4,297 words
Saving Private Ryan is widely acknowledged to be one of the best war films ever made. Released in 1998, the film quickly became both a critical and commercial success, and was soon nominated for 11 Oscars – ultimately going on to win five (including both Best Picture and Best Director). Spielberg was praised for challenging both audience desensitization and the idea of World War II as some sort of “glamorous” or “romantic”[1] affair, and said he “wanted to achieve reality”[2] in his portrayal of the conflict. In particular, the first half-an-hour of the film has received especial praise for its brutally intense portrayal of modern warfare – and was reckoned to be so realistic that many PTSD-prone veterans were advised not to go see it.
Furthermore, in a society increasingly marked by its effeminacy and the specter of the ‘nu-male’, the film offers a refreshing glimpse of the rugged masculinity we associate with the ‘greatest generation’ – e.g. ‘when men were men’ (Spielberg claimed the character of Captain Miller was based on his own veteran father).[3] This makes the film one of the few examples of positive male role models in modern cinema, and it is no doubt for this reason that (despite Spielberg’s liberal leanings) the film remains a conservative favorite.
However, regardless of the film’s technical proficiency and superficially conservative themes, we need to examine it a lot more critically – especially given Spielberg’s reputation as a curator of the public consciousness and the status of his films as ‘educational experiences’ – through which we can relive the worst episodes of our own history. Even many normie critics are puzzled by some of the film’s apparent contradictions – why is a film that ostensibly portrays the horrors of modern warfare bookended by nearly ten minutes of overt patriotism? Isn’t this a weird way to bookend a film that’s meant to portray war in an unheroic light?
This is where it becomes useful to be a race realist. Those of us ‘in the know’ realize that we cannot ignore the glaring issue of Spielberg’s ethnic heritage. To be cursed with the gift of understanding is a heavy burden, but it also gives us an inimitable advantage over the normie film critic: we have an appreciation of the millennia of collective experience that undoubtedly feed into and inform Spielberg’s artistic expression – without which any analysis of his work is fundamentally incomplete.
Now that we have the necessary analytical tools to deconstruct this film, let’s start digging into it a bit more critically. Though the film ostensibly strips away the aura of ‘heroics’ surrounding war, there are many other ways in which it subtly glorifies it. Yes, the film portrays modern warfare very realistically at times (“muh Omaha beach scene”). But as with all cinematic language, the issue is not just what the film shows, but what the film doesn’t show: i.e. the issue of ‘framing.’ The important thing is not that the suffering and brutality of war is shown, the important thing is where it is shown in the film, and what is shown before and after it.
It’s a given of cinematic language that a narrative doesn’t start off where you want to end – there is some sort of journey involved in reaching the moral message you want your audience to imbibe. War films are no exception. They take you on an emotional journey. Think about their typical structure. Most (think of All Quiet on the Western Front) start off from a high point of idealism, then gradually move to a low point of cynicism and personal tragedy as the film progresses. Our heroes, persuaded of the rightness of their cause and captivated by visions of personal glory, rush to enlist, only to come face-to-face with the grim reality of war. The film sets up expectations of glory and heroism, only to subvert them over the course of the film.
If Saving Private Ryan were genuinely an anti-war film, it would have followed a similar structure: it would have started by following the lives of our characters as war broke out, as they enlisted and went through basic training, as they reassured both themselves and their families of the rightness of their cause, only to see them mercilessly gunned down at the film’s climax, with the survivors questioning what it was all for.[4]
This is why most anti-war films do not start with their biggest set-piece battle – they finish with it. Saving Private Ryan essentially does the opposite. By having the most gruesome and realistic depictions of war at the beginning, Spielberg neatly turns the classic anti-war formula on its head. In most anti-war films, war is set up as good, only to be revealed as bad. In Saving Private Ryan the opposite happens: war is set up as bad, only for us to be gradually persuaded that it is good. If the film had just been trying to show us the innate cruelty of war, it would have remained on the beach and dwelt upon the suffering of the wounded and dying – it would never have left the beach, because there would have been no more story to tell.[5]
Instead, the Omaha Beach scene (which, if placed at the end of the film, would have caused us to be permanently repulsed at the brutality of mechanized warfare) simply serves to set up a film where war itself is ‘redeemed’. Spielberg has thus left himself more than enough time to challenge our initial perceptions in the film’s remaining two-and-a-half hours.[6]
But surely, I hear you say, the opening scene is just there to set the tone for the rest of the film? After all, a cool war movie has got to start with a cool battle scene – isn’t that standard cinematic practice? Well, yes. But what’s more telling is that the rest of the film doesn’t really follow the tone that’s been set. As I said, if the film wanted to emphasis the true horror of war, it would simply have remained on the beach. Instead, the camera quickly moves away and accompanies our heroes on a more traditional action-adventure narrative. And since our view of the war comes through the eyes of our characters, it’s only natural that their experience of war is our experience of it. We see nothing beyond what they see, and have nothing else to base our conclusions on. Thus, when the film moves away from the beach, the carnage there quickly slips from our minds.
The drastic way in which the film departs from the tone it has set reveals the true purpose of the Omaha beach scene – to provide a sort of moral ‘momentum’ for the rest of the film. Again, Spielberg is very selective in what he shows and what he leaves out of the frame – he keeps the camera on the carnage of the battlefield as long as is needed to invest us in the narrative, and no longer. Despite the opening scene’s ostensible realism, the film’s cloyingly sentimental prologue has already been not-so-subtly trying to transfigure the fallen American soldiers as heroic warriors fighting for a righteous cause (remember that we must wade through five minutes of schmaltzy patriotism before we are even introduced to Tom Hanks’ character – yet another way in which Spielberg frames the opening scene), so we are naturally outraged when they are senselessly slaughtered on the beach. The point of the Omaha Beach scene is not just to get us to sympathize with their plight, it is to get us to subconsciously identify with their cause. Thus, when an American soldier falls, we feel the cathartic urge to take up the cause for which they died and continue the charge up the beach.
The flipside of this subconscious connection with the plight and cause of the American soldier is a corresponding hatred for the faceless enemy who mercilessly guns him down. This leads us on to the second issue of framing: the dehumanization of the Germans. It is here that Spielberg’s sublimated racial animosities start to become evident. While the American soldiers are portrayed as courageous, heroic and self-sacrificial, the same is rarely true of their German counterparts.
Consider also the way in which soldiers on both sides die. While American soldiers die in terrible pain while pathetically calling for their mothers or desperately trying to pass on notes to their loved one (i.e. in ways designed to elicit sympathy from us), German soldiers (perhaps sensing the moral qualms of the audience) invariable die obligingly and conveniently quickly. An anti-war film would emphasise the common humanity of soldiers under all flags, and the fact that they were ‘all in it together’ (think of the ‘Christmas Truce’ of 1914). Our hostility would thus be directed up the chain of command, against the ‘top brass’ that send men from both sides to their deaths.
But Spielberg allows us no such easy target. The single-minded steadfastness of our protagonists (who seem utterly convinced as to the morality of their cause) leaves us just one outlet for our pent-up rage: the hapless soldiers on the other side of the frontline. The film’s internal logic remorselessly drives us to the conclusion that the German must be destroyed for our negative emotion to be released – we need them to die.
Thus, the Germans become not people, but targets, to be gunned down like so many cardboard cutouts in a shooting gallery. The film basically becomes Skinner’s ‘operant conditioning’ in cinematic form: like Pavlov’s dog, we are trained (through the promise of emotional release) to metaphorically ‘shoot’ the German without even making the decision to do so – it becomes an unthinking reflex. The scene with Private Jackson in the bell tower thus assumes a more sinister meaning. When Jackson fixes a German in his crosshairs, we are not merely passive onlookers (Spielberg specifically noted that he “didn’t want … the audience to be spectators”[7]) – we are emotionally present, and we will him to shoot. When he pulls the trigger, we are pulling it in our minds along with him.
At this point, many people might be objecting – “so what if the film doesn’t include a German perspective, surely the story is told from an American point of view? Not every German soldier needs a ridiculously long backstory and an exaggerated death scene – it’s a movie!” I get it. After all, we have few moral qualms about seeing gunned down en masse in more traditional action flicks like Where Eagles Dare.
However, the issue is, again, not merely the onscreen act of a German soldier being killed, but the way the act is framed. In Saving Private Ryan, by the time we see German soldiers being killed, Spielberg has been careful to build up such a sense of emotional impetus that we need a form of catharsis. Thus, when a German soldier is killed, it is not simply an act within the film, it is an act internal to our own subconsciousness as well – it has an effect in the real world.
In Where Eagles Dare, the henchmen are simply ‘there’. We harbor no particular animosity towards them – they are merely hapless goons who must be gunned down for the hero to reach his goal. They are merely plot points in action. Crudely put, their deaths mean nothing to us, because there is no negative emotion to release. Consequently, they can have no external emotional effect on us.
There is much more I could say on the dehumanization in the film, but would take it would take too long to express through the medium of the written word[8], so for now I’ll restrict myself to focusing on just one of the film’s more disturbing subplots: that of Steamboat Willie and Upham. Unlike some of the other subtler methods we’ve talked about, this one is surface-level enough to disturb many of the film’s viewers.
When we first meet Steamboat Willie, he is reduced to literally playing the fool as he disowns his leader and his country in an attempt to appease his captors. Spielberg is sure to bring the camera right in and revel in the pathetic pleading and humiliation of the German. But again, he is careful to frame the scene so as to elicit the reaction he wants. Steamboat Willie begging for his life, a sight that might otherwise have attracted our sympathy (after all, he was just following orders) is overshadowed by the still-fading screams of the group’s medic, Wade, who has just spent several minutes begging to be euthanized as he dies in agony. This sequence is thus a microcosm of the film’s emotional framing in general. The humiliation of the German is preceded by the suffering of the American, so the former is simply seen as justly-deserved ‘payback’ for the latter.
Quite apart from this ritual dehumanization, though, is what the saga of Steamboat Willie represents: Captain Miller’s failure. Though “act of humanity”[9] in freeing Steamboat Willie (against his better judgement) is ostensibly meant to convey the strength of his moral fiber even in the moral wilderness of war, this reading of the scene is confounded by the results that such an act reaps. When he gives into his humanity and frees the hapless soldier, we would reasonably expect that an act of goodwill will reap good consequences somewhere further down the line – perhaps Steamboat Willie will corner Miller at some future point, but decide to spare him. After all, isn’t this the basic lesson of moral reciprocity we have been taught since birth – ‘do unto others as you would have them do to you’?
However, this is not what happens. Far from repaying Captain Miller’s compassion, Steamboat Willie is ultimately the one to strike him down. Thus, Miller’s act is transformed from one of kindness to one of naivety – and Steamboat Willie becomes a metaphor for the innate villainy of the German – who is apparently destined by his very nature to repay this act of mercy by stabbing his captor in the back as soon as he turns away. The German is thus stripped of one of the essential elements of humanity: moral reciprocity.
This is where the character of Upham comes in. Though his subplot is ostensibly your typical redemption arc (he begins the film as timid and inexperienced, and after his cowardice causes him to fail his comrades, must summon up the courage to do the right thing), the specifics of his actions have disturbing implications for the moral message we take from the film. He does indeed have to learn to do what the right thing, but what Spielberg considers to be the right thing is rather distasteful to our gentile sensibilities. But again, it may be instructive to compare his story to what might it might have been in a normal war film. If Upham’s story arc really was about finding redemption through courage, it would have gone something like this:
As in the film, Upham starts off as a timid and inexperienced character with little stomach for war. Thus, his nerve fails him when he is needed most, and he is forced to deal with the guilt of letting down his comrades. However, he redeems himself by saving his comrades during some retreat from advancing German forces, and gives his life to delay the advance long enough for his friends to get away.
This is just an example – but it would far better convey the message that most people attribute to Upham’s subplot. Instead, his story arc consists of learning to quash his moral objections to committing war crimes. Many gentile critics have found the scene where he puts down Steamboat Willie similarly disturbing (‘morally dubious’ is a common understatement in reviews of the film), but they cannot deny the logic that has led the story to this point.
Again, an act that might otherwise repulse us has already been framed – the agonizing death of Private Mellish[10] that comes right before this scene has already stoked our desire for vengeance. Steamboat Willie was, of course, surrendering – the battle is essentially over by this point in the film, and his death accomplished next-to-nothing. Unlike the villains in Spielberg’s indictments of slavery and the Holocaust, he had committed no unforgivable act. But we find that we do not care. We demand that Upham pull the trigger. Like the intentions behind the real-life Kaufman and Morgenthau Plans, the German cannot be trusted even in defeat – and his existence is ultimately too dangerous to be allowed to continue.[11]
Mellish thus becomes the counterpart to Captain Miller – he ‘succeeds’ where Miller ‘failed’ – and at the same time redeems himself for persuading Miller to spare Steamboat Willie in the first place. In many ways, he is the most important character in the film, because it is through him (rather than the film’s comparatively superficial protagonist) that Spielberg speaks most clearly.
Finally, we come to the central objective of the film – the eponymous Private Ryan himself. What does this character represent? Here a study of the rest of Spielberg’s oeuvre may prove beneficial. It is notable that, while Spielberg’s other two wartime films (Empire of the Sun and Schindler’s List) both depict the alleged atrocities committed against non-white peoples by Western nations (internment of the Japanese and the Holocaust, respectively), this seems not to be the subject matter of Saving Private Ryan – which appears to tell a smaller and more personal story. Or does it?
It seems odd that the same film that has been at pains to tell us that the sacrifice of 22 men to save one general was an unacceptable loss also tells us that the deaths of dozens of soldiers are worth it to save one lowly Private. The only way to justify this rate of exchange mathematically is to assume that Ryan’s life is simply worth more. But what World War II objective of negligible strategic value could Spielberg wish us think was worth sacrificing so many men over, if only so they could assuage their own guilt? The parallels with Spielberg’s own co-ethnics are too tempting to ignore. Ryan thus becomes an analogy for the Jewish people themselves, and the mission to save him simply a microcosm of the cause that makes the entire war moral in the first place – the task of ‘saving’ the Jewish race and destroying their historic enemy.[12] By reaffirming our faith in the rightness of the mission, the filmmaker is reaffirming our faith in the rightness of the war.[13]
The film thus essentially becomes a Jewish religious narrative.[14] What other message can we take away than that the apparent purpose of gentile lives is to be sacrificed en masse to save the Chosen People? Yet this was the real impetus behind World War II. We did not have to go to war against our European brothers – we could have made peace with Hitler in 1939 (who himself tried to do so several times before and after the outbreak of war).[15] In truth, it was not Hitler that was set on war, but Churchill.
Seen in this light, one of the more personal moments in the film – Miller’s injunction to Ryan at the film’s ending to “earn this” – becomes an interesting look into the Jewish psyche: it reveals the complex relationship they have with their experience of World War II. Unlike many of the world’s other ethnic groups, the Jewish people have existed as a diaspora for the last few millennia. Thus, one of the overriding drives in the Jewish mentality is the need to maintain their cohesion in a hostile culture – and one of the best ways of doing this is through shared experience. In a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, around 70% of U.S. Jews said commemorating the events of World War II was an essential criterion of Jewishness (above even Jewish ancestry).[16] This is why their relationship with the Holocaust is so complex – because, in a perverse sort of way, they need it.
The Holocaust also has a soteriological dimension – it has become a bizarre sort of post-Christian narrative, in which the Holocaust is the sacrifice (etymologically, the ‘burnt offering’) the Jewish people make to become worthy to rule over the goyim.[17]
Miller’s injunction to Ryan thus assumes a dual meaning – Spielberg is both reminding his co-ethnics of the one of the foundations of their identity and exhorting them to become worthy of all the suffering they endured at the hands of the German – to claim their rightful inheritance as the Chosen Race. It also makes a mockery of Spielberg’s claim to ‘commemorate’ the death of all those U.S. servicemen in any meaningful sense – in his worldview, their sacrifice was only meaningful in that it was made on behalf of the Jewish race.
But why then, if this film is about the Jewish experience, is it told from a gentile perspective, and not from a Jewish one? This method of storytelling is nothing new for Spielberg. It is no coincidence that both of his definitive depictions of the Holocaust and slavery (Schindler’s List and Amistad) are told not from the perspective of their victims, but of high-status gentiles intimately connected with their perpetration.[18]
But these conscientious whites are the very people that Spielberg wants to recruit – he realizes that only the European has the power to effect change in today’s world. Spielberg is realistic about the political process – he recognizes that, for all the moral efficacy of the tale of the underdog, they cannot ultimately effect change on a world-historical scale – they need a patron first.
This is also why Spielberg, in many ways, does not complete his story – we do not ultimately know if Ryan lived a good life, if Miller’s sacrifice was worth it. Through this final withholding of catharsis, the morally-sensitive white is forced to seek resolution for themselves, in the real world. Spielberg wishes us to be the authors of change.[19]
And how does Spielberg wish us to seek catharsis? By atoning for the sins of our ancestors. Spielberg’s films should thus be taken not only as commentaries on the Jewish experience, but also as ‘instruction manuals’ on how their gentile ‘allies’ are to act. It is by watching these films that the virtue-signaling white knows what feasance is required of them to meet their racial obligations and relieve their burden of hereditary guilt. Spielberg thus hopes to recruit us into furthering our own dispossession.[20]
I hope this analysis has been useful in exposing some of the more insidious anti-white themes present in today’s popular culture. Like so many normies out there, it would be so easy to just sit back and unthinkingly digest all the prolefeed society throws our way. Sometimes, like Cypher in the Matrix, we wish we could go back to that life. But we are called to a higher mission, a higher purpose – the task of reawakening our people. And this time, no amount of propaganda will divide us.
Notes
[1] Paul Vercammen, “Spielberg aims to tell truth about war in ‘Saving Private Ryan’,” CNN, July 23, 1998, http://edition.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/Movies/9807/23/private.ryan/
[2] Jeff Gordinier, “Saving Private Ryan: Message in a Battle,” Entertainment Weekly, July 24, 1998, http://ew.com/movies/1998/07/24/saving-private-ryan-message-battle/;
[3] Ibid.
[4] Naturally, pacifism (as well as being logically and morally incoherent) is not a message I endorse, but a film with an openly pacifistic message would be least be honest and transparent as to its intentions (and could be logically met and refuted). Spielberg, regrettably (but perhaps inevitably), is not.
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEKSCwA38L0
[6] We must remember that the Omaha Beach scene, intense as it is, takes up only 20 minutes of screen time – and yet it is the only thing most people mention when talking about the film.
[7] Roger Ebert, “Private Spielberg,” RogerEbert.com, July 19, 1998, https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/private-spielberg
[8] If anyone is interested in a deeper analysis of these themes, check out Rob Ager’s analysis of the film here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4FeyONCtfc
[9] Paul Bullock, “Saving Captain Miller: Spielberg, Private Ryan and the Morality of War,” Medium, May 14, 2017, https://medium.com/from-director-steven-spielberg/saving-captain-miller-spielberg-private-ryan-and-the-morality-of-war-55588de70663
[10] Contrary to popular belief, the soldier that Upham puts down is not the same one that who kills Mellish, but it is perhaps not a coincidence that Spielberg chose to cast such similar-looking stony-faced and middle-aged men with shaved heads in both roles, rather than the youths with full heads of hair and familiar cuts who assuredly constituted the bulk of the Waffen SS by 1944 (still a subject of some controversy among re-enactors and history buffs) – a blank face is much easier to project our own fears onto.
[11] It is also important to note where Saving Private Ryan comes in Spielberg’s filmography – unlike his previous two films, which served as indictments of Western atrocities, Spielberg here takes things a step further by justifying the killing of Germans. This marks a crucial shift in his thematic substance.
[12] Though obviously Matt Damon is a model exemplar of the Aryan race, and is not very Jewish-looking (I tried to do some digging on any suspect ancestry, but to no avail), I suspect this is simply a clever ploy by Spielberg to dress up an otherwise unappealing imperative in a familiar aesthetic – hence the Nordic-looking Damon.
[13] Spielberg is of course far too intelligent to believe that World War II was about securing our ‘freedoms’, and other such moralistic cant.
[14] The way in which Private Jackson strikes down soldiers from above, like some Valkyrie from Germanic legend, while calling on the divine for help give his actions an explicitly religious quality.
[15] Richard Tedor, Hitler’s Revolution (Chicago, 2013), 131-136.
[16] http://www.pewforum.org/2013/10/01/chapter-3-jewish-identity/
[17] http://faithandheritage.com/2016/06/the-blasphemy-of-judeo-christianity-and-the-heresy-of-the-holocaust/
[18] Biguenet, op. cit.
[19] Bullock, op. cit.
[20] This is also the reason Spielberg frames his film with such patriotic imagery – though, as a Jew, he obviously feels uncomfortable in a homogeneous society with a strong sense of national identity, it is his hope that he can weaponize a ‘toothless’ patriotism against its more muscular variants. In the same way, the film’s positive portrayal of masculinity is simply a way of weaponizing the instincts of the traditionally-minded against themselves.
43 comments
One of the first thoughts, back in 1998, when seeing this movie was that in a vague way it was a rip off of Kubrik’s Full Metal Jacket; the first part (basic training with R. Lee Ermey) is infinitely more interesting than the mid and latter parts. This is paralleled in SPR with the Omaha beach scene and the “rest of the movie”. I, and many others apparently, saw no connection between the D-Day scene and the rest of the movie.
Then I recognized the usual cliches in war movies.
The German soldiers are incredibly tactically incompetent. The published accounts of British and American soldiers from the late 1940s into the 1970s actually showed the Germans on the tactical level to be very professional and thus very deadly. Conversely, the Americans are shown to be the fire breathing incomparable warriors. Again, the American infantry (and armor) were in reality drawn from the lower social strata much more than the air corp and artillery. It ended up showing in the typical American infantry being filled with the unskilled and unenthusiastic. German army put a lot of its best human material in its infantry and especially in the officer and NCO ranks.
The American soldiers were typical cliches as well. The northerners were the “cool kids” and the one from the South was some religious hick/dope. I swear, watching that Jackson character take his crucifix out every single time he made a shot and kissed like it was his prom date, made my gag. Still does. I grew up in the South and never saw anything like that in over 15 years. If anything, the Italians/Irish catholics of the north east do that kind of thing.
Plus, in real life, according to veteran accounts, there was no enthusiasm for new members to one’s small unit, simply due to not knowing that person and in all likelihood would never due to ever present danger of quick death before anyone got to know him. Certainly, there would have been less enthusiasm for risking one’s own life in order to rescue someone so that one could go home to their mommy. So, all the WW2 veterans acting as if it was realistic for such a mission doesn’t ring true.
This movie was the usual, frequent attempt to keep the WW2 (and all it implied aka holohoax) alive in the public’s mind. The new Gary Oldman movie about Churchill is doing the same I suspect. Germans: bad. Allies: good. Meanwhile, since the end of WW2, jews in Allied countries are behind the efforts to mongrelize them with third worlders. jew gratitude on display.
You are right, and many avid historians have been going to town on the movie’s purported historical accuracy for decades – and this was the main thing that annoyed me as well for many years. But upon digging deeper you realise SPR is unique in that it’s not just historically lazy – it’s also actively malevolent. Most other WWII films exist to keep the narrative alive, as you say, but SPR ramps it up – which is why I think it’s worth paying especially close attention to.
Thanks for the reply. I will keep in mind, during future viewings, the deeper meanings of the various scenes and characters.
I remember the IMDb website had boards for every movie and the SPR board would have a debate about every little nuance of the film, and not just some historical inaccuracy; mostly about themes. So many people found some unspoken meaning in one of the scenes or characters, state it, and then others would howl in protest. Sometimes a particular debate would rage for over a year. But it was good to have so many viewpoints being expressed.
Brilliant Analysis of the movie. In recent years I have thought about this and came to the same conclusions as you did, but I could not have written such a beautiful, thoughtful and well structured essay. For me, this is kind of sad, because I used to love the World War Jew movies. Churchill was my hereo No more. They all make me throw up. It is all one big ginantic lie.
Thanks!
Another “How America Won the War” films..
Never bothered to see it.
It’s worth watching if only so you can deconstruct it with normies – redpill hidden inside of a bluepill
The only good thing about the film was the fact they were willing to rescue one kid to preserve what was left of American agrarian nationalism.
You’re a national treasure, Anglian Exile! What an insightful analysis of the movie. Insightful, yes, but in a sense your words are almost coming from within my own mind, spoken with my own voice… eloquently expressing my very own basic, albeit mute, impressions. That’s talent!
” We all pretend to ourselves that we are more naive than we are: this is how we relax from other people.”
-Nietzsche
Thanks!
Could you do an analysis of Spielberg’s “Warhorse?” I haven’t been able to come to a definite conclusion of where he was going with it.
Spielberg’s work varies quite widely in its objectives – not all his films are necessarily anti-white. But it would definitely be a good one to rewatch.
I am new to this website, and have only begun to flirt with the White Nationalist position. In my college years, over 20 years ago, I remember always feeling some kind of indescribable attraction to the German people, mostly, I think, because my great love in life was music and I was in love with the “Great German Composers.” I viewed World War Two as a terrible tragedy for Western Man, and lamented that the Americans and the British sided with the Russian communists over the Germans. Of course, I unwittingly absorbed quite a lot from my radical leftist professors over those few years and therefore found myself inhabiting some strange no-man’s land of fundamentalist agnosticism — unable to reconcile the differing perspectives in my brain.
I grew up in a very strict, fundamentalist (one might even say “cult”) Christian household, so exposure to new ideas in college was intoxicating, and the appeal of liberalism was great. Liberalism was the thing that put the first chinks in my Christian armor, and I have since abandoned all semblance of Christianity, seeing it now as a strange kind of Jew-worship for gentiles. I can never go back to worshiping a man, and a Jewish man at that, as God himself.
But Liberalism left a lot to be desired. I always had an instinctive sense that race/ethnicity was important, and found it strange that no “mainstream” political groups in America talked about it in any kind of open, realistic way. On the other hand, I was inundated with the subliminal message that the white man is inherently evil and should not be race-conscious, whereas minorities (including Jews) had every right to it.
Today, as I continue the aging process, I feel more and more alienated from the mainstream than ever before. I’ve lost all faith in America as a nation, and hardly feel any connection to the “left” or the “right”. Seems like the choice is either egalitarian insanity and extremism on the one hand, or low-culture rapture-ready Jesus-freaks and kooky gun-totin’ conspiracy theorists on the other. I guess my main beef is with modern America in all its mediocrity and terrible, divisive, soul-crushing diversity, where loyalty to a sports team is considered more important than metaphysical considerations, scientific achievements, or artistic greatness.
I just don’t fit in.
“It is notable that, while Spielberg’s other two wartime films (Empire of the Sun and Schindler’s List) both depict the alleged atrocities committed against non-white peoples by Western nations (internment of the Japanese and the Holocaust, respectively)”
Empire of the Sun is about the capture and brutalization of British nationals by the Japanese in WW2. Specifically, the autobiographical experiences of Brian Aldiss the sci-fi writer.
Ah, my mistake. I haven’t seen the movie so I must have misread the plot synopsis.
You should at least watch the scene where the boy sings Suo Gan to the japanese pilots when they are preparing to fly their kamikaze missions. And what comes immidiately after it. It is one of the most beautiful scenes on cinema ever. And extremely symbolic.
The original novel “Empire of the Sun” was written by dystopian novelist J. G. Ballard (so not Brian Aldiss). I used to work with his daughter Beatrice!
I am a fan of Ballard’s work. Here is Jonathan Bowden on the writer :
“I agree with J. G. Ballard that people live through television screens and through video and through the internet to such a degree that it’s fantasy piled upon fantasy, and yet the way out of that dilemma is to put some realism back into the fantasy, and that may involve even greater forms of surreality and surrealness.”
Oh right, duh. I arrogantly correct someone and then say something like that…I knew that.
It’s worse.
Much much worse.
Saving Private a Ryan and Fury can be seen as a sort of Volume I and Volume II Greatest Generation.
Two movies made to justify the literal destruction of Europe by a mystery meat caste of men from over the seas.
“Fury” was a disgusting movie. Really left a bad taste in my mouth.
Actor Hellion Crispin Glover, wrote …”Do you believe Steven Spielberg is an ideal guide and influence for our culture? Do Steven Spielberg’s films question our culture?…Why is one thing questionable and one thing acceptable? Did Adolph Hitler entertain any good thoughts? Was Shirley Temple sexy as a young girl?…Would the cultural mainstream ever silence Steven Spielberg? Has the United States government given the immensely wealthy Seven Spielberg millions of dollars to fund a media project that reflects his religous beliefs and cultural beliefs? Does the Talmud speak of the superiority of the Jews and the inferiority of other cultures and beliefs? Does Steven Spielberg reflect this imperative?” (Apocalypse Culture 2) …We can see why this great actor with the high IQ and distinctive voice hasn’t been heard from in a while. He retired to a property in Czechoslovakia and hopefully is doing well. Two good war movies, in my estimation, are Das Boot, the long version, and The Red Line.
What struck me about the movie(I just thought it a heartfelt tribute to the veterans, no malevolent subtext, btw) was the final scene in the cymmetary at Normandy, with all the white crosses, when the camera pans quickly across them. It seemed like every third one was a Star of David! I thought “quite a fortuitous line of graves to have captured that many, they must have looked hard.” But a couple of years ago I was at that graveyard in Normandy, and it really is like that! In any patch of crosses the eye comes to rest upon, there is at least one Star of David. Weird! I didn’t actually measure a proportion, but it seemed far greater than the mere 1 or 2 per 100 their percentage of the American population would lead one to expect….
Interesting spot, will look out for it on my next viewing!
This is an excellent essay and a great companion to Rob Ager’s always-insightful film analyses.
“By having the most gruesome and realistic depictions of war at the beginning, Spielberg neatly turns the classic anti-war formula on its head. In most anti-war films, war is set up as good, only to be revealed as bad. In Saving Private Ryan the opposite happens: war is set up as bad, only for us to be gradually persuaded that it is good…. Instead, the Omaha Beach scene (which, if placed at the end of the film, would have caused us to be permanently repulsed at the brutality of mechanized warfare) simply serves to set up a film where war itself is ‘redeemed’.”
Great observation, the best one of the essay. This is the “lens” Spielberg establishes through which we are to make sense of the rest of the film’s events.
“Steamboat Willie becomes a metaphor for the innate villainy of the German – who is apparently destined by his very nature to repay this act of mercy by stabbing his captor in the back as soon as he turns away. The German is thus stripped of one of the essential elements of humanity: moral reciprocity.”
The ways in which the film dehumanizes the German soldier are many. Upham’s arc, for instance, serves as a rationalization for allied war crimes.
“The only way to justify this rate of exchange mathematically is to assume that Ryan’s life is simply worth more. But what World War II objective of negligible strategic value could Spielberg wish us think was worth sacrificing so many men over, if only so they could assuage their own guilt? The parallels with Spielberg’s own co-ethnics are too tempting to ignore. Ryan thus becomes an analogy for the Jewish people themselves, and the mission to save him simply a microcosm of the cause that makes the entire war moral in the first place – the task of ‘saving’ the Jewish race and destroying their historic enemy… The film thus essentially becomes a Jewish religious narrative. What other message can we take away than that the apparent purpose of gentile lives is to be sacrificed en masse to save the Chosen People?”
This is an interesting and plausible thesis, but I’m not sure I entirely buy it. It’s too long to go into here, but it pivots on competing theories about why & how the U.S. entered WW2 and under what pretenses. WW2 was a massively overdetermined historical event.
“But why then, if this film is about the Jewish experience, is it told from a gentile perspective, and not from a Jewish one? This method of storytelling is nothing new for Spielberg. It is no coincidence that both of his definitive depictions of the Holocaust and slavery (Schindler’s List and Amistad) are told not from the perspective of their victims, but of high-status gentiles intimately connected with their perpetration.”
This additional context for making sense of Spielberg’s narrative choice in Saving Private Ryan no doubt strengthens the more general theses of this essay. Great work.
” In truth, it was not Hitler that was set on war, but Churchill.”
Churchill was the most effective mere MP ever then. Surely Chamberlain and Halifax deserve some appreciation.
I believe in the same year The Thin Red Line came out, I saw both films at the theatre, I quickly forgot SPR, The Thin Red Line has remained one of my all time favourite films and has stayed with me all these years. I would be curious to hear the writers thoughts on “When Trumpets Fade”, an HBO war movie that came out around the same time.
Thin Red Line (1998) had the misfortune of coming out in the same year as Saving Private Ryan and was unfairly compared to it. But TRL really was a commentary on the nature of conflict: of men at war with each other, with nature and themselves. It’s one of the few movies in which the narration works, as if a blank verse epic poem akin to a Norse edda. You also see how a bunch of White guys on a jungle island can work together to overcome all obstacles.
(There was also a 1964 version of Thin Red Line which pushed an obvious Freudian interpretation of the story. The James Jones novel has enough depth to make any number of movies out of it.)
Empire of the Sun is hardly about massacres against nonwhites?
Or more about the handing over of the guard from the British Empire and the Japanese to the Americans. The British and the Japanese are both more beutiful and dignified and sophisticated than the americans. But the americans has more vitality and energy.
That may be how Spielberg casts it in the film, and, thinking back to it, you are perceptive, it is easy to read the movie in that way.
I recommend reading the novel, which allows no such
interpretation.
Well, the movie where the boy sings Suo Guam to the japanese pilots preparing to go on Kamikaze is the most beutiful scene i have ever seen in any movie.
But I guess there might be another meaning directed at people with less sentimental eyes. Maybe it means, the Goyim might have these old and beutiful cultures. But if you show them bling, strenght and power, they will follow that instead and forget about their carefully crafted cultures. Horsepower! A sort of goyim instruction manual?
It could also be a contrasting between english and americans. Suo Guam is a welsh lullaby. The english subjugated the welsh and incorporated some of their culture into the center of theirs. The americans do no such things. Or at least, i do not find any german lullabies imported into the american culture post ww2? But this is a very very tentative interpetation. Im just slightly intrigued by the choice of song which is thematic for the movie. Maybe that choice is the result of something else, like not wanting to glorify a christian song, which are probably more typical for boys choirs.
One of the most persuasive, readable, and illuminating articles I’ve read on CC in recent time. Subtle and stRiki-Eiking, profound and forthright, intricate and clarion. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this one. Kudos to the author and hope we can read more essays from you.
Thanks!
Excellent piece, cheers on citing Rob Ager. While he might not be one of us (at least, not openly) his film analysis is brilliant.
Yes, he does a good job of deconstructing of a lot of the propaganda out there, which is no doubt why some of his more controversial videos are rally points for a lot of pro-white energy.
I never liked this movie. It gets off on a bad foot for me when I note that around 80 percent of those Americans ‘hitting muh-Omaha’ were draftees. Draftees sent to their deaths by the ‘Greatest-Stupidest-Generation’ (GSG) to die and destroy Germany for the sake of British dominance of Europe by wiping out their economic and empire rival. So, in view of this reality there has to be an answer for why so many Americans had to die, what was the cause? There is none, so, I guess, ‘saving the Jew’ has surfaced as the fallback position. To question and discredit the foundations of the war from America’s point of view is to discredit the myth of psychopaths FDR and Churchill.
Dear Anglian Exile,
I will second all the praise given you for this fine film review. As some may know, I’m a bit of a film reviewer myself over at The Occidental Observer, so I’d like to talk shop if I may.
Long ago, I wrote about Spielberg’s films and considered his Jewishness, but my professors back then resisted this approach. “He’s just a director, period” was the common response. Oh, the denial.
In any case, I certainly saw SPR in the way you describe:
“The film thus essentially becomes a Jewish religious narrative. What other message can we take away than that the apparent purpose of gentile lives is to be sacrificed en masse to save the Chosen People?”
I did this because I knew Spielberg was Jewish and like most Jews, he was serving Jewish interests. In the film itself, it was the opening focus on the Star of David that told me the sacrifices we were about to see were for a good cause: to save Jews.
Yet you have an insight that never occurred to me, namely:
“Ryan thus becomes an analogy for the Jewish people themselves, and the mission to save him simply a microcosm of the cause that makes the entire war moral in the first place – the task of ‘saving’ the Jewish race and destroying their historic enemy.”
I’d never thought of that. Well done.
Now we get to the crux of your analysis, something I completely agree with:
“Spielberg’s films should thus be taken not only as commentaries on the Jewish experience, but also as ‘instruction manuals’ on how their gentile ‘allies’ are to act. It is by watching these films that the virtue-signaling white knows what feasance is required of them to meet their racial obligations and relieve their burden of hereditary guilt. Spielberg thus hopes to recruit us into furthering our own dispossession.”
This is an important key to unlocking the “mission” of so many Hollywood movies (and other cultural artifacts). Once one has access to this key, one can find the same approach in many places. Hopefully, one may then become inoculated against this racially destructive malady.
For years I have taught this in the classroom, and to date the most blatant example of this technique has to be “Remember the Titans” from 2000. Not surprisingly, it uses one of the two main Numinous Negroes for the main role, Denzel Washington. (Morgan Freeman is the other hired hand for the job in many other movies.)
Over at TOO, I’ve referenced this film at least four times, so rather than write about it again, I’ll piece together what’s already there. Readers should get the picture.
I called this “one of the most manipulative anti-White films I have ever seen.” We begin:
Remember the Titans (2000), perhaps more than any other Hollywood movie, presents the template for the planned replacement of the American majority. Ostensibly a heart-warming tale about a group of high school football players working to overcome racism in turbulent times, the barely buried subtext is that whites will gladly — altruistically — hand over to blacks every favorable niche they have. The football team represents American society in microcosm: black, white, and tense. Only through the replacement of the white coach and white players by black counterparts can amity be realized. In the film, most whites accept this displacement with but slight resistance. . . .
Remember the Titans. Directed by Boaz Yakin and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, both Jews, this film is a straightforward replacement film. That is, the main White characters are replaced by Blacks and all turns out for the better. The White coach is replaced by Washington’s character (and learns to be happy about it), the White quarterback Gary is replaced (and is later shown in a Christ-like pose symbolically celebrating this new team), and another White player even asks the coach to replace him with a Black player in the middle of the big game.
How Ethan Suplee and his bulk are used in Titans is instructive. The script repeatedly shows him as overtly stupid and always contrasts that to Black smarts. For instance, when they go to football camp in Gettysburg, PA (Yes, this is used to ruminate on the racism surrounding the Civil War. And yes, they went to camp in school buses, which is used to educate us on the necessity of 1970’s busing) Suplee the fat lineman is asked by Washington’s coach character what his future plans are. College? No, the lineman answers, “I’m no brainiac like the Rev.” Jerry “Rev” Harris, we see, is Black.
In any case, the Black coach offers to tutor the fat White lineman. Later, there is even a scene where the lineman himself blurts out that he’s “nothing but no-good White trash.” Not to worry, as “Rev” Harris the Black genius will also tutor him. Are we starting to get the point? . . .
Into this tense situation comes a new Black coach, Herman Boone (Washington), who moves his family into an all-White neighborhood. At the recently integrated school, the men find out that Boone will replace Yoast, the White coach, as head coach, a proposition that the White coaches find unpalatable. The White players, too, object, threatening to boycott the Black coach. Yoast, however, convinces them that the right thing to do is play ball.
Play they do, beginning with a bus trip to summer camp. To no one’s surprise, the bus scene is used to highlight segregation. Coach Boone is eager to establish his dominance and does so when Gary, the White quarterback, tries to act as master of the coach. Boone neatly turns the tables by humiliating Gary (with all the White parents watching), badgering the boy with taunts of “Who’s your daddy?” Meekly, Gary gives in and rides the integrated bus.
Upon arrival at the camp, Boone demands that White and Black players share rooms. Clashes erupt over tastes in music as well as responses to a poster of Black athletes using the Black Power salute at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. An obese White lineman confesses to all in the cafeteria that he is too stupid to go to college. To remedy this, a brilliant Black player volunteers to tutor the grateful White, who acknowledges that he is nothing but “White trash.” . . .
Injecting historical seriousness into the film, Boone runs his charges through the dense woods, coming upon a fog-shrouded battlefield cemetery. He then speaks of the background of the Civil War and its attempt to erase the wrongs of slavery. Let us not, he intones, forget those goals and sacrifices, nor let those past hatreds persist.
A particularly egregious co-optation of a Christian theme, I felt, comes when quarterback Gary is driving his ’69 Chevy Camaro through town after another Titans’ victory. His car is broadsided by an old pickup truck, and he is permanently paralyzed from the waist down. In the hospital, Gary watches on TV as his team fights its way to victory in the Virginia State Championship. Jewish director Yakin sets up a shot where White light from above shines over the prostrate Gary, who then lifts his arms in a Christ-like pose. He has given everything so that his Black teammates may play. No opportunity is missed to show that the world is a better place when Blacks replace Whites. The lesson for American society in general is clear.
I suppose it is painful for any racially aware White to view, let alone teach, such replacement-theme films. My conflict, however, comes with each new year proving me so right. Have a look at my movie reviews for TOO recently, paying special attention to Washington’s 2010 film Unstoppable. The same old “replace the inept White males with multicultural stars” has become routine.
END of QUOTES
Anglian Exile, it would be interesting to hear your read of this vile film.
Thank you, I will definitely check out your reviews!
Edmund Connelly what do you think of Spielberg’s “Warhorse?”
I have never seen the film, and have no desire to, was very tired of Spielberg’s propaganda after his atrocious take on J.G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun, the only one I have seen since was A.I., a mess, but the same Jewish propagand theme, the robots being destroyed by rednecks etc. is clearly intended to promote Holocaustianity.
This good analysis just confirms that it was as I would have expected, a good article.
There are long-standing rumours to the effect that Spielburg (parse that name) is a paedophile. the first I read was in Answer Me!!, also lately, people are not naming him, but the references are clear.
I read a contemporary review of ‘Saving …’ , referring to Tom Hanks as ‘Mister Potato Head ead’, seemed a perfect description at the time,
Think about the scene in Gremlins when the WW2 vet Mr.Fudderman and his wife are mowed down by the gremlins driving his tractor. Earlier in the movie Fudderman complains about foreigners and foreign vehicles and we see a poster of Richard Nixon on the wall in the Fudderman home. You see, he went to war to save Spielberg’s people but it doesn’t matter, he’s a Nixon voter and he has to die.
Interesting article Anglian Exile. I’ve seen the movie, but never really reflected on what you wrote.
I want to ask you if you have seen the warmovie “Hacksaw Ridge” (2016) ?
The Director is Mel Gibson. Not a jews, but a white person who was actually accused of anti-Semitism for his film “The Passion of Christ” (2004) by jewsish organizations like ADL.
I am therefore interested in hearing your opinion and analysis of that film. Would you say that it is also anti-white? Or does it contain no such propaganda, would you say?
I’ve only seen the film once, and then not in a manner particularly conducive to close reading, but I believe that beyond the obvious pacifist garbage there are no prominent anti-white narratives.
I clicked on your name to read more of your stuff and it seems this is the only piece you wrote?! Get to writing, I want more! Thanks for this amazing analysis
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