BlackPerspective.net
Discussing the Diaspora as seen through an internal Black lens
Blacks In War Movies - Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna
August 21st, 2008
At the website That Minority Thing the author states:
“With Spike Lee’s new movie, Miracle at St. Anna set to open in theaters at the end of September, another group of black American war vets are finally going to get their Hollywood do. Hollywood has tended to treat the service of non-white soldiers as “specialty” projects. The Oscar bait of Glory or Soldiers Story, rather than as stories that deserve to be told on their own merit. That is to say such films are rarities, rather than a regular part of the Hollywood diet.”
I would moreover say that the greater point is the fact that they always have to be separate stories, or Black participation doesn’t get noted at all. Why aren’t Blacks simply featured in general war movies as part of the American and other western forces; as they always have been? Whether, as a sub-storyline within the greater story being told, or just featured as other soldiers who were there; why is it so hard for white Hollywood to give non-whites their just do?
The only significant American war movie made by white Hollywood that had any substantial Black presence that I can recall was Platoon (a great film by the way). But then again that was the losing war, where the soldiers are hardly honored; and though while rather voluminous percentage wise, none of the Black characters really do anything of note. I certainly give credit for their inclusion but their purpose often was to be there to be the subject of white solider “Rabbit’s” racism. And of course the cowardly solider who sprays his feet with bug repellent so it can seem that he’d gotten and infection and could go home earlier is of course one of the Black guys.
But that’s why we have Spike Lee. While many Blacks want to clown the brotha because he “preaches to us too much” a.k.a holds up a mirror that Black folks don’t want to look into because then we might actually have to confront ourselves; the same fire that drives Spike to do those such films drives him to make the Four Little Girls and When The Levies Broke, which Blacks then hail him for telling our stories. In that same light comes Miracle at St. Anna
The Huffington Post reports that “Lee _ whose next film is this fall’s “Miracle at St. Anna,” the story of an all-black U.S. division fighting in Italy during the war _ said Eastwood’s 2006 movies “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters From Iwo Jima” were whites-only affairs.
“He did two films about Iwo Jima back to back and there was not one black soldier in both of those films,” Lee said Tuesday at the Cannes Film Festival, where he was a judge in an online short-film competition.
“Many veterans, African-Americans, who survived that war are upset at Clint Eastwood. In his vision of Iwo Jima, Negro soldiers did not exist. Simple as that. I have a different version,” Lee said.”
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At her blog, Lola fetters out the point Lee was making in criticizing Eastwoods film, and offers a good bit of history Blacks in U.S. and British wars.
When Spike Lee asked why Clint Eastwood’s movie Flags Of Our Fathers had no black people in it, Clint Eastwood responded with anger saying that ‘a guy like him should shut his face’.
According to Clint Eastwood, there were indeed a few black people there in Iwo Jima, but they didn’t raise the flag (which is apparently the film’s focus).
He then goes on to say that he made the film based on “… the way [he] read[s] it historically, and that’s the way it is”. Well, Mr Eastwood, that’s precisely the point Spike Lee was making - maybe how you see it isn’t actually how it is.
Spike Lee’s comments are not about tokenism, nor about equal opportunities. This is about the role of movie makers in documenting historical truth, not just ‘as they see it’ but as it actually is/was. In writing black soldiers out of war movies, film makers such as Clint Eastwood are actually re-creating their own - inaccurate and distorted - version of history and passing it off as fact.
Mr Eastwood is not the only war film maker to write history from his own perspective, a perspective which does not include any people of colour. Black soldiers appear in very few Western war TV series or films despite the fact that they fought on the front lines for Western countries in sizeable numbers.
Do you know that at least 16,000 black people from the Caribbean fought for Britain in World War I and at least another 10,000 fought for Britain in World War II? In America, close to 200,000 African-American soldiers fought in the Civil War. You probably don’t. And why not? Because those people are the missing black people - rarely spoken about, and rarely depicted in TV or film - which happens to be one of our most prominent mediums for the reenactment of history. Why is their presence not deemed important enough to be included? Not just in Eastwood’s film, but in any war film? Why should Spike Lee be accused of playing the ‘race card’ just because he is pointing out that films about war without black soldiers are factually inaccurate?
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6 Responses to “Blacks In War Movies - Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna”
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Yobachi Boswell is creator and publisher of BlackPerspecitve.net. I’m a writer, activist and political watcher based in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve also been know to do some spoken word and MCing in my day.
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Good for Spike continuing to tell stories of the black experience. But its unfortunate that his perspective is often incorrectly reported as “Blacks are the only people in the world who do anything of note.”
Right, it’s that we’ve done things too; plenty of things and monumentous things.
I love Spike Lee, though I admit to being fairly oblivious to war movies in general.
” I admit to being fairly oblivious to war movies in general”
Hippie!
I’ve become very cynical about Hollywood making war films featuring African Americans. When Glory came out years ago, I was so inspired by the movie that I did research on the brave men of the Fifty Fourth. Upon learning the truth about the men, I became disgusted with the film and avoided watching it for years. I’ve also avoided any and all African or civil rights movies with a white central character. I really have high hopes for this new film by Spike. He represents well in his documentaries and I’m sure he will take the time and care to do the research to make the film true to the source. Unlike white men like Eastwood.
I just read a count down of 7 movies based on a true story that had little to do with the actual story. That’s the way it usually goes. Hollywood has to have it’s cliche’s so making an intersting story out of the true story is seldomely ever going to happen; they just use the true story to make up something fictional that fits their cookie cutter format.