No Escape - Intense Racism
- Thread starter Marter
- Start date
Which is quite an unfortunate and, frankly, stupid decision. If they thought portraying ISIS as bad guys was racist, they'd be wrong; ISIS really are "bad" people. This sounds far more racist than if you used an actual group who does actual horrible things to the Americans (and anyone not on their side.)inu-kun said:
Yeah, this was the kind of vibe I got from the trailers. Was kind of hoping they wouldn't make that mistake, but at least it was technically sound, I guess. :/
It's a real shame because it's not like this kind of thing can't be done without making all the locals into a substitute for a zombie hoard.
Heck there's actually a zombie movie that has the zombies revolt against a survivor city that actually manages to make you have sympathy for said zombies. So it shouldn't be too hard to do so with living people.
It's a real shame because it's not like this kind of thing can't be done without making all the locals into a substitute for a zombie hoard.
Heck there's actually a zombie movie that has the zombies revolt against a survivor city that actually manages to make you have sympathy for said zombies. So it shouldn't be too hard to do so with living people.
Isn't it fair to say that anyone acting under a mob mentality, regardless of race, are a bunch of savages? I haven't had the chance to watch the film, only a few glimpses of bits outside of the trailers, but what's racist about showing a large group of extremists attacking foreigners and not showing any humanity toward them? Would it still be racist toward the extremists if they were white groups "being portrayed as savages" toward foreigners that are partially contributing to their hard times?
When it comes down to it, you can't write off a film as racist for having the villains be a different race than the protagonists. Maybe once I give it a watch, I'll understand where the vitriol for the assuredly paper-thin plot comes from, but for now it just seems like undue controversy.
When it comes down to it, you can't write off a film as racist for having the villains be a different race than the protagonists. Maybe once I give it a watch, I'll understand where the vitriol for the assuredly paper-thin plot comes from, but for now it just seems like undue controversy.
Oh, sure, Hollywood can't make a Hitman movie that feels like Hitman, but they can make a spot-on Far Cry film without even trying!
They would, however, actually have to BE ISIS, and not just 'Generic Arabic horde that we're going to call 'ISIS' because they're the ones everyone's paying attention to now'. If it was still exactly the same movie, just with the slitty eyes swapped for black headscarves and the ISIS label name-dropped in the dialogue a couple of times, then it would still be racist. It would be racist for making no distinction between ISIS and the melting pot of different ethnic groups being brutalised by and/or fighting against ISIS. It would be racist for caring not a jot about those people in favour of the US tourists (who would be visiting a country ravaged by ISIS for... some reason). It would even be racist for not bothering to explain what the beliefs and mission of ISIS actually is, and why THAT is bad, preferring instead the implicit suggestion that 'they're bad because they're Arabs and they're toting Kalashnikovs'Gorrath said:
Jesus, the filmmakers could have made the mobs all white, and people would have complained that there was no representation of other skin colors.
In short, some peeps gotta complain about anything or they're not happy.
In short, some peeps gotta complain about anything or they're not happy.
I don't think they would have to actually be ISIS; you could have a group that's meant to represent ISIS as a metaphor and it would not be racist. The movie itself does not need to play the, "But not all Arabs/Muslims," card in order to avoid the racist label. If the movie deals with a specific group that's doing these things and the crimes of the group are attributed to that group, that should be sufficient to indicate the, "But not all Arabs/Muslims," without having to talk to the audience like they are eight year olds. The audience should be able to draw the distinction between actions by a specific group and attribution of those actions to an enormous populace, some of whom belong to said specific group.NinjaDeathSlap said:
The same argument basically applies to you next two points as well. Following a group of tourists being chased by ISIS and not spending a great deal of time expanding on anyone else isn't racist by default. The narrative is about these specific people being chased by this specific group for these specific reasons. None of that becomes racist because the narrative didn't also dip deeply enough into local politics or other examples of brutality against other people native to the area.
One need not go into actual ISIS dogma to the Nth degree in order to show why murdering American tourists is bad. People are aware enough of ISIS and its exploits that having them as an antagonist in a film could certainly work, or better yet, using a fake group meant to represent ISIS and its ilk.
All of that said, spending the time on each of the things you mention would probably make a better movie than a movie that does not since all of those things are likely to make the film deeper and more interesting but lacking those elements does not automatically make a film racist.
I don't know how to take this. All this culture war shit going on has seriously numbed the effect of calling things racist. On one hand I've read a few of this author's articles and he doesn't seem like the type to rant on it... but on the other hand it seems like everyone could be blowing it out or proportion. Correct me if I'm wrong but the storyline is based on being on the receiving end of racism, local ethnicity vs the 'other' Americans, and trying to survive it. A dangerous premise given the charged environment currently.
I guess the question is did they do it on purpose: Were they going for an 'othering' effect on purpose and screw it up? Did they intentionally ignoring the other side to highten the tension caused by the unknown? Or was it a white guy writing a story for other white guys because that's all he knows?
Personally I'm of the opinion that a relatable villain makes for a better movie. Sounds like a scene or two to show how desperate the locals were and why they resorted to mob rule would have cleared this up and made for a more intense ride. Maybe I'll watch it on Netflix when it comes out.
I guess the question is did they do it on purpose: Were they going for an 'othering' effect on purpose and screw it up? Did they intentionally ignoring the other side to highten the tension caused by the unknown? Or was it a white guy writing a story for other white guys because that's all he knows?
Personally I'm of the opinion that a relatable villain makes for a better movie. Sounds like a scene or two to show how desperate the locals were and why they resorted to mob rule would have cleared this up and made for a more intense ride. Maybe I'll watch it on Netflix when it comes out.
A holy trinity of disappointment here.
1. It isn't a film about exploring and overcoming racist communities, the likes of This is England or American History X.
2. Oops, they went full resident evil 5 on us.
3. That picture is not of Steve Irwin, as I first suspected, but of Owen Wilson. What a disappointment.
1. It isn't a film about exploring and overcoming racist communities, the likes of This is England or American History X.
2. Oops, they went full resident evil 5 on us.
3. That picture is not of Steve Irwin, as I first suspected, but of Owen Wilson. What a disappointment.
I guess I didn't mean to imply that you couldn't make an stand-in for ISIS (or Boko Haram, Al Shabbab, Al Qaeda etc). However, whether your going for an explicit depiction or not, you have to show that you have a grasp on what your dealing with. I don't think anyone was really expecting this particular film to be an insightful examination of any global conflict, but it is as Marter said, if your only ambition is to put a bunch of readily 'identifiable' (I really, really don't want to get started on how much THAT argument reeks to me, so I'm just leaving it alone) characters up against the Endless Vaguely-Defined Horde of General Threat, then that's what we have zombies for. Even if they are overplayed, just making a zombie movie sans the zombies won't make it any less generic; and if you're going to make a movie in this day and age that paints vast swathes of a foreign culture as filled with blood-frenzy, then you should recognise that you're dealing with human beings, and that they need at least some semblance of a human identity. That's not to say that they have to be necessarily sympathetic (although it wouldn't hurt to have a few more of those), but they do need to have a dimension at least. Bonus points if you can get at least two people with the same colour skin to express as much as two separate opinions at some point in a 90+ minute run-time.Gorrath said:
I'm not asking much. I don't go into a B-list, late-summer Pierce Brosnan vehicle expecting a seminar on international relations. However, if we can make films featuring Nazi's where the bad guys are recognisably individual and possessing human reasoning, then nobody has an excuse any more not to do the bare minimum.
All of what you say here I think I can agree with 100%. I feel the difference between this film and the proposed film is that this film only vaguely defines the antagonists which leads to painting the whole culture or group of people the same way, which does have racist connotations. Using a specific group ameliorates that issue by defining the antagonists. It's like the difference between making a movie where the antagonists appear to all just be blood-thirsty Germans murdering every non-white person in sight and making a movie about Nazis doing the same thing. Even if the film doesn't take to the to explain who the Nazi's are, what the core beliefs are or that not all Germans are Nazis, you won't necessarily end up with a racist film. People understand to some degree who the Nazis are and why murdering anyone and everyone who isn't a Nazi is bad, even if the film takes no time to explain these things. The same could be said of a film that does this with ISIS or some ISIS stand-in. Hope that clarifies my point a bit and thanks for hopping into this with me; it feels productive.NinjaDeathSlap said:
I know right?! That movie was amazing, if only for the fact that it made me, ME, empathize with the undead. That opening scene of the village of zombies being attacked by the "barbarian horde" (ie: the survivors), made me actually feel bad for them. So yeah, I was actually rooting for the zombies in that movie. And, this might not seem like much, but I don't like the undead. I've always hated them in stories. Any kind of undead thing just annoys and bothers me. I hate zombies, I fucking despise vampires, especially our pop culture sexification of them. Basically, any time someone tries to make them into some kind of sympathetic hero character, I have zero interest.Imp Emissary said:
Now using them as antagonists, no problem. I LOVE them as badguys, they make great ones. Hell one of my favorite villains is the Dracula in Van Helsing. He was so gloriously chewing every scene he was in. It was great!
But that Land of the Living Dead movie, I was totally rooting for the zombies. Which says something about the directors ability, that he made ME of all people, feel bad for walking corpses! xD
Oh, yeah, No Escape, sounds like a bad movie, glad I had no interest in seeing it.
Someone smarter than me had this to say about it: Even the title is wrong. The American tourists have an escape, as long as they get to an airport or embassy they can fly out of the country. The people who have no escape are the locals, whom the movie conspicuously avoids showing - the best they can hope for is to evacuate the country and leave every material thing they own, assuming a neighbouring country will permit asylum.
I read a cracked article taking the piss out of the trailer for its racism. The comments section to is almost entirely made up of people bitching and moaning about how cracked has gone too far into SJW territory, whilst apparently unaware that every other critic is also calling this film racist.
I read a cracked article taking the piss out of the trailer for its racism. The comments section to is almost entirely made up of people bitching and moaning about how cracked has gone too far into SJW territory, whilst apparently unaware that every other critic is also calling this film racist.