Forum - View topicINTEREST: Critic Calls Out The Wind Rises For Perpetuating Historical Revisionism
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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He has a new book out about screenwriting (it's an e-book on Amazon for $5) that I've been enjoying a whole lot, and it comes in a 'Banner' version that's formatted normally.
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Knoepfchen
 Posts: 698 |
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This is my first personal comment on this page where I otherwise enjoy constructive discussion of my preferred entertainment. But I just can't swallow the amount of ignorance presented in this comment. Please do some research (and counting) before you go on posting some outrageous stuf like this the next time. |
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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There is certainly a fecund discussion to be had regarding the relationship between a film's moral status and its other merits and demerits. Unlike certain oft-cited cases however, most principally that of Riefenstahl, it does not appear that this film is sufficiently deplorable yet sufficiently lauded to be of special utility to such a discussion. The film certainly seems to be marred by its failure to condemn certain actions it depicts, though given that this fault is hardly a rarity it is unlikely to place exceptional stress on critics.
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Knoepfchen
Posts: 698 |
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I just wanted to edit my previous comment and include something about Leni Riefenstahl, but you beat me to it. Of course, there's a moral difference between a director taking and representing a side (while still producing something artistically beautiful, but emotionally sickening) and a director simply not openly condemning a character's actions in order to tell his story. Without having seen the movie, I can't possibly comment on this any further, though.
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lizardking461
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Yeah, then he said the purges were "debatable"... bit of a twit isn't he... |
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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That's a lie. He said we can debate them. "Debatable" carries a connotation that implies their status is dubious. When one simply says we can "debate" something though then it is more just a synonym for "discuss". And in general, his point is pretty clearly that, while numerous countries have done awful things throughout history, in regards to WW2 specifically it was overwhelmingly the Germans and the Japanese that were at the heart of it. |
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Kreion
Posts: 332 |
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If you really want to put things in perspective then you can't just ignore everything PRE the world wars either. The US still celebrates Columbus who butchered a civilization, the British had their fair share of 'colonization' which led to most of the natives being wiped out. I'm sure the French have had their fair share of death-dealing too. You can talk all you like about white-washing history - but the simple fact is that you can't in an information age. I highly doubt that the Japanese truly believe that they hold no blame, regardless of if they openly admit it or not. Or rather held no blame is much more appropriate, since modern Japan has nothing to do with it. Just as Modern Germany stands for nothing like what it may have stood for in the past. That's not to say that the original idea to not admit fault was correct in any way, it was deplorable. But by this point it's pretty irrelevant, nothing would change if they admitted it. No country talks extensively about their nasty pasts - that's something that just isn't likely to change. Maybe if the US hadn't used what they did on Japan they would have been more forthcoming, but as it stands they had the perfect thing to change them from villain to "?". Either way, there's a lot of points that could be made about this and none of them are really relevant to the movie. The movie is not about the war, that's just the setting. Miyazaki's be so anti-war and anti-changing history that it's got him in trouble more than once, so I really think that this point should have been made without latching onto this film. Since this seems a bit...faddy? The writer's a respectable one, but as I've said it's quite clear that the issue in question was just not one raised in the film - and a film doesn't need to raise every issue about the time in which they are set. |
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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So the movie about the people involved in the Manhattan Project really doesn't need to mention at all the human cost or what it was used for or anything.
Anyway guys everyone's done bad things and killed people so it's cool, don't throw stones in glass houses after all! |
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EastN3
 Posts: 149 |
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Pretty much anyone who knows anything about WWII Japan knows that the military was a ginormous human rights violation all bundled up into a great big package of hubris. Even still, whining about it helps no one. It happened more than 50 years ago, and chances are most people who were involved are dead. People don't know how to let go.
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Blatant historical revisionism in a thread about historical revisionism; oddly appropriate in a twisted kind of way. The only "debate" that's going on amongst reputable modern historians is whether Stalin killed twenty million civilians over the course of his reign or sixty million; nevermind the purges. When the conservative estimate is higher than most upper estimates for the Holocaust or the Imperial Japanese war crimes, pretending that Stalin doesn't deserve to be in the same club is outrageous. All three regimes were evil, Stalin should not guess a pass just because he was on the Allied side in WW2. |
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ikillchicken
Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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There are four recurring points I'm seeing here that I want to respond to:
#1) But it's not about the war. Yeah, that's kinda the problem. You can't make a movie about a guy building warplanes for his nation to use to invade other countries and then turn around and just decide you're not gonna be "about" the war. The war is inexorably linked. #2) But America did stuff just as bad. Across all of history? Yeah. Absolutely they have. Although I'm not sure how that's relevant here. Nobody is trying to say Japan is worse or more culpable across all of history. But if you're going to make a movie set during WW2 obviously what will be relevant to that is Japan in WW2. And in WW2, Japan and the Axis powers were the aggressors. They invaded unprovoked. And they committed massive atrocities against the people of the countries they attacked. Nobody came out of WW2 without mud on their hands. The allies did terrible things too. But none were so pervasive or widespread as those done by the Axis. #3) But American movies are also guilty of revisionism. Yes, but unlike with American revisionism, this is part of a pervasive and ongoing pattern of behavior from a country that still refuses to acknowledge the atrocities it committed 70 freakin' years later. Other countries have done bad things. And they've also owned up to those things. Hell, a lot of Americans seem to actually like to criticize their country for this. There's a ton of material out there criticizing and acknowledging all the shitty stuff America has done. But apparently, in Japan, even an extremely left wing media creator like Miyazaki get's called "anti-Japanese" for a movie like this. Historical revisionism in fantasy kinda becomes a massively bigger deal when coupled with a widespread denial in reality. #4) What does it matter anyway? It happened 70 years ago. It isn't related to modern Japan. Let it go. So then why are they still denying it? This argument cuts both ways. If you really think it is time for people to move on then that's all the more reason Japan should just acknowledge their history. Living in a state of perpetual historical revision and getting really really mad if anyone tries to say otherwise is the opposite of "moving on". |
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TiredGamer
 Posts: 246 Location: Florida |
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I stopped reading the first piece (the opposition) as soon as I hit the line about slaves building the Pyramids. It's ironic that the piece argues about historical revisionists when it uses the oldest piece of historical revisionism in existence. |
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Fronzel
Posts: 1906 |
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Isn't that an outdated, disproved conception rather than revisionism? |
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insert name here
Posts: 84 |
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To be fair to Miyazaki, you could apply this criticism to a lot of what Hollywood has produced about history, and about most things really. The still intractable denial in some sections of Japanese society about their history is certainly a problem, but its unfair to lay that at Miyazaki's feet, and its important to remember that our society isn't exactly blemish free in that regard either.
I'm eager to see this film, I suspect that the ambiguity that I've heard about in the film is a productive one. I've heard that the film explores the beauty in the art of making machines that were designed to kill. Well, we know that Miyazaki is a bit of an environmentalist and one without the most optimistic outlook with regards to the future of humanity. We also know that his works are tied in with the production of endless merchandise, some of which is probably floating around in the ocean somewhere by this point. I could see there being a germ of autobiographical confession to this, but all of that is a provisional theory based only what I've heard. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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I believe it was actual revisionism invented by the Old Testament (Exodus mostly) and perpetrated by the Ancient Greeks. |
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