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matthewstelly
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RED 2 (2013)
Red 2: Can't Bruce Willis Just Fade Away????
Any movie that has to deal with super-spies will show them as being fearless, cracking jokes in the face of danger, unbeatable in hand to hand combat, expert marksmen with weapons of all kinds and brilliant when deducing or cutting apart a plan by the bad guys. When you add a wrinkle to this unrealistic scenario, that is where you can sell movie tickets. Whether it's gender ("Salt," "Tomb Raider," etc.) or race, people will pay attention(as long as they are surrounded by enough white men and a white man is their boss. "Red 2" is about the people who have quit the spy business but who are being hunted because they represent a threat because of their skill set. This bit of realism is then qualified by the fact that they are all elderly – but, as the myth of white supremacy would have it, appear to not have lost a step in their physicality, their virility when it comes to interest in sex, or their mentality when it comes to snappy one-liners and figuring out the method of operation of the bad guys. At the end of the movie, as a sign of a divine example of disrespect, the $4 jet that belonged to the Asian member of the contingent is blown up when Bruce Willis switches a case that had a bomb in it. All the Asian can say is, "You blew up my plane." Willis sarcastically says something like, "I'll pay you back," and just like that, the issue is over and resolved. Such arrogance!
White House Down (2013)
White House Down - But Not Out!
Just because you have a black President doesn't mean that squat is going to change, as I tried to tell my brothers and sisters when Barack got elected. This movie lends credence to my statements. What do we find? We find that the military is behind the attack on the White House because the President (Jamie Foxx) is opposed to war and doesn't want any more military contracts – he wants peace in the Middle East.
Enter a "superman" who is a former military man who served in Iraq and is now vying to join the Secret Service. In this movie even though out-manned and out-gunned, he performs one "super feat" after another. He defeats trained military personnel (mercenaries) , all in the name of saving his little girl, who is presented as being "super" in her own right. In fact, she is the real hero of the movie: she is the one who takes pictures of the bad guys who have infiltrated the white house and then emails it to officials; she is the one who stands up to the leader of the bad guys by staring down a gun, not once but twice. She is the one who takes the flag at the end of the movie and signals an air strike force not to "blow up" the White House saying, in essence, my daddy has everything under control.
This pisses off the military decision makers and their "in-house collaborators" who enable military trained personnel to infiltrate the White House, blow up Air Force One (with people on board), gain access to missile systems and everything else. Jamie makes the point that America is not for sale and that the military is doing this so that they can continue making money. And this is an example of art imitating life.
But what is the overriding message? A trainee who didn't pass muster when he trained for the Secret Service and a United States president can out-think, out-muscle, out-perform and outlast a squad of trained mercenaries. Even though they are white, don't forget that they are doing all this to capitalize on America's racist belief that "terrorists" (read: middle eastern brown men) are going to destroy their way of life, starting with taking over the White House.
The Lone Ranger (2013)
The Lone Ranger: Wild Rest Racial Hierarchy
This story is, in my view, the western frontier version of "Superman." After all, the Lone Ranger existed because he was riding with seven other rangers and got cut down in an ambush. He was the "lone" survivor and was rescued by a Native American who he named Tonto. Like Superman, at least in this movie, this white man was deemed to be a "spirit walker" who could not be killed. At one point when Tonto is fighting a bad guy atop a train moving at top speed, the Lone Ranger, riding Silver while atop another train moving parallel to the first train, fires a shot that hits a club out of a bad guy's hand. Before shooting he says to himself, "I'm a spirit walker – I can't miss." So he had convinced himself to believe that he was omniscient in the same way that future generations would view Superman.
The historical truths uncovered in this movie did assuage some of the racism of it. Although a Comanche tribe is wiped out (twice), at least it showed brave warriors going forth and taking on the cavalry and the train company. The movie showed the lying ways of the white man, the "official" way that the train company ("progress") broke treaties, the Chinese working in relative anonymity on the railroads (especially in the tunnels), and a few token blacks shown in with no real relevance to the movie (as usual).
The rest of the movie is wrapped in jokes, quips, obscure bull squat and violence. In my view it is racist to take a white man, put him on a white horse and in a white hat, and have him ride with a Native American who, in every way, was superior. He knew the country better, he was smarter, he was more spiritual (not "Christian," but spiritual), he was stronger and he was rougher all around. And yet in the white man's mind, this guy from back east, educated in law and very green, is going to come out west, ride with his brother (who was a Texas ranger), who had no gun training but "used to box for the law school," can come to the wild west, get shot down, rise up, get shot with an arrow, rise up, develop a plan to take down a giant railroad organization, know how to use a lasso, ride a powerful horse and so on. Only a white audience would eat this stuff up.
Elysium (2013)
Elysium: More Class Segregation in the Future
This movie is about "white flight" at the scientific and futuristic level. If you weren't convinced that the majority of this country is going to be Latino in a few years, this movie, which takes place in 2154 will surely convince you. It's an incredible movie, a direct rip off of race relations in this country, stripped from the annals of white interpretation, dipped into a batter of intergalactic bullshit, and the put on the screen so that viewers, especially the Millennials, will think that "man, this couldn't happen" when, in reality, it's already happening right in the face of these young idiots. This is a story about Trey and Max, a cute Latina and a white dude who grew up together in the slums, or that is, what is left of Earth. He has adapted as they grew up and went their separate ways. She was smart and left to become a nurse. He was a hustler, car thief and thug who ends up doing blue collar assembly line grunt work in some hi-tech factor (don't forget this is the 22nd century). They pledge themselves to each other with tattoos, but it's not much more than that. In reality, Max would be a black man from the South in the 1940s working in the most hazardous areas of any plant or factory. But all they have to do is steal this reality, flip it, make the hard working guy a white boy, and these Millennials – who know about as much about history as a wino knows about building a laser gun – won't know the difference. While working for corporate giant Armadyne, Max's boss forces him to repair a machine and Max gets caught in it and is exposed to a fatal dose of radiation (shades of Yaphet Kotto in "Blue Collar," where he was intentionally locked in a paint room at a car factor and died). Of course the boss who assigned Max to "fix it" knew it was hazardous and as Max is carried out of the radiation filled chamber, the boss disappears. This is the way they treated black men during the 1940s in the foundries in Detroit when it would get so hot their work boots would literally melt. At any rate, Max doesn't die, but is told by the doctors that he has only five days to live. While he's at the hospital he runs across Frey, who has returned and is working as a nurse. They begin to rekindle what they once had. As both "We're the Miller" and "2 Guns" made clear, Latinos are the order of the day. "Elysium is no exception. The part of the world they are in, America, is not predominantly Latino and I didn't see three blacks together throughout the entire movie. At any rate, Frey's young daughter has a physical disability. Now, we've established the relationship, we have to talk about context. "Elysium," is what the white man's goal is in real life: more segregation, this time based on class, not just race. They get all the good stuff – space, land, good health care, clean air, luxury – and the vast majority of people don't get squat. Is this not the way it was during "white flight" in the 1960s when blacks move to the city and white folks immediately packed up, left and created "the suburbs"? This movie featured Latinos because that is the trick that is being used on the Millenials. Just as "World War Z" had a global, somewhat "third world" flavor, and "2 Guns" had a Mexican flavor, "Wolverine" had a definitive Asian flavor, and "Lone Ranger" was Native American, so it is with "Elysium" and its thrust toward Latinos from top to bottom: love interest, bad guys, corporate brains and so on. This "multicultural cast" dupes young people into thinking that everybody's the same, while the racist message of these white boys coming out as winners in every single scenario, is ingrained in their minds and as such, the myth of white supremacy is maintained. Sure, it's a movie NOW, but the theme is so typical of him: he creates another world, basically a giant satellite revolving around polluted earth, where only the wealth can live. In other words, for whites only. Wasn't that the same way it was during the days of legal segregation and isn't that the way it still is with all these "gated communities" and "upscale habitats"? And as it is in real life, Elysium is the place where there is fresh air (ala the suburbs) and where you can get top notch medical care, including cares for all diseases. Meanwhile, earthlings inhale polluted air, live in the midst of squalor and suffer from high population density in high crime. In other words, a re-creation of the ghetto and barrio.
The Conjuring (2013)
The Conjuring Conjures Up Hopes for a Better Sequel
The concept of white supremacy is what produces such images and characters as "Superman" (all powerful), Aquaman (controller of the seas), Wonder Woman (an amazon with super powers), Batman (super smart and virile), Thor (a Norse "god" that exists in their mythology that came to comic books and is now a hit on film), the Hulk (white man is a genius but creates a laser/radiation beam that puts color in his skin and when he turns green, he goes berserk), Daredevil (blind man with super acrobatic powers, is an attorney by day), Spiderman (punk kid gets bitten by a Spider and gets super powers, speed and fights crime for free), and so many more. But in the white supremacy culture, it is equally important to show that just "regular white folks" can also be masters of their domain and of those around them. This is where "The Conjuring" comes in. People want us to believe that in November of 1971, this stuff really happened. That is bovine scatology, plain and simple. Afamily moves into a house that is "haunted" as in so many other movies("Poltergeise," "Amityville Horror," "The Haunting," "Dream House"etc.). In this case the demons must be "exorcised" from the home and that is where we find the link between white supremacy and the white view of their religious beliefs. As I've written elsewhere, the white man sees religion and the concept of "god" as nothing less than an extension of his own power. In this movie the Catholic church gets all this credit for being able to "exorcise" demons, not only from individuals, but also from houses. It is no longer enough to "exorcise" the devil from human beings; now we have a residential structure and, as the pastor points out, "This house needs an exorcism." There are criteria for you to qualify to have an exorcism performed, we learn. You have to be a member of the (Catholic) church, the kids involved (one was being possessed by a demon) have to have been baptized and third, you have to have approval from the Vatican. What? This movie didn't hold true to that because the guy that performed the exorcism for the family that was having the problems had kids that weren't baptized (at one point he says we were eventually going to get around to it) and they DIDN'T get the permission from the Vatican, although at movie's end the writers made it a point to throw in a final scene where the couple that performed the exorcism "finally got the call from the Vatican." But these whites had already solved the problem, defeated the devil, and all is well. This whole idea of ghost hunters, haunted artifacts and these apparitions is a recurring themes in these movies (as in the case of "This Is The End"). All of this pays into the white man's view of himself and the pervasiveness of his power. And of course, there is the flip side: since all religious, saintly, holy and spiritual power equates to white power, then expect references to evil (as in this movie) to be regarded as "a DARK spirit." Or how about this line: "I've been seeing the DARK entity that haunts your family – it's feeding off you." According to this white supremacy-based bullshit, there are three phases to someone being taken over by the evil. These stages are, first of all "infestation," where a bunch of evil spirits congregate in a body and, as in this case, an actual house. Second is "oppression," and that's where they start playing pranks on you, messing with lights, slamming doors and, in short, scaring the living bajeebies out of you. Third is "possession," and that's where the evil spirit takes control and sees you and anyone else as an invader or outsider. The title of the movie is, "The Conjuring." According to Webster's Dictionary, "to summon by or as if by invocation or incantation." In other words, a key part of the exorcism is to call on the devil to get the hell out of the body it is possessing, so you're "conjuring up" the evil. But guess what? There's another meaning as well and it's mostly used by the British. But these people are related by culture and their collective hatred of people of color, so you have to study words that they use in their entire context. To "conjure" also means "to treat or regard as important." What??? And therefore a "conjuring" could also mean to pay homage or tribute to, couldn't it? And is that not what I am alleging: that the white man's evil ways here on earth are, indeed, "devilish"?
Watermelon Man (1970)
Watermelon Man: Ahead of Its Time
Jeff Gerber is a white man who wakes up and sees his skin color has changed to black. But the movie is much more complicated than that, and those who cannot take discussing race will be able to laugh about racism and still as yet learn about it. That is what makes "Watermelon Man" so special.
As I wrote in my 29 page essay/review, How strange this is that Jeff knew where to go and what to do. So he must have seen some commercials in a magazine or heard about black people and skin bleach. White folks know about all of this "identification with the aggressor" behavior, from the conk to hair straightening to skin bleach because they shaped the mentality that led to the craving for such products. Karenga (1967) once wrote that, "We say that Blacks are suffering from mass insanity. Anybody who straightens their hair, bleaches their skin and bites their lips has got to be insane."
Jeff has a sun lamp delivered to his house hoping to reverse the effects. When the salesman comes to the house, Jeff gets physical with him because of some racial exchanges. The white man runs out the door with the lamp shouting, "I heard of black power, but this is ridiculous!" Then he adds as he heads off, "That guy needs a sun lamp like Fred Astaire needs dancing lessons!" There is no doubt in my mind that these lines were added by either Van Peebles, Cambridge or a combination of the two.
At any rate, Jeff is shocked and turns to Althea: "I heard him! I heard what he said! He thinks I'm colored!" Althea makes it clear that, "The Blacks in this city have enough trouble without you killing a white man!" That night he takes a bath in milk hoping that will make him white again. He's also chanting, "Ooga Booga Doo" and has purchased a book on voodoo. Althea comes into the bathroom and watches him bathe in the milk. "Are you getting any whiter?" she asks. He says, "No, but my skin is sure getting softer!"
He gets out of the bathtub and comes into the living room. She tells him she put the kids to bed early and he asks, "Did you promise them they could stay up and watch the cross burning on the lawn?" Again, points are being made about race that are being said in jest, but they are certainly meant in earnest.
But Jeff, like the majority of people in this country who buy into the system and view their entire lives as being based on the concept of "work," has to go to the job sooner or later. He's an insurance salesman and therefore wears suits to work every day, although he always runs to meet the bus:
The next day, he is persuaded to get up and go to work. Things start out well at first, until Jeff is accused of "stealing something" while trying to eat at a restaurant for whites only. The policeman assumes that, since he is a black man, he must have stolen something. During his lunch break, he makes an appointment with his doctor who cannot explain Jeff's "condition" either. After several calls, the doctor suggests that Jeff might be more comfortable with a black doctor. (Wikipedia, 2013)
The issue is a little more complex than described above.
To begin with, as he heads out the door to work, white people who are out walking or watering their lawns almost lose their minds. In their minds, this Black man is bedding this white woman. The emotions of hatred,fear and envy all culminate and create the reaction that we will seelater on. When Sammy Davis, Jr., married white Mai Britt, she was immediately referred to as a "slag" when they went to England. Do you know what a "slag" is? It's a white women who dates or marries black men, that's what it is. Each day Jeff caught the bus and never even noticed the black bus driver. Today he's running to catch the bus as part of his exercise routine and the white people are losing their minds and, in fact, start chasing him. "Where you going' Seabiscuit?" one asks. They all seem to believe that he stole something because he's running. Eventually he is cornered by this crowd of white and the police arrive. He tells them he has his work shoes in his briefcase and has to take them out and put them on. The cop asks the crowd, "Did somebody see this man steal anything?" Several of them respond that they didn't, "but he must have."
The black bus driver recognizes the running routine and when he sees Jeff being surrounded he gets off the bus and vouches for him. Jeff, still in denial, tells the bus driver he's not black after the driver refers to him as "brother."
Man of Steel (2013)
Man of Steel: Prospects and Potential
This is white nationalism in its purest form in that the image and the message that emanates from that image is clear: white people are universal and there are other planets with whites on them. Jor-El, Superman's father, makes this clear when he tells the Kryptonians who will listen that he's scanned the galaxy and found a planet that will not only sustain Kryptonian life, but also has a population of people "similar to ourselves." Later in the movie Jor-El, speaking to Kal-El (Superman's real name) through a high tech archive of some kind, tells him, in preparing him, that he will be able to "fit in among the earthlings." Clearly he was talking about white folks.
It's a combination of "Romeo and Juliet" and "Hercules." Superman falls for a white woman and no matter how busy he is, he finds time to "rescue" her. And this gets into another issue.
What they show is this white man who can fly, has x-ray vision, heat vision and super breath, rescuing people, keeping planes from crashing, saving giant ships that are sinking and so on. But ask yourself this: what are the bases for his choices? How does he make his selections regarding who, all over the world, is in the worst situation? You know thee answer. If a hundred white folks are dying say, in Boston and ten thousand Africans are dying in Botswana, you know he's going to choose the white people for two reasons: first, they're white and secondly, they're Americans. This is the unspoken message that I don't hear anyone discussing. Super man would have to be a "race man" and as such, a racist based on his decisions.
Superman's presence would go directly against the Military-Industrial Complex. He could stop the war in the Middle East and make the Jews back off. He could straighten out Syrian civil war and deal with all those warlords in Africa. But if he did, this would threaten weapons sales and that would affect America's economy. This was an issue regarding weapons sales that was raised in "White House Down." If there are no guns, tanks, missiles, mines, grenades and rocket-to-air missiles to sell, tens of thousands of people would be out of work. There might be less war, but America would not be able to tolerate it. Superman would eventually become the enemy of "G.I. Joe"! Throughout the movie, from Jor-El's lectures, the beliefs in the baby by his mother, Lara and the on-going prompting from his "adopted father," Pa Kent (Kevin Costner) to the cheer leading claims of Ma Kent (Diane Lane), Kal-El (Superman) is told that his presence, if discovered, is going to change the world. Jor-El claims that the child will grow up to enable Earth to avoid the mistakes made by the doomed Krypton. There are references to the fact that growing up under a yellow son (Krypton's is red), he will be strong, have incredible powers and in fact, "he'll be a god." And it is here is where the racist message is most entrenched. Since Superman represents the "American way," that means that he represents American interests. And since, throughout this two hour and twenty-three minute movie, it appears that he has no interest in battling racism, then that means that he has accepted it as part of the fabric of America! There is not a single mention of the glass ceiling (gender discrimination in employment against women) although Lois Lane has to be underpaid although Perry White (played by Laurence Fishburne of all people) uses the fact that she's "under contract" to keep her from quitting. There is not a single mention of racism even though Perry White is a black man running a white newspaper in a major city.
The Wolverine (2013)
Wolverine, Asian culture and race
Like Superman, this is another comic book hero who is indestructible. The difference is that Wolverine is a mutant and has been operated on by some super scientists and has a body that is filled with a skeletal structure that is metal. He can spring giant claws from his fists and when injured, his wounds heal automatically. With that out of the way it should not surprise anyone that this movie is very political and, like Superman, very ethnocentric. In this case, we find Wolverine – who is, by the way immortal – is in an underground holding cell during what appears to be the American bombing of Nagasaki. This was the second time a nuclear bomb was dropped on Japan (the first one having been on Hiroshima). Wolverine saves the life of one of the Japanese officers and somehow this man bonds with Wolverine, although they have not seen each other for years. The movie is about genetics. The Japanese guard knows of Wolverine's power and knows that Wolverine doesn't want to be super any more, just wants to be a regular white boy. This is because he lost his long-time love Jean (in earlier episodes) who he had to kill because she had been turned evil by Magneto. At any rate he's a loner but this cute Asian chick is sent to fetch him so that the Japanese officer, who is dying but who is the head of a mega-sized research lab, can say his last good-byes to his "friend." The movie is also about culture. In one scene as Wolverine and the heiress sit down to eat, he has his chop sticks stuck into some meat, standing vertically as he opts to use a fork. She gently takes them and places them on the table, letting him know that chop sticks that are standing represent antagonism of some kind. Even after that the scene continues and then he does it again. And once again this proud woman gently takes the chop sticks and sets them down. We learn that when it comes to the proper use of a Japanese sword, you use two hands, not one. And we learn that the vaunted Ninjas are known, in the early days of their formation, as "the black clan." The Japanese has a simple plan: since he knows Wolverine doesn't like immorality or his super powers, he (the Japanese) has a way where Wolverine's powers can be transferred to HIM, therefore enabling Wolverine to become mortal, eventually fall in love and die of old age. But Wolverine knows that his powers are not always a blessing and tells the man, "You don't want what I've got." The plot thickens because, unbeknownst to us, the Japanese guy has willed all his finances and corporate power of Yashida Industries, to his grand daughter. The bad guys want her out of the picture and try to assassinate her. Aided by the cute Asian chick who flew him to Japan, Wolverine and the heir take off and try to hide. Along the way Wolverine's powers have been weakened because some blonde mutant female blew some kind of smoke into his lungs during a kiss. So the Japanese guy wants the white man's genetic code and his powers – he wants eternal life. The white man with the powers simply wants to get on with his life and get as much pussy as possible. Two of the most beautiful women I've seen, who just happen to be Asian, are slobbering all over this guy, one as a self-appointed "body guard" and the other who has slept with him, inherits an empire and begs him to stay (which, of course, in line with the "lone wolf motif," he turns down). At no time does anyone mention the fact that America was behind the dropping of that bomb. Even when Wolverine and the heiress return to Nakasaki, he references the hole that he and her grandfather dived into to escape the explosion's radiation, but America is not indicted or held responsible a single time for making the racist decision to drop a bomb on a race of people who, to this day, feel the effects of those two bombs being dropped on their two major cities. So it's selective history wrapped around a racially (genetic) driven movie.
World War Z (2013)
World War Z - is inevitable ....
The white man has done something wrong and it's spread all over the world. They claim the "source" of the disease that transforms the dead into the walking dead is elsewhere, but you know the U.S. has its hand in it. Brad goes all over the world to find a clue. You know that the Jews are involved in the script because they even went to Israel, a nation usually kept out of any movie that has to do with a pandemic because the blame for such disasters is usually blamed on brown people from the Middle East.
I'll spoil it from you: the zombies will only attack and eat you if you're healthy, Brad Pitt -- (again, the 'super man" is motif is apparent from the beginning to the end of this film) "discovers" based on his personal observations. This is a theme borrowed from "Species," where black Mykelti Williamson was not approached by the sexy alien because he had sickle cell trait. But he notices, deduces and otherwise "solves" a problem that has escaped every scientist on earth. And although it's only a theory, he turns out correct and saves the day. Again, he is ex-military, has medical training, and is fearless as he leaves his family to head to all parts of the world to search for the source of the virus. He even survives the crash of a jetliner! As was the case in "The Purge," and "White House Down," the "super white man" risks his own health by injecting himself with a virus and then, to test it on the spot, walk down a hallway filled with maniacal and hungry zombies. At any rate the solution is to infect everybody with some kind of virus which will render that person invisible as far as the zombies are concern. "Then we can fight and defeat them," Brad says at one point. Let me get this straight: infect yourself with something that will make you sick and possibly kill you so that you won't get killed by a zombie.
Game of Death (1978)
Bruce Lee Was Great, Though Dead
Robert Clouse, the same guy who directed "Enter the Dragon" also directed this movie. Bruce died after making "Enter the Dragon," but Clouse and other Hollywood pimps felt they could use excerpts to include in "Game of Death." Kareem Abdul Jabbar is in this one but is no match for the great Master Lee. Bruce has to fight his way through a maze of different kinds of fighters, tricks, traps and other trivia. I think that Chuck Norris' "The Octagon" might have ripped off some ideas from "Game of Death." It's an interesting movie, but there's so much editing and manipulating to replace Bruce's image that any aficionado will be bored senseless. Let Bruce rest in peace, but the movie is certainly worth watching. Bruce Lee fan or not