I fear your cited reviewer (Tom from The Big Tent ) and by implication, you, may be missing the point in regard to Miramax's depiction of Japanese cruelty in The Great Raid. The Japanese have lined up pretty much four square on the side of the Bush Administration in the War on Terror. Bashing the Japanese these days -- by depicting their horrific cruelty during WWII -- has the side effect of undermining the moral legitimacy that Japanese support of the war in Iraq provides to Bush. The Japanese just aren't politically correct these days. So Weintstein and Miramax probably feel okay with the harshness of their film vis-a-vis Japan.
I haven't seen the film so I don't know if that would impact my suspicions here, but that's the only explanation I could come up with and it seems to fit here. As I'm sure you're aware, the Japanese have become somewhat of a 'whipping boy' these days: witness the inexcusable activities of the Chinese government recently in stirring up anti-Japanese sentiments and riots a few months ago. That met with all too little outrage by the world at large, I think in part, because of their (the Japanese's) relatively pro-American stance. I don't mean to excuse the brutality of the Japanese during that time, but it just seems a little too convenient, given, as you note, the tendency in recent years, to portray them as victims rather than the victimizers that they indeed were.
My reply, which may or may not appear on Instapundit, is this:
Needless to say, I am skeptical of the theory that it is okay to portray the Japanese as the bad guys because they sided with the United States in the War on Terror. At the Washington D.C. premiere, Weinstein specifically noted that he made the director cut some of the more gruesome scenes. At the same time, the crew and cast said nothing whatsoever about the Japanese atrocities, suggesting that they were more than a little uncomfortable with their honest portrayal.
I'm not saying that the anti-Bush crowd won't abandon their principles on race when it suits their agenda (see Rice, Condoleezza), but I just do not think that is the case with The Great Raid.
I would love to talk about this further. Please feel free to comment here or at the original review.
2 comments:
While I don't disagree with what Robert Greer is saying, I think it is quite a stretch of logic. While the Japanese government may be a strong supporter of the war in Iraq, it is hardly one of the ones at the forefront (Britain, Australia, Poland, etc. would be above it in most people's minds). In fact, I sure a quick poll of the American public would find that most people would put Japan on the other side of the debate. Thus, it would be a difficult point for the filmmakers to make, indeed, that because the Japanese were immoral in WWII, therefore their support in Iraq is immoral. Thus, it seems Tom's take on the portrayal of brutality fits more with Occam's Razor; the filmmakers were going for realism, which meant they had to show the realities of the camps, no matter whether it's now politically correct to show the Japanese (or Germans, or Soviets, etc.) in that manner.
As to the point about the Japanese as "whipping-boys". I would think that that has more to do with their continued attempts to downplay their brutality and criminal actions in China, Korea, and the rest of Southeast Asia and the Pacific during the war. Remember, the "riots" in China were on the heels of another Japanese history textbook that refuses to acknowledge Japanese wrongdoings. Anti-Japanese sentiment these days has more to do with their actions about the past than about their actions about the present.
Yeah, and keep in mind that the movie sat on the shelf for something like two years while Miramax and Disney figured out their situation.
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