Although this essay may seem like one of those "personal" pieces I write on weekends, I hope it will serve a larger purpose.
One of my guiltiest cinematic pleasures is John Milius' 1975 epic The Wind and the Lion, which chronicles the 1904 face-off between President Teddy Roosevelt (Brian Keith's best performance ever) and a Berber chieftain named Mulay el Raisuli (Sean Connery), the kidnapper of an American citizen. This is the role in which Connery escaped his James Bond persona and established himself as a leonine authority figure whose old bones young women want still to jump.
Much as I hate to admit it, this is a great film, featuring terrific performances, near-perfect direction, solid action sequences (from the era before digital "stuntwork" ruined action scenes), amazing photography -- and Jerry Goldsmith's finest score.
So why feel guilty about this pleasure? Because the film was made by a conservative who (in his DVD commentary) praises Dubya's foreign policy.
In truth, one cannot pigeonhole John Milius too easily -- he describes himself as both an imperialist and a Marxist. No doubt this dichotomy helps to explain his fascination with TR, who was a trust-buster and a conservationist as well the wielder of that famed "big stick."
Milius' political variant of multiple personality disorder forces viewers of this film to switch loyalties every ten minutes or so, which is one reason why it remains fascinating. Most conservatives who attempt to ply the narrative arts lack the intellectual capacity to understand anything beyond the simplistic clash between Good Guys and Bad Guys. In The Wind and the Lion, you never quite know who the Bad Guys are; they may -- or may not -- be us.
Why mention this old film in a political blog?
In part, because TW&TL was so predictive. The conflict between American imperialism and Islamic nationalism has become the conflict of our time. Connery's jihadist holy man now seems a model for Osama Bin Laden -- and don't dismiss the possibility that Osama saw this film, which was popular among Mulsims. (I hope readers will forego the usual oh-so-clever comments about Connery's brogue. Who else could have played this role?) Moreover, the character of the half-mad Captain Jerome seems to prefigure Ollie North. Only a (semi-)conservative film-maker could have gotten away with a movie glorifying a terrorist while disdaining the corrupt puppets who run too many Islamic lands.
The film also maintains relevance for its strange attitude toward history -- toward reality itself.
Of course, I have never expected strict historical accuracy from Hollywood films. And I always liked Milius' decision to change the sex of the Raisuli's kidnap victim (a switch widely publicized by reviewers back in 1975). The change makes the story better.
But filmic myth-making becomes a serious matter when the myth invades the classroom.
On the DVD commentary track, Milius informs us that Marine Corps instructors routinely screen one section of TW&TL in every OCS course -- the segment in which some 250 Marines storm the palace in Tangiers and take over the government of Morocco.
Never happened.
At the time this film came out, I was in high school taking an AP class in American history. When the teacher declared that America avoided overseas entanglements between the war of 1812 and the First World War, I loudly disagreed. "What about the conquest of Morocco?" I asked.
The teacher told me to double-check, which I did.
We never took over Morocco.
American battleships showed up in Tangiers harbor, and Marines did march through the streets of Tangiers. But they did not take over. They merely rattled sabers in order to convince the ruler of that country to negotiate with the Raisuli.
(That's another predictive aspect of this film: We see a Republican president vow never to negotiate with terrorists, yet he does just that in order to free American captives.)
Why (presuming we can believe Milius' commentary track) do Marine instructors fixate on this one scene? With all the astonishing events in the history of the Corps, why teach new officers to model themselves on a fictional battle?
It's not even much of a battle. In the film, 250 well-armed Marines face roughly two-dozen sword-wielding ceremonial guards in comic opera costume. When Captain Jerome yells "Hostiles to the left!", the one-sided tableau makes the audience laugh.
Do Marines really point to this encounter as a proud moment?
Elsewhere in the film, TR -- having bagged a grizzly bear in Yellowstone -- delivers a speech about the American spirit. "The world may learn to respect us, but they will never love us -- for we have too much audacity." A lecture like this can make a conservative achieve orgasm.
On the commentary track, Milius reveals that these words are now engraved on a plaque in a state park in Wyoming. He even gave officials of that state an official-sounding citation, in order to "prove" that Teddy said those words.
Alas, the entire speech was a concoction.
Milius seems genuinely amused his little ruse has given rise to one of the most famous "quotes" attributed to President Roosevelt.
Whenever such film-centered controversies come up, writers often point to a quote from John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence: "When legend becomes fact, print the legend." (Ford was another complex individual with both conservative and liberal tendencies.)
I've heard that phrase all my life. I've grown leery of it.
The most dangerous aspect of the conservative's mind is his psychopathic refusal to differentiate between what is and what he feels should be -- or, when the topic turns to history, what was and what should have been.
Today, any news outlet is considered "biased" if it does not emit the right-wing fantasy du jour. Ann Coulter has written a hagiography of the half-mad Joe McCarthy, and has been rewarded with a Time cover for her many falsifications. With true audacity, Ronald Reagan told audiences that he personally participated in the liberation of the concentration camps, and that it was North Vietnam (not the South) which had refused to participate in the reconciliation efforts of the 1950s.
These are not areas of legitimate controversy. Unlike (say) the killing of JFK or the sinking of the Maine, these are not enigmatic matters on which reasonable people may have widely varying views. These are instances of deliberate lying, of propagandists making a deliberate decision to put the very fabric of history through a laundromat designed by Big Brother.
As I write, a book called Rule By Secrecy (written by Jim Marrs) sits on my desk. This work presents as true such well-known hoaxes as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and The Report From Iron Mountain. Nearly every page contains an outrageous, easily provable lie. Naturally, this work became an underground bestseller in rightist circles.
Go to Snopes, and survey the political tinge of the many urban legends catalogued there. Most of these widely-promulgated yarns promote a far-right ideology. Very few have any basis in fact.
We see the same principle at work in the discourse over current events.
As all well-informed people know, the fall of that infamous Saddam statue was a staged event using Chalabi's goons -- yet the right-wing press still portrays the incident as a spontaneous reaction by the citizens of Baghdad. Whenever truth-seekers counter rightist lies about the Plame affair -- no, he did not go to Africa at his wife's behest; no, the Niger documents were not proven authentic -- the radio rightists simply renew their bogus charges.
Repeat a lie X number of times, and it will become true. Or so the right-wingers seem to believe.
The conservative mania for re-moulding history was harmless enough when John Milius brought it into our movie theaters. Today, however, that mania threatens all of America.
Far-rightists now control the presidency, the congress, and most of the judiciary. They now scheme to control history itself. Reality itself. Politics has become an exercise in epistemology. The only question left is Pilate's question.
In twenty years, will we have any history left? If some future Secretary of American Culture decrees that our schools should teach that Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were allies throughout World War II, who will dare shout "Liar!"?
Who will dare to say "Don't print the legend?"
7 comments:
Sweeping, excellent observation, Joseph.
It astonishes and depresses me how blithely Americans these days treat reality as if it is plastic and can be purposefully shaped. Not just history. Consider the political correctness syndrome. An example--a teachers' association in Britain wants to discontinue the term "failure" and replace it with the term "deferred success." As if failure can be done away with by calling it something else.
It's all madness. A few years back, I heard an activist for the handicapped in an interview say "we don't want special treatment, we just want to be able to do the things everybody else does." Uh--like blind people driving? I mean, if they can do what everybody else does, then they aren't handicapped, are they?
The point is that reality is being denied these days. As if illusion trumps substance. But it doesn't, and we're about due for a reality check.
'A few years back, I heard an activist for the handicapped in an interview say "we don't want special treatment, we just want to be able to do the things everybody else does." Uh--like blind people driving? I mean, if they can do what everybody else does, then they aren't handicapped, are they?'
Your argument is merely a verbal trick, more insidious than the euphemisms you deplore.
If there were a prosthetic device that let blind people drive, yes, then let them drive. The handicapped maybe just want enough help for them to do the sorts of things the unhandicapped can do without that help.
It is true, though, that you cannot deal with 'failure' by calling it 'deferred success'. Renaming a crutch as a 'walking support device' doesn't help; you need to improve the tool itself. So the problem isn't so much that the person inventing euphemisms is 'PC', but that he or she is merely putting band-aids on a broken and destructive system.
I remember that film well. Brian Kieth and Sean Connery carried it a lot further than it would have gone without their engaging performances. As I recall, Connery's North African Muslim was a fully defined character and very appealing.
This is preferable to what we've got today. The entire Muslim world wears one mask defined by the odious CM (corporate media). I heard Blitzer interview Prince Turki, the new Saudi Ambassador. He asked why are there not more clerics opposing suicide bombing. Turki diplomatically said, we'll they just need to get the word out better. He should have said, "You f'ing idiot, they do it all the time, REPORT IT" but he didn't. Guess that's why he's a diplomat and I'm a ... a...writing on this blog.
Thanks for the fun memory.
I remember that film well. Brian Kieth and Sean Connery carried it a lot further than it would have gone without their engaging performances. As I recall, Connery's North African Muslim was a fully defined character and very appealing.
This is preferable to what we've got today. The entire Muslim world wears one mask defined by the odious CM (corporate media). I heard Blitzer interview Prince Turki, he new Saudi Ambassador. He asked why are there not more clerics opposing suicide bombing. Turki diplomatically said, we'll they just need to get the word out more effectively. He should have said, "You f'ing idiot, they do it all the time, REPORT IT" but he didn't. Guess that's why he's a diplomat and I'm a ... a...writing on this blog.
Thanks for the fun memory.
autorank of DU
Barry, I need eyesight correction for driving. Am I handicapped? No. I have a prosthetic device (eyeglasses) that corrects my vision to 20/20. But if I drop and break those glasses, I become handicapped and can't legally, or safely, drive home.
If a blind person is fitted with artificial eyes of some kind, and his handicap ceases to significantly limit his activities, then he is no longer handicapped, and more power to him. I'm all in favor of society assisting people in overcoming whatever handicaps they have. But let me offer you another PC example. A strip club owner whose gimmick was having a nude woman dance in a shower booth onstage was sued for discrimination by a woman confined to a wheelchair. That's not a fairness issue. She had a handicap that prevented her from performing the job as it is defined.
I have no patience with PC. I have no patience with any of the l shenanigans that have eroded our societal grip on reality. It isn't just euphemisms that do this. Consider how the Bureau of Labor Statistics invokes hedonic values to understate our price inflation. Consider how marijuana is still criminalized, despite decades of vain government efforts to prove it is dangerous.
My point was not meant to offend, unless to offend anyone who thinks reality is not, in fact, reality.
“At the time this film came out, I was in high school taking an AP class in American history. When the teacher declared that America avoided overseas entanglements between the war of 1812 and the First World War, I loudly disagreed.”
That is correct so long as we forget the following:
-- Korean Expedition/Sinmiyangyo; 1871
-- Spanish-American War/Invasion & Occupation of Cuba, Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico; 1898
-- Samoan Civil War/Invasion & Occupation of Samoa; 18??
-- Philippine-American War/Philippine Insurrection; 1899-1913/the island of Moro continued until 1916
[The 19th century equivalent of the Vietnam War, complete with barbaric atrocities committed by “kids just following orders”, as many as 1,000,000 Filipinos were killed in it, the US never officially declared war in order to avoid having to pay veterans benefits, you can find detailed writings on it from William Jennings Bryan, Andrew Carnegie & Mark Twain as well as the old American Anti-Imperialist League, and Howard Zinn refers to it a lot too]
-- Boxer ‘Rebellion’; 1900
-- Mexican Campaign/Mexican Revolution; 1916-1917/1910-1928
-- Invasion of & Occupation of Haiti; around 1915
-- Occupation of the Dominican Republic; 19??
If interested, you can look these up, you’ll find that each and every one, without exception, was economically motivated.
Sorry about the imprecise dates for 4 of these, but obscure wars are difficult to track down at 3:54am.
LamontCranston
Well, I can't take blame for errors committed by my old AP History teacher, although he was a decent enough fellow. Gave me an A.
Oddly enough, though, I don't recallhim ever discussing the atrocities in the Philippines, which is not a subject taught in most American History course, even the advanced ones. I learned aboout that later.
As I recall, the whole thing so hoorified Mark Twain that he declared in puiblic that the American flag should be changed to red white and black, with little skulls replacing the stars.
Post a Comment