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TheFoywonder
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
833 Posts |
 Posted - 02/17/2008 : 02:54:57 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by Sardu
That's a lot of it but the whole notion of Mudbloods, Purebloods and racial purity always seemed clearly a Nazi reference to me.
I'm pretty sure she wrote it to imply royals vs. commoners, upper crust vs. working class.
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Citizen Carrier
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
322 Posts |
Posted - 02/17/2008 : 06:12:35 AM
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I would disagree. The mention of "blood" definitly seems to imply a reference to eugenics. And that Malfoy looks like a poster child for the Hitler Youth seems hardly accidental.
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Greenhornet
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1791 Posts |
Posted - 02/17/2008 : 07:49:05 AM
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I don't mind SUBTLE polotics in movies, it can even enhance the story. But there are some who --as Citizen Carrier pointed out-- feel the need to "RAM it down our throats". Case in point is George Lucas; his "Revenge Of The Sith" was anoounced to be an indightment of President Bush and the war agaist islam. (Oddly enough, Lucas said MANY YEARS AFTER THE FACT that "Star Wars" was his reaction to President Nixon and the Viet Nam war) However, it really comes off as him saying "Look! Look! I'm current! I'm being relevant!", it has an air of desperation about it.
"The Queen is testing poisons." CLEOPATRA, 1935 |
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TimLehnerer
Diocesan Ecclesiarch of the Sacred Order of Jabootu
USA
95 Posts |
Posted - 02/17/2008 : 10:15:46 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by TheFoywonder
quote:
Originally posted by Sardu
That's a lot of it but the whole notion of Mudbloods, Purebloods and racial purity always seemed clearly a Nazi reference to me.
I'm pretty sure she wrote it to imply royals vs. commoners, upper crust vs. working class.
I thought that was the whole "house elves" subplot, which was also creaky and interminable. |
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zombiewhacker
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1475 Posts |
Posted - 02/17/2008 : 10:17:12 AM
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"It’s up to citizen-journalist bloggers and amateur videographers to capture and disseminate the raw, unfiltered story of what’s really going on, to show you the horrific truth they won’t put on TV.'
The joke of this, vis-a-vis the Iraq war, the images and stories amateur bloggers have presented have been more positive than those being diseminated by the mainstream media. The MSM is all to happy to bring us blood and guts, the next car bomb explosion, the next Abu Ghraib. Milbloggers actually bring more perspective in the other direction. If Romero was intellectually honest, he would present a worldview where network news presents only the downside of what's going on and the amateur sleuths/bloggers allow news consumers to hear and see both sides of the issue.
BTW, to whoever said Romero's films were always left wing: there was no left wing (or right wing) bias in Night of the Living Dead. Them's were the good ol' days.
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Citizen Carrier
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
322 Posts |
Posted - 02/17/2008 : 10:42:21 AM
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Ah, but I slightly disagree there too.
It wasn't by accident that in 1968 the hero of Night of the Living Dead was a competent, businesslike, non-stereotypical black man who was basically playing the role of John Wayne at the Alamo.
I always liked that touch. |
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R. Dittmar
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
420 Posts |
Posted - 02/17/2008 : 11:02:51 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by Citizen Carrier
Ah, but I slightly disagree there too.
It wasn't by accident that in 1968 the hero of Night of the Living Dead was a competent, businesslike, non-stereotypical black man who was basically playing the role of John Wayne at the Alamo.
I always liked that touch.
Although even here, I think Romero was being surprising subtle. In the end remember, there's an argument to be made that Ben was incompetent. His leadership got everybody, including himself, killed in the end. Had everyone done what the annoying dad wanted to do and barricaded themselves in the cellar in the first place, then they would have survived the night.
Maybe it's not really a conservative or liberal thing, but it's interesting how much Romero stacks the deck in favor of Ben only to totally undercut him in the end. Making Ben black is a subtle part of this because so many in the audience want to see him succeed simply because he's so non-stereotypical - call it the Obama effect. In the end it's all for nothing when he ends up dead anyway. Is Romero saying that Ben is "inauthentic" and therefore doomed to failure? If that's the case, then there is a subtle bit of left-wing commentary. |
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Sardu
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1126 Posts |
Posted - 02/17/2008 : 11:40:44 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by Citizen Carrier
Ah, but I slightly disagree there too.
It wasn't by accident that in 1968 the hero of Night of the Living Dead was a competent, businesslike, non-stereotypical black man who was basically playing the role of John Wayne at the Alamo.
I always liked that touch.
Actually, it was. A complete accident. George has said explicitly (in fact, there's an interview in The Onion AV Club right now) that the role was written without any thought on casting an ethnic actor in it- it just so happened a black man was the best actor to audition and he got it. Now, you can argue it was a fortunate accident that lent depth to the film- but it wasn't intentional. Now he does say that in light of that success the decision to cast an Actor Of Color in Dawn of the Dead was intentional.
"Meeting you makes me want to be a real noodle cook"
--Tampopo |
Edited by - Sardu on 02/17/2008 11:42:22 AM |
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Citizen Carrier
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
322 Posts |
Posted - 02/17/2008 : 11:45:25 AM
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I can't remember the original that well, but I do remember watching the re-make done in the 1990s.
What I remember from that one is that each faction had their own idea about what needed to be done, but that due to infighting, etc. all of the plans were either not done or wrongly executed. And any of the plans, had they been followed through on, would've worked. This resulted in everybody dying except for one woman who simply walked out and effectively dodged her way through the slow, clumsy zombies to safety.
She returned to the house to find that one man did survive the night by barricading himself in the attic. Unfortunately for him, he'd spent the entire movie naysaying everyone else, not playing with the team, and perhaps even stabbing them in the back. The woman discovered him alive and promptly shot him in the head even though she knew he wasn't a zombie. |
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Gristle McThornbody
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
Germany
186 Posts |
Posted - 02/17/2008 : 4:17:34 PM
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I have nothing to add to this thread except to say how emblematic it is of everything I like about this website. An intelligent discussion of political allegory in flesh-eating zombie films, approached from both sides of the political spectrum, in which Hitler and Nazis are brought up, in digressions, as subtextual thematic elements of pop culture and not as accusations levied against posters of opposite political perspective.
Jabootu-ites, I salute you!
"Hi, I'm Bob Evil!" |
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zombiewhacker
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1475 Posts |
Posted - 02/17/2008 : 7:14:51 PM
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Citizen, the role of Ben in NOTLD was originally written for a white guy. Specifically, an actor named Rudy Ricci.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0723248/
After Duane Jones walked in out of nowhere and aced the audition, Romero recast Ricci and gave Jones the plum lead role. No changes were made to the script after a black actor took over the part.
Ricci is best remembered by zombie fans for having played the motorcycle gang leader in the original Dawn of the Dead.
"Hey, listen, we don't like people who don't share. You just (bleeped) up real bad." |
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Sardu
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1126 Posts |
Posted - 02/17/2008 : 7:33:28 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Gristle McThornbody
I have nothing to add to this thread except to say how emblematic it is of everything I like about this website. An intelligent discussion of political allegory in flesh-eating zombie films, approached from both sides of the political spectrum, in which Hitler and Nazis are brought up, in digressions, as subtextual thematic elements of pop culture and not as accusations levied against posters of opposite political perspective.
Jabootu-ites, I salute you!
"Hi, I'm Bob Evil!"
Sounds like something a Nazi would say.
(Sorry, how could I resist *g*)
"Meeting you makes me want to be a real noodle cook"
--Tampopo |
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Prankster
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Canada
727 Posts |
Posted - 02/17/2008 : 11:36:59 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by R. Dittmar
I don't want to caricature the liberal critique of the Bush administration, so correct me if I'm wrong. But what I always hear from the left are things like there were no WMD's so Saddam was never a threat. Bush is using the threat of another 9/11 to gin up jingoism for political reasons. None of these "enemy combatants" is dangerous enough to justify water-boarding or even wiretaps. This is not my view, so forgive me should I sound disrespectful because that's not my intent. It just seems to me that the generic liberal critique of the Bush administration involves the claim that terrorism is not a big enough threat to justify invading Iraq or putting the country on more of a war footing or even doing anything that smells of an infringement on civil liberties.
You raise a good point. Most Hollywood stuff in the SF arena usually bobbles the parallels with 9/11 or the War on Terror or whatever because, as you say, it's usually a real, obvious threat, and thus, the dynamic is totally different from the more complex real world situation. I'm always baffled by the way filmmakers want to shoot themselves in the foot with a "the [Bush Administration stand-ins] are just trying to scare you with stories of zombies!" When there ACTUALLY ARE ZOMBIES. It's stacking the deck, but against their OWN argument.
A recent example in the other direction: "The Mist", a generally good movie, featuring a bunch of characters who patently refuse to believe there's anything out to get them in the Mist because they think everyone else is giving into their fears, and blindly walk off to become monster chow. It's pretty absurd, and a case of the filmmakers trying to hard to make a statement on recent events (yeah, I know it was in the original story, but still).
I personally enjoy satire and political commentary in a movie, genre or otherwise, but it's got to be clever and subtle and insightful. Or else it should be pushed way down into the subtext--I mean, Godzilla is a movie about then-recent current events, but that doesn't matter to the basic story. Starting from a place of painting one group or another as delusional is getting things off on the wrong foot.
An example of doing this well is the current Battlestar Galactica. There are obvious parallels to current events in the plotlines, but they never force it. The story is clearly its own entity. The event that kicks off the series, the devastating holocaust and near-destruction of the human race by a superior force of evil robots, obviously resonates with 9/11, but the writers never try and pretend that they're the same thing; clearly the western world was not completely destroyed by an overwhelming tide of Muslim extremists, so the allegory only goes so far. Ditto the third-season plotline wherein the humans became freedom fighters on a Cylon-occupied world: it evokes Iraq, obviously, but doesn't try and pretend that the situation is the same. That creates a certain detatchment in the political commentary, so it comes off as relevant but not shrill.
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Check out my online comics at [URL]http://www.phantasmictales.com[/URL]! |
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Prankster
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Canada
727 Posts |
Posted - 02/17/2008 : 11:39:32 PM
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And I have to agree with Foy about Harry Potter. Remember, the British have a whole different take on class and breeding than us colonials. It's not even about race, neccessarily--you can be ostracized just because you're not from the "right" family.
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Check out my online comics at [URL]http://www.phantasmictales.com[/URL]! |
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Citizen Carrier
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
322 Posts |
Posted - 02/18/2008 : 03:30:58 AM
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As far as my view on Potter, I confess that it is not an original observation of mine. I remember reading about the idea of the references to Nazism first from a writer for "National Review". A guy named John Derbyshire. Yes, a transplanted Brit who recently got his American citizenship.
But EVEN if he or I am making the wrong observation-his being that although they are wonderful books, you never forget while reading them that the author is definitly a member of the Left-my original point was to show that even an innocuous children's story about witches and enchantment is not free of political or social bias. Which shows that movies with a viewpoint or political commentary are not at all "rare", as a previous poster believed.
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Edited by - Citizen Carrier on 02/18/2008 05:03:20 AM |
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