American foreign policy in two minutes and 30 seconds
Published by Sabotabby July 10th, 2007 in Imperialism for Dummies, MoviesDespite my penchant for movies where the plot can be summarized as, “People run around; stuff blows up,” I am fairly unlikely to watch The Kingdom. (I have my limits.) Nevertheless, the trailer is quite instructive. If you’re ever wondering, as I often do, “Gosh, what is the Bush administration thinking?” your answer may be here:
It’s really got every cliché in the book:
They attacked us first. Just why are those wholesome Americans playing baseball in Saudi Arabia?
We’re the good guys. The cute kid said so.
Diplomacy won’t work with those people. The people who suggest otherwise are the same people who, in alien invasion movies, sputter: “You know, I think they really do come in peace.”
It’s really foreign over there. Like Mars, I tell you. Mars!
The local authorities are Doing It Wrong. This situation can only be solved by maverick American cowboys who break the rules, roll up their sleeves, and get their hands dirty.
Chicks with guns are hot. You know Jennifer Garner will be reduced to helpless victim/romantic interest by the end of the film, though.
Just let us do our job. We would have won Vietnam if we’d just stayed the course!
The Good Arab. He justifies all subsequent killing of faceless brown people in the movie, because he hates the terrorists even more than you do. As a bonus, he signals to the audience that the filmmakers aren’t racist. See The Siege for the most glaring abuse of this stock character.
Chilling laughter, with an Arabic accent. Muahahahaha.
They treat their wimminz badly. Every movie made about the Middle East, ever, must include gratuitous footage of a veiled Muslim woman. For movies justifying imperialism on the African continent, a woman carrying a large water vessel on her head may be substituted.
The prayer mat. Just to remind you that we’re on Mars (Mars!), here’s a shot of a large group of Muslim men praying. This is increasingly common in movies that aren’t about the Middle East (see Children of Men, various zombie movies), because for some reason it feels more apocalyptic than a group of Christian men swaying around in a mega-church in Middle America.
I bet that the little girl in the doorway won’t die. In the real world, she’d be collateral damage and the U.S. would “regret the mistake.”
All men in the Middle East wear keffiyeh headdresses and run around with AK-47s.
We’re gonna find them, and we’re gonna make them pay. Just like we did with Osam…whoops!
Hollywood: If you can’t win the war in the real world, make up for it by making a movie with a happy ending.
If I were a drinking woman, i’d make your post and The Kingdom into a drinking game.
I’m just sayin’.
Oh great. Now I am going to have to watch it.
heh heh heh
B-b-b-ut the Saudis are the good Arabs, right? Right?
Ah, The Siege. I remember seeing it when it came out and again, just recently. Wasn’t it so endearingly cute how the hero speaks out about how torture is a bad thing, and how the people Won’t Stand For mass detentions born out of fear? A more innocent time, before we had the opportunity to see demonstrated quite clearly that we won’t stand for torture… unless you call it something else. We won’t stand for massive roundups… unless you chuck the people somewhere out of sight. Certainly not in a baseball stadium.
Oh, and that hard-working career federal agents would stand up for what’s right, throwing away their jobs and possibly their lives because they knew the government was engaging in torture. Pardon me while I pour one out for my imaginary homies, now replaced by Jack Bauer and his ilk.
For a brief moment there I thought this was a spoof. it is like Jingoist Stereotypes 101. Sheesh.
Do people not get that we cannot just go and do law enforcement in other countries? We wouldn’t even ask. And if we did, isn’t the FBI barred from doing foreign work the way the CIA is from working domestically?