Recently saw Black Hawk Down and was disgusted by the propaganda

[quinnox]

I heard how this was supposedly such a great war movie with many things going for it such as, Ridley Scott the well known director, lots of big name stars, it was nominated for many academy awards etc.

Well, its a movie that shows the American soldiers all in a shining noble light, while the enemy, the Somalians, who all happen to be black and very dark skinned, are depicted as evil savages whose main goal in life seems to be to kill as many people as possible.

Its a good example of how any American intervention is treated as a just cause, and the reasons for it are dismissed quickly as not important. Its like - if America is there fighting, that is all the justification needed to know we are doing the right thing, who cares what the other side thinks or their viewpoint.

And to top it off, it wasn't that great a movie in terms of pure action either. It got boring after an hour and a half, and yet another hour to go showing the same types of battle scenes over and over with the same "stirring" heroics by the soldiers.

No wonder so much of our populace is gung ho on any military action the US does, the movies feed this to them as well as most of the other forms of mass media in this country.

[Balbus]

1. What color skin should the Somalians have had in the movie?

Would you have preferred them being played by white actors?

[quinnox]

2. way to miss the point

And it would have been nice to see more than one black soldier on our side.

It was like a sea of lily white faces versus dark skinned Africans, the racist subtext was not subtle.

[Township75]

14. S/he fucking nailed your ass on that one.

If it is "missing the point", maybe you shouldn't have put that in your OP...obviously you thought it was important enough to bring it up.

As far as the "one" black soldier on our side, well, all the characters were based on actual soldiers from a platoon, so maybe they thought of using a white actor to play a white soldier????

Come to think of it, I didn't' see any female soldiers on our side...you didn't point that out.

[quinnox]

16. Nah, trust me, I'm not the only one to make these observations

There are many others who picked up on the same things I did, check out IMDB user reviews if you don't believe me.

[redgiant]

33. WTF?

The movie should have been changed so that it didn't reflect the fact the Somalis were black and most of the US troops were white?

That was the real situation. Are you a revisionist?

[Abin Sur]

15. Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that only one of the US soldiers *was* actually black.

Would you have cast more black actors to portray US soldiers?

[quinnox]

18. I find that really hard to believe

I'd love to see any evidence that of all the soldiers who were in Somalia that day, only one or two were black. From what I know of military folks, many black people are in the military and they are not represented in this movie.

[Abin Sur]

24. I'm not speaking of all the soldiers in Somalia on that day, but rather

those killed in the Battle of Mogadishu (1993)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mogadishu_%281993%29

Of the 18 US casualties listed, only 2 of them have hyperlinks which allow you to see a picture of them. Both are white.

http://military-photos.blogspot.com/2009/08/battle-of-mogadishu-1993.html





Looks like a bunch of white guys...

[Posteritatis]

61. No, dammit, dig *up!* (nt)

[redgiant]

32. Okay...

...here's some pics of blacks vs white to provide balance. Would have been nice to see some white faces in the mob. No savagery there.

http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/u-s-marine-dragged-through-mogadishu/

[Drahthaardogs]

9. Yes, because portraying African people as black people makes no sense!

And having a military action which actually started to provide humanitarian for civilians caught in the middle of a coup is "gun-ho American nationalism".

This is drivel.

[Township75]

12. LMAO!!!!!!

Good one!

[Hassin Bin Sober]

38. White! How, do you say?....

[Katashi_itto]

56. Propaganda?

"my friend, you keep using that word. I do not think that it means what you think that it means"

[Katashi_itto]

57. CIA FACTBOOK... Says

Somalia is Inhabited by...wait for it...Somali. Happened to be where the ..you know ...that battle was. Yep. Pretty racist if you ask me.


noun: Somali(s)
adjective: Somali

Ethnic groups:
Somali 85%, Bantu and other non-Somali 15% (including 30,000 Arabs)

Religions:
Sunni Muslim

Languages:
Somali (official), Arabic, Italian, English

Population:
9,925,640 (July 2011 est.)
country comparison to the world: 86
note: this estimate was derived from an official census taken in 1975 by the Somali Government; population counting in Somalia is complicated by the large number of nomads and by refugee movements in response to famine and clan warfare

#occupynavy

[AngryAmish]

3. Don't watch "Zulu" or you might get sad.

[charlie and algernon]

4. You do know its based on a actual battle, right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mogadishu_(1993)

[quinnox]

6. Yea, and

what difference does that make?

[charlie and algernon]

8. well when the ACTUAL Somalis were black and the ACTUAL Americans were white

it kinda shoots down your premise that the movie was purposefully made as racial propaganda.

And as another poster said, that engagement has become the textbook case of "How NOT to fight a battle in hostile territory."

That movie was more anti-war than pro-America jingoism. If you stuck around till the end, Eric Bana's character clearly says that he doesn't give a shit about the politics back home, he's there for his fellow soldiers.

[leeroysphitz]

5. Many American military commanders keep that book on their shelves as a guide

for how NOT to conduct operations and that is a good thing. As for the movie, well it's a movie.

[Katashi_itto]

58. That and "Team Yankee" are the bibles

[atreides1]

7. I've seen it

Never really thought of it as "a good example of how any American intervention is treated as a just cause", to me it looked like a completely botched operation that never had to happen in the first...that cost lives needlessly.

I never considered the Somalians depicted as evil, or the Americans as noble...as for savages killing as many people as possible, what would you consider a helicopter gunship firing on anyone on the ground, taking no consideration that non-combatants may have been in the area as well...not exactly civilized!

I say this as an Army veteran...maybe learning to read between the lines might help.

[dionysus]

10. hmm... i remember it was a good movie, and it's probably a poor recruiting tool since the US dudes

got the shit kicked out of them...

:shrug:

[jakeXT]

11. I don't know if Pearl Harbor from the same year (2001) by the same producer (Bruckheimer)

was worse.
Especially adding 900 screens to a fading movie just te week before 9/11 happens is really interesting.

$183,145 (USA) (9 September 2001) (272 Screens)
$1,164,650 (USA) (2 September 2001) (1,036 Screens)
$75,852 (USA) (26 August 2001) (116 Screens)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0213149/business


Lots of war movies never give historical background or real reasons for that war.
I think the first minutes of the Blackhawk Down movie go into the humanitarian intervention thing, by showing starved people for a couple of seconds.

[quinnox]

13. I didn't see Pearl Harbor but Black Hawk Down was pretty bad

I don't know, I heard Pearl Harbor was a stinker as well.

[Abin Sur]

20. Pearl Harbor was awful.

The anachronisms in the movie abound. Women in bikinis, a newsreel in 1940 showing US forces fighting in France, fighter pilots somehow becoming bomber pilots for the Doolittle Raid. Not to mention a tin ear for period dialogue.

Also, the film had a no-smoking policy...so no one smokes.

In 1941.

Yeesh...

[LynneSin]

17. I'd almost buy into your theory if it wasn't for the fact that the movie was based a real story

just saying

[quinnox]

19. Hollywood often takes liberties with true stories

Its nothing new.

[LynneSin]

22. True. But the facts are that Somalians shot down that helicoptor.

So there was no 'demonizing' of a race - just presentation of the facts.

I remember another similiar movie was done with Owen Wilson called "Behind Enemy Lines" where Owen was an officer whose plane was shot down behind enemy lines in Serbia. To be honest, that film came across way more propagandish than "Black Hawk Down". BEL had some inspiration from a few stories of the Serbian conflict but BHD was based on one notable incident.

[Whisp]

41. I think the OP might have meant this...

at least that is what I gathered when I read it.

That most conflicts Americans get into do not involve blonde blue eyed enemies, but usually dark or brown skinned people.

[Rebubula]

44. Well, to be fair

There are not many people outside of the US that have blond hair\blue eyes.

Unless you watch a WW1 or WW2 movie - then you have plenty

[LynneSin]

49. Probably the closet would be our intervention in the former Yugoslavia region

n/t

[WildEyedLiberal]

59. I guess we should invade Poland just to equalize things, then

:eyes:

Not really rolling my eyes at you, but if that is indeed the point the OP was making, it's a stupid one. We certainly didn't hesitate to fight the last pack of blonde/blue eyed people who wanted us dead, so I think it's more than a little disingenuous to suggest that the US will only wage war against dark skinned people because we love killing the non-Aryans.

[Whisp]

63. I'm thinking of the past, and central america and south america.

I think the US diddled with about every country there.

[occupyeverywhere]

43. The movie was made with the full cooperation of the Defense Dept.

Therefore by definition, is propaganda.

[Rebubula]

50. Uhhhh....

...

[occupyeverywhere]

51. Not sure how to respond to your comment

[Rebubula]

54. Not everything is propaganda...

...even if the DOD assists - they did not assist, but provided technical references to make the battle scenes realistic.

They also assisted on Saving Private Ryan, Platoon and The Bridge over the River Kwai.

Are those propaganda as well?


My post refers to a scene in The Princess Bride

"my friend, you keep using that word. I do not think that it means what you think that it means"

[Name removed]

60. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[WinkyDink]

21. Its purpose was to (help) bring down Clinton, not to be racist.

[Township75]

25. Is that why it was released in 2001?

What was he going to be brought down from since he was out of politics at that point?

[WinkyDink]

62. Do you know the name "Hillary"? The Republicans play a long game.

And please don't tell me that Bill-bashing about fighting terrorism stopped in 2001!!

http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19931018,00.html

[newspeak]

37. yeah, remember some about the movie

didn't poppy order the troops in before he stepped down-then clinton was sworn in? was supposed to make clinton look bad forgetting those soldiers.

[leftyohiolib]

23. wow, someone's gonna need ice to ice down the groin muscle after that stretch

[Marrah_G]

26. I thought it was a great movie

It portrayed real events. It was a huge mistake in our military history and one now used as a "what not to do" learning tool.

[saras]

27. Choosing to make a movie about the battle was a racist decision - the rest follows

It was a botched battle in a botched cause. A good movie might have shown that.

But to deliberately present it as a heroes-vs-villians, white-vs-black action movie was a major, conscious choice of the film's creators.

[PavePusher]

28. Not sure where you got this from:

"heroes-vs-villians, white-vs-black action movie", other than out of thin air....

[rjj621]

29. Sounds like a stretch to me.

It sounds like you are looking for propaganda and reading way too much into it. If you want to find it bad enough you can rationalize it into practically any movie, song, photo, article....etc.

[redgiant]

30. Intervention?

Do you know why the US intervened? Are you not old enough to remember the images of countless "black and very dark skinned" Somalis (not Somalians), rail thin and starving by the thousands? Clan warfare and warlords prevented effective delivery of food aid to those who needed it. It was to correct this situation that the US felt pressured, with UN backing, to do something. In hindsight, we should have stayed out. Fuck 'em.

History is currently repeating itself. A new famine looms. Another group of thugs is preventing aid from getting through. Would I support putting boots on the ground to ensure the aid gets through? Fuck, no.

Read this article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/16/world/africa/famine-hits-somalia-in-world-less-likely-to-intervene.html?pagewanted=all

[PETRUS]

31. Hollywood/Pentagon cooperative ventures

If the Pentagon approves of a script, the filmmakers get to use military hardware at the taxpayers' expense. Just FYI.

[booley]

34. of course it's propaganda

Not racist propaganda. That is silly to be surprised that natives of an African country would be portrayed as dark skinned.

But before any movie can use resources or use actual military equipment, it has to get the seal of approval from the Pentagon.

And they only give that to movies thatw ill make the US military look good.

They even have a trope on this it's so common..

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BackedByThePentagon

[Odin2005]

35. Oh for fuck's sake.

You probably think "Pearl Harbor" is racist against Japanese people, too. :eyes:

[Taverner]

36. Typical Republican Revisionism: In that movie they make Somalia "Clinton's War"

Never mind the fact that Bush I started it...

[redgiant]

39. Probably for oil, right?

The famine had nothing to do with it.

Don't get me wrong. I wish we had stayed the hell out of that shithole.

[Taverner]

40. To be honest, I have no idea why Bush I started that war, but he did start it

That's a matter of history

[redgiant]

47. Absolutely, he started it

If you know of any credible sources that--given the state of the media attention to the scale of the famine and the international outrage thereof--point to some motive other than humanitarian, I'd be happy to consider it.

That the attempt to secure the relief effort was miscalculated and mishandled is also history.

Lesson learned: No more sending US troops into hostile or potentially hostile environments for humanitarian reasons.

[Rebubula]

42. Wow...

...that was an awesome POUTRAGE post with absolutely no credibility.

This is war movie based on TRUE EVENTS.

I guess The Sands of Iwo Jima pisses you off as well....


Seriously...

[Odin2005]

46. I hate when people overanalyze things in order to confirm their own beliefs.

It's the typical cognitive bias of assuming the conclusion and then looking for "evidence" to support it. If one looks hard enough one can find "evidence" for anything, even if it's BS. Hence Astrology and Feudian psychobabble.

[LanternWaste]

45. self-delete

Ok... appears as though many people entertained the same sentiment I did.


:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Movies. Sheesh, right? :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[walerosco]

48. K & R

Dont forget the many video game title that push the same meme. The next generation of Americans will be so indoctrinated that they would not be capable of questioning their country's war crimes.

USA - Fuck yea

[Catherine Vincent]

52. I think I know what you mean

The Somalians I've seen in the past aren't very dark skinned...say like President Obama's father. Is that what you meant? all I remember is that "Black Hawk Down" was loved by republicans because it made then President Clinton look bad. That's the only reason why they like it.

[snort]

53. IMO the best thing about the movie?

Rachid Taha. Check out teketoi! in particular. Rock & Rai at its best.

[GreenTea]

55. That's the reason I have never seen it nor ever will....

Just by the hype back then I knew what it was going to be propaganda for & to justify wars for profit & oil - while getting the ignorant to sign up for war & soldier brotherhood & American patriotism right or wrong bullshit (for the corporations to make huge profits off wars, killing & soldiers dying)....I could be wrong, cuz I've never seen it....but I'm sure I'm not far off from their intentions.

[Obamanaut]

64. There was a documentary made a couple of years after the movie detailing

how close the movie was to actual events.

A google search will lead you to it.

[ZombieHorde]

65. Wow, this is one of the most contraversial movie reviews I have read on DU.

Though I once wrote a movie review that got scrubbed from this site.