True American Heroes

The American view on heroism has an impact on the world.Who are the American heroes? Who used to be the American heroes.

The American popular culture is so strong, that it is bound affect all of us. In Hollywood movies, the hero most often depicted used to be the cowboy. The cowboy fought against the cattle barons and rich land owners, who would abuse their power to bend the law in favour of their own interrests, to make them ever more richer on the expense of others, to protect their wayward and less talented sons, and they used hired gunmen, and wild cowboys to exact their will upon some happless little town in the middle of nowhere.

A nother type of an American hero is the superhero. A musclebound superhuman wearing tights who again stands in the way of super criminals who are motivated by greed, for both money and power.

The third type of a hero is the soldier. Fighting overseas for democracy, against nazism or communism, or more and more often for a cause they do not seem to grasp. For the politician who openly admits in the public, that the wars are fought to “protect the interrests of USA abroad.” That is to say, the capitalist interrests of faceless corporations, that want to exert their possibilities to exploit the natural resources of some poor third world country. Ultimately the soldier is fighting to survive and to defend his most nearest mates. His squad members – brothers in arms.

The cowboy has almost disappeared from the cinematic production, altough he still casts a long shadow in the stereotypical ideal of heroism. It is remarkable, that when we are talking about such a small group of people who were active for only a few decades in the end of the 19th century in such a limited arena as the so called “wild west” used to be. It is also remarkable how the main opponent of the poor, free cowboy is the capitalist. The capitalist for whom the modern state of US has been built for. How the interrests of the capitalist are almost sacred to the notion of freedom in the US today, when all the stories told to modern generations are about how bad things went in the “wild west” because the only thing standing in between the arbitrary abuse of power of the rich capitalist was a random gunman, or a cowboy. How civilization was so fragile, that if the sheriff of the small town had to face the capitalist and his gang, most of the abused, but armed citizens of the town would not stand with the law. Am I the only one who finds that there is a contradiction in play between these ideals?

The ever more popular superheros, who have made their debute from comic books to film decades ago are for ever dressed in tights. The more modern films try to make the tights from leather, or some other more fashionable/sexier material than the underalls the original comic book heroes used to wear, but still their clothing is body tight. The heroes are dressed up in this way, while the average US man would not at any cost wear “speedos” or what we in Europe call swimming trousers. Why is it that the culture, that expects men to wear as loose fitting garments even when swimming, as some sort of male burkhas, admires and has for generations admired heroes that wear tights?

Americans are all about winning. It seems, that their society is built on the idea, that anybody may become the winner and those who fall from the grid are losers and somehow deserve what has befallen them. The war movies have for decades been about the “heroic” survival stories of the American soldier. As if the Vietnamese, Somali, Afghan, or Iraqi soldiers fighting against them did not go through at least as much hell. The modern US soldier on the film is running for his life in some third world country the US has invaded. The films depict the US soldiers always killing bunches of their enemies (expanding from the original rapports of few dozen into hundreds before they reach the film version), all of whom are for some reason running towards the US Navy Seals, Delta Force or what ever elite unit as if they were trying to come to hit the US dudes with their Kalashnikov rifles. It is a proper rifle and deserves to be depicted more as a shooting weapon, than an improvised hitting implement. The shooting looks as realistic as something from a video game, but the stories, the real told stories behind the scriptwriting telltale of a different world. A world where the US soldier fails his mission, his helicopters are shot down again and again (it is a method of transportation, that should not be used closer than 2km from any armed, organized and determined enemy), he gets no support from his own artillery, or airsupport even if his army has a total airdominance over the battle field. When the airsupport finally comes it is typically off target to hurt the US soldiers more than the enemy. In the end, these military stories are realisitic in the way the US fights it’s wars and in who they face. From religious, or nationalistic fanatics, to the true patriots defending their country from the US imperialism, to some poor bastards who had been rallied to defend some dictator, who used to be the friend of the US as long as he sold the natural resources of his country for cheap to the US capitalist, but when he got greedy he was punished by sending the world’s most expensive army to punish him. The US army is the one military, that sends their diver unit (Navy SEALs) to mountains. Why? Have these men not have been trained specifically to fight on sea and near other bodies of open water? Does that very big army not have anybody specifically trained for moutainous terrain. Such as landlocked Afghanishtan, or are they so ignorant in the pentagon, they did not know this?

The modern stories of the US soldiers in combat have one frequently repeating tendency to them, especially if they are based on true stories. The happless soldiers are depicted as heroic survivors against impossible odds, but what really happens, that they are continously saved by some local villagers, local ambulance crews, or by some UN soldiers with (though less expensive) obviously better equipment and working relations and trust of the population of the third world country in any particular story.

I dare to make the claim that this sort of culture of heroism, provides for the world that we live in today. For better, or worse.

All of these heroes use violence as their main method to resolve their problem. The true heroes of this world who save lives by the power of their words are not often depicted and perhaps rightly so. Perhaps a culture of violence does not create much heroes like that.

 

 

 

I Can Not Believe…

“I can not believe I am still fighting this same s#it.” This was a sign I recently saw in a demonstration against Neo-Nazies. I Think it must have been the sentiment of Luke Skywalker at some point when the First Order appeared.

I like both fantasy and sci-fi. To me Star Wars has always represented the first category. It has absolutely no science element to it, so it is space fantasy, or space opera, if you please. When one has overcome the noise space ships make in the void, one has gone beyond any annoyment about real physics in the suspension of disbelief within the movie.

Imperial stormtroopers

I loved the Rogue One. Even despite the rubbery CGI faces of particular characters, it was the best Star Wars has offered as a real movie. The story is the most important element in any movie or other method of telling stories. I liked episodes I,II and III and the second in the original trilogy Empire Strikes Back has been my favourite of the entire series for ages. The new trilogy VII and VIII have been made professionally and offer good entertainment, but in my opinion, the story (and their individual stories) are lacking. The battle and combat scenes are simply toooo long. They lose drama in action. There are interresting new characters, but the backround story makes me feel tired. Because – as in the real world – my sensation is: “Why do I still have to fight this same nonsense?” Have you ever felt it? It might be realistic, for the old characters to have to fight the remnants of the evil Galactic Empire, but it is just sad, that it seems like the rebellion did not achieve much anything after the Emperor died and the Empire fell…

The opression of the system seems not to have gone away with their victory at Endor in episode VI. I hope there will be some sort of Star Wars Story set between the episodes VI and VII to paint a broader picture and explain why everything went so wrong for the Rebellion movement and why they were unable to re-establish the Galactic Republic, or some similar and better means of government. Or perhaps the reasons for the failure of the Rebellion are right in front of all of us viewers. Their system even before the fall of the Old Republic was thoroughly corrupt. Robots are a slave class with obvious sentient minds and real enough emotions (look at C-3PO), and even all the “good guys” in the stories own robot slaves. In the fringens and peripheries of the Galaxy crime lords rule is not disputed even by the Jedi order. Is that not the reason why such a character as Darth Vader emerges? The avenging slave is one of the most ancient story lines in the world.

Crom!

Darth Vader is in many ways the very same character as Conan the Barbarian, or ancient character of Kullervo from the Finnish national epic Kalevala. All three are men who have suffered the greed of others and been enslaved as children. They all have a revenge to be achieved and after it has been fulfilled a new situation where they have to choose what to do with their lives and to re-invent themselves when their sole motivation and driving force has been depleted.

Conan decides to move on and live on and not to ponder what has passed. Kullervo, after a discussion with his sword, that blames him for becoming the same as those who ruined his own life, takes his own life. Darth Vader, in many senses is the most moral of the three. At least he makes a moral choise to make things right. He decides to stop the evil that led to his tragedy, but alas, he fails miserably, as in his quest for power to stop evil and harm, he is led to a path to do the same and perhaps even worse evil by vague promises of immortality for his loved ones. He loses his humanity in his desperation of losing the few people he loves. He is offered an impossible bargain of evil deeds to save his loved ones.  In the end he redeems himself, as he finally kills the Emperor, who abused Darth as a tool, simply out of hunger for power for the sake of power, not to stop evil.

These are just stories, but if one looks at the world, it is full of good meaning people, who have lost their humanity because of their desperation. People who accept and even engage in all sorts of atrocities, because they have been told they and their loved ones will be saved from, powerty, destitution, death, or fates worse, like burning in a fiery lake for all eternity,  simply by signing in to sick ideologies and divinities with less than suspicious morals.

 

Robin Hood Once Again

Robin Hood is one of the legendary symbols for fight against oppression. A famous and popular symbol of the little people fighting against the greed of the mighty. The story has had many, many film adaptations along the years. Every filmmaker gives their own interpretation of the legend. As it is legend and not an historical story, it is quite malleable, without any good reason to tell people, that is not how it actually went.

Exept, that while art owes nothing to history as such, when a legend is set in historical backround, history is often distorted totally out of proportion when historicity is not an issue interresting to the storyteller. In the 1960’s there was a time where a western movie telling a story about cowboys had a certain look. None of it looked remotely like the 19th century in wich the stories were set. Both men and women had their hair and makeup made according to the latest fashion of the release date of the film and much of what they wore followed the same logic. Infact, one could say, there was a genre of western fantasy and the expectations of the audiences echoed suit. Then some Italian dudes made their own westerns, and because they were poor, they could not afford all the gimmicks and fashions of the Bonanza-style western fantasy and they had a vision of gritty, but realistic poor west. The basic story was always the same, not much different from Robin Hood, where the poor man has to fight for his rights against the magnate. After that all the western movies made before, turned into total camp. The fantasy version of old west, was suddenly percieved as it was – a bit silly.

Now me, I expect, that some day a scriptwriter, a director and a producer will see this opportunity to do to the film industry what the spaghetti westerns did to the western movies in regard to medieval and for example viking-age stories. There have been attempts to make something authentic, such as for example the film Being Human (starring Robin Williams), but as of yet, none of them has prevailed the genre. The day someone does this to the Biblical movie genre, will be a day to remember, but alas – I do not expect that to change anything, because the major audiences of that particular genre are so invested and indoctrinated, that they could not possibly see the difference between an authentic version of what may have happened in comparrison to the fantasy, because to them the fantasy versions are part of their identity. Even though, the fantasy in Biblical stories is quite fansy indeed.

My favourite filmatisation of Robin Hood remains the 1980’s TV series Robin of Sherwood. This even despite the occasional silly bursts of nationalistic nonsense. Though low on budget, they at least tried to make it look like it actually could have happened during the reign of John Lackland in the turn of 12th and 13th centuries. What they achieved was far too often only showing the time of the making of the film. Yet, at least they tried, wich is more than can be said about most high budget movies or TV adaptations of the story. My favourite version too had some mythical elements to it, but at least during the first two seasons, the idea was much, that some events seemed supernatural to the characters who lived in a superstitious culture and we modern viewers were only led to their perception of the situation, rather than that these were supposed to seem like supernatural to us. The characters were well built and grew during the series and my personal favourit still remains the frustrated bureaucrate the sheriff of Nottingham as portrayed by Nicholas Grace.

Well, I was a kid and every generation seems to get their own Robin Hood. I guess the story remains popular as long as people can see the injustice in the abuse of power and the poor man forced to fight it. Just as in the western movies. That sort of injustice has not disappeared from the world, not by a long shot, but do we get many movies about modern day Robin Hoods taking a stand against it?

I am affraid, that most filmatisations from Errol Flynn to Prince of Thieves, through Robin Hood (starring Russel Crowe), to the new movie (of wich I have not yet seen more than the teaser) are so fantastic – and more fantastic by the number- that they have a tendency to turn the historical events behind the legend into a blurr in the minds of the greater audiences. That ultimately as a result of such medievalist fantasy the line between fantasy and history gets more and more bogged. That people will be having more difficulty to understand what is known about history and what is mere legend. Or that the real history actually took place and that we have something to learn from it.

 

 

Death & Taxes

Most people do not think about death too much, because it is an unpleasant thought. Many people have been led by superstitious cultural heritage to tell themselves they or their loved ones are not going to die at all, but continue in some sort of pelasant paradise after their bodies die out. Some people have managed to provide themselves an income by providing a service of rituals that perpetuate this baseless, but pleasant notion. There are even a few, that get some form of sick satisfaction from the idea that bad people will suffer for an eternity in this assumed afterlife. No surprice the definition for the bad people is typically tribally moralistic, that is, people who are not part of the “tribe”, or “club” that has certain tenets and rituals.

Death is inevitable, but many a cultural movement, that are built around the blatantly obvious form of wishfull thinking, that it is not and there is some form of afterlife, have managed to make themselves exempted from being taxed. Some of them even get support from other taxpayers and indeed they all collect a form of taxes themselves to provide the income to their ritual experts. This is a widely accepted situation in almost any given society. Why?

A couple of years back here in Finland the government decided to stop collecting fees for owning a TV-set and provide funding for the national radio and TV broadcasting network YLE (much like the BBC in Britain) by taxes instead of the previous obsolete method of collecting money. The new tax was named the YLE-tax according to the name of the national and government owned broadcasting company. Now the vice president of the youth section of the (True) Finns party Aleksi Hernesniemi, has launched a citizen campaign to stop the YLE-tax. This is possible through a nother new law we have, wich is that if you can collect 50 000 names to support an initiative, the parliament has to have a discussion about the matter. This is how our new marriage equality laws for example were finally led to the parliament vote.

The main complaint against the YLE-tax is about it being unfair, as it is a network under political guidance. Hernesniemi complains also about the bad quality of the programmes as provided by YLE channels. It is sometimes very difficult to fathom how stupid people are. The president of the political guidance for YLE has been for almost a year a member of the same party as Mr. Hernesniemi. Is he now complaining against his fellow party member, or what? To what is he comparing the quality of the programmes as sent by YLE? One can argue, that the newest series by HBO, that the YLE keeps sending are not quality programme, but that is a rather subjective view at best and they do get high ratings. YLE sends out a wide range of movies, other entertainment and documentaries from around the globe and it provides those online to be watched at the convinience of the audience. I have watched a variety of commercial channels, and none can compare with quality, or wider selecltion to that as sent by YLE. Yes, it is true, that YLE does not produce Big-Brother type of social porn, send out ridiculous “documentaries” such as produced by for example the History channel and that their news are “biased”, to research the facts behind the news stories before airing them out, instead of spouting out racist hatred. Like some small time private tabloids, that are not even members of the journalistic unions have done. That can hardly be called partisan bias, even though the party of Mr. Hernesniemi has based much of it’s xenophobic populism on such.

I for one would much rather see news from a company led by constitutional and journalistic principles and a democratically chosen political guidance to regulate that those principles are held, than by newscompanies led by the popular vote of the viewer masses, advertising sponsors and the preferances of billionare owners. In any case , it can not be argued, that one or the other was any cheaper to me. If anything the commercial channel is prone to be more expensive, because not only does it need the money to run it, but it must also provide for winnigs of the owners. I either pay for the service through some form of taxes, or by the extra cost in products for advertising them.

So, indeed there are ways to awoid taxes, even if there are no ways to awoid death. However, it should be observed how much it is going to cost us, to awoid the taxes.

 

Armour in Movies

Have you ever watched a movie with expensive cars in it, or a very plausible space ship interior? Ever wondered what it cost to the film makers to have the expensive car in the film being driven around, abused and even wrecked, or the space ship interior being build? Have you ever seen a movie set in the middle ages with an even remotely plausible set of armour in it? I am not talking about Game of Thrones, or the Lord of the Rings as accurate descriptions of medieval history. But movies set on some particular date from actual history. I have seen some, that could pass, if one was not very knowledged in medieval armour and with the understandable suspense of disbelief in any movies. But most seem to have these terrible pieces of armour bought from the sale at the cheapest costume shop in the internet, and all the medieval people including the armoured knights and men-at-arms seem like they woke up in a dump, wearing rags and scrap metal attached to leather around their bodies. Why? Are the production values for medieval movies lesser than any other sort of movies?

Here is a short film, about the mobility of armour, with a couple of very good reproductions of accurately brightly polished 15th century armour and a couple of the most simple of historical techniques actually found in contemporary sources. Notice also how they demonstrate the fact, that hitting the armour with a sword is a wasted effort:

Any number of sports cars in movies are a lot more expensive than a good quality reproduction of a suit of armour is – that one can find from the markets these days. Why is it then, that movie makers do not invest in this, even when they are making a movie about medieval times with seemingly big budget? Because the audience does not know what an armour should look like? Because the movie makers and the audience expect medieval times to be dark, damp, ragged and dirty? I have no idea what the interior of a future space ship should look like. Do you? But it is obvious, that when the movie makers want the audience to have that particular suspense of disbelief to set in instinctively, they put a lot of effort and money into making the set seem plausible, and not just something they found from a garbage dump.

Perhaps, the problem is, that people do expect certain things from a sports car, space ship interior, and alas an armour in a movie. That previous movies have set the example, that forms much more so, than the actual reality, what to expect. Like the fact, that in movies a car is supposed to explode when it plunges from the road? Or a space ship interior is supposed to have the captain’s seat in the middle of the room? Armour of the bad guys is supposed to be made out of riveted black leather?

The other reason might – just might – be, that the film makers, directors, art directors, costumers and all, have no clue as to what armour really looked like and any remotely sword shaped piece of scrap metal, passes as an actual sword. It seems also, that they have no real interrest to even bother to find out. But why not? Would not a film about fast cars be more applauded, if it did not have the typical movie mistakes, like bursting into flame when all the wheels are off ground? Or a space ship interior presented as no-one had seen one before, for example the captain’s seat in the roof upside down, or something? After all, in space there is no gravity to hold the crew on some common floor and digital graphics can work wonders. What about a totally new concept of making a medieval movie and finding out what the alledged period really looked like and investing in better quality of armour, weapons, and fight coreographs who actually know something about medieval fencing? Why would that be too hard? These items and people are around. If you ever need any and do not know how to find them, contact me.

I do realize that the purpose of films is to satisfy the public at large, who do not know how easily a motorcar explodes. Who expect a space ship interior to be just so as in Star Trek and countless films after it first appeared. Who think they “know”, that the medieval armour is clumsy, bulky and dull, and fights look exactly like the mad hacking, or kung fu jumps in their video games. However, would it not serve the movie, as a piece of art work to stand out from the mass, to promote it widely in the eyes of people who are actually interrested in the subject, be it cars, space ships, or medieval times, that the enthusiasts of the subject would notice the effort to quality? Especially these days, when word gets around in the social media and as such it can serve as advertisment and promote the sale of tickets. Would it not ultimately even serve the egoes of the directors and others responsible, that they actually achieved quality?

I for one am quite sure, that if the general public would even once see a medieval movie, with some high quality reproduction armour and nifty fencing moves taken straigth from the actual medieval fencing manuals, even the most ignorant of the audience would be impressed. It might go against some of their pre-set biases, but seeing is believing, and it might be a box office hit as well. Well, if the film was any good otherwise, anyway…

Do you have an example of a good medieval movie in wich the armour and/or fighting was plausible?

 

Center of the Universe

Some people have told me, that the medieval people knew, that the earth we are standing on is a sphere. This can be traced down, for example, from some medieval illustrations in which the planet is depicted as round. The interresting question is, who in the medieval times was aware of this? Was it common knowledge among the vast masses of people, or was it only privy knowledge of the University professors who knew about the Ptolemic model of the Universe? What was their understanding of it?

I have also been told, that Galileo Galilei was NOT martyred for science, because the medieval church was NOT opposed to science. Yes I know, put like this, it sounds a bit weird and it is a bit of a simplification of the idea, but essentially what I have been told to think. Well, he was not burned on the stake, because he recanted his statements, so I guess it must be so. Is it? The interresting question here is, who in modern times even knows why poor Galileo was accused of herecy? Most people have heard his name…

Galileo Galilei was accused of herecy because of his heliocentric views in 1633. He recanted, and was not sentenced.  Eventually heliocentricity was lifted from the cencorship list of the Catholic church in 1758 (only some hundred years after the trial, but who is counting) and allready in 1992 (less than 400 years after the trial) the pope John Paul II apologized the treatment of Galileo!!! Besides, today we know, that Galileo was indeed wrong – The sun is not the center of the universe.

According to a couple of recent studies 66% of people in Europe and 74% in the US are aware that the earth revolves around the sun. In these studies it was also revealed that only 66% of Europeans and some 48% of US population were aware, that human beings have evolved from other animal species. Or to be more precise, these are the persentages of people who got it right when asked. This essentially means that a good part of them only managed to guess right. While all the people who got it wrong obviously did not know these elementary scientific facts, there is a group of people who also have little, or no clue, but managed to make the right guess. Even accepting that these studies do not tell the entire story, I find this alarming. Do you?

Have you ever wondered about sci-fi movies where the film makers obviously could not understand the difference between a galaxy and a solar system? Or why on earth do the alien species from other planets look like humans with rubber masks on? Well, call me a geek, but I have. No longer do I have to wonder such blatant idiocies. If almost half of the audiences even here in the western world have no clue wether the earth revolves around the sun, or that human beings are animals evolved under specific conditions from other species on this particular planet, then none of such stupid and illogical things should disturb them a bit. And after all it is all just entertainment.

The really frightening thing is, that these are more or less democratic countries where we, the adult population are all voters. When we are voting for candidates do we understand what sort of leaders we are choosing? If the basic understanding of science is this poor, the choises made can be really bad. It is paradoxical how far our science has taken the limits of human information and how little of it the common man understands.

Our position in the universe, or our origins as a species may seem like trivial things in modern politics, but when people are choosing representatives to make decisions about things like nuclear power, military funding, climate change, euthanasia, abortion, or any other decision involving ethics and science, then what kind of choises will be made and on what grounds? Their personal beliefs in their preferred superstition (read religion)? Can we expect the politicians to make informed choises based on known facts, if they are chosen by and representing people who have no clue of the most basic facts?

How important is this lack of information and understanding of it? As whith any choises we have to make,  whith better information better choises are made. Correct?

*The research about European knowledge was an Eurobarometer from 2005 and the research about US science knowledge was a study by the National Science Foundation on Public Attitudes and Understanding 2012.

 

Mannerheim

Couple of weeks ago the Finnish national broadcasting company YLE released a film called “Suomen Marsalkka Mannerheim” or The Finnish Marshall Mannerheim. It was made in Kenya by local moviemakers there in the style they make films. Even before it was released it roused a terrible outrage.

What were the people outraged about? Most people were outraged not even having seen the film and most of them openly declared that it was sacriligious to portray Mannerheim as a black man. They actually seemed to think that Mannerheim is such a holy character to the Finnish people he should not be made fun of. And the fact that the Kenyan actor was a black man was totally unhistorical. Well, it is. Is it not? However, I do not remember any outrage from previous film depictions of Mannerheim speaking Finnish, when that is as much unhistorical. The man could hardly read Finnish from paper…

Mannerheim was born into a Swedish speaking aristocratic family and advanced his military career in Imperial Russia as far as the personal bodyguard of the Russian empress, where the court spoke mostly in French.  So he was fluent in Swedish, Russian and French, but did not understand a word of Finnish. The Hollywood film industry continuously takes liberties in making characters of non Anglo-Saxon cultures represent their own languages by these outrageously ridiculous accents. Perhaps it is because they are marketing their products to a largely illiterate audience, but in Finland we are accustomed to films being subtiteled. Hence, there is no other motivation to make Mannerheim to speak Finnish in any Finnish made film, than to unashamedly lie to the audience. To bolster the icon of Mannerheim as an all-Finnish hero. Wich is much more devious, than presenting him as a black man. Is it not?

Wich is a worse twist of historical facts? The one where it is obvious to all the audiences, that what you see is not true, or the one where we are not aware as an audience, that we are lied to?

Many people were so outraged by the fact that a black man would portray Mannerheim, that they declared they would not watch the film and that they thought it was an insult to the Finnish veterans. It seems that what ever a conservative person wants to attack in Finnish culture, he/she draws on the veterans as if they were some form of conservative icons themselves. But the veterans are just humans who sacrificed a lot and most of them not by their own choise. What they sacrificed for, was not the divine person of Mannerheim, but for the ideal of freedom. That in Finland a person may decide for her/his own life and that we as a collective sovereign nation would not be a part of imperialistic Soviet Union where the person of Mr. Stalin had grown into a cult. I would go as far as to say a religion in it’s own right. That vision of freedom is completely opposite to what the cult of Mannerheim seems to represent to some conservative Finns today.

It is tragicomic, that when the great book about the Finns in WWII by Väinö Linna “The Unknown Soldier”  was printed a decade after the war had ended, the conservatives in those days declared loudly, that they would never read it, because it was a shamefull and did not do justice to the valour of the veterans. Like they had an inner knowledge what the book was about even before they had read it. Today the Finnish conservatives of our own time eagerly watch the film version of this book on every Finnish independence day from YLE. The film has become a part of Finnish identity, though it tells of events that happened over 70 years ago.

After having watched the Kenyan version of the Finnish Marshall Mannerheim, I would say it was a fairly good film made with limited budget. It actually goes to show, how a simple but good story carries through even a small scale film. Movies do not have to be about bigger and bigger explosions and more and more famous actors. It was a good depiction of a man behind a legend. It was set in a completely different environment and culture, and it revealed how much we humans are similar. How often it is that when a career makes a person great he/she has had to sacrifice a lot of personal happiness on that altar, and how even a great leader may sidestep and even how easily we may fall in love, when we did not mean to. It was a good movie and I do recommend it.

It is a great angle to portray a man behind the legend rather than the legend. Perhaps it took as much to remove Mannerheim all toghether from the historical timeframe and surrounding culture to show him as a human being rather than a historical character, or an icon to us Finns.

The film was a provocation, no doubt. The emotions people presented were almost religious when they felt their holy icon had been desacrated, but I am happy to say our secular culture does not leave much room for violent demonstrations and perhaps the people who actually were outraged by this were mostly such a minority, that even if they would have had the energy to raise their butts from besides their computers to go out and demonstrate their frustration, it would have been a small group of people indeed. On the other hand,  a lot of people were annoyed by it. Not just because it revealed some hidden racism in our culture, but because it challenged a popular image of history for a lot of people. And even though here in Finland the number of openly racistic idiots is small, the number of people who actually know anything about Mannerheim as a person is very small indeed. People who think they are smart, like for example the movie critics, were disappointed at the film. Many of them wrote that the film should have revealed more of Mannerheims personal life and that it should have had more allegories in it. While most of the open racists expressed their discontent at the fact that YLE had spent money on a film where a black man acts the part of Mannerheim, the professional movie critics were annoyed, that no more money had been spent to make it a big production. I think most of their annoyance came from realizing how little they knew about Mannerheim, but as they could not openly present that, they decided to make complaints about the film not revealing more. As if they knew all about the personal life of the main character beforehand. And they propably did look it up, when the evening press made a fuss about the film – from wikipedia.

Mannerheim is one of those historical characters whose statue stands on shelves in every school here in Finland and his role as a unificator of the Finnish people under foreign agression during the winter war is a widely known image. However, that is not the whole truth. There is the dirty history of him having been one of the Imperial Russian generals sent to Poland to subjucate the Polish people before WWI and then the bloody aftermath of the Finnish civil war where he, as the commander of the winning side, was personally responsible of the concentration camps where literally thousands of Finns were exterminated. It was an obvious war crime.

Mannerheim was a great man. No doubt about that. He was a couple of times in a position to grab power and become a dictator of Finland, but he chose not to. Perhaps, to the retired Imperial Russian general, the idea of being a petty dictator of small Finland was ridiculous. Though he was elected to be the greatest Finn ever, few years ago in a TV gameshow, he was also a candidate for precidency once and lost the elections. He was not loved by his contemporaries as much as he is by the conservatives of today.

Why is it, that people have this need to worship these icons? That they need to believe to the purity of the cause and actions of some particular person? How easily a simple human being who did something extraordinary is lifted to divinity? To such extent, that reminding that person of having had human frailty is seen as blasphemous? Howcome people are so eager to feel one with their heroes, that if these characters are presented as speaking the same language as their worshippers, when they actually did not, that is not seen as distorting history, but right away if they are represented by the wrong skin colour that is seen as an outrage? Why would the actions and causes of these heroes be seen as any less, if we see them just as humans, that they were? And not as some divine entities?

 

Red Dawn

I think John Milius is one of the most underrated directors ever. He has the most epic understanding of dramatics. In his movies the nature and sorroundings are a character speaking loudly from the backround. Some of his work is disturbing, but also genuinly challenging the audience. Milius is a contraversial character and to my knowledge openly admits that.

The movie Red Dawn is just all about that lust. If you have not seen the movie, you are now hereby warned that I am going to tell many things about the film. I think since it is some thirty years of the release of the film, it is quite all right to analyze it now a bit deeper.

The plot is not all that complex. It tells a tale of bunch of youths who live their own lives when suddenly their country and their lives are invaded by foreign military might. The enemy has superior strength and cunning. The desparate attempts to counter the onslaught are repelled easily. In the chaos and turmoil the kids suddenly end up in a situation where they are the only ones who have not been supressed into obidience, and they start their struggle of guerilla warfare against the overwhelming enemy.

In my opinion the Red Dawn is a film that everybody in the world should see. Especially it should be seen by the US Americans. Maybe in retrospect it cuould make them think about the concept of freedom they hold so dear. Even a person equipped with the minimal skill of emphathy, should from this movie have a glimpse of the reality so many people have had to face around the globe, when an invader has come a’ knocking. That invader has been (before this movie and after it) most often the Americans and their allies.

The Russians, Cubans and the Nicaraguans in this film have been portrayed not as faceless monsters, but as human individuals that also have their own lives and motives. One of their leaders even expresses his frustration for occupying the US, for as long as he was fighting the US world domination, in guerilla action he felt he had just cause, but now since he has become the invader, he no longer felt the justification to take the fight to the Americans. And that is what it is all about. The invaders in this movie could have easily have expressed their content at the prospect of taking the US down, as it obviously was harbouring weapons of mass destruction, and trained terror tactics to troops that wouldattack and sabotage such countries like Cuba and Nigaragua. But for some reason the movie makers made them not do that. Why not? Were these invaders actually portraying higher morals in comparrison to actual US foreign and military policies.

One could easily say that the invaders gathered free gun toti’n Americans to concentration camps and that the US has never done that where ever they have invaded. But that would be blatant a lie. Where the US has ever invaded, the right to bear arms has been the first one the locals have lost. What is Guantanamo prison, if not a concentration camp? What happened at Abu Ghraib? It is sanctimonious to claim that other empires have political prisoners, but that the US has only detained illegal fighters. It is sanctimonious to say other empires use torture, but the US only uses water interrogation and isolation. All of these are in violation to the Geneva convention.

In retrospect there is a very interresting reference in the story when a group of Russian soldiers visit a memorial of a place where the US army massacred native Americans. The Russians of the movie do not refer to it as justification to their invasion, but presents a glimpse into the mind of the director and his sense of history. One could claim it is a fascistic notion, that is revealed in this way, that later when the dust has setteled, the victors of the wars are the ones who controll what ever it was, that was fought over, and who was right or wrong does not matter after a few generations. But it is also a very powerfull way to play with the sense of justice of the audience. Is might really right?

The movie is also much about how the characters grow from blisfull ignorance of youth to adulthood under the most grim circumstances. They come to question the justification of their own actions, wich is the real measure of an adult after all. Some of them are consumed by the war, a few survive to tell the tale, but none is left unscarred. It is clear to them from early on, that after what happened there is no return back to what was before. The story is imaginary, but it is true to so many kids around the globe, where a nother nation has invaded, oppressed, or is extorting  their nations. The father (Harry Dean Stanton) yelling to his sons (Swayze and Sheen), to avenge him, after he has been detained by the invaders on the sole reason he owns a gun, could easily be seen as a Taliban father yelling to his sons who are just about to join the Al Qaida. Could they not? Just replace the baseball caps, with a pakul and there you have it. 

The young actors wich of many later rose to fame like Patric Swayze and Charlie Sheen get to show their talent and they are supported by a number of great older actors like Powers Boothe, Harry Dean Stanton, Ron O’Neal and William Smith.

One has to admire the worksmaship of Milius and his crew, for creating the apocalyptic feeling of an all American small town as war torn battlefield. Even the Russian tanks and helicopters allmost look like real thing. That shows how a movie, no matter how imaginary tale, can be convincing and compelling, if the details have been looked after. Of course there are a lot of typical military fumbles in this type of movie also. The heroes of the movie have to make the difference, so they have to win a number of fights against the odds and for a while the audience is let by the good feeling of just revenge. The built up Russian tanks do not wobble in their tracks when they fire their cannons, because in reality the cannon is just a fiberglass and alumnium tube and the shot is a mock up, but these are minor distracktions. They might eat up the reliability of the story, if the story would not succeed in the end to pass by the necessary flag wawing heroism to the harsh reality of war. Where the good guys are just as woulnerable as the evil henchmen, and where the superior numbers and training finally has meaning, though the high motivation of someone fighting for their own land makes up a lot of what lacks in helicopters and tanks.

The story rolls on like a tank and inevitably the young guerillas are being hunted down. As a final spite they resort to sucide attack. Oh, how that kind of gung-ho charge against the foreigners who think they can come to a nother country to boss around, is seen as such a glorious way to go. But not so by the invaders. To them it is just an act of crazed terror. That dead end of desperation is however the very source from wich terrorists sprout from.

I guess the chance of Russians, Cubans and Nicaraguans invading the US was never really very high. However, that was the athmosphere of the cold for, at least for the common Americans. I doubt if the Russians were ever too worried of American troops suddenly parashooting at the outskirts of some little town by the Urals mountains, but to the Cubans and the Nicaraguans it was, and still is, a real enough threat. Or in other words a “clear and present danger”. The US has sent mercenaries or “freedomfighters” trained and armed by the CIA to both of these countries and only with the patriotism of the soldiers and guerilla fighters of these nations have they managed to repell such attempts and preludes to full scale invasions. After the WWII the US has invaded a dozen countries, and despite the obvious lack of democracy in these countries what have the US and other western countries really brought to these occupied countries by invading? Peace? Stability? Democracy? Well not many of these invasions have been successes. Why? Could it be, that there still is a moral demand in the US that such attacks should be justified, and that in such attacks some form of legal and humane controll should be shown towards the natives? If that is so, why does not the worlds most prominent military might with the loudest demands for justice and democracy give any of its own soldiers or politicians (more notably) to stand trial on the international war tribunal on accusations of war crimes or crimes against humanity?

How does a small country, democratic or not, prevent the US from invading? Easiest way is not to have any raw materials, especially oil, or any kind of geopolitical significance. The second best is to let US corporations strip your country from its natural resources and offer submission by letting US troops to have military access. In other words to let them invade without a fight. The third one is a dark and difficult and requires for your country to have a nuke. After that even the one and only super power has to play ball it would seem…

Before I get too carried away, watch the movie, if you haven’t. And if you have, watch it anyway, and bear in mind that it is not important who is the invader and who is the guerilla. The invader is allways invading.

 

Valhalla Rising

What is it about vikings, that it is a subject of which it seems to be impossible to make a decent movie about? I have seen several, but none I actually liked, or which was even remotely plausible in terms of authenticity. One would think that of this subject there is an abundance of information and many magnificent original stories like the ones in the Sagas. The truth about vikings is much more spectacular than the popular image. Yet, all movies go to support the silly popular image. Why is this?

The good, the bad and the ugly of viking movies: The best viking movies I have ever seen were the Icelandic/Norvegian production “The White Viking” and the Polish movie “Stara Basn”. The former had a good story that related remotely to historical knowledge of how christianity was spread to Norway and Iceland. But it was ambient movie, where costumes, weapons, ships and buildings, looked very primitive in comparrison to what is known from archeology. Maybe it was a result of film budget and not a choise by the film makers. For some reason it is often the case that this subject seems to draw the makers to present a dirty and ragged, or downright primitive appearance of the people of the viking age. The Polish film, was not bad as such. It told the story of how the slavs had to fight cruel opression by the vikings. We have solid information, that this is how the Scandinavians behaved in many countries they moved to like Ireland, England, Prussia and vast forests and steppe of Russia. The fight scenes are lacking and some turns of events are a bit clumsy. However, this is the one movie that actually comes close to being a good movie about vikings. It has the best props and most plausible story. It seems odd, when you think that the Polish film makers could achieve something where the big budgets of Hollywood and Scandinavians whose ancestors the vikings actually are have almost totally failed.

 The worst viking movies have been made by big Hollywood productions. The Vikings was a major production featuring Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis, made in an era, when many such semi-historical movies were launched. It presented the classical barbarian image of vikings, though they had enough of presence of mind not to include the horned helmets (not that I can remember, at least). When the vikings in this movie attack England they did not only cross the sea, but also travelled through time. The English defending the large stone castle (an actual historical castle ruin far too modern for the vikings to attack) are dressed and equipped not like the Anglies and Saxons, but something like knights from the late 13th century. 

While The Vikings was at least trying to have  some resemblance to our knowledge of the vikings, later Hollywood productions have failed this completely. The 13th warrior starts out by a splendid story based on an actual historical source. Antonio Banderas plays the lead role of the actual historical figure of the arab explorer Ahmad Ibn fadlan, who actually made a trip up the river Volga and met Scandinavians there. However, the movie has so many historical errors in how these are depicted that this blog post would not stretch to unbearably long just to list them up, but a couple I simply can not get by whithout a mention are, that the makers thought that vikings had horses bigger than the arabs, plate armour and that the their ships had entire dragons sculpted to their prow. Finally the intriguing story of the actual historical character is not told at all and the action around the movie runs around an imaginary stone age people fighting a war against the vikings. It could have been a decent fantasy movie, but as such it exploits a historical source and gives totally misleading picture of an era.

One of the new Hollywood spectacle movies is the Pathfinder, where a viking raised by native americans defends them against the invading vikings. The vikings depicted in this movie are truly demonic. Propably it was the idea of the film makers to represent them in such a way that it would not leave any questions open for the audience about who are the bad guys in this movie, but also to present them from the perspective of the natives, not as men, but as demons or such. The inhuman appearance of these vikings is achieved by horned helmets, chains hanging from their black leather clothes and black furs. They look like truly tormented individuals. The whole story, even the name of the film has been taken from an older Norvegian film. There is a difference though. The original film tells the story of a saami boy leading finnish agressors who have come to kill, enslave and rob his people to a natural trap by offering himself as a guide. Is it such a difficult thing for the white american male audience to percieve themselves as native americans, that the hero could not be one of the native americans? That the hero had to be a white man and therefore one of the vikings? Or is there a nother reason the hero was not a native american?

The Valhalla Rising is one of the most boring films I have ever seen. All that happens could have been shown in so much less time. There are some beautifull landscapes, but that is about all the film has to offer. Once again the vikings are represented as dirty, ragged barbarians. Maybe the director wanted to achieve a sort of artistic impression, but while the actors propably used a lot of time to rehearse the action scenes, it seems they did none for rowing.

Why is it that when trying to entertain the audience, film makers try to affirm the classical expectations of the audience? Or are they simply trying to affirm their own preassumptions? No doubt that, when men have spent several days in an open tarred boat, they are dirty. For this I can wouch for from personal experience. On the other hand, it is a fact that historical and archeological sources tell that the vikings were in fact rather precise of their personal hygiene and many of them were quite dandy. We know that they used make up for their eyes and grew long hair and this was disapproved of by contemporaries as fashionable fancy. This would be quite astonishing to any film audience. Would it not? I suppose it does not fit in the traditional barbarian image, that vikings actually used brightly coloured wool clothes and not the dark leather and furs usually depicted in movies.

The old Norse sagas are an abundant source of exiting and inspiring stories. Why has no movie been made from those? It seems rather that all movies are made whith the same clues (or no clues at all as whith the Valhalla Rising) which are fitted into any movies wether the subject is vikings or whatever…

 

Conan

Crom!

In the early 20th century some wery interresting fairytales were written. Among these were the adventures of  Conan the barbarian, by Robert E. Howard. Nowadays it is often thought that fairytales are predominantly meant for the children, but is that so? Has it ever been so? Conan the barbarian for one was not by any measure a childrens book, even in its own time. It is best remembered by the eightees-film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, that set a model for a number of mind numbing more or less low budget barbarian movies. The original Conan movie was different to most of the films of this genre, in that it at least tried to follow an actual storyline of a book. Not many people have noticed, but the dramaturgy of the first Conan movie was the work of an aspiring genious of Oliver Stone. The film makers took a collection of shortstories that the Conan originally was based on and concluded a compelling storyline. The film was as epic an adventure as the novels and marvellous music by Basil Poledouris filled the gaps.

We may laugh at the bodybuilder image of the barbarian movies genre, but Conan the Barbarian was a film for the adult audiences and it did treat some of the basic questions of human cultures. If the harsh life Conan faces during the story seems alien to you, be happy. Be also aware how lucky you are, if this is so for you, since war, slavery, genoside and religious demagogues are far from gone from the world even today. I for one must admit that the film affected me, and my adolessen mind at first sight.

The story is classic. The avenging slave, who bears the hope for all oppressed. Conan is not acting to save the oppressed, or to stop the mighty who destroy and enslave nations, but for personal vengeance. A duty he feels for his own lost kin. Yet, it is not a praise to individualism. Without the help of his friends and those who love him, he would have perished before achieving his ultimate goal.

One wery similar story appears in finnish mythology. The story of Kullervo. He is also taken a slave as a boy and grows to be an exeptionally strong man as a slave. When a blacksmith buys him, from his original captor, the smith thinks to have “a slave worth a hundred men”, but nothing he does succeeds, because of the buried hate Kullervo holds for any work done as a slave. He seems to use far too much strength for any work.

In the traditional finnish culture the matron of a peasant household held much power. Perhaps the fact that women even today have actual political power in Finland, is partially derived from our historical tradition. Be it as it may, the blacksmiths wife does not like the new slave, and for a spite plants a stone in his bread, when he is sent to herd the smiths cattle in the forest. The stone breaks Kullervos last line to his childhood memories, as his fathers knife is broken while cutting the bread. Finally he escapes slavery as the cup of torment has been filled, but not before killing the blacksmiths illtempered wife. The smith cries for his loss and swears vengeance in turn. Along the way to freedom and an attempt to rehabilitate himself as a member of society Kullervo seduces a maiden, who is later revealed to be his sister. She commits suicide. Kullervo is almost at a dead end, but he has one more thing to do. He avenges his family and kills his slaver destroying all that man owned, killing all the people who are assosiated to this slaver and burning his village. That leads Kullervo to question his own existance, and as there is no-one else left he speaks to his sword. And the sword answers: “Why would I not drink the blood of a guilty man? Ihave drank the blood of the innocent just as well.” The short conversation leads to a wery finnish ending, Kullervo throws himself to the blade…

Conan the Barbarian does not kill himself. In the film for US audiences he carries the irritating princess he was sent to rescue (somwhere along the way) to the sunrise. It seems european audiences were not believed to fall for such a blatant ending, so the other version ends Conan simply meditating alone on the ruin of the temple of his arch enemy Thulsa Doom (magnificently interpreted by the talented James Earl Jones). Just before the end, when Conan is finally about to kill his opressor, Thulsa questions the cause of Conan by claiming Conan as a person is a product of Thulsas actions and wellcomes him as a son. The words are compelling. This conversation reminds me about the short dialog beween Kullervo and his sword.

Both stories the Conan the Barbarian and Kullervo tell us a simple lesson. The mighty of the world should better learn it before it is too late for them. You may build a perfect cultural  machine of terror and abuse the weak and the meak, but even a one man may make the difference, if the oppression reaches a certain level, it will invoke avengers. So, even if the oppressed masses would not rise, or even if their revolt could be surpressed, there is allways the possibility that one man gifted enough decides to exchange his life for that of the ruler. To choose to die, just to kill the oppressor.

Were Conan and Kullervo terrorists? They fought the system. In the case of the film version of Conan he fights a religious demagogue, who is revered by his followers. To a point that they are ready to make suicide by his order. Is Thulsa Doom not the duly appointed leader of his followers? We are not told the reasons why the Cimmerians (Conans people) were attacked by Thulsa. Maybe they were a troublesome barbaric tribe, that civilized people from the culture of Thulsa were tired of fighting and the attack on the home village of Conan was just a pre-emptive strike or even regarded as self defence. Conan was orphaned, but was he not only the result of collateral damage? He was sent to slavery, but not taken by Thulsa as such. Maybe that was something young Thulsa could not affect, because he could not change the economics of his time. Maybe he was gathering his forces to stop slavery all together, when Conan finally intercepted him. We do not know.

This thing about revenge works also in minor scale and all us common people should remember a person may only be pushed so far. It is heart breaking how easily normal everyday people punish those around them, if they themselves feel bad. We are constantly told, that revenge does not lead to anywhere. This is true in many ways, but as life in general, it is not that black and white. Revenge may serve its purpose. On the positive side it may be the motivator to stop opression and torment. However, we should act to stop these wrongs even if we had no vengeance to motivate us. 

I have heard they are making a new film version of the Conan the Barbarian. Shall the new film have anything worth while to contribute to the legend, or will it be just a copy with some boring and obvious digital effects? The remaking of once popular films seems to be the trend of the day. We live in an era that tries to replicate the past glory. New pop singers are made from people who imitate the succesful artists of the past days, like in the “Idols” series. Medievalists re-enact the romantic vision of an era long past…

If I had my way, they would make a new movie from the only actual full length novel about Conan. “The Hour of the Dragon” or “Conan the Conqueror” tells the story of Conan as an aging king who is once more bound on an adventure to survive and defeat a mighty conspiracy against his rule. It would be magnificent, if Arnold Swarzenegger was starring this film and if the film was made with same piety as the Lord of the Rings movies were made. In my opinion he is actually a wery devoted and talented actor and comedian, even though he has been typecasted as a robot. I have allways thought that this story was the best of the Conan stories anyway, and having the history on screen that the character has, would make it even more believable.