WHEN REEL TALES REWRITE REAL HISTORY
by Leon Hadar
Antiwar.com, CA
Oct 30 2007
In his new revisionist study, No Simple Victory: World War II in
Europe, 1939-45, renowned British historian Norman Davies challenges
the "very superficial and Americanocentric view" of World War II
reflected in the popular war histories.
For instance, the American author Stephen Ambrose’s Band of Brothers
and American director Steven Spielberg’s movie Saving Private Ryan
show World War II as a struggle between freedom, represented by the
Anglo-American powers, and the forces of fascism and totalitarianism
that climaxed with the Normandy invasion.
"There is little doubt that the Ambrose-Spielberg axis, combining a
specific historical stance with the preferences and commercial power
of Hollywood, chimed perfectly with the rise of the ‘neoconservatives’
and the declaration of a ‘new American century,’" Mr. Davies argues.
One recalls, in the days leading to the war with Iraq, President
George W. Bush keeping a bust of Winston Churchill on his desk and
a copy of Mr. Ambrose’s D-Day by his bedside. At the same time, Mr.
Bush’s advisers have compared him to Churchill and Saddam Hussein
to Hitler.
"It all formed a part of the same package," Mr. Davies suggests. "A
very superficial Americoncentric view of history was a necessary
adjunct to the reigning Americoncentric view of world affairs." And
Mr. Davies foresees that "someday, somehow, the present fact of
American supremacy will be challenged, and with it the American
interpretation of history."
There are many other perspectives on World War II, he notes. "The
Chinese, for example, remember the war years as period of immense
suffering inflicted by imperial Japan and a necessary prelude to
the Chinese Revolution. In a Sinocentric world, one could expect the
importance of Europe and of Europe’s suffering to be downgraded; the
victories of Russians and Americans would be pushed to the margins;
the Japanese militarists, not the Nazis, would represent the prime
force of Evil; the ‘memory spot’ par excellence might be the city
of Nanking; and the screen epic of the mid-21st century (if screens
still exist) might show some unknown Chinese private being rescued
on some as yet unremembered beach."
Well, we might not have to wait until the release of Saving Private
Li. Ang Lee ‘s award-winning, very expensive, and very long Lust,
Caution seems to fit the bill of a Sinocentric screen epic about World
War II. Or was it the Pacific War? Or the Greater East Asia War? The
film, set in World War II Shanghai during the Japanese occupation,
is about a young Chinese woman, played by the very talented Tang Wei,
who is a member of an anti-Japanese underground and whose task is to
seduce a member of the Japanese collaborationist government, played
by Tony Leung, as part of a scheme to assassinate him. It’s a WWII
story that is told from an Asian perspective.
That there are no European or American characters playing a central
role in this film might explain why the movie has not been doing so
well in American cinemas.
Interestingly enough, another award-winning, very expensive, and very
long WWII movie, Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book, which is set in Holland
during the Nazi occupation and is about a Dutch-Jewish woman, played
by Carice van Houten, who is a member of an anti-German underground
and whose task is to seduce a German officer, played by Sebastian
Koch, as part of a scheme to kill a Dutch Nazi collaborator, was
more successful than Lust, Caution in terms of attracting American
audiences when it was released in the U.S. last year.
The reason is that Black Book is more "conventional" than Lust,
Caution, as far as the Western spectators are concerned, since it
has all the ingredients (occupied Europe, Nazis, the Holocaust)
from other WWII movies with which they are familiar.
And when it comes to the battles in East Asia, Americans expect to
see a movie about American soldiers fighting the "Japs" on this or
that Pacific island and are not familiar with the suffering inflicted
by the Japanese on the Chinese and other Asian nations – an issue
that has only surfaced in the American media in recent years during
the debates over Korean "comfort women" and the Japanese leaders’
visits to their country’s war shrines.
If you were a Pole, Hungarian, or Czech, the war was not a simple
victory of good over evil, but the defeat of one totalitarian state,
Nazi Germany, by another, the Soviet Union, whose crimes were just
as vast, if less diabolical.
But that kind of view was not evident in the documentary The War,
produced by Ken Burns, which was broadcast recently on American public
television and in which the Soviets seemed to play the role of the
understudies in a war fought and won by the Americans.
Trying to construct a meaningful and balanced narrative of WWII or, for
that matter, of other major chapters in world history is a task that
is embraced not only by academics, but also by contemporary political
players who are trying to shape the direction of our current history.
Hence Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s efforts to raise doubts
about the historical facts of the Holocaust are part of a strategy
to challenge both Israel and its Western patrons.
The anger expressed by many Chinese and Koreans over the Japanese
attempts to downplay their role in WWII atrocities is an integral
part of the current attempt to shape the balance of power in East Asia.
And then we have the recent vote by the U.S. Congress to condemn the
atrocities committed by the Ottoman Empire and its allies against
the Armenians during World War I and in its aftermath. On one level,
it was part of a campaign by the Armenians to depict that tragedy
as genocide – which the Turks reject. On another level, the debate
intertwined with the current politics of the Middle East, including
Iraq, and demonstrated Turkey’s effort to reassert its power. And on
yet another level, that issue highlights the way the West, including
the U.S., has been preoccupied with the killing of 1.5 million
Christian Armenians by mostly Muslim Turks and Kurds.
That most of us tend to identify and empathize with the plight of those
who are close to us – family, friends, compatriots, co-religionists –
is understandable and even natural. Nations write their own histories,
and if they are victorious and powerful, they have an enormous
influence on the construction of the broad and accepted historical
narratives.
But in a world in which globalization is making it impossible for
nations to live in isolation from each other, they all need to
reexamine their common histories.
One such exercise has been performed by American actor and producer
Clint Eastwood, who, in two separate films, examined one of the
bloodiest battlefields of WWII in Iwo Jima from American (Flag of
Our Fathers) and Japanese (Letters from Iwo Jima) perspectives.
It is possible that the Americans who defeated the Japanese in WWII and
who regard them now as close political-military allies and economic
partners find it less agonizing to adopt a more balanced approach to
their former enemies.
But unfortunately, interpreting the wars of the past is going to
continue to play an important role in the evolution of the contemporary
relations between nations by providing a sense of legitimacy for the
wars of the future.
1832
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