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18 April 2000
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Protest of Racist Film "Rules of Engagement" Scheduled for Washington DC |
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"RULES OF ENGAGEMENT" PROTEST, WASHINGTON
DC: "Rules of Engagement," which is probably the most vicious anti-Arab racist film ever made by a major Hollywood studio, continues to top the box office charts. In its second week of release, it again topped the all-important weekend charts bringing in $10.9 million according to its producer, Paramount Pictures. Protests have taken place in several cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles, and more are scheduled in other cities. If ever there was a film that deserved to be protested, this is it. The director of "Rules of Engagement," William Friedkin, is reportedly negotiating for rights to make a film based on "O Jerusalem," a novel about the 1948 war in Palestine, so it is all the more imperative that we make our view of "Rules of Engagement" clear. If you would like to protest the film, please contact ADC for help, advice or materiel. ADC has created a flyer ADC has created a sample flyer which is available on our website at <http://www.adc.org/rulesfact.pdf> as a formatted PDF file for downloading and printing. This flyer should be handed out during any demonstrations to all bypassers. It is also posted in plain text at <http://www.adc.org/action/2000/12bapril2000.htm>. Critical reaction continues to pan the film as racist trash. Please see ever-expanding list of attacks on the film's racism by movie critics below, and in particular note Stewart Klawans' excellent review in the Nation, which can be read online at <http://www.TheNation.com/issue/000501/0501klawans.shtml> . ADC's analysis of the film can be read on our website at <http://www.adc.org/action/2000/11aprilb2000.htm>. CRITICAL CONDEMNATION OF "RULES OF ENGAGEMENT": "It's downright offensive. ... Positioned emotionally by the film to identify with the put-upon jarheads, the audience I saw the film with cheered when the Marines slaughtered the civilians. ... The Arab demonstrators, as usual, are portrayed as vicious, wild-eyed maniacs who dare stand up to the cold efficiency of the Marine Corps we're meant to admire (even a Yemeni doctor who later testifies against Childers is shown to be an utter liar), but for a while we also see them as the apparently innocent victims of Childers' wrath. Halfway through, though, we come to understand that we were totally wrong about that as well, Childers is completely in the right, and that all the sympathy we bestowed was mistaken because they are all evil, lying creeps who for some ungodly and of course irrational reason hate our guts. ... Nothing can redeem this film's deep immorality." - Peter Brunette, Film.com "What distinguishes "Rules" is its use of xenophobia to bolster its legal arguments, and presumably tap audience's deep-seated prejudice. ... The movie paints Muslims as bloodthirsty villains plotting unspeakable violence against the United States. In other words, even if they had been unarmed, Col. Childers should have mowed 'em down anyway." - Steve Murray, Cox News Service "At its worst, it's blatantly racist, using Arabs as cartoon-cutout bad guys, and unrealistic in its depiction of a conflict in the Middle East. ... Why is the embassy in danger? What has happened? Who are the people rioting? We never know, but we do know this: Those pesky, dark-eyed people in Arab dress, holding protest signs, have become international shorthand for ‘terrorist bad guys.' You're tempted to wonder what the filmmakers had in mind. "Oh, it's the Middle East," you imagine them saying. "There's always something going on. Let's just make up some generic crises and toss a few hundred cliches at it." - Paul Clinton, CNN "...an angry Arab mob is for the umpteenth time serving as convenient and clichéd villains hostile to our way of life. While the mob is chanting untranslated slogans likely to be variants of the traditional "death to the spineless, running dogs of American imperialism" and aiming bullets and Molotov cocktails at the poorly defended embassy..." - Kenneth Turan, LA Times "Friedkin also risks accusations of racism. Little attempt is made to humanize Yemeni people. On screen, except for a doctor and a one-legged girl on crutches, they are stock villains, human cattle ready for herding and slaughter to demonstrate the right and might of the U.S. policeman's role." - Burce Kirkland, Toronto Sun "What if the Americans really do lack an understanding of Arab culture? -- the drama ultimately retreats to safer, duller, more illogical and more reactionary impulses and stereotypes." - Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly "Seems the Yemenis are upset about the U.S. presence
in the Persian Gulf. That's all we know, and director William Friedkin
and screenwriter Stephen Gaghan seem to believe that that's all we need
to know, since, you know, we're talking about Arabs here. The words
'terrorists' and " It has something to offend every political sensibility
but little to offer in thoughtful "The continuing scandal of Hollywood's Arab-bashing smells to high heaven, but this film manages to stun nonetheless. Near the end of last year, in a particularly odious and underhanded example of political correctness, the Directors Guild of America removed from the name of its annual prize that of D.W. Griffith, who was convicted 85 years after the fact of fostering intolerable "racial stereotypes" in one of his several hundred films. Given the movie colony's mammoth self-delusion and boundless hypocrisy, you can be sure the DGA won't raise a peep against Billy Friedkin and Paramount for promoting the only vicious racial stereotype that's not only still permitted but actively endorsed by Hollywood. Still, at least you now see why the movie is set in the Middle East. If Childers had mowed down a hundred Africans or Swedes, say, it might be a little hard for us to see our hero's act as just like that earlier murder in Vietnam: harsh but justifiable, perhaps even heroic. Arabs deserve it, anywaythey're the enemy, the dark, fanatical other, aren't they?" - Godfrey Cheshire, New York Press "The biggest question — one, incidentally, which Rules certainly never asks — is what those demonstrators outside the embassy were upset about in the first place." - Mike Ward, PopMatters "But the movie is spoiled by its simplistic portrait of people from the Mideast as incorrigibly violent and untrustworthy, and by its jingoistic suggestion that self-protective ends justify murderous means when American soldiers are at risk." - David Sterritt, Christian Science Monitor "By the way: Why were the Yemenis rioting? The US ambassador's young son asks that question during the siege, while cowering in a corridor. From his mother comes as much of an answer as Webb cares to give: ‘The people are mad about something, darling,' an explanation addressed not only to the boy but to the audience, whose mental age Webb must calculate as no more than 9. ... Rules of Engagement is an illogic machine, constructed to remove the inconvenience of thought from anyone who might question a half-century of America's war-making. First, with more brutality than cunning, the movie entices you to condemn Samuel Jackson, who leaves behind not only piles of corpses but also those children in the hospital, including a cute little one-legged girl who hops around with a crutch. Then, with more highhandedness than legerdemain, the movie exonerates Jackson, showing that the Yemenis deserved to become corpses. Those women and children were armed, and even the cute amputee popped away at Marines. Imagine Spielberg's girl-in-a-red-coat in Schindler's List as a guerrilla, attacking soldiers who'd been sent on a tough job. ... Those good men still have their job to do, especially in the Middle East--and it's too damn bad if some ragheads get in the way. For example: In July 1988 we blew to bits no fewer than 290 unarmed civilians in the Persian Gulf in an incident that rather undermines the movie's premise, since we outdid the body count by 207, and yet scarcely bothered to grunt ‘Sorry.' To the official mind, the victims deserved to die. They'd had the effrontery to pass over the USS Vincennes in a regularly scheduled commercial flight from Iran." - Stewart Klanwans, The Nation "Lip service is paid to the pile of corpses, or at least to the one or two presumably innocent Arabs among them (the rest are merely yowling wogs), but the movie concentrates on the poor schlubs with the ordnance, and the holy obligation to use it. ... we're even treated to a close-up of an evil five-year-old Yemeni girl shooting an automatic pistol. ... there's no limit to how cynical you should be about Hollywood. " - Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice |
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