The ending of Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto seemed to be presenting the Spanish conquistadores as good guys, whose arrival was necessary to end the barbarity of the Mayans.
As I said earlier, that wouldn’t have been controversial 75 years ago, but it seems so now. TODAY, a movie is more likely to show Indians as innocents and Western colonists as evil.
Not quite. The Redlegs are the bad guys - and they were, despite being on the right side.
The U.S Senator at the beginning who had all the surrendering rebels decently fed then decently shot was pretty bad too.
ETA: Damn, didn’t realize Senator Lane was a real person, and was the actual leader of the redlegs. Withdrawn.
And Josey would have been happy to stop fighting, if the Redlegs would have stopped chasing him.
Yeah, he made a slew of them, including Copperhead. Straight out Southern Apologist aka Neo-Confederate revisionism".
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2003-02-21/entertainment/0302200408_1_maxwell-joshua-chamberlain-civil-war
I won’t bother arguing the validity/interpretation of Southern-viewpoint films here, but the handful that exist hardly approach the number of the standard Unionist ones.
Despite being substantially told from the Southern side, Gods and Generals depicts Joshua Chamberlain as a hero, and has scenes (from both sides) reflecting on the wickedness and hypocrisy of slavery.
It’s more about the Cold War era military-industrial complex and McCarthyism. IIRC, Heller even said as much in interviews, that his experience in WWII provided the setting but that the book itself was meant to critique the state of the military and government at the time, not during WWII.
(I actually was also going to mention Slaughterhouse-5 but it’s been so freakin’ long since I read it I don’t really remember it.)
IIRC, there’s also a passage where Yossarian says that defeating the Axis powers was, in and of itself, a worthy goal, and that his objections are to risking his life after the war has largely been won so that incompetent commanders can, essentially, “run up the score” and pad out their military resumes.
All Quiet on the Western Front?
What are you confused about?
Am reminded by this post, of a work by the American novelist Kenneth Roberts – one of several of his, set in the United-States-to-be at the time of the War of Independence, and earlier. A couple of his War of Independence ones (Arundel, Rabble In Arms), are from the point of view of the fighters for independence – in particular, Steven Nason and Cap Huff of the revolutionary army. Another, though, Oliver Wiswell, is from the point of view of Americans loyal to, and fighting for, the British: the protagonists, a couple of guys who are rather close Loyalist counterparts of Nason and Huff. OW’s protagonists are given to the view that pro-independence zealots are scatty, not-very-rational types with a tendency to run indiscriminately after every novelty that comes along; and that people of good sense will be either Loyalists, or apathetic.
The Best Years of Our Lives. Made in 1946 after the county was fed a steady diet of propaganda films from Hollywood. It portrayed PTSD, broken soldiers, unfaithful spouses back on the homefront, lack of support for returning soldiers and all the other failings of the country towards returning veterans. The country at the time wanted to forget the war and pretend that everyone returning could just pick up where they left off.
Terry Jones’ The Crusades made the Muslims of the era look a lot saner and more reasonable than the Christians.
MacArthur’s Children was told from the point of view of conquered Japanese right after the war. One of the main characters, a Japanese naval officer who had massacred American captives unnecessarily, made numerous efforts to submit himself for trial and not avoid responsibility for his crimes. The Americans kept telling him to go home until one finally arrested him and he was executed some time later. Not exactly “Japan should have won,” but a rare look at this period from the Japanese perspective.
I have never ever heard this interpretation of the ending of that film. My impression (and every one I’ve ever read) was that their arrival is an ominous and portentous one that would not solve or civilize anything, but create a larger threat to the way of all tribal lives beyond their own hostilities. Our hero does not know this (he just seems them as strangers and alien), but we clearly do.