-
Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!
Dunkirk and its whitewashing of history...
- Thread starter Miles Quaritch
- Start date
MatrixMan.EXE
Member
Which it did and is the point of the film? Whether or not the film whitewashes is another conversation altogether which should be had, but to liken this film's story to Brexit is borderline disrespectful in my opinion. There's absolutely no glorification of the situation that these soldiers are in, nor is there any flag waving or over jingoism. It's incredibly matter of fact and is an event in history that should be highlighted. Better that than the usual Hollywood "America won WW2" nonsense that has perpetuated war films for the past 20 years.
As to the topic at hand, I did notice this and the only people of colour I saw where the French soldiers who were refused access to one of the vessels during the stretcher scene. It's a problem that I wish was addressed, thought weirdly enough I was even happy to see at least some black soldiers in the film, even if it was only brief. Something I noticed in Fury as well. Battlefield 1 is a breath of fresh air in that sense.
This, I'm tired of this rhetoric because it seeps into the realms of positive discrimination which I can't fucking stand. Don't add people of colour for the sake of it. Do it meaningfully rather than just to say that "our film had black people and asians in it". I find that worse than there not being any at all. More black leads are what we need. Not extras, because that flies in the face of what the real issue is.
I have been saying this but GAF have made up their mind about him.
MrMysterio
Member
Non-white person appears "oh I think this will be about racial politics and how the non-whites relate to white people".
White person appears "ah, a great race-neutral, kinda historic but not really (if we want to omit structural racism and oppression) action flick!"
White person appears "ah, a great race-neutral, kinda historic but not really (if we want to omit structural racism and oppression) action flick!"
What in the 9 hells is "care bait"?
You're joking but this is literally what we can expect out of Hollywood.
I can tell if it's better than token minority that is there to elevate the white protags though.
Napoleonthechimp
Member
Why? Is this seriously the logic of some complaining about this?
No. They wouldn't surely have been at Dunkirk. This was a global war stretching across a continent. It also predates the immigration that came post-war from countries outside of Europe, the same immigration that has led to what multicultural identity Britain has in the 21st century.
lmao@all white = the absence of race
MrMysterio
Member
I wasn't joking 
Albino_Yeti
Member
Not necessarily though. To use a very recent example, Wonder Woman is set in WW1, but of course that isn't portrayed as accurate as possible. Just because something is set in a historical period doesn't mean it HAS to be completely accurate. Dances With Wolves, The Last Samurai, The Last of the Mohicans, all great movies set in historical periods. None of them are portrayed as accurately as possible.
If it was a decision made out of racial bias then I agree with you completely. I'm just not so sure Nolan was acting on any racial biases when he cast this movie. But I'm not him, so I can't know for certain.
It's what you use to trick Gamergaters into considering the thoughts and feelings of other live human beings in the real world.
Pancake Mix
Copied someone else's pancake recipe
They're never working though, you can't make a GG type care about other human beings.
It's what you put in "empathy traps"
I haven't seen the movie, so I can't speak specifically on it, but I do have to say that there almost always seems to be an excuse not to include minorities and women in these types of stories. To the point where the excuses can apply to almost any movie/story/game/etc, in any genre, in any setting.
As an underrepresented minority, these excuses stick out like a sore thumb to me. There's a reason why so many marginalized groups feel disconnected from the world around them, and a part of it is because our stories are either co-opted and repurposed (ie, Ghost in the Shell, Death Note live action adaptations), or we're drowned out in favor of another story where the represented majority gets to have another moment of glory and heroism.
I'm a black guy in my late 30's, and it's been such a saddening experience for me to dig into the history of my people, and discover how much of our contributions have been overlooked, dismissed, or stolen from us. How much of our history (and I'm speaking specifically as a black American), is lost and unknown to us. And how much pride and community we would feel if just a fraction of that history was known. There's a reason why movies like Hidden Figures resonates so strongly with people, in particular women and minorities. There's something uplifting and inspiring when you see how your people matter. There's this connective tissue that unites us when we discover how much we have in common. How much we have all fought, bled, and died for one another.
When story after story is told propping up one group (ie, straight white males), it comes at a cost. Maybe not a cost to the portrayed people, but a cost to the people that are scrubbed from the history books.
It's easy to say "It's just a movie," but film, television, literature, music, and games speak to us as a species, and inform and shape our perspective of the world around us and each other. Christopher Nolan may have been focused on telling a story of a small group of people, but by setting it in a real world setting, and excluding yet again the sacrifices and efforts of non-whites, he is contributing just that little bit more the shaping of our social perspective. Once again the browns and blacks and the women are lost in the fray, their stories continuing to be untold. Again. Their contributions don't matter. Again. They're background decoration while the big boys do the heroics. Again.
It's heartbreaking and demoralizing. Even moreso when an actual story about your people/gender gets replaced with white faces. It's not about hating on whites, or wanting to see the end of stories from a white person's perspective, but about adding to the lexicon of storytelling and entertainment by including the equally valuable and important people of non-white, non-straight, non-christian non-male backgrounds. I just want our stories to be told too.
I'd love to see a film about Black Wall Street, that's for sure. We certainly didn't learn about that in my history classes growing up...
As an underrepresented minority, these excuses stick out like a sore thumb to me. There's a reason why so many marginalized groups feel disconnected from the world around them, and a part of it is because our stories are either co-opted and repurposed (ie, Ghost in the Shell, Death Note live action adaptations), or we're drowned out in favor of another story where the represented majority gets to have another moment of glory and heroism.
I'm a black guy in my late 30's, and it's been such a saddening experience for me to dig into the history of my people, and discover how much of our contributions have been overlooked, dismissed, or stolen from us. How much of our history (and I'm speaking specifically as a black American), is lost and unknown to us. And how much pride and community we would feel if just a fraction of that history was known. There's a reason why movies like Hidden Figures resonates so strongly with people, in particular women and minorities. There's something uplifting and inspiring when you see how your people matter. There's this connective tissue that unites us when we discover how much we have in common. How much we have all fought, bled, and died for one another.
When story after story is told propping up one group (ie, straight white males), it comes at a cost. Maybe not a cost to the portrayed people, but a cost to the people that are scrubbed from the history books.
It's easy to say "It's just a movie," but film, television, literature, music, and games speak to us as a species, and inform and shape our perspective of the world around us and each other. Christopher Nolan may have been focused on telling a story of a small group of people, but by setting it in a real world setting, and excluding yet again the sacrifices and efforts of non-whites, he is contributing just that little bit more the shaping of our social perspective. Once again the browns and blacks and the women are lost in the fray, their stories continuing to be untold. Again. Their contributions don't matter. Again. They're background decoration while the big boys do the heroics. Again.
It's heartbreaking and demoralizing. Even moreso when an actual story about your people/gender gets replaced with white faces. It's not about hating on whites, or wanting to see the end of stories from a white person's perspective, but about adding to the lexicon of storytelling and entertainment by including the equally valuable and important people of non-white, non-straight, non-christian non-male backgrounds. I just want our stories to be told too.
I'd love to see a film about Black Wall Street, that's for sure. We certainly didn't learn about that in my history classes growing up...
For the extras, it's probably that the audition called specifically for white men, which would be a decision that had to be made by someone in the casting crew, rather than Nolan himself.
On the flipside, you can't cast 1000 all-white extras and not have racial bias somewhere in the team.
Guerrillas in the Mist
Member
This is my thoughts in a nutshell - if Nolan had, say, made a movie about the Battle of Imphal (one of the biggest land battles between Allied and Japanese forces, and largely forgotten) and decided to ignore Indian troops, he would deserve to be dragged through the mud.
MatrixMan.EXE
Member
This is what I'm talking about. I want to see more films that focus on issues that people of colour have overcome and are still overcoming, along with having more people of colour in leading roles. While it is sad that our contributions to history are grossly overlooked, I also don't people of colour to be thrown into films "just because". If you're going to do it, do it in a meaningful way. For me, just having brown faces in a sea of extras just doesn't cut it, but maybe I'm asking too much of Hollywood.
Psychoward
Banned
You literally used a superhero movie as your first example.
The catch is that looking at Nolan's filmography he won't take that kind of risk.
Hence why we're in a thread about Dunkerque and not about Imphal.
Albino_Yeti
Member
And then I used 3 non-superhero movies after that. What's your point?
Psychoward
Banned
My point is your argument was immensely flawed from the beginning and it was hard to take the rest seriously. That being said I only saw The Last Samurai out of those other 3 and while it's not 100% historically accurate it also doesn't shove all the Japanese under the rug and actually paints Western imperialism in a bad light so
Yeah, because you know...they like, prevailed.
We're talking about a movie that means to depict an actual battle that actually happened and you're talking about a movie where an Amazonian demi-god ends WW1 by killing the Greek God of War.
Yep. The same England that left India to starve in one of the worst famines in the country's history while they literally had ships packed with food they didn't need.
Not really. The Battle for Britain had just begun.
TransTrender
Gold Member
Well, like, you could consider the part where the movie maker only has a certain amount of run time and doesn't want to overly convolute the script like a Roland Emmerich film with tons of inconsequential subplots that turn the movie in to an editing clusterfuck.
But whatever.
Racism.
Ocarina_117
Banned
Albino_Yeti
Member
Maybe it wasn't the best example but I was just thinking of movies set in historical time periods lol. And I would hope the Last Samurai doesn't shove the Japanese under a rug, it is set in Japan after all
Gnome Scat
Member
The war would've been over if the British didn't prevail in rescuing their soldiers.
Psychoward
Banned
Including minorities as extras would have upped the runtime? Making one comment about how the Brits had preference over the Indian soldiers for boarding would have added a convoluted subplot?
You're talking about the director of The Dark Knight Rises, with this being maybe his shortest movie ever?
What, would running by some minority soldiers have added 10 minutes to his precious runtime or something?
TransTrender
Gold Member
Were the minority divisions even in the same space as those that were the focus of the movie?
excelsiorlef
Member
I mean it sort of is but ok.
Charles Brandon
Member
Can you back that up?
Acknowledging the mere existence of people of color unnecessarily eats away at precious runtime.
Wow.
TransTrender
Gold Member
Maybe he felt the pressure of being time constrained
/s
Well 10 minutes of run-time but if they were never included in the original screenplay and whatnot then you'll have to consider a couple of million $ in extra shoots, costumes, writing, payroll, days on set, SFX, etc.
Replacing some white soldiers with people of color would have added inconsequential subplots and increased the run time? Making an all white movie a little less white in representation would have made this a Roland Emmerich film?
Psychoward
Banned
or like I edited in, throwing in a single line even referencing how the Indian troops were shoved to the back of the line like the French even though they were fighting for the Brits, or how their fighting helped delay the Germans which was crucial to the evacuation
it would have made the movie unwatchably long
the_darkness
Banned
Giving meaningful screen presence to a character of every ethnicity, nationality, gender and religion present during the conflict? Yeah, that would take time
TransTrender
Gold Member
When it comes to movie execs, yes, this matters. It's pretty much a money play, simple as that.
Sarcastic Poster
Member
Last of the Mohicans is appsrently pretty darn accurate actually, apart from some typical noble savage tropes.
Anyway, don't see a problem with not showing a group that consisted of 0.5% of the entire force, and may not have been involved in the specific areas the film focused on. A "pander" shot of some Indian soldiers for a split second would have been equally criticised for using them as some quota filler and not in any prominent role.
Psychoward
Banned
Or... he could have just thought of that before shooting and swapped some of the white actors with minorities...
England screwed India so hard. I'm surprised they never made a formal apology.
Psychoward
Banned
Didn't we just have a thread about how the myth perpetuated by the movie execs that audiences are scared of diversity is not only unfounded, but factually proven to be the opposite? Nolan has more than enough clout to say "hey how about we include some minority actors in this movie as extras or even just reference the struggle/persecution/necessity of those troops?
excelsiorlef
Member
Minorities make for convulted scripts and inconsequential subplots?
TransTrender
Gold Member
Would randomly inserting minority characters been historically accurate? Probably not.
Would trying to appease every demographic turn this into a Roland Emmerich film? Yes.
Who would want to see the story of minorities escaping from a Battlefield anyway?/movie execs