Bad idea movies

I did not want to see Where Hands Touch - even though I was watching the work of Amma Assante - because I thought the movie was a bad idea. Oh, a romance between a Nazi and a Black girl! How original! She can even be a little anti-Semitic, because we really aren't all that different!

Yes, African-American anti-Semitic sentiment has been a problem (see Jesse Jackson, circa 1984). Also, while the Nazis were focused on Jews, they had some prejudices against Black people as well (see Jesse Owens, 1936). Of course, racism does not rule out attraction - some people have seen that turn pretty quickly - so it's not that it's impossible, but what do you gain from it? Even if it is handled super well, which can so easily not be the case.

That was how I felt in 2018. Then in 2019 three other movies screamed "Bad idea!" at me. I have read quite a bit about them while conscientiously not seeing them, but then because I have not seen them I was reluctant to blog about them; I mean, I don't really know.

So in honor of Amma Assante I am going to throw all my caution out the window today, and rip on movies that I haven't seen. 

There will be spoilers.

Richard Jewell 

It became very obvious from the trailer where this was going, when you hear the profile of the Olympic bomber being a white man. How dare they make that about race? You can hear Clint Eastwood thinking it. 

However, the bomber Eric Rudolph was white, and had some similarities with Richard Jewell where it was not completely unreasonable that given Jewell's proximity to the scene he would be investigated. He was never charged. I will gladly acknowledge that law enforcement can be heavy-handed - Portland sure knows that! - and that the media could have handled it better. 

In return it would be great if Eastwood would acknowledge that the mass shooters and bombers have been overwhelmingly white males, and that it is not a coincidence that a white man who hated abortion, gay people, and socialism would cause death and destruction. Also, since he does see that putting out a false view of someone like Jewell via mass media is wrong, then it would be great if he could apologizing for the ugly smearing of reporter Kathy Scruggs. 

I had posted one article about it at the time, without commenting a lot. Here is another one: https://variety.com/2019/film/columns/richard-jewell-clint-eastwood-kathy-scruggs-controversy-1203435866/

Joker  

What bothers me most about this is that he becomes a hero by killing powerful white men, like jerky corporate businessmen and a popular television host. Well, and his mother; that part was realistic.

In real life, it's the girl they liked but never asked out, or the ex-girlfriend, or the kid walking home at night but he has dark skin and a hoodie. He would have killed the Zazie Beetz character. Their lack of power gets directed downward, not upward. There's no analysis of how the ways in which society lets him down are worse for other people, but there is an understanding that because it rolls downhill he can take advantage of that. 

I don't know; I didn't see it. Maybe people came out of the theater anxious to help uplift others with better health care, including mental health care, and better safety nets. Did that happen? Did I misjudge it?

Jojo Rabbit

It was another quote in the trailer that did it: "You're not a Nazi, Jojo. You're a ten-year-old kid who likes dressing up in a funny uniform and wants to be part of a club."

Okay, I get that not joining the Hitler Youth would have been really dangerous, and maybe the toll that takes could be interesting, but all that sympathy for this weird, weak kid and triumph that and he finally comes around. That price is his mother getting hanged, his leader sacrificing himself, and him stabbing the Jewish girl before he can finally reject violence.

Yes, a lot of the people drawn into white supremacy have been rejected from other groups (Higher Learning portrays that pretty well), but once they are in they can see a lot of death and destruction without feeling any remorse for it. They love it. Even if they could learn from it, they do not have the right to have marginalized people pay the price for it.

I think the reason it happens is because there is this mindset that everyone knows racism is wrong and Nazis are bad; let's do something different!

That there should be emotional truth in works of fiction would be reason enough to be very careful about that, but your real problem is that racism isn't settled. Some people believe it is in the past because they don't understand it, while others are downright reveling in it. The pursuit of a twist is not worth accommodating that!

Art can be a very effective way of showing the humanity of others. There are so many marginalized people that are constantly having their humanity denied; why would you focus on the Nazis?

Anyway, 2019 was the year that I started making a point of going to see movies that I felt it was important to support. It's not that I had been likely to see movies that screamed "Bad idea! at me before; that wasn't the change. Instead, realizing that who was in the lead and wrote the screenplay and directed affected the ideas that would be put forth, and that it mattered and I should vote with my dollars, that was kind of new. 

That was also the year I started watching the works of these Black directors, so it all circles back.