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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Leave it to GLORIOUS SUPERIOR JAPAN advocate Crispy45 to suggest that anyone who has a problem with the way this movie is executed is shallow, racist and war-obsessed.
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ikillchicken
Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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I know right? It's just like with this classic masterpiece: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHmYIo7bcUw |
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GWOtaku
Posts: 678 |
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Regardless of the inarguable matter of war being hell and no involved side being "pure" by default, every person trotting out this moral equivalency canard in regard to World War II should substitute "Germany" for "Japan" in their reasoning and think for a few minutes about how that looks. Putting the aggressive and conquering side on the same level as the defending side would be bad enough, but generalized context-free boilerplate like that well-no-one-came-out-smelling-good stuff pretty much amounts to whitewashing what the Axis Powers did and what they were trying to achieve. Suggesting no one has standing to criticize is even worse, if that is possible. It doesn't matter what kind of simplistic comment anyone was responding to with that, it's dead wrong and not OK. Seriously, stop it.
As for The Wind Rises, I'm going to see it and make my own mind up about it. For now I do think that at the least, Miyazaki's record is sterling enough that no critic can or should suggest that he's willfully trying to ignore history or in any way reinforce any kind of militarism. I don't see why he shouldn't be taken at his word that he was struck by his subject's statement about how "I just wanted to make something beautiful". Still, it might also be true that Miyazaki got so invested in this and made the movie a work of such personal expression that he missed the forest for the tree. That said, I have problems with inventors being blamed for war crimes the way some of these concerned critics seem to want. Where are the hordes of historians blaming the German Panzer and Japanese bomber planes for the Nazi invasions and Pearl Harbor? Weapons are tools. It's the ones giving orders about how they're used that bear the responsibility. Last edited by GWOtaku on Mon Dec 16, 2013 4:30 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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ikillchicken
Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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That's a really simplistic view. Nobody is denying that the ones actually using the weapons are responsible. All anyone is saying is that the inventors may be too. Weapons may be tools but you can hardly wash your hands when you make them available to people. I mean, if I hand a gun to a murderer, knowing full well that he is planning to use it to kill somebody, then I can hardly claim innocence when he does. And it's no different here. If you know full well how "the ones giving the orders" are going to use your creations then you can hardly hide behind the notion that it isn't your decision. You may not be as responsible as others but you still deserve some blame. |
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Agent355
Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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Thank you Vashfanatic. The thing that bothers me most about this movie is that it fictionalizes a recent historical figures life in a way that most people (including most of the American movie critics I've read) can't tell its fiction. I don't understand why anyone would do that. Imagine if someone made a biographical movie about Einstein, but completely fabricated his personal life. It would probably upset a lot of people. This is not like "Nobunaga is a Cute Girl Anime #35!" Or "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter".
The idea that they fictionalized his personal life to make the movie melodramatic just makes the whole thing worse to me. |
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GATSU
Posts: 15470 |
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Zac:
Last time I checked, you had no problem with a child rapist director exploiting the Holocaust for Oscar bait. GWOtaku:
We did with The Tin Drum, Das Boot, and The Downfall. The world is still turning. Next. Agent:
And yet we do that all the time with historical figures who murdered Indians. |
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GWOtaku
Posts: 678 |
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That's a very large "if" you're leaning on there. The "indifference" Kang criticizes is absolutely fair game though. |
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ikillchicken
Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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Okay. Guess I didn't realize the whole "we're invading other countries and having another world war" thing was kept pretty hush hush in Japan. |
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jl07045
Posts: 1527 Location: Riga, Latvia |
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There are ethical systems were one can claim innocence quite easily after handing the gun, but this is not even a similar situation. There are any number of reason why a weapon designer does what he does - he might agree with the government's politics and want to do his part, he might simply do this out of duty, he might find this as the best way he can earn a living, he might simply want to do the job he loves. When the engineer designs an airplane, how much can he know how it will be used? And what if he knows, should he become a conscientious objector? He may get imprisoned or shot. What will happen with his family? And how this relates for example with a common soldier who gets an order and kills an enemy soldier? Is he to blame for it? Because by your argumentation that soldier carries some blame as well since he definitely knows that he has to kill if it comes to that. |
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GATSU
Posts: 15470 |
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jl:
That's exactly the point the movie makes which gets overlooked in these attacks against The Wind Rises. The Japanese government treats even the guy designing its warplanes as a potential subversive. So if he were to express disagreement with the national policies, he could be blacklisted, jailed, executed, and/or all of the above. So Jiro tries to make the most of the situation, instead. I think that's what makes the film a tad more honest than Schindler's List. The latter pic makes it look like it's that easy for the guy to make the kind of moral deals which save so many lives. And being able to make such a choice so freely is not the norm for most people. |
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Tuor_of_Gondolin
Posts: 3524 Location: Bellevue, WA |
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GATSU,
So you're saying that Jiro privately had reservations about what his designs would be used for, but kept silent about it so as not to be labeled a subversive by the Japanese government? If so, please provide some sort of evidence to support such a claim, because based on what has been said on this thread (at least, the parts of it I have read, which is most of it), it appears to me that he was a willing participant with no objections to Japan's national policies of the time. I have the impression that he was happy to Do His Part for his country, and his part was designing the best warplanes he could. If I'm wrong in reaching this conclusion, then as I said, please show me how I'm wrong. Otherwise, I'm going to view your comments as mere wishful thinking. |
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GATSU
Posts: 15470 |
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Tuor:
The government spies on correspondence letters between him and his wife.
He's doing it, because he loves planes. |
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Tuor_of_Gondolin
Posts: 3524 Location: Bellevue, WA |
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That tells me that the Japanese government spied on its citizens. It doesn't mean that he had any reservations about what he was doing insofar as furthering Japan's military machine.
I don't deny that he loves planes. But that doesn't mean that there aren't other reasons as well. |
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GATSU
Posts: 15470 |
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Tuor:
He still associates with people he could easily rat out for subversion for comments made against the Axis. |
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Agent355
Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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What wife?
I can't find any information on Horikoshi's personal life from a cursory web search--there's no mention of Jiro Horikoshi's wife on his Wikipedia page, The New York Times' obituary of him published in 1982, or the Amazon descriptions or reviews of his two books available in English, Eagles of Mitsubishi: The Story of the Zero Fighter and Zero! with Masatake Okumiya and Martin Caiden. As for regrets about the war, without actually reading both books myself, the closest thing I could find was this Amazon review
I definitely found that review helpful! But I'm still frustrated that because of Miyazaki, people are going to associate Dr. Jiro Horikoshi with a maudlin, melodramatic love story that did not happen while whoever his real family were will not be remembered at all. |
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