The Somalis in Black Hawk Down are also handled well, and a core theme of the movie is the incoherence and futility of the American mission in Somalia.
I love Zulu and you’re in danger of making me watch it again. My recollection is it treats the Zulus as an almost unknowable force that appear and then disappear for obscure reasons. Yeah they’re not villains, they’re more a natural phenomena like the weather. I think that’s a problematic trope given our history in Africa is today ‘upheld’ by the idea that we came in and civilised it, and that trope denies them the obvious status of another civilisation who were at political odds with ours.
I really don’t think you can call them the good guys in the film, though it’s true that most of the sympathetic characters in the film are somewhat sympathetic to the Zulus. Even as they mow them down and win the day!
Fort Apache is another film like Zulu that I really like and that I don’t think makes (in this case) the Native Americans out to be evil Villains, but I still think is pretty problematic. I’d love people to change my mind, though.
Yeah, maybe like the Michael Bay version ends up problematic but Ridley Scott did a good job. Its not a white savior, dark skin equals bad film.
The edems all put themselves in a situation where they have to feel lucky that trump mishandled the pandemic, because they picked someone who’s absolutely terrible at running for president. Which kinda means that they have to feel lucky that the pandemic happened in the first place.
Biden was polling well ahead of Trump before the pandemic.
Hoo boy if they’re reducing the sum total of Somali piracy all the way down to “Starving Africans” then it’s probably good that I keep avoiding Citations Needed.
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In Black Hawk Down they literally call the Somalians “skinnies.”
That’s what the Rangers actually called them in real life. And the movie isn’t approving of this or any other American action, again it is far more critical of the Americans than the Somalis.
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I like citations needed, but they have at least one galaxy brained take an episode. I can’t remember the exact stupidity on the last episode I listened to (gig workers one), but I thought it was something like “all bosses are bad.”
The cadence of Citations Needed bothers me. It’s like a high school student writing an essay.
I don’t need a five minute introduction, introductory blurbs for each segment, conclusion blurbs for each segment, and formal transitions. Y’all, we’re not boomers, just put up the goddamn content.
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Listen, I’m half Welsh. I love this movie and how it portrays the very realistic way a full men’s chorus can lead to victory on the battlefield. It’s great representation. And yung Michael Cain is in there too, there’s just a lot to love about this movie. And the Zulus certainly aren’t portrayed as comicbook villains. In it’s own way, it does respect their culture, there’s a legitimate element of wokeness there.
And at the same time, the movie doesn’t give you any perspective as to why these chaps have found themselves in South Africa or why the locals are so keen to kill all of them. It’s a story about stoic and manly British guys fending off waves of savage but noble opponents. This is all framed in a really problematic way and we need to pan back a bit to think about all of this.
Black Hawk Down isn’t much different. Badass US special forces shooting their way through wave after wave of starving Somalians. You can’t walk away from this film without marveling about how macho and cool our military guys are. Why these guys are hanging out in Somalia and why all the locals really, really don’t like them very much is not something we’re invited to dwell on.
I’m standing by their hot take: if you’re making a movie where the Imperial Storm Troopers are the tough guy action heroes and the Ewoks are the antagonists, you need to sit down and think about what the fuck you are doing.I don’t fucking care if you include some woke scenes where you respect Ewok culture.
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Against my better judgement and at my brothers request I listened to Justin Amash on YangSpeaks.
The way the legislative branch operates right now is insane to me.
It’s broken, we need to fix it. I don’t know what the best solution is.
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Good lord the 538 pod is awful. Why did I try.
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Nate has a face for radio and a voice for Twitter.
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Ice Cube on the new Bad Faith, seems like quite a get. Hopefully it’ll be better than the Chomsky ep (could hardly be worse).
I’ve never listened to a Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast. Anyone have a recommendation on what they feel is his best work, so that I can check it out?
Not all of his episodes are free unfortunately. Personally I like Ghosts of the Ostfront best but that’s because I’m really interested in WW2. I’d put Wrath of the Khans second.
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I love Ghosts, especially the first one that focuses on Stalin’s disbelief that his pal Adolf would ever ratfuck him that quickly.
My personal rankings of the multi-parters:
Death Throes of the Republic
Wrath of the Khans
Ghosts
Something like a tie between the current Supernova & The WWI one
Honorable mention to the stand alone episode on the Siege of Munster, probably my favorite single episode.
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For what it’s worth, I saw Black Hawk Down in the theater, this was before 9/11 and well before the era of wokeness and I was 19 or 20, but I definitely thought the portrayal of the Somalis was problematic. There are so many vertical shots of them scurrying around and then swarming a target and then getting blasted, it left the impression with me that they were like insects.