Racism part 1

For the next blog post this administrator has watched Miracle at St. Anna directed by Spike Lee in 2008. Personally I thought this movie had a horrible plot with tons of holes in it. Up until the end the movie I would have recommended it to my friends but within the last ten minutes I lost all faith in the movie. However, that is not what I wish to focus on for my blog, instead I want to discuss the issue of racism and war.

This movie follows the story of last four survivors from a black regiment in World War 2; they get stuck in a small Italian village while they wait for back up from the rest of the company a few miles away separated by a large platoon of Germans. The issue of racism comes up frequently and the audience is able to see three different perspectives on the black involvement in the war. The Germans would feed lies over intercoms beckoning soldiers to join the axis side, and yet the Germans displayed an incredible amount of hatred towards the Blacks not to mention they were attempting to create a master race. The white Americans show a level of contempt for the black soldiers and consider them to be lesser soldiers than the regular white infantrymen. In one of the first scenes a white commander disregards the needed artillery to support the black troops under fire because he is convinced they are lying because they were not white and there for could not be that far into enemy territory. Finally, we are shown the Italian perspective which is much better than the other whites in the movie. At first they are fearful of the black soldiers but they eventually warm up to the soldiers. One small child befriends one of the soldiers to the point where he begins to act as the child’s guardian.

The army was not desegregated until 1948 and this movie shows the audience the hardships faced by the black soldiers in WW2. Spike Lee shows how these soldiers were mentally and physically abused when they simply were trying to defend their country, a point that is frequently up by the soldiers.

My next post will be about the movie Glory, a civil war movie about a Black regiment, and I will compare the two movies and their representation of the black soldier.

Response: "King of Hearts"

King of Hearts is a 1967 French film set in small French village at the end of World War I. Alan Bates portrays Scottish Private Charles Plumpick sent on a mission to detonate explosives set in the village by the retreating German army. He arrives to find the town deserted and mistakenly lets loose the remaining citizens from the local "lunatic asylum." The patients of the asylum take control of the town and name Plumpick their king. He is then faced with the decision to join the mentally challenged in their blissful world or carry out his mission. Plumpick's struggle is surrounded by a surreal and visually beautiful array of characters from the asylum. At its root, King of Hearts is an absurdist questioning of war. The new inhabitants of the town are completely naive to the conflict of the outside world and don't care to learn of it. Surrounding this isolated group are the German and Scottish armies who are portrayed as equally insane and farcical as the lunatics that briefly control the town. This juxtaposition brings out the undertones of war and impending doom which make the film a poignant and beautiful satire of the absurdities of war and conflict. King of Hearts is an entirely unique portrayal of war and one that is strikingly different from most war films or war satires produced in the United States.

Here's a link to the trailer:
http://www.spout.com/films/King_of_Hearts/19001/353977/trailers.aspx