Only if you’re a complete moron. “The terrorists were human and had reasons for their actions” does not entail “The terrorists’ actions were justified” and only a complete and utter idiot (like the lovely Ms. Coulter) would ever suggest that it did. Where the fuck does this “If you view the bad guys as anything other then cartoon charicatures of evil then you must be on their side” attitude that so many people seem to have come from, anyways? How can a former public defender of all people be even so remotely sympathetic to such a viewpoint that he’d suggest Coulter doesn’t deserve a pitting for it?
I respectfully disagree. The movie clearly suggested that the murderers had good reasons for what they did. A viewer could certainly leave feeling sympathetic to the murderers; feeling that the Israelis had acted aggressively and murderously themselves, and thus brought on their own heads this sort of response.
Possibly. To do so, however, our hypothetical viewer would have to ignore vast swathes of the movie. I’m thinking particularly of Golda Meir’s speeches near the beginning, the final scenes at the German airport, and pretty miuch everything Daniel Craig’s character says throughout.
I usually am disgusted by AC, but when I saw this particular little screed, I actually thought it was pretty funny-- especially the *Munich *part. She just said bluntly what many others said in a long, more tactful way when complaining about that movie.
The problem, though, is that AC isn’t on Comedy Central doing stand-up. She’s flitting around on the political talk shows. She wants to have her cake and eat it, too. Oh, I was just trying to be funny, I didn’t reallly mean it, but I’m on the serious TV circuit so I can slip these little messages in on the sly.
Our hypothetical viewer could reach my conclusion by not ignoring Meir’s speeches or Craig’s character, but hearing them as self-serving polemic rather than genuine expression.
And if “only a moron” could reach such a conclusion about the movie, why was the director strongly criticized by several reviewers for precisely this reason? Were the reviwers in question all morons as well?
Probably, yes.
I think he was just using sound character development. No one believes themselves to be evil. Everyone has a reason for what they do. There are people who believe that any attempt to humanize a historical villain is the same as generating sympathy for their cause. The same thing happened over the movie about young Hitler in Vienna (which may have been accurate in that case; I haven’t seen it). It does suggest a somewhat limited capacity to understand the purpose of a movie.
I’d alwys thought of her as a mediahound cokewhore. We’ll just have to agree to disagree.
Does anybody anywhere truly believe in their heart of hearts that Stephen Spielberg believes the murder of the Olympic team was justified or that the retribution (Operation Wrath of God) was completely immoral and that the two together were the purpose of his movie?
It was a character study about a man who has to commit “unrighteous” acts to protect and further a “righteous” cause. It was meant to show that there are two sides to issues and that a lot of people have been thoroughly screwed in the formation of Israel.
In Schindler’s List the title character is a member of the Nazi party who gets rich through a combination of Nazi corruption and money extorted from rich old Jewish prisoners at ridiculous returns (they give him a fortune in cash and he gives them pots and pans and jobs making pots and pans). Some of the Jews in the ghetto are less than heroic, tossing out people from their hiding places and even assisting in the liquidation of the ghetto, while Schindler is ultimately a truly wonderful person. However, I don’t think that anybody could reasonably have said, even in jest, that the plot/message of the movie was “Some Nazis were more noble than the Jews”, which is actually a lot less offensive than AC’s little quip (the “Jew athletes”, not “Jew-ISH” or Israeli, but just “Jew” as in “an old nigger and an old Jew woman taking off down the road together”, a word not prima facie offensive but implicitly used offensively in many cases).
In any case, it will be interesting to see what the Crack Whore for Christ does when what looks some people seem to think she has fade even more and she loses more of a spotlight and people come up through the ranks willing to bite the heads off live rabbits rather than just the field mice and bats she’s willing to orally decapitate. She’ll either become an official Aryan Nations spokesmodel or she’ll pull the “I was deceived and now I’ve seen the light” thing to get her back into the tent with the higher paid freaks. In either case, I like fried chicken.
Just in case anybody’s not familiar, the “line” above was from Driving Miss Daisy where the word “Jew” is used as an insult.
Is that what it takes to get service around here?
I’m not much for saving lives but
“hey mods. How you doin’?”
I’d have to see the film again to really comment on that. For the time being I’ll just say that, from what I remember, nearly every character in the film is presented as being true to one particular cause or another, and Meir & Steve (Craig’s character) are no exception. The impression I got was that they genuinely believed what they were saying vis a vis Palestinian terrorists.
I think the scenes at the German airport, however, are very unequivocal. The terror and hopelessness on the faces of the Israeli athletes can only be interpreted one way, a way which completely undermines Coulter’s slanted summary of the film.
Max? I think “Downfall” also got similar criticisms at first, even though both make Hitler look human, they don’t nessicarly make him look sympathic.
Except maybe in the “It’s sad that he didn’t become an artist instead of a genocidal dictator. It would have turned out better for everyone, and at least when Hitler started going nuts later in his life, maybe he might have created a new art trend instead of bringing Germany down with him”.
In a word, yes.
Imagine a different movie, set in another time and place. Imagine a movie telling the story of a prosecutor attempting to bring to justice the leader of a lynch mob that had hung a black man for allegedly raping a white woman. Imagine that the leader of the lynch mob is portrayed in a somewhat sympathetic light - as human, as having complex and human desires and motivations, as caring for family, etc. As someone who believes in justice, and moreover believed that his actions during the lynching were in pursuit of justice. In spite of this, the prosecutor succeeds in convicting the lynch mob leader, but only by suborning perjury, and the lynch mob leader is sent off to rot in prison.
And then some wag comes along and says that the message of the movie is “nigger had it coming.”
That’s pretty much how I feel about Coulter’s little quip.
Note: attempts to nitpick disanalogies between my hypothetical movie and Spielberg’s actual movie will be ignored.
Either that or they were demagogues.
Do you personally believe that Steven Spielberg (who is Jewish himself) sincerely believes that the Jewish athletes at Munich deserved to be murdered?
Do you think that any intelligent person could honestly believe that Spielberg intended to convey that message in his movie?
When Coulter said, “Raghead talks tough? Raghead faces consequences,” I was quick to criticize her, because no reasonable person should believe that this was appropriate language to use.
This view Coulter offers now, however, is one that has also been offered by others - and not fringe nut others, but other people who are paid to review movies and offer their interpretations.
You may argue that the interpretation is flawed or outright wrong. But you cannot argue that no reasonable person would feel this way, when reasonable people obviously do.
No, I don’t think that Spielberg intended to convey this message. But I do believe that a reasonable viewer could reach the conclusion that this was, in fact, the movie’s message. And several reasonable reviwers did.
Show me a review where any critic said that Spielberg conveyed a message that the victims in Munich deserved to die.
I’ve sen complaints that Spielberg humanizes the terrorists (and what’s wrong with that, by the way? Are they NOT human beings? Should they only be portayed as one-dimensional cartoon villains with no humanity?), but that’s not the same as saying the Munich athletes deserved it.
Man, does that ever beg the question.
Name one.