The radical left can’t abide expressions of American patriotism,
which are an affront to their sneering conviction that this country is the
fount of all oppression and evil. For them, patriotism = jingoism. They find
the very image of the Stars and Stripes itself jingoistic, which is one reason
they’re always trying to replace it with a variation featuring Barack Obama’s
face, logo or name. Hence the director of
2009’s GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra,
explaining why his movie featuring a patriotic American icon was scrubbed of any
patriotic American symbolism like flags, said
“It’s an Obama world now.” Indeed it is, and so it’s open season for the left
on any movie that might display unabashed patriotism – like Red Dawn.
If you haven’t already heard, Red
Dawn –a remake of the 1984 original – features a handful
of young Americans in Washington State taking on an invading force from North
Korea. Yes, North Korea – not exactly a credible invasion threat, but an enemy
of America to be sure. The invaders in the Cold War era of the original film
were Soviet Communists, and the remake’s original script replaced Russians with
the Chinese – but concerns about rubbing China the wrong way prompted the
producers of the updated version to switch to North Korea (at least Hollywood
went with a real-world enemy instead of the politically safer option: aliens,
as in Independence Day or Battle L.A.). “No one would distribute
the film if the enemy was China,” says producer Tripp Vinson. That country’s
investment money, booming film industry, and surging moviegoing audience are
the looming future of the entertainment biz.
I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I can’t speak to its cinematic
quality. But the film’s quality is irrelevant to the issue of the hostility
directed
toward it,
for its apparent patriotism, by the community of left-leaning movie reviewers.
And no reviewer I’ve read so far takes the complaint quite so ludicrously far
as the Wall Street Journal’s Jeff
Yang.
Those that depict Asia as a
Mordor-like netherland where every hand wields a weapon and every weapon points
at the throat of the civilized West — and those that treat Asians as an
interchangeable, all-same mass. Can’t offend these Asians? Well, let’s just say
they’re those Asians instead. A little cosmetic adjustment to flags and
uniforms, and we’re off to the races.
Who thinks that way? Only the straw men in Yang’s
race-obsessed mind. Certainly no one does among the PC-straightjacketed,
hand-wringing cowards in Hollywood, who would rather cut their own throats than
offend anyone except Tea Partiers. Yang’s weird assertion is that, to the supposedly
bigoted producers and their supposedly bigoted audience, any Asian country
would suffice instead of China, because it’s all the same “Yellow Menace” to them.
But the producers didn’t pick just any Asian alternative;
they didn’t make the invading force from Bhutan or Thailand or Japan. They
chose North Korea, which is our enemy,
however unlikely it is to actually invade us. Red Dawn producer Vinson tried to push past the controversy about
North Koreans by explaining that the film is “not about who the enemy is. The
enemy could be anybody.” No, it couldn’t. It couldn’t be Bhutan or Thailand or
Japan, because audiences know that these countries are not our enemies, and
would therefore find it even more unbelievable than North Koreans parachuting
into the U.S.
In any case, Yang poses the question, “But if… the enemy
could be anybody — and given that the film’s appeal is inextricably rooted in
us-versus-them jingoism — why bow to the darkest fringe-element xenophobes and
conspiracists by making them Asian? Why even make them human?” Why not make the
enemy “the undead” or “an invasion of vampires,” Yang wonders, exposing his own
xenophobia against the much-maligned undead and vampires. “Every underdog
trope, every patriotic theme, every soul-stirring rally-to-the-flag moment
could remain intact, without the potential to inflame hate.”
“Us-versus-them
jingoism”? I’m sorry, Mr. Yang, but wartime is by definition us-versus-them,
and deluding yourself otherwise is how you lose wars, including culture wars.
How is it jingoistic to unite against those trying to kill you and conquer your
homeland? Funny how the left never labels our enemies as jingoistic. Why don’t
they call the North Korean or Iranian regime jingoistic and racist? Why don’t
they call openly supremacist Arab terrorists jingoistic and racist? Why only Americans?
To Yang and his ilk, if a cinematic enemy is Asian or Muslim
or anything other than a white businessman or Aryan Europeans like the GQ-styled terrorists of Die Hard, then we’re racist for fighting
back. That is one big reason that Nazis are the only foreign enemies Hollywood
is comfortable depicting as unequivocal bad guys. 2002’s The Sum of All Fears, for example, is a famous example in which political
correctness forced the bad guys of Tom Clancy’s original novel to be changed
from Muslim terrorists to neo-Nazis.
The Castro/Chavez/Ahmadinejad-embracing left never
acknowledges that America has external enemies (or internal ones, for that
matter, but let’s stay on topic). They consider rational wariness about actual
enemies to be “paranoia”; if that enemy is non-white, the left dismisses us as “xenophobic”
(Yang used both insulting labels in a
different article about Red Dawn).
Apart from the fact that North Korea is not going to invade us, they are an enemy, so it’s neither paranoid nor
xenophobic to cast them as the bad guys.
But apart from the aforementioned white people, the only
movie enemy that Americans are allowed to engage without incurring hateful
labels from PC policemen like Yang are nonexistent ones like vampires.
Real-world enemies are off limits, because in the left’s warped mind, America itself
is the real enemy.
(This article originally appeared here on FrontPage Mag, 12/5/12)
