Why is it, they have no problem showing American soldiers getting blown away, shot, mutilated, and ripped apart, but hardly any fire when it comes to the Somalis getting killed? The Somali father getting riddled with bullets and another Somali gets blown up with an RPG. That's it. The rest just fell down. Why are the whores in Hollywood so afraid to offend everybody but Americans?
shareSomalis are being blown away all through the film man. How could you possibly think that this film intends to offend Americans? It's clearly a Hollywood, pro-USA, propaganda film like many other US war films.
That's not to say that I don't like the film though, seen it many times over the years.
Somalis are being blown away all through the film man.
With the exception of the two instances I stated, Somalis fall down the whole film. They sure aren't getting "blown away".
shareI think you make a fair point. This is common in action/adventure movies, you see the plight of the heroes but the suffering of the villains is usually understated, with few exceptions (usually those exceptions tend to be the better movies as a result of having some empathy/complexity for their villains).
And it's even a better point in Black Hawk Down because it's suppose to be a re-enactment of an actual battle. However, with that all said, it's an understandable problem. In order to get the audience to identify with the characters in the story MORE than their opponents, some dehumanizing is often necessary. It's simply how drama works for getting an audience to sympathize with the protagonists, which is how this movie was presented, from the Americans perspective, all the way throughout.
It is, however, also how propaganda works too. There is a recent article by Rob Ager which covers this very topic in regard to Saving Private Ryan, which you may find interesting;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEKSCwA38L0
Good points. I think you're the only person that actually understood what I was saying. I'll check out that article...
shareSame reason why in Saving Private Ryan all the US soldiers are mutilated and bloodied and screaming out in agony when they're shot and the Germans simply fall down and die immediately. They want the audience to feel terrible for the protagonists' deaths and feel nothing when the antagonists die.
share