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We are running out of Villains
talos7
New Orleans
In this age of political correctness, filmmakers are going to find it harder and harder to find villains who's choice does not offend someone, or, as we've seen recently, invite the wrath of an offended group. Are we destined to have only non human adversaries or people of an unidentifiable ethnic backgrounds as out film villains? Here is an interesting article.
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2014/12/18/pansy-hollywood-cuts-north-korea-from-list-of-movie-villains/
With Sony’s decision to pull the Seth Rogen/James Franco starrer The Interview from circulation following a brutal hack attack by the North Korean regime, Hollywood finds its list of acceptable villains growing shorter and shorter. Not only did Sony pull The Interview thanks to intimidation at the hands of Kim Jung Un – the film was about reporters trying to kill the evil dictator – they also pulled a slated Steve Carrell movie, Pyongyang, about the regime.
Ironically, North Korea had become Hollywood’s safest go-to villain, supposedly avoiding the multicultural blowback of targeting Muslim terrorists or the Chinese government—which provides an enormous amount of funding to Hollywood, as well as a lucrative foreign market.
China, in particular, has gotten off easy in terms of Hollywood villainhood—an enormous regime that routinely works with major corporations, forces women into abortions, and jails dissidents makes for an inviting target. Unless, that is, that regime hosts the world’s fastest-growing film market and owns equity in major studios like Legendary Pictures and MGM. China explicitly bans films that “distort the civilization and history of China or other nations… or… tarnish the image of revolutionary leaders, heroes, important historic characters, members of the armed forces, police, and judicial bodies.”
It is no wonder, then, that MGM shifted the villains of its remake of Red Dawn from the Chinese—plausible invaders of the United States, if any are to be found to replace the Soviet Union—to the ridiculously implausible North Koreans. North Korea was a safe target; China was not. As the Los Angeles Times reported at the time, “China has become such an important market for US entertainment companies that one studio has taken the extraordinary step of digitally altering a film to excise bad guys from the Communist nation lest the leadership in Beijing be offended.”
So Chinese villains were off the table. So, too, are Muslim terrorists, given the multicultural backlash to accurate portrayal of Muslim terrorism. When 24 had the temerity to suggest that Muslim terrorists might provide a greater terror risk to the United States than, say, white Europeans, the Council on American-Islamic Relations made such a stink that star Kiefer Sutherland had to disown the Muslim terrorist storyline in a public service announcement for the show:
Now while terrorism is obviously one of the most critical challenges facing our nation and the world, it is important to recognize that the American Muslim community stands firmly beside their fellow Americans in denouncing and resisting all forms of terrorism. So in watching 24, please, bear that in mind.
We’ve also seen the US government get involved to the extent that when an American ambassador is murdered at an embassy in Benghazi, Libya, the Obama administration responds by pushing for the arrest of a bad filmmaker who had the temerity to label Mohammed a villain. Even when Muslim terrorists are featured on film, they’re portrayed sympathetically, as in The Kingdom (2007), where they are equated with American trackers; Rendition (2007), where America’s anti-terror techniques are seen as the catalyst for Muslim terrorism; and The Green Zone (2010), where American greed for oil leads to terror. Going all the way back to 2002, the Ben Affleck bomb The Sum of All Fears, based on the Tom Clancy novel, changed the villains from Palestinian terrorists launching a nuclear attack (plausible) to neo-Nazis doing so (not).
That basically left North Koreans as the only permissible non-white villains on the table.
So much for that. One hack attack, and Kim Jung Un suddenly gets wiped from the film industry.
Now that North Korea has taken its name off the Hollywood permissible villains list—a list that is limited to countries or groups that will not threaten to burn down your theaters or leak your nasty emails—the only folks left are the Russians, the Nazis (and even then, Hollywood prefers that splinter groups too evil for the actual Nazis be targeted, as in Captain America), and white Republican businessmen. Christians don’t riot and murder women in the street when you mock Scripture (This Is The End, starring Rogen and Franco, mocked it relentlessly), and neither do those big bad conservative oil men (no hack attacks after Tex Richman tried to knock down the Muppet theater in The Muppets). And the Russians will likely hack someone to take their name off the hit list sometime soon.
So it turns out that the only villains in Hollywood are non-villains—the sort of folk you don’t really have to fear. Which means that while Hollywood trains us to fight the kind of people we shouldn’t really worry about (oh, no, the Big Bad Christian Voodoo Man wants to stop the transgender kid from following his dream of dancing at the 1910 World’s Fair!), the people we should worry about sit back and chuckle.
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2014/12/18/pansy-hollywood-cuts-north-korea-from-list-of-movie-villains/
With Sony’s decision to pull the Seth Rogen/James Franco starrer The Interview from circulation following a brutal hack attack by the North Korean regime, Hollywood finds its list of acceptable villains growing shorter and shorter. Not only did Sony pull The Interview thanks to intimidation at the hands of Kim Jung Un – the film was about reporters trying to kill the evil dictator – they also pulled a slated Steve Carrell movie, Pyongyang, about the regime.
Ironically, North Korea had become Hollywood’s safest go-to villain, supposedly avoiding the multicultural blowback of targeting Muslim terrorists or the Chinese government—which provides an enormous amount of funding to Hollywood, as well as a lucrative foreign market.
China, in particular, has gotten off easy in terms of Hollywood villainhood—an enormous regime that routinely works with major corporations, forces women into abortions, and jails dissidents makes for an inviting target. Unless, that is, that regime hosts the world’s fastest-growing film market and owns equity in major studios like Legendary Pictures and MGM. China explicitly bans films that “distort the civilization and history of China or other nations… or… tarnish the image of revolutionary leaders, heroes, important historic characters, members of the armed forces, police, and judicial bodies.”
It is no wonder, then, that MGM shifted the villains of its remake of Red Dawn from the Chinese—plausible invaders of the United States, if any are to be found to replace the Soviet Union—to the ridiculously implausible North Koreans. North Korea was a safe target; China was not. As the Los Angeles Times reported at the time, “China has become such an important market for US entertainment companies that one studio has taken the extraordinary step of digitally altering a film to excise bad guys from the Communist nation lest the leadership in Beijing be offended.”
So Chinese villains were off the table. So, too, are Muslim terrorists, given the multicultural backlash to accurate portrayal of Muslim terrorism. When 24 had the temerity to suggest that Muslim terrorists might provide a greater terror risk to the United States than, say, white Europeans, the Council on American-Islamic Relations made such a stink that star Kiefer Sutherland had to disown the Muslim terrorist storyline in a public service announcement for the show:
Now while terrorism is obviously one of the most critical challenges facing our nation and the world, it is important to recognize that the American Muslim community stands firmly beside their fellow Americans in denouncing and resisting all forms of terrorism. So in watching 24, please, bear that in mind.
We’ve also seen the US government get involved to the extent that when an American ambassador is murdered at an embassy in Benghazi, Libya, the Obama administration responds by pushing for the arrest of a bad filmmaker who had the temerity to label Mohammed a villain. Even when Muslim terrorists are featured on film, they’re portrayed sympathetically, as in The Kingdom (2007), where they are equated with American trackers; Rendition (2007), where America’s anti-terror techniques are seen as the catalyst for Muslim terrorism; and The Green Zone (2010), where American greed for oil leads to terror. Going all the way back to 2002, the Ben Affleck bomb The Sum of All Fears, based on the Tom Clancy novel, changed the villains from Palestinian terrorists launching a nuclear attack (plausible) to neo-Nazis doing so (not).
That basically left North Koreans as the only permissible non-white villains on the table.
So much for that. One hack attack, and Kim Jung Un suddenly gets wiped from the film industry.
Now that North Korea has taken its name off the Hollywood permissible villains list—a list that is limited to countries or groups that will not threaten to burn down your theaters or leak your nasty emails—the only folks left are the Russians, the Nazis (and even then, Hollywood prefers that splinter groups too evil for the actual Nazis be targeted, as in Captain America), and white Republican businessmen. Christians don’t riot and murder women in the street when you mock Scripture (This Is The End, starring Rogen and Franco, mocked it relentlessly), and neither do those big bad conservative oil men (no hack attacks after Tex Richman tried to knock down the Muppet theater in The Muppets). And the Russians will likely hack someone to take their name off the hit list sometime soon.
So it turns out that the only villains in Hollywood are non-villains—the sort of folk you don’t really have to fear. Which means that while Hollywood trains us to fight the kind of people we shouldn’t really worry about (oh, no, the Big Bad Christian Voodoo Man wants to stop the transgender kid from following his dream of dancing at the 1910 World’s Fair!), the people we should worry about sit back and chuckle.
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Comments
People act like we're living in some sort of politically correct age but this stuff is old hat. The people who made the early Bond movies like Terrence Young and Richard Maibaum weren't "pansies" as Breitbart.com shallowly implies. They were WW2 veterans who simply didn't see a need for black-and-white niceties.
I'm not just talking about Bond movies. I'm talking about all movies in general.
Well, I wouldn't call that hack a non-violent reaction, if you are referring to that? Cyberviolence is very much violence.
I personally liked Silva as a villain, his underlaying story with M less so. But, that doesn't change the fact I am interested in this computer-crime plot they are apparently pursuing.
Yep theres only us and the Nazis left really.
The truly tragic thing here is that the West is panicking not to offend this tubby little wanker but doesnt give a toss about the oppressed North Korean people themselves. We should be making more films criticising this regime not banning them.
But I guess this is not the studio's fault really its just symptomatic of the spineless leadership in the west. How about if Obama did a JFK and came out and says the US will regard any hack or attack traced back to North Korea as an act of war against the US or one its allies and will be met with the most serious repercussions? But of course they would know its all a bluff and we have absolutely zero stomach to do anything. Thats why Putin gets away with what he does and now we are seeing little tin pot countries getting in on the act. Who's next to start pushing the west around? Tonga? The Cook Islands? Wales?
Well, I'm not going to get bogged down in a debate as to what constitutes violence; I'll just say that I would rather have my computer wiped clean than have a bullet downloaded between my eyes. ;)
The old reliable stock villains like Nazis, Muslims, Sicilian Mafia and simply out of vogue. There was a time when South Africans could be used but after 1993, this is no longer an option.
Looks like they have to concentrate on criminal organizations that are multi national but does not salute any flag. Say SPECTRE or Quantum for instance. Mexican Cartels and Russian Mafia has been the latest vogue of villains. Perhaps this trend will continue.
It's not like he's going to be offended.
But fictitious characters have a nationality, a background, etc. And even if they are from entirely fictitious nations and entirely fictitious world, the actors playing them are very real.
Well, in The Wire the Greek syndicate is, in spite of its name, very iinternational: apart from Greeks, it has Russian and Israeli members. And South African villains are often featured in Deon Meyer novels of course, which are often about the ghosts of Apartheid.
Seriously. When your founder is best known for spreading a video that collapses a community group which turns out to be fake you kind of lose your credibility.
You sure?
The Devil May Care
Also it's always been safer to use quasi-corporate terrorist movements like SPECTRE, Quantum, and HYDRA, to add another layer of escapism and strangeness to the plots.
Agreed and true, but if it is crazy thinking what are they going to now because they might offend someone? Their are alot more gruesome movies made out there. The Russians could have done the same years ago when the Soviets were the villains in previous movies. Just because a certain few or someone has thrown their toys out of the pram to get a movie stopped? Don't let it take over everything. If that is the case? No more Bond or any kind of action movie, War movie..............etc. I could say if the next villain is British and White? I could suggest to the world their will be grave consequences?
The Bond films have villains from all back grounds male and female.
A good North Korean would be hunted down by his government. If he is pictured positively in a movie, North Korea might find offensive that a "bad" North Korean is îctured in a positive light.
Oh and there was one in The Big Bang Theory.
Why didn't I think of that?