No Escape - Intense Racism

[Gorrath]

Ok guys, question time:

Why didn't Black Hawk Down get flamed like this movie is getting? Is it purely because it came out when political correctness was just starting to appear, or did it portray the blight of the horde of foreigners better than No Escape did?

From what I remember of Black Hawk Down, it did have some moments of humanization, but that made up 2% of them movie at the most; 80% was just American soldiers mowing down hordes of Somalis, which was the point of the movie, but that obviously doesn't justify anything.

A couple of reasons I can think of.

1) It was based on a true story. While some of the events were fictionalized in their details, the general events actually happened. It's no more a racist portrayal of the Somali people than a movie about Nazis fighting Allied troops is a racist portrayal of Germans.

2) Black Hawk Down showed both the Somali people who fought against the American troops and those who supported them so as to not make the mistake of portraying Americans = good, Somalis = bad. From the various reviews I've read, this movie failed to make such a clear and appropriate distinction.

3) The failure of America's own policy in Somalia was a central part of Black Hawk Down as opposed to a barely mentioned footnote, further reinforcing that the situation was more complex than America = good guys, Somalis = bad guys. Again, from what I've read, this film failed to do a good job of that.

If Black Hawk Down had just been about American forces putting a good smack down on uppity black people, it too would look pretty racist.

 

[Zetatrain]

Ok guys, question time:

Why didn't Black Hawk Down get flamed like this movie is getting? Is it purely because it came out when political correctness was just starting to appear, or did it portray the blight of the horde of foreigners better than No Escape did?

From what I remember of Black Hawk Down, it did have some moments of humanization, but that made up 2% of them movie at the most; 80% was just American soldiers mowing down hordes of Somalis, which was the point of the movie, but that obviously doesn't justify anything.

Well regardless of political correctness there are two things to take note of.

The movie came out in December 2001.

Internet usage was not nearly as wide spread as it is today so if there were a lot of people who found BHD racist it would be hard to get the word out unless they were a physical organization with media coverage.

Also BHD came out just 4 months after the 9/11 attacks in the US. Chances are the pro-military attitude at the time would have eclipsed any allegations of racism.

 

[Reasonable Atheist]

Hey look, another thing your not allowed to make into entertainment, a story of escaping a revolution in a foreign country.

So, if the protagonists were black, or asian, would this be fine?

Give me a break.

Also, this shit actually happened! like you know, non-fiction style.

 

[gandhi the peacemake]

Hey look, another thing your not allowed to make into entertainment, a story of escaping a revolution in a foreign country.

So, if the protagonists were black, or asian, would this be fine?

Give me a break.

Also, this shit actually happened! like you know, non-fiction style.

Having not read the review, I can't speak for it, but here's MY rub with the movie:

Asia is the size of North America AND South America COMBINED. (By the by, Africa has this rather famous map:

)

Let's say we set a movie similar to this shambles in America.

America, where everything is thick rainforest and winding rivers. Mosquitoes and giant ants and neon-colored frogs run amok, and the tour guide hacks a broad leaf out of the way with a machete and announces in Gujarati, "Welcome to America!"

You'd be understandably confused. "That's not America," you'd say.

"What are you talking about?" would be the reply. "This is totally an American country."

"Well, right, but see, the American country I'm from isn't like this at all. Where I'm from, we have skyscrapers and we speak English and--"

"Hey look, another thing you're not allowed to make into entertainment!" they would say mockingly. "Can't we just tell a story of escaping a revolution in a foreign country?"

Your response would probably be something like, "Well yes, but you should be more specific about where this is. America is a big place."

Well, so is Asia, and while it's all well and fine to tell a story of escape from a revolution in a foreign country, it would be nice to know what that country actually is besides "Asian." Because, again, Asia is the size of North America AND South America COMBINED. A lot of countries, unique in every way, are Asian. Unless the implication is that all Asian countries look like and experience revolutions the way this movie shows it. I mean, clearly India had a revolution like this. Except for, you know, that one time it didn't. Because Gandhi.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Moviebob may have departed, but his spirit lives on.

"...Asian citizens of a country it can't be bothered to name..."
and why do you think they didn't name the country? Because if they had, they'd be giving you more ammunition to complain about how it depicts all people in Thailand or Laos or wherever as terrible. They used a fictional (or at the very least, unnamed) country to try and NOT offend people. I also find this sort of hysterical: if we made a movie set in Alabama and it depicted all the white characters are stupid and racist, I doubt anyone would complain about its depiction of folks in Alabama.

"Why doesn't it focus on the citizens of the country?"
This is like complaining that "The Raid" should have focused entirely on the innocent people in the apartment building and not on the Cops. Likewise, you could basically make this argument for just about any movie ever made that involves people in life or death situations. 'Die Hard' shouldn't have focused on John McClain, it should have focused on those poor people being held hostage! "Tears of the Sun" should have focused on the innocent people being killed, not on the Navy SEALs who can actually fight back! "Dredd" shouldn't have focused on the Judges, it should have focused on the people being held hostage in that building by the criminals!

"that they're revolting because of the way that American companies have managed to more or less own several of their important businesses through underhanded tactics. This isn't a focus, though..."
I haven't seen the movie, but if it just follows Owen Wilson and family, then it makes sense that they don't go into huge amounts of detail regarding geopolitical and economic issues affecting the entire country, since a guy and his wife and kids are probably not going to know this stuff nor even be involved in it. That, to me, is sort of the point: this is just a family caught up in a situation way bigger than them that they don't understand, and they're trying to survive. This isn't "Schoolhouse Rocks", it doesn't have to be educational.

"That is, until it comes to murdering Asians, which they do with glee and without any psychological trauma - despite the fact that they're "normal people.""
Again, I haven't seen the movie, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that our protagonists are killing these people in self-defense or to survive?

 

[hentropy]

I think the problem with the movie isn't any one specific thing you can pin it for, but rather a perfect storm of tropes and themes.

Set it in a nameless country? Check.
That nameless country is an amalgamation of many major Asian countries because people don't know anything about Cambodia? Check.
Don't even pretend that it's based on a true story? Check.
Americans shouldn't leave their suburbs or they'll die? Check.
Make all evil foreigners faceless with no characterization? Check.
Focus entirely on the suffering of the whites? Check.

Taken was still sorta crappy because of "Americans shouldn't leave their suburbs" trope, it doesn't matter that everyone in it was white. Argo was able to make their mobs mostly faceless because it was a real situation that took the time to fully inform the audience about what the conflict was about (although it did take some liberties with the truth that weren't really needed). In this case had just one of the tropes been employed it wouldn't have been much of a problem, but the fact that anyone (producer or whoever) looked at that script and thought there were no problems with it shows that 1) either they are fully out of touch or 2) are intentionally employing racist tropes for selfish purposes.

 

[hentropy]

and why do you think they didn't name the country? Because if they had, they'd be giving you more ammunition to complain about how it depicts all people in Thailand or Laos or wherever as terrible.

That's sorta the problem, though. By setting it in a completely fictional country "in Asia" they think they are absolving themselves of racism and having to treat humans with basic human respect, when in reality they're taking it from "Cambodians are monsters" to "all Asian countries are powder kegs, so don't go there or it will happen to you!" If you do set it in Cambodia, you have to go into pesky things like Cambodian culture and history and modern state, and clearly no one was interested in doing that.

Personally I'm just kinda tired of the idea of painting foreigners as being universally bad or less trustworthy than Americans. This can be seen in lesser forms, like "many action movie villains being Europeans for no reason" to "letting your daughters go to France is dooming them to being kidnapped into sex trafficking", despite the fact that it is wildly unrealistic. Neither of these examples have anything to do with race. Hollywood seems relatively unwilling to paint a white American as being a villain, and when they are they are cartoonish sociopaths and/or given a lot of sympathy and moral grayness.

 

[RebornKusabi]

I haven't seen the movie and thereby can't make an honest assessment of it- sorry reviews don't equal an accurate opinion of the subject matter and content of the movie. But my little issue with the movie is that... where does this movie take place again and why Asians? Unless this movie takes place in Burma/Myanmar (which is pointless when there is a China or a Japan), North Korea (which is impossible) or Vietnam (between 1954 to 1975), we haven't had a huge political uprising in an Asian country in quite awhile so while I can't say events like the movie couldn't happen (it has in the past), it was an odd choice. Especially when someone mentioned on the original page that the movie was supposedly gonna uses ISIS instead which if done properly would have side-stepped the whole "white=good, Asians=evil" thing this movie ended up using.

I don't know- I might check this out when it comes to on-demand but for now I am largely ambivalent to movies like this... well, movies in general unless they're horror movies or comic book movies. I mostly play vidja gaemz and read comics when not working.

 

[Paradoxrifts]

Hi! I'm an American, and I've been in an Asian country during a revolution. They tried to burn down the apartment building I was living in with my wife and child, and they tried breaking in. They did successfully make several very threatening phone calls intimating their desire to kill us and take our stuff.

Thanks to Soviet architecture, burning down the building only succeeded in knocking out the electricity and scorching the first floor stores (which we watched them loot). Also, every floor had a locked door and then a locked gate to get through, and they apparently couldn't figure those out (although they tried).

In short, mob mentalities during revolutions tend around rampant violence, blind tribal hatred, and alcohol. The author of this article probably doesn't know jack squat about how terrifying situations like this can be. Probably the closest he's been is watching it on CNN.

Never underestimate the power of the barely educated ignorant masses to destroy your faith in humanity when things go wrong. I'm glad your survived your brush with humanity's darker side.

 

[SecondPrize]

That's some mighty fine virtue signalling right here. Should anyone ask me how good a person you are, I'll be sure to mention how you bravely stood up and called these filmmakers racist.
You want racism on film, check out how the black guy is portrayed in Street Fighter (Sonny Chiba, not video game). That presentation of a character is built upon an idea that black people are inferior. The rioters in this film are rioters first and the actions they take are the actions of rioters, you're the one one bringing their race into it, not the actors, directors or producers.

 

[Shihoudani]

That's some mighty fine virtue signalling right here. Should anyone ask me how good a person you are, I'll be sure to mention how you bravely stood up and called these filmmakers racist.
You want racism on film, check out how the black guy is portrayed in Street Fighter (Sonny Chiba, not video game). That presentation of a character is built upon an idea that black people are inferior. The rioters in this film are rioters first and the actions they take are the actions of rioters, you're the one one bringing their race into it, not the actors, directors or producers.

You sir deserve an award. Political correctness has gotten to the point where if something exists, it has to be racist somehow. Micro aggression is the new fad, wait til you see reviews chastising films for committing micro aggression due to inherent racism or privilege.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

"Why doesn't it focus on the citizens of the country?"
This is like complaining that "The Raid" should have focused entirely on the innocent people in the apartment building and not on the Cops. Likewise, you could basically make this argument for just about any movie ever made that involves people in life or death situations. 'Die Hard' shouldn't have focused on John McClain, it should have focused on those poor people being held hostage! "Tears of the Sun" should have focused on the innocent people being killed, not on the Navy SEALs who can actually fight back! "Dredd" shouldn't have focused on the Judges, it should have focused on the people being held hostage in that building by the criminals!

Actually, there are a few scenes in both Dredd and the Raid that make a point of showing that not everyone in the building are criminals but rather the world they live in is overrun by them in certain areas. It never dwells on these matters since that would kill the pacing but those small asides do help make the world expand and give context. Of course it helps that the major villains in both movies are only a twirly mustache away from being Snidley Whiplash.


I mean if the setting is a coup, then there's a good chance that Owen Wilson's family would find themselves running for their lives alongside many of the locals since radical groups like that adore putting their own to the sword: I mean the Khmer Rouge are estimated to have killed up to 21% of Cambodia's population, never mind any foreign nationals unlucky enough to have been there at the time.

I haven't seen the film so I'll refrain from weighing in on if I think it's racist, but based on what both sides are saying I'd say it just suffers from tunnel vision and focuses on the family to detriment of both context and scale.

 

[Bat Vader]

I think the film makers wanted to use ISIS originally but because having muslims be terrorists is "racist" they used asian country No. 43 instead.

How is that racist though? Are there really people out there that think Muslim is a race? They honestly don't know it just means someone who follows the religion of Islam? I'm curious if people like that actually exist.

 

[sageoftruth]

I seem to be an exception to that filmmaking rule. For me, if you put children in a film, especially if the children are nothing but the load, I'll just be cheering for any outcome that leads to me not having to deal with them for the rest of the movie.

 

[sageoftruth]

Moviebob may have departed, but his spirit lives on.


"Why doesn't it focus on the citizens of the country?"
This is like complaining that "The Raid" should have focused entirely on the innocent people in the apartment building and not on the Cops. Likewise, you could basically make this argument for just about any movie ever made that involves people in life or death situations. 'Die Hard' shouldn't have focused on John McClain, it should have focused on those poor people being held hostage! "Tears of the Sun" should have focused on the innocent people being killed, not on the Navy SEALs who can actually fight back! "Dredd" shouldn't have focused on the Judges, it should have focused on the people being held hostage in that building by the criminals!

Also, there's the simple fact he missed that actual citizens are not fish out of water. A citizen knows how society works, and has friends to go to for help. A foreign tourist is running blind with the only advantage being that he has a safe home to escape to. This movie would be a lot less tense if it was about a citizen.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

My favourite thing about the internet is seeing someone say racism and watching the anti-pc crowd get triggered.

My favorite part is watching people declare basically everything under the sun as racist without putting an iota of critical thinking effort into it.

 

[hentropy]

I think the problem with the movie isn't any one specific thing you can pin it for, but rather a perfect storm of tropes and themes.

Set it in a nameless country? Check.
That nameless country is an amalgamation of many major Asian countries because people don't know anything about Cambodia? Check.
Don't even pretend that it's based on a true story? Check.
Americans shouldn't leave their suburbs or they'll die? Check.
Make all evil foreigners faceless with no characterization? Check.
Focus entirely on the suffering of the whites? Check.

Taken was still sorta crappy because of "Americans shouldn't leave their suburbs" trope, it doesn't matter that everyone in it was white. Argo was able to make their mobs mostly faceless because it was a real situation that took the time to fully inform the audience about what the conflict was about (although it did take some liberties with the truth that weren't really needed). In this case had just one of the tropes been employed it wouldn't have been much of a problem, but the fact that anyone (producer or whoever) looked at that script and thought there were no problems with it shows that 1) either they are fully out of touch or 2) are intentionally employing racist tropes for selfish purposes.

Taken was a damn good film, I don't see how the film was implying that americans should "never leave the suburbs" or that it was "making all foreigners faceless" or "focusing entirely on the suffering of the whites", also you're very naive if you actually believe that the scriptwriters were "implying racist tropes for selfish purposes".

I never said Taken hit all the points above, only No Escape did that. However, I still hear people citing Taken or some other movie as a proof that you "shouldn't go to Europe" and other BS, it may be idiots but there are a lot of those. Taken could have very easily been set in the US, and it would have been more realistic and believable for it. Kidnappers going to the most touristy part of Paris to kidnap two American nationals and then getting away with it (aside from Liam Neeson of course) is one of the most stupid and unbelievable movie plots I've encountered. Europe does have a problem with sex trafficking (as does the US), but it's not tourists being abducted, it's off-the-grid eastern Europeans being trafficked through western Europe to work in the sex trade. Paris is one of the safest cities for tourists to visit, likely much safer than any major American city.

Is it a good action movie? Sure, but its premise is so repulsive that it just stinks up the whole movie. And unlike No Escape, few people at the time it came out criticized it, because that's how deeply ingrained "Foreign = Bad" is in our collective psyche.

 

[Fox12]

This reminds me of an excellent, little known Spielberg film called Empire of the Sun, about an English family getting caught up in the Japanese invasion of China. It was an interesting look at poverty, chaos, internment camps, and how the Chinese and Japanese viewed the conflict. It had a white British kid as the protagonist, but it did a good job of humanizing all the groups involved. There was a particularly interesting scene where their house is being looted, and the kids maid slaps him in the face when he asks her for assistance. I would highly reccomend it, if you want to see this done right.

I thought Argo was interesting as well, since they at least try to explain the Iranian situation.

This is a disappointment, I was hoping this would be a thought provoking film.

 

[maninahat]

Ok guys, question time:

Why didn't Black Hawk Down get flamed like this movie is getting? Is it purely because it came out when political correctness was just starting to appear, or did it portray the blight of the horde of foreigners better than No Escape did?

From what I remember of Black Hawk Down, it did have some moments of humanization, but that made up 2% of them movie at the most; 80% was just American soldiers mowing down hordes of Somalis, which was the point of the movie, but that obviously doesn't justify anything.

That's an interesting question.

I would say there are several caveats that make it bite less:

1) Black Hawk Down is from the perspective of soldiers, who's primary interaction with the locals is going involve shooting them from a safe distance - that makes it easier to not show the Somalian's faces.
2) It is explicitly based on a true story, of which the most detailed accounts presumably come from US soldiers rather than the insurgents. Faithfulness to these accounts could partly justify the lack of Somalian characterization. No Escape, despite its obvious real life influences, is a fictional movie that doesn't have to stick to such a restricted accounts.

That said, I can easily see why people can be critical of Black Hawk Down, both in the movie and the real life debacle. The twenty or so Americans killed is depicted as a total tragedy, whereas the thousands of Somalians killed are a statistic at the end - a statistic which pro-military types might even be proud of, to show how deadly and courageous the Rangers were against such odds, as opposed to yet another atrocity in one of the most unstable and poorest countries in the world. A couple of Somalians get humanized in the movie...a couple...it is still an unbelievably one sided look at the conflict and a case of Hollywood treating white Americans as implicitly more valuable than other races and nations.

 

[Loonyyy]

Ok guys, question time:

Why didn't Black Hawk Down get flamed like this movie is getting? Is it purely because it came out when political correctness was just starting to appear, or did it portray the blight of the horde of foreigners better than No Escape did?

From what I remember of Black Hawk Down, it did have some moments of humanization, but that made up 2% of them movie at the most; 80% was just American soldiers mowing down hordes of Somalis, which was the point of the movie, but that obviously doesn't justify anything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hawk_Down_(film)

Because it did.

It got slammed by the New York Times in the same manner. It got slammed by one of the actors. It got called out by Entertainment Weekly and the Philadelphia Weekly, it got called out by Somali nationals, it got called out by one of the faction leaders who appeared in the film, Somalians tend to think little of the Americans, and in viewings in Somalia, cheer when Americans are shot, a Navy Seal criticized the accuracy, Malaysian officials complained that the contribution of the Malaysian military was erased, as did a Pakistani general who later became the Pakistani President.

Notably, none of these people are enforcers of your vaunted "Political Correctness", nor SJWs. They're a mix of critics, world leaders, members and leaders of the military, and the foreign peoples themselves.

It's the most basic of research. It's in the wikipedia article. Before levelling this claim, do your due diligence.
EDIT:

snip

You are engaging with a fantasy, constructed from wholecloth. It's available in the most basic source, and if you search the net, you can see more results that didn't make publications of merit.