a quasi-political rant
Jan. 16th, 2013 12:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brushwolfSo there's a "manhunt for Osama bin Laden" movie out. And a few years back there was a 9-11 movie and a movie about the plane where the passengers stormed the cockpit.
National monomyth is more dramatic narrative than fact. It was our destiny to expand westward dealing with half-naked savages is more dramatic storytelling than that, through disease, broken treaties and sheer stubborn force, a United States still defining itself screwed up a number of vibrant civilizations and wiped out huge chunks of the native fauna. During WWII, we were clearly the good guys, so please ignore the Latino guys who got beaten and murdered for wearing too much cloth in their zoot suits, the Black guys who weren't assigned to real units, and the Nisei guys who fought in the worst chunks of the war while their families were stuck in camps back at home. Etc. The last big hurrah of American national monomyth was back in the '80s, where our President Wasn't Taking Shit From Anyone (TM), Was Tough on the Russians (TM), and was Restoring All Our National Pride That We Lost When We Left Vietnam and as a result Defeated Communism (TM). Whether that's true or not - we racked up a huge national debt, killed a batch of civilians, set in motion the events which would come back to hit us in the ass in Afghanistan, and dicked our social safety net, while guys like Lech Walesa and Mikhael Gorbachev were busting their asses to change things - but it made good theater.
Right now we're a country largely without national monomyth. Oh, there's the national monomyth that we're the country that passed the Civil Rights Act, integrated the schools, and sent out manned moon landings - but we don't wanna hype that do we? It might result in needing money for infrastructure. There's the national monomyth that an immigrant's kid, a Black dude, went to college, worked hard and became President of the United States of America. Even without pushing through the closest thing to national health care we're going to get, all of this is contentious - it's not a safe national monomyth to bank on. Our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq aren't a bankable commodity; neither is the way brave, heroic men in uniform and media silence suppressed a protest of some unarmed, grubby civilians in places like New York, Oakland and Davis. And meanwhile you've got people with money casting around for safe films to bank on - and 80s nostalgia works better than even John Carter of Mars (you'd think that'd go over gangbusters - it didn't).
My contention is the 9-11 stuff is pretty much the only bankable commodity to come out of 2000 through now, partly because it kinda qualifies as 80s nostalgia of sorts, and therefore we're in for a few more movies worth of the stuff. This is independent of any other politics I might have, I'm simply thinking about people making money.
National monomyth is more dramatic narrative than fact. It was our destiny to expand westward dealing with half-naked savages is more dramatic storytelling than that, through disease, broken treaties and sheer stubborn force, a United States still defining itself screwed up a number of vibrant civilizations and wiped out huge chunks of the native fauna. During WWII, we were clearly the good guys, so please ignore the Latino guys who got beaten and murdered for wearing too much cloth in their zoot suits, the Black guys who weren't assigned to real units, and the Nisei guys who fought in the worst chunks of the war while their families were stuck in camps back at home. Etc. The last big hurrah of American national monomyth was back in the '80s, where our President Wasn't Taking Shit From Anyone (TM), Was Tough on the Russians (TM), and was Restoring All Our National Pride That We Lost When We Left Vietnam and as a result Defeated Communism (TM). Whether that's true or not - we racked up a huge national debt, killed a batch of civilians, set in motion the events which would come back to hit us in the ass in Afghanistan, and dicked our social safety net, while guys like Lech Walesa and Mikhael Gorbachev were busting their asses to change things - but it made good theater.
Right now we're a country largely without national monomyth. Oh, there's the national monomyth that we're the country that passed the Civil Rights Act, integrated the schools, and sent out manned moon landings - but we don't wanna hype that do we? It might result in needing money for infrastructure. There's the national monomyth that an immigrant's kid, a Black dude, went to college, worked hard and became President of the United States of America. Even without pushing through the closest thing to national health care we're going to get, all of this is contentious - it's not a safe national monomyth to bank on. Our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq aren't a bankable commodity; neither is the way brave, heroic men in uniform and media silence suppressed a protest of some unarmed, grubby civilians in places like New York, Oakland and Davis. And meanwhile you've got people with money casting around for safe films to bank on - and 80s nostalgia works better than even John Carter of Mars (you'd think that'd go over gangbusters - it didn't).
My contention is the 9-11 stuff is pretty much the only bankable commodity to come out of 2000 through now, partly because it kinda qualifies as 80s nostalgia of sorts, and therefore we're in for a few more movies worth of the stuff. This is independent of any other politics I might have, I'm simply thinking about people making money.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-17 10:57 pm (UTC)