fearing that other coup attempts may be imminent, Lumumba consolidated his control over the military and then began conducting a series of purges. He instructed parliament to re-write the constitution, placing more power in the presidency. In order to rebuild the SRC’s fractured economy, Lumumba sought funding from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and agreed to privatize most of the country’s mining businesses. However, the “structural adjustments” required by the IMF increased the nation’s poverty, and civil war broke out in 1980. For the next 9 years rebel factions supported by Rwanda and Uganda waged war with Lumumba, who fled to Egypt in 1989, and eventually settled in South Africa at the invitation of President Nelson Mandela in 1994.

Lumumba spent his remaining years writing and advising on African politics. His wife Pauline died in March. Patrice Lumumba is survived by 5 children.

Background source
http://www.africawithin.com/lumumba/historical_bio.htm

The Color of Paradise

Reel Whirled Peas

The Color of Paradise is a beautiful movie filmed in 1999 in Iran. It’s the story of a blind child, Mohammed, who leaves his urban school for the blind and returns to his family’s farm near the mountains. His widower father is a coal worker, and the farm is worked by his 2 young sisters and granny.

The opening set of scenes, occurring at the school, show classrooms full of elementary-aged boys, all of them blind, who live and study together under the watchful eye of their kind and generous teacher. The boys physically guide one another, joke around, and work diligently on their Braille lessons. In all respects the scene could be taking place in New York or London. My sheltered and ignorant western perspective was surprised to see such effort made to accommodate these children. I have seen so many news images of special needs children shunted away, neglected by their families, the embarrassing result of some heavenly retribution.

The first indication that this is an Islamic republic comes when the parents arrive to pick the boys up for their 3-month break from school. All of the mothers are wearing black burkhas. But even that is subtle, on screen for just a minute, because this is not a film about living in an Islamic society, but rather a film about hope and loss, disappointment and renewal, themes that transcend geography and culture.

Later, as Mohammed and his father head out through Teheran to catch the bus that will take them on the first part of their journey home, father stops by a couple of local businesses to sell wares: a hand-woven rug in one store, and a silver bracelet in another. You don’t have a sense at this point whether his actions are truly commercial or he’s simply pawning possessions to raise money to go home. Later in the film, when father is addressing the family of a woman he is courting, he mentions that he was recently in Teheran conducting some business, which the prospective in-laws found very impressive.

The scenes involving the courtship were not surprising. The several trips father makes to call on the family always involve gifts, self-promotion, and delicate negotiations. The first time we see him arrive, he was shaven himself and put on his best clothes, and rides to her home on his horse, smiling broadly to show his fine teeth, so caught up in presenting a good image that he fails to see the low-hanging tree branch that knocks him off his steed. On his last visit, where plans are made for the wedding, he presents a dowry, a wad of bills and some jewelry, and his future father-in-law congratulates him. He will be marrying into a more well to do family than his own, and through this entire courtship he has not let on that he has a blind son. He may very well be one of those who see that burden as a curse, and he does not want to risk losing that opportunity. Later, after his mother dies, his prospective in-laws return his dowry, believing that his mother’s death was a sign that the marriage would be cursed. Even in a theocracy, old superstitions die slowly.

The Iraq-Iran War, along with other civil conflicts over the past 30 years left as many as a million widows and betrotheds in Iran. At one point the family tells father of their daughter’s loss of a fiancé, and that father represented their last hope for marrying her off. Throughout their conversations each side seemed to be saying the same thing, want the same result, but each inherently knew that certain protocols and traditions had to be adhered to. And yet, despite all of that, they called off the wedding because granny died.

The other set of scenes that were interesting showed the relative self-sufficiency of the family farm. They grew alfalfa, wheat, and corn, and raised chickens. They had vast fields of colorful flowers nearby, which they picked by the bushel for use in making cloth dyes. Although they did not show how the dyes were used, perhaps father’s sale of the rugs in Teheran was a commercial venture after all. By all indications Mohammed’s family, while not wealthy, seemed relatively comfortable. Despite all he had, however, father was a sad man. He asks his mother why God has made his life so terrible.

But, like so many other things in this film, those doubts are not unique to Iranians. In more ways than it shows our differences, The Color of Paradise shows our similarities.

We wish to inform you...Stories from Rwanda

Reel Whirled Peas

What does one do when the government allows, or rather encourages, the mass murder of a segment of its population? Where does one turn when the conventional sanctuaries have turned you away, or, even worse, lured you into extermination?

As I read We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families, I caught myself asking those questions, and wondering how human beings can hate deep enough to commit these atrocities. Philip Gourevitch, through extensive first hand accounts, provides readers with real-life stories of Rwandan genocide of Tutsis in 1994. Each page seemed to be more horrible than the page before.

The numbers are staggering: During a 100-day period, at least 800,000 people were murdered, mostly be machete. That was over 10% of the entire population of Rwanda, making the massacres, as Gourevitch points out, a literal decimation of the country. Many attribute the animosities that gave rise to this inhumanity to the remnants of colonialism, which perpetuated pre-colonial roles of Tutsis as herdsmen and Hutus as cultivators. The Europeans favored the lighter-skinned Tutsis, and over time the “Hamitic Myth”, that Africans who physically best resembled Europeans were superior to their darker brethren. The Belgians exploited the myth in order to maintain control over the country, as a way to play each of the other. This was done in spite of the fact that the two groups had interbred so much that many Tutsis assumed physical attributes of the Hutu and vice versa.

Following Rwanda’s official independence in 1962, the Hutu majority ruled, and began its retribution toward Tutsis for decades of social and economic subjugation, retribution that culminated in the 1994 genocide. Once “Hutu Power”, a racist ideology that codified the destruction of Tutsis, took hold in the cities and countryside, the interahamwe death squads set about to kill all the Tutsis. The army and the police were co-sponsors of the genocide. Hospitals, schools, and churches were no longer safe havens for targeted Tutsis. Rescue was not forthcoming. Everyone abandoned the Tutsis: The United Nations, the United States and Europe. The only reason any of them survives was because of army and militias became so pre-occupied with murdering Tutsi civilians that they forgot to fight the rebel forces.

Gourevitch reports the story of Pastor Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, the president of the Seventh-day Adventist church in Rwanda, and his son, Dr. Gerard, who had been trained in the United States. The Pastor, by eyewitness accounts, helped perpetuate the slaughter of Tutsis by assuring their safety in the church and instead turning them over to the militia. Likewise, many Catholic priests and at least one Bishop allowed Tutsis to be massacred on their watch. As I read those accounts, I wondered where Christ was. How can men of God, ordained to relieve the suffering of Christ’s children, allow – even encourage – atrocities perpetrated on the defenseless? Their story was one that I wish had been in the film Hotel Rwanda. In the only country in Africa with a Christian majority, the Church failed Rwanda. I am ashamed of that.

As I read the book, I could not imagine the images. I responded to the discussion board that the film created the images I cold not create on my own: The menacing faces of the army, the jubilance of the interahamwe in the midst of hacking people to death, the calm voice over the radio encouraging Hutus to kill. To some extent, I understand war. I understand anger and action. I even understand isolated occurrences of murder, when passions overwhelm sanity. I cannot understand the murderous collusion of millions of people. I cannot understand how neighbors, in-laws, friends, and business associates can suddenly turn and hack to death people once dear to them.

The book also had a depiction of great humanity. Paul Rusesabaginga, the manager of the Hotel des Milles Collines, showed great resourcefulness and courage in finding a way to save over 1200 people. He was by no means a superhero, but rather an ordinary and pragmatic man who on at least two occasions gave up freedom from the persecution in order to tend to others. I am sure there must have been others who showed compassion and service at great personal risk, but their numbers must have paled compared to the murderers. The book, and the movie, affected me deeply.

Paradise Now and the Oscars

Reel Whirled Peas



I suppose it is reasonable to expect controversy to surround a film about suicide bombers. In the U.S., we have been accused of unfairly labeling "freedom fighters" as "terrorists", and "martyrs" as "murderers". Outrage erupted following a Gloden Globe win for Paradise Now, as an internet signed by 36,000 was presented to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences by Arab-American peace activist Nonie Darwash. She claimed that the film "did not show the evils of terrorism enough".

Darwash presented the petition in hopes of revoking the film's nomination for Best Foreign Film at this year's Oscars. The petition was initiated by Yossi Zur, the parent of a 16 year-old boy killed by a suicide bomber in 2003. Zur's petition prompted another internet petition, this one supporting the film's nomination. Zur contended that the film legitimized suicide bombing as a valid form of protest, and portrays the film's characters as victims. Zur wonders whether a film about Saudis training to fly planes into New York buildings, or one showing an operative releasing a biological agent killing 10,000 would also portray the instigators as victims. To Zur, the killing of 17 or 17,000 is still mass-murder.

The opposing view states that the film attempts to explain the other side of the story. It shows how a "life of desperation can lead to an act of desperation". They imply that the living conditions of Palestinians under the "Israeli occupation" have forced protesters to use the only form of resistance available to them - their bodies. The petition claims states that the film does not legitimize the actions. It should be, they claim, widely seen in order to balance what they consider to be a one-sided view of the conflict presented by Western news media.

I have to admit that Zur's argument has some merit. As I watched the film, and saw Said and Khaled interacting with one another and their families I started thinking about how hard it would be to go through a day knowing that it is your last. I felt sorry for Said's mother. I wondered how Jamal could idly talk to Said's mother knowing that tomorrow her son would die, and Jamal would have a hand in that. I felt sympathy for the Said. And then I came back to my senses and remembered that this is one of those mass-murderers that kill indiscriminately - children, women, the elderly. Are they different than the 9/11 terrorists, Lieutenant Goeth from Shindler's List, the Khmer Rouge, the Hutu interahamwe, or General Dyer who ordered the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in India? I agree with Zur that they are not.

But I do not agree with Zur that the film should be withdrawn or censored in any way. Filmmakers assume many roles in developing their craft. Sometimes they provide sheer entertainment, sometimes they tell an important story. Often they are social commentators, sometimes critics, and sometimes propagandists. America has a long tradition of making films whose content is controversial but most Americans support a filmmaker's rights. I agree with the counter-petition suggestion that the film be seen and allowing viewers to draw their own conclusions about the story and its value.

Tito and Me

Reel Whirled Peas

In his review of the film Tito and Me, Vincent Canby writes:

"Tito and Me" was made before the Yugoslav war broke out, which doesn't help one's passive enjoyment of the film today. Tito's excesses, his rule by repression, his cult of personality, all of these things could be more easily satirized while the federation he helped forge still held together. The satire now looks shortsighted, over-simplified, almost ghoulish.

His observation is unique among the reviews I read, and I believe it merits some discussion. Filmmakers once censored by repressive governments got a new lease on their creative lives during the 1990s, and many, like this film’s Goran Markovic, took the opportunity to poke fun at the regimes as a way of revisioning official history.

In the film, the adults seem world-weary, only 10 years removed from a World War that changed the rules in the Eastern Europe. In our Unit Two readings, we find that Yugoslavia was an amalgam of ethnics, religions and cultural traditions. Croats supported Hitler in the War, and their secret police committed atrocities against Serbs, Muslims, and Jews. Serbians made up the majority of the communist resistance, although even within the nationalists there was conflict between Mihailovich’s Serbian Nationalists and Tito’s Communists. A virtual civil war was paralleling the world one, resulting in Tito rising to supreme power and freeing the Balkans from Hitler, without the aid of the Russians. Yugoslavia was thus geographically united under Tito, but lingering animosities and a bankrupt economy made the created a nation that was far from single-mindedness.

So we see Zoran’s parents, artistic and bourgeois, trying to make sense of their odd child’s love for the man responsible for their repression. In the film we do not see the specific reasons for their unhappiness with the regime, but the visible discomfort expressed on his father’s face each time Zoran speaks or writes about his love of Tito tells the story. The “March Around Tito’s Homeland”, a weeklong hiking and camping retreat for the winners of the “Why I like the President”, essay contest, serves as an allegory of Tito’s rule of Yugoslavia. The March is undertaken by about 20 youths and their adult leader, Comrade Raja.

Raja serves as Tito’s proxy. He shows great favoritism to his elect, and great disdain toward the ill begotten. He constantly spies on the children, looking through peepholes, taking notes of their actions and comments, enlisting the children to tell on one another, forbidding them to speak, and threatening them in order to control them. He is constantly licking his finger to check wind direction before setting out in the wrong direction. He is Tito as a comic book character, one that allows even a 10 year-old completely immersed in the cult of personality to “recognize the idiocies and dangers of one-man rule” (Canby). A key moment of the film follows Raja’s decision to send Zoran home early, and at the train station gives the boy a sandwich and a train ticket. Despite his obsessive love of food, Zoran throws the sandwich into the trash. Raja demands that Zoran retrieve the sandwich, and he refuses. A long moment of willfulness exists between them, and Raja breaks first. The other children move to stand with Zoran against Raja. The people have overthrown tyranny.

Canby might say that if you carried the allegory to its historic end we might see the children, after a brief period of self-congratulations for setting themselves free, begin fighting one another to replace Raja as leader, and, gaining no clear consensus, eventually splitting into 4 or 5 smaller groups and engaging in internecine conflicts. One can make the claim that Yugoslavia should never have been a single geopolitical entity to begin with. “But, compared to the present horrors”, Canby writes, the “Tito era takes on a golden aura”. There were periods of economic prosperity. There was relative peace among the ethnic groups. The country received monetary support from both sides of the Cold War. Recently, there has been civil war, high unemployment, and charges of ethnic cleansing.
Perhaps Markovic’s smug ridicule of the regime was shortsighted.

The U.S. and France in Viet Nam

Reel Whirled Peas

The Viet Nam experiences of the United States differ from those of France due in part to each country’s motivation for getting involved there in the first place.
France had a long history with Indochina, going back to the 1880s, and despite the poor light cast upon all European colonialism there were some benefits to both sides of the relationship. Like most colonizing ventures, French businessmen saw great commercial opportunities in Southeast Asia. Natives benefited from improvements to the infrastructure and the modernization of the economy. The Catholic Church saw great opportunities for proselytizing and education. Colonizers were not a homogeneous group, as explained in Hasian/Shugart paper. Some were benevolent, others cruel, some inclined to support local custom, others bent on Europe-izing. But in nearly every case they viewed their place in Indochina with no end date. They set about with an expectation of permanence.
The U.S., on the other hand, saw the region as rich in opportunity to carry out the Truman doctrine. Southeast Asia was the newest front for the Cold War, and the U.S. was not going to let communism spread in the region. The U.S. also had an expectation of permanence, but one that was ideological rather than physical. Ho Chi Minh was supported by China and the Soviet Union, but in a real sense Viet Nam’s battle for independence was between the people of Viet Nam and the French. The Viet Nam War with the United States transcended an indigenous people wanting self-determination. It was an ideological conflict for the soul of Southeast Asia. In this case, the U.S. lost the battle. It remains to be seen who wins the war.

Norindr on Indochine

Reel Whirled Peas



Panivong Norindr writes:
"Critical and popular acclaim notwithstanding, Wargnier’s representation of Indochina exerts a dangerous fascination precisely because it brings visual pleasure without questioning or subverting any preconceived ideas about French colonial rule in Southeast Asia. Indochine merely displays beautiful images and should only be remembered as a symptom of the current French fad for things exotic."
I agree with Dr. Norindr’s criticism of the film.
It is a beautifully photographed film. The long shots of the Tomkin islands, the image of the workers heading out in the early morning mist to tap the trees and collect the rubber sap, and the mountains reaching into low-lying clouds are all part of the almost brutal visual majesty. The look of the era – the clothes, the cars, and especially the beautifully appointed home of Eliane – provided an elegant counterpoint to awesome nature. The film reveled in its beauty. One would be hard pressed to find three more beautiful people than Catherine Deneuve, Vincent Perez, and Linh Dan Phan. This film made me want to own 15,000 acres of rubber trees in French Indochina, a guilt-ridden admission.
Other films, Gandhi for instance, got me to pull for the natives in their quest for independence. The British clearly were the bad guys there. All of the Contemporary World readings dealing with colonialism made me figuratively stand up and cheer when the locals had finally overthrown their exploitative masters. I am shamed by the treatment of native peoples by Europeans and Americans. And despite all that, the film made me want to be a benevolent colonizer like Eliane.
Why is that I wonder? It goes beyond the beauty of the time and place. Throughout the film, the actions of the colonizers are juxtaposed with the actions of the rebels. We see oddly maternal Eliane after she has apparently punished a runaway worker, who admits that Eliane is his “mother and my father”. We do not see her actually inflict the punishment. We hear Guy say “we punished” this one, “we executed” that one, and we find out that Guy may have been responsible for killing Jean-Baptiste. But, we do not see the colonial police actually do any of that stuff. We do see Camille murder the evil naval officer, but she then begins her journey toward becoming a communist rebel.
Conversely, the rebels shoot the mandarin. People begin scurrying about, fearful that the communists will kill them all. The rebels go from village to village inciting riots. The communists burn another mandarin to death on a bonfire of his worldly possessions. The film’s director, Regis Wargnier, clearly is drawing a judgment about the parties at conflict. The film has a sort of “back in the good old days before those guys screwed it up” feel about it. If one watched the film without knowing the larger context you might walk away asking “Why were those people revolting anyway?” You get a good dose of fashion history from the film, but ultimately very little useful political history.