"Pearl Harbor" just so much neo-fascist hype Pearl Harbor Jerry Bruckheimer, producer Michael Bay, director Touchstone Pictures, 2001 27 May 2001 Before seeing "Pearl Harbor," I thought this review would have to refute the usual "Amerika is the bastion of democracy" crap. You know: Just like in World War I, the Amerikans stormed into World War II -- against their will, 'cause we all know they'd rather be playing baseball and smooching with their honeys -- in order to save the world for democracy and protect the rights of the little guy. But nope, "Pearl Harbor" doesn't even reach the level of such high-school-civics bromides. Instead, Amerikans enter the war out of pure ITAL revanche, END as in "you touch me so help me god I'll fuck you up big time." It's WWII as "Rocky III" -- big, fat, out-of-shape Amerika has to get its ass kicked before it gets "the eye of the tiger" back. Or it's WWII as earthquake coverage on the local 5:00 news -- war is inevitable but it really brings people together and challenges them to grow. Mainstream reviewers correctly trashed "Pearl Harbor" as "war porn."(1) Producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay definitely have a neo-fascist agenda -- I'll get into that more below -- but they mostly like to blow up things and people for kicks. There's a perverse comic rhythm to the carnage at Pearl -- bomb lands next to guy, bomb doesn't explode, guy wipes sweat off his brow, says "it's a dud," then the bomb explodes and the guy's brains are all over the camera lens. How ironic ha ha ha. "Pearl Harbor" doesn't even respect the 2,400 people who tragically died that Sunday morning -- let alone the tens of millions who died by force of arms during the entire war. I say tragic, because World War II was at root a war over colonies. Germany and Japan didn't have 'em, and wanted to get some. The united $tates, England, and France had 'em, and wanted to protect them. No imperialism, no war, no 60 million dead -- there's the tragedy. Historians have written extensively about the struggle for colonies in Asia that led to WWII in the Pacific.(2) Here I'll only say (a) one of the judges at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal argued that the united $tates provoked the war with Japan, and (b) u.$. State Department memos from 1940 discuss the loss of colonies and neo-colonies to Japan -- but don't mention high falutin' ideas like nations' right to self- determination.(3) In the course of the war, many colonized and exploited peoples took advantage of the fighting between the imperialist powers to righteously struggle for liberation. The people of the socialist Soviet Union valiantly fought at great cost to themselves to defeat the bulk of Nazi military might. So more or less by chance the individual Amerikans who made great sacrifices in WWII did indeed help defeat German and Japanese fascism and indirectly help some colonized people's gain freedom and democracy. But when the end of the war came, like it or not, the Amerikan militarists put them back to work defending colonial empires and corrupt puppet regimes -- in Vietnam, the Philippines, China, south Korea, etc. etc.(4) By ignoring this historical backstory, "Pearl Harbor" ends up rehabilitating Japanese militarists like Admiral Yamomoto while vilifying the Japanese in general. War is inevitable, so somebody has to be the bad guys, and the Japanese militarists played the role well. They were just doing their jobs, as were the Amerikans, when they had to stick it to those "Jap suckers." No hard feelings, bub, sorry about that Hiroshima thing, but war is hell what are ya gonna do? In this Bruckheimer and Bay are just emulating MacArthur and Truman. The Amerikans exonerated many Japanese war criminals to help out in struggles to preserve Amerikan, French and British colonies and in the Cold War.(5) "Pearl Harbor" also manages to stir up anti-Asian chauvinism by raising the idea that all Asians are potential spies. One spy poses as a tourist. More insidiously, a Japanese resident of Hawaii answers a phone call from a stranger on the day of the attack asking questions about troops deployments, the weather etc. The implication is clear -- even "loyal" Asians can be used by Amerika's enemies. Given the recent Wen Ho Lee spy scandal, endemic anti-Asian chauvinism -- including belittlement of Amerikan imprisonment of Japanese civilians in internment camps -- and regular anti-Asian attacks, Bruckheimer and Bay have been hard pressed to defend "Pearl Harbor" against charges that it will do anything but pour gas on a raging fire.(6) "We tried to recapture the feel of the attack... It's not a history a lesson," said director Bay.(7) I couldn't have summed up the Bruckheimer and Bay's neo- fascist approach to art any better. And I'm not just talking about all the flag-waving and Norman Rockwell moments in "Pearl Harbor," like zeros buzzing boy scout troops and pick-up baseball games. The film is packed with tough-guy anti-science ideology, as in "I don't care what the manual says, I don't care if it's impossible, damn the risk, I'm gonna do it anyway!" Compare that attitude with old-school fascist ideology which exalts "faith" and "feeling" over rationality and blathers on about "the mystery of patriotism."(9) It's no accident that Hitler said the Fascist organizer had to be first and foremost "a psychologist."(10) Don't argue with me about what really happened, don't tell me about Amerika's imperial interests in Asia, because Pearl Harbor "felt" like a "stab in the back," "my country right or wrong," etc. etc. Finally, I should note that the film ends with the Doolittle bomb raid on Tokyo, which it calls a "pinprick" compared to the "sledgehammer" of Pearl Harbor. What goes unmentioned are the 250,000 civilians who would die as a result of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the 100,000 civilians who would die in the firebombing of Tokyo.(8) So where "Pearl Harbor" would have us believe that the united $tates was a slumbering, peaceful giant only woken to vengeance by a "dastardly" attack, the truth is the Amerikan militarists had been preparing for war as long as (if not longer) the Japanese, and they were willing to kill hundreds of thousands of civilians out of spite and the desire to "kill the chicken to scare the monkey" -- that is, threaten the Soviet Union and others who would dare stand up to Amerika. Notes: 1. Robert Wilonsky, "Bora! Bora! Bora!" http://www.newtimesla.com/issues/2001-05-24/film.html. 2. J. Sakai, ITAL Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat, END Chicago: Morningstar Press,1989, pp. 90-94; Stephen R. Shalom, "V-J Day: Remembering the Pacific War," http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/july95shalom.htm; Howard Zinn, ITAL A People's History of the United States, END New York: HarperPerennial, 1980, pp. 398-434. 3. Shalom, op. cit.; Zinn, op. cit., p. 402. 4. Shalom, op. cit. 5. Shalom op. cit.; MIM Notes 145, 1 Sep 1997. 6. Basketball star Jason Williams recently responded to an Asian fan who heckled him: "I'll shoot all you Asian motherfuckers. Do you remember the Vietnam war? I'll kill y'all like that. Just like Pearl Harbor." L. Jon Wertheim, "King of Fools," Sports Illustrated, 30 Apr 2001, p. 26. A radio DJ in Illinois also said that the Chinese pilot who was killed in a collision with a u.$. spy plane should be sent to "one of those Japanese camps." AsianWeek, 26 April 2001. Violent attacks against Asians increase around December 7, the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. NPR's Morning Edition, 24 May 2001. For more on Wen Ho Lee, see MIM Notes 206, 15 Mar 2000. 7. E! Online, 24 May 2001. Of course, Bruckheimer talks out of the other side of his mouth when trying to get kudos from VFW and American Legion types: "This was the real world, so you have to be very careful to keep the historical accuracy." Reuters 25 May 2001. 8. "According to the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, 'probably more persons lost their lives by fire at Tokyo in a 6-hour period than at any [equivalent period of] time in the history of man.' The head of the Army Air Forces telexed LeMay [who led the raid] afterwards: 'Congratulations. This mission shows your crews have got the guts for anything.' 'I suppose if I had lost the war,' LeMay later commented, 'I would have been tried as a war criminal. Fortunately we were on the winning side.'" Shalom, op. cit. 9. R. Palme Dutt, ITAL Fascism and Social Revolution, END New York: International Publishers, 1934, pp.184-192. Dutt explains why "the mystical and openly non-rational character of Fascist ideology and propaganda is only the inevitable expression in its class role to maintain the domination of a doomed and decaying class." 10. "Hitler with an eye on today," MIM Theory 13, pp. 125-129.