Movie

[cdybedahl]

We've just been to the cinema and watched an appalling story about four random kids who go to a foreign land, shoulder the White Man's Burden and save the poor helpless indigenous people by starting a war and taking over the government.

But at least Tilda Swinton was worth the price of admission all by herself.

Comments

[misshallelujah.livejournal.com]

Best movie review ever. :D

[seaya.livejournal.com]

cdybedahl++

[yellowmix.livejournal.com]

Haha! Movies in 15 Minutes? Movies in 5 seconds! seaya sent me.

[jennixen.livejournal.com]

*lol*

Although it wasn't until you mentioned Swinton that I realised what movie it was. ;)

[cdybedahl.livejournal.com]

After seeing the movie it actually surprises me that I've seen no discussion about its blatant racism. It really bothered me.

[jennixen.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall someone mentioning it...but I can't remember who or where. I have yet not seen it.
I know someone said something similar, like there was lots of debates about the christian view in it but no debate on how Lewis portrays people of different colour.

[jennyaxe.livejournal.com]

In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, there aren't any non-English humans. The Witch isn't human at all, and all other characters are animals. So you'd have to take that extra step to see the animals as people in order to get at the underlying assumptions on how Narnia is a country with exclusively non-human inhabitants which must nevertheless have a human ruler. Much as the Europeans saw the colonies, really.

The racism is far more obvious in some later books, where the people of Calormen appear. The Calormens are very much like the then-current stereotype of Arabs - they were dark, wore turbans, used crooked swords (as opposed to the straight swords the Narnians used) and worshipped an evil god. The were The Enemy, with a big The.

[jennixen.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly. The Calormens were an example that the people discussing brought up. If I could only remember where...

I feel there's a similar thing with Tolkien. In his books, basically all "nice" humans are blond or have light skin and dark hair.
The southerners who have dark skin and dark hair are bad evil guys who are with Sauron.
Very generalising really, because they basically say that those humans are not worth saving, there is no good in them.

[jlms.livejournal.com]

Aah. I'd been wondering up to this point which movie it was (although, to be fair, assuming it was one I hadn't heard of.)

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

Hey, they didn't start the war, they just supported the rebels who were already there.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

What about the racism? Narnians don't seem any more racist than earthly people are. Beaver's something of a bigot in that he expects the fox to be in league with the wolves, and most types of similar creatures do seem all be one one side or the other, but there seem to be dwarves on both sides, there are felines on both sides.