Re: [Marxism] Crusades

["Carlos A. Rivera" <cerejota@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Lause" <MLause@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

> Ridley Scott said he thought "Black Hawk Down" was an antiwar film that
> documented a disaster--and he said he was surprised that it was
> perceived otherwise.  It hardly made me want to run out and join them...

I think Black Hawk Down was anti-war.

What got to me wasn't that.

It was the style of how it was shot, there is exactlly one movie that rules
that style, and that is "Thin Red Line", John Toll did his one masterpiece
there, but maybe it was Terrence Malick as director... Badlands -with Martin
Sheen, which is how I came upon it- was incredibly well shot for a 1970s B
movie.

The lack of depth of the characters, *and* how unilateral it was.

The only time the Somalians aren't cannon fodder that can't shoot straight
and hit by sheer numbers, it's with the interrogator/guard comes in.

Before that, the Somalians were so generic, it felt like those Ninja movies
in which obviously they had 10 extras who died time and again.

Now, what got to me in this thread was this comment, by Joseph Callahan:

"Can anyone recommend a good objective (that is pro-Middle East rather than
pro-European) account of the Crusades?"

When the Crusades happened, European hegemony was not complete. European
world domiance was not to be until the 17th century, and European hegemony
of the Mediterranean would be in question until the USA invaded Tripoli and
France invaded Egypt, and the conquest of the middle east wouldn't be
complete until after the collapse of the Ottoman *Empire* in the 20th
century!

So any "pro-Middle East" account of the Crusades would most probably not be
objective, but more like the mirror image of the Euro version...

sks



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