I am a teacher who utilizes movies (and/or parts of movies) as a teaching device. I find that they are excellent attention grabbers and great for developing thoughtful reflection and discussion in my classroom.
As we know, rare is the Hollywood film that is 100% accurate. However, I want a movie that captures the basic essence of the time period, portrays the events as accurately as possible, and takes no liberties with history or attempts to re-write history.
Recently filmmaker Spike Lee criticized Clint Eastwood’s movie Letters From Iwo Jima. Spike Lee said, and I quote, “There were many African-Americans who survived that war and who were upset at Clint for not having one [in the films]. That was his version: the negro soldier did not exist. I have a different version.”
Lee has his own WW2 movie in development. (Note: it will be interesting to see how historically accurate it is, especially in comparison to Eastwood’s films?)
World War 2 was of course crucial for the fight against racism, and more specifically Civil Rights. We were fighting a war against fascism yet within our own country we had segregation and racism that placed one group above another, ect. World War 2 was a turning point of sorts for Civil Rights especially when we take into account the developments in the courts, and of course the 1950s and Emmitt Till and Rosa Parks.
At Iwo Jima there were about 110,000 American soldiers who were involved. Of those 700-900 were African-Americans participates, or less than 1% of the aggregate force. The Clint Eastwood films of the battle focused on the flag raising on Mt. Suribachi, the caves within the mountain, and where unfortunately African-Americans were not involved, or had little involvement.
This had nothing to do with African-Americans’ desire to be more involved – this was a symptom of the problem mentioned above.
Eastwood responded to Lee by saying the following, “The story is Flags of Our Fathers, the famous flag-raising picture, and they [African-Americans] didn’t do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people’d go: ‘This guy’s lost his mind.’ I mean, it’s not accurate.” Referring to Lee, he added: “A guy like him should shut his face.”
Eastwood wanted to create an accurate account of the events. It would have served no purpose and even perhaps been belittling to African-Americans to place some kind of “token” Black soldier in the film. That to me would have been a true slap in the face to African-Americans.
Eastwood’s film and the lack of Black participants can be an excellent discussion point about Civil Rights and segregation. To have done what Lee wanted would have been dishonest and historically inaccurate. I applaud Eastwood in his response to Lee.
Mr. Lee would do well to make a film about the experience of those black servicemen who participated. I would watch and support it…if if came close to the reality.
Trying to film any slice of history is difficult. Trying to include every possible point of view is admirable and probably appropriate. Trying to do it in two hours is impossible.
Looks like Spike has taken the high road and made a “Blacks in WWII” picture of his own. If his original comment had been to decry the lack of African Americans in WWII films in general, he might have had a valid point. To single out Eastwood’s film was a mistake. Mr. Lee seems to know a little about Black peoples’ experiences during the war. If he dug a little more deeply, he would discover a huge wealth of situations and incidents on which to base a movie – all of them historic, none of them “made up” for drama’s sake. I hope his new film will prove both dramatic and (more or less) historically accurate.