Title -Coming In From the Cold: Fury and the Perception of Enemies PDF

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Clark H. Summers The Weaponising of Cinema: Hollywood, Propaganda and Portrayals of Enemies of the State/s www.inter-disciplinary.net 10 July 2015 Title - Coming In From the Cold: Fury and the Perception of Enemies Introduction. Cinematic depictions of combat are as old as the movies themselves. Amo...

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Clark H. Summers The Weaponising of Cinema: Hollywood, Propaganda and Portrayals of Enemies of the State/s www.inter-disciplinary.net 10 July 2015 Title - Coming In From the Cold: Fury and the Perception of Enemies Introduction. Cinematic depictions of combat are as old as the movies themselves. Among the earliest productions of the Edison Studios are shorts purporting to show combat from the 1898 Spanish American War and the Philippine Insurrection.1 What is this enduring fascination with battle and warfare? It certainly is as old as Western Civilization: see the Iliad’s vision of the bloody carnage of the Trojan War. Throughout time, cultures have defined their character by their representations of war and those whom they fought against. Modern American culture is no different. With its reliance upon the latest technology, recent movies present audiences with evermore realistic and authentic representations of the sights, sounds, and textures of combat. A surprising number - including Fury (2014) - still draw upon World War II, a war that ended 70 years ago. This essay poses a set of questions relating to the movie Fury: First, how is it different from other recent movie representations of World War II combat against Nazis? Second, what were some of the cultural and political factors at work during the time of the movie’s production that might provide context and insight for understanding the differences in Fury? Third, why might these differences have a broader, and perhaps deliberate, effect on public attitude toward another commonly perceived American enemy? I suggest that Fury is unique, because it carefully and deliberately builds a foundation of moral equivalency between the American GIs and their Nazi !1

enemies, and then undermines that foundation in the final climactic battle scene, leaving the audience with the almost subversive idea that it is the Nazi - the “other” - who may be most human. Such a message of shared humanity between antagonistic cultures comes at a time when the perceived “other” facing America is not an enemy vanquished 70 years ago, rather one of real and immediate concern: Iran. Fury: What makes it different? Let’s consider Inglourious Basterds (2009) to illustrate the attitudes toward Nazi (i.e. German) soldiers commonly found in World War II movies. As Lieutenant Aldo Raine states in an opening scene, “Nazis ain’t got no humanity!” and such sentiments are well-demonstrated by the carnage that follows. In the course of the movie, over 400 German soldiers and various Nazi officials (civilian and military) are killed, tortured, incinerated, or blown-up by dynamite. In contrast, total Allied military and civilian persons seen killed over the course of the film is exactly twelve. Even in the closing scene of the movie, the final visual image is that of LT Raines mutilating a Nazi with a Bowie knife. Other recent movies illustrate the same pattern, (See both Captain America - The First Avenger (2011) and Captain America - The Winter Soldier (2014).) In such movies, Germans can be killed without number, as long as they are nominally identified as Nazis because, as Lieutenant Aldo Raines has said, “Nazi’s ain’t got no humanity!”2 If we accept this as our starting point, the images presented in Fury become all the more remarkable. In fact, by the end of the movie, the image of the “inhumane Nazi” has been completely overturned. This transition is framed by two particular scenes, one early, and the other at the movie’s climax.

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In the early scene, 3 the crew of the M4 Sherman tank (“Fury”) has just completed an attack on a German position. As the surviving German soldiers are taken as prisoner, Staff Sergeant Don Collier (ranking sergeant of the tank crew) notices a surrendered Nazi soldier wearing a GI overcoat. Determined to toughen-up Private Norman Ellison (the young replacement soldier who has just joined the crew, and who hesitated to shoot at the enemy) Collier forces Ellison to shoot the Nazi POW in the back. The unarmed German pleads for his life, showing a torn and dirty photograph of his family, but to no avail. Telling Norman that, “He’s here to rip your throat out Do your job!” Collier wrestles his pistol into the young soldier’s hand, and jerks the trigger, killing the German. Colliers words create an explicit parallel between the German and the American private - both are there to kill the other. Meanwhile, the other GIs watch all of this, laughing. After the killing, Collier leaves Ellison to be gathered up by the other members of the “Fury’s” crew. As the scene resolves, we see the tank’s loader, a vulgar, foul-mouthed soldier named Grady Travis, wearing a German coal-scuttle helmet and German uniform overcoat. The image non-verbally reinforces the moral equivalency explicitly stated by Collier in making Ellison complicit in the killing of the surrendered Nazi. In the climactic battle of the movie,4 the “Fury,” stands alone, desperately holding a key cross-road against hundreds of attacking Nazis. The tank is wrecked and burning, and only Private Ellison and Sergeant Collier remain alive. With all ammunition expended, the two men wait tensely for the final German assault. Fearfully, Norman wants to surrender; wounded and dying, Don asks him not to, saying, “Please don’t - they’ll hurt you real bad.” Collier sacrifices his life to give Ellison time to crawl out into the surreal glow of the burning night under the tank. As boots tramp by and armored vehicles roll by the burning wreck, a single soldier breaks off, !3

and peers under the tank with a flashlight. The light illuminates Norman’s face, his eyes staring wide with fear; the shot cuts back to the young soldier watching him. Norman slowly and deliberately raises his hands in surrender. For a long moment, the two look at each other, and then, hearing his name called, the young Nazi draws away, leaving Norman undisclosed under the tank. Norman had done exactly what Collier in his dying moment had told him not to do - he had surrendered. Yet not only had he lived, he had not been “hurt bad”. In a scene suggesting the depths of Hell, the one undeniable act of mercy, kindness or compassion between combatants throughout the entire movie was offered not by the recognized “good guy”, the honorable and heroic American fighting the righteous fight. Rather, this singular act is the culmination of the movie’s final battle, and is tendered by the “evil,” the “other” so easily consumed in other conventional war films. After establishing and reinforcing throughout the entire movie the moral equivalence between the Americans and the Nazis (meaning the Germans) this symbolic gesture of mercy is all the more remarkable. Why is this significant? Fury concludes with a remarkable message, one that affirms the humanity of an otherwise universally accepted evil icon. Appreciating the significance of this shift requires taking a step back from the movie itself, and to think about it as the product of Hollywood at a particular moment in time. Fury was under development and production from late 2012 to mid-2014. It was during this same period of time that President Obama was seeking re-election to his second term, and then pursuing rapprochement with the Islamic Republic of Iran. This presents us with two inter-related themes to explore.

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The first theme is the friendly relationship between President Obama and the highest levels of Hollywood society. This relationship was particularly intimate both during and immediately after the 2012 election season. The close alignment of Hollywood's popular causes with the administration's policy goals resulted in high amount of fundraising, including some $22m given in a single month (October 2012). 5 Such funding suggests a close, personal level of interaction between members of the administration and influential movie-industry leaders. Obama's relationship with the "celebrity community" had recognized political benefit, with Hollywood and Washington appearing nearly indistinguishable.6 Absent an explicit quid pro quo, entertainment industry leaders can expect a sympathetic hearing from the Obama administration.7 Likewise, Mr. Obama might reasonably expect Hollywood to be amenable to producing entertainment that is both profitable and sympathetic to ideas, themes and messages introduced during the close, personal contact of campaign fund-raising. 8 The fertile environment for collaborative efforts between Hollywood and Washington DC during this time leads to a second significant theme: that a rapprochement between the U.S. and the Islamic Republic of Iran was a specific policy objective of the administration in the time spanning the development, filming and post-production of Fury. The movie’s subtle yet unmistakable message suggesting the rehabilitation of a perceived enemy could not have been more advantageously timed to support the President’s desired political messaging. A cursory comparison of the timelines between significant benchmarks between the two reveals:

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1. Following re-election in November, 2012, in the early spring of 2013, President Obama begins secret negotiations with Iran.9 In February 2013, the script for Fury is optioned and begins pre-production.10 2. Secret negotiations with Iran continue throughout 2013, culminating in the announcement of a preliminary agreement with Iran announced November 23, 2013.11 Production and filming of Fury continues on-schedule, finishing production during November, 2013. 3. Post-production on Fury continues during 2014, leading to its premier in October 2014. Continued negotiations between the US and Iran followed the 2013 announcement, culminating in the November 24, 2014 release of the Framework Agreement with Iran, and intensifying Congressional resistance to the Administration’s diplomatic efforts with Iran.12 It would be a mistake to suggest that the production and release of Fury was deliberately coordinated with Administration initiatives towards Iran. However, it certainly appears advantageously coincidental. Prior to re-election, Mr. Obama tended to speak harshly of Iran in public.13 Then, starting in 2013 and through 2014, as the secret diplomatic program was underway, the President clearly understood that opposition by the US Congress would hurt his negotiation stance with Iran. 14 From the spring of 2013 onward, Mr. Obama has had a very real interest in influencing Congress, either directly or by shifting popular opinion towards Iran.15 The release of Fury, with its powerful messages suggesting first an equivalency between enemies, and second that a previously intractable “other” shares the same humanity, suggests a

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purposeful (if not explicit) effort to change peoples’ perceptions at a time when it would be of an advantage to the current Administration. This being so, it leads us to consider how a movie such as Fury reflects public perceptions of war and how they change. Is Fury Propaganda? As discussed above, Fury is carefully constructed to convey a message that challenges the commonly accepted attitudes and opinions of the audience towards a perceived “other.” It does this by undermining the widely accepted meme of “a Nazi as inhuman.” Given that the timing of this message might very well have an implied purpose toward a possible political end, does this make it propaganda? “Propaganda,” is thought of commonly as, “information that is often biased or misleading, used to promote a political cause or point of view.” 16 Undoubtedly, we automatically think of propaganda as a pejorative. The key to the definition would be the qualifiers, “biased or misleading.” Thus we would have to consider the truth or validity of the message being conveyed. This requires that we take into account what cultural context and expectations the audience is already bringing to the table. If we consider the American audience, we ought to start with the American pre-disposition to see world in Manichean terms, meaning either “good, just, virtuous…like America,” or “bad, unjust, lacking virtue,” leading to a demonization of perceived enemies.17 As introduced previously, movies have reflected this from their earliest beginnings. By the beginning of the 20th century, Hollywood studio chiefs knew that the medium was powerful: Adolph Zukor, head Paramount following World War I, said, “…as an avenue of propaganda, as a channel for conveying thought and opinion, the movies are unequaled by any form of communication.” 18 This is affirmed by the persistence of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists of World War II as

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the benchmark of evil by which all perceived enemies are measured and has continued to this day, 70 years after victory in 1945.19 The dominance of the Nazi image as the paragon of evil illustrates the power of establishing a borderline, or frontier, between “us” and the “other,” an image of the actual or perceived tension between societies used to justify actual violence. 20 Within the context of 1941 to 1945, the Nazi meme could not be considered biased or misleading, but does it have any validity as a yard-stick or basis of measure with regard to how societies outside of America are perceived? Americans often fail to appreciate that Hollywood and movies invariable convey images of how Americans view other cultures to other cultures.21 The strength and dominance of American cinema throughout the world means that movies are understood by other peoples as representations of common Americans cultural attitudes.22 As this is so, we ought to consider the Iranian perspective towards American films, with an eye to information that is perceived as, “biased or misleading.” Iranians are well aware of the tendency of American cinema not to differentiate between the acts of individuals and the general beliefs of groups as a whole, particularly with regard to Muslims.23 Thus reactions are strong against movies that present negative stereotypes of Iranians, such as Argo (2012), The Wrestler (2009), 300 (2006), and Not Without my Daughter (1991). Hostile images of Iran have been coming out of Hollywood since the 1979 Hostage Crisis.24 Racist stereotyping of Muslims in American cinema goes all the way back to the beginning of the last century, a tendency that is exacerbated by the failure of the average American to appreciate the difference between Arabs and Persians (Iranian).25 This situation is

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complicated by the fact that the Iranian people believe that the American movies they see are products of a state-run and approved studio system; because all Iranian movies are officially sanctioned, they believe that American movies are likewise expressions of US Administration policy.26 Thus, a movie such as Fury presents a sort of dilemma when seen through an Iranian lens. On the one hand, Iranians have an understandable predisposition to view any American film as propaganda in the negative sense, inherently “biased and misleading” while attempting to promote a political point of view. On the other, if the audience in Iran believes the movie to be an expression of official US policy, might a message that effectively dismantles the stereotypical meme of a traditional enemy suggest that the “other” might be worthy of trust?27 Conclusions. Fury offers a timely opportunity to consider how movies reflect both the public perceptions of war, and how those perceptions change. This particular movie is unique, in that it has deliberately re-cast a popular meme of an accepted enemy (Nazis), at a specific point in a shared public discourse another perceived enemy (Iran), under circumstances that seem to be the result of a collaborative partnership between those who have the capacity (Hollywood) and one who has in interest (Mr. Obama) in shaping popular opinion. In mass communication, the importance of dehumanizing an enemy, such as comparing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to Adolph Hitler in 1990-1991, has long been recognized.28 Meaning, if the enemy is a Nazi – or like a Nazi - then violence against them is okay, because (of course,) Nazis aren't human, or otherwise lack humanity. Therefore, if a movie such as Fury can reverse this argument, and rehabilitate the character of such an “other,” might it then it be reasonable to suggest that additional, widely accepted “others” found in the popular culture might also be subject to being “brought in from the cold”? !9

Changing public perceptions towards perceived enemies presents us with something of a “chicken and the egg” problem. As noted above, movies with propaganda content are produced because they are profitable; yet it must also be recognized that the pervasive and persistent stereotypes that simultaneously fuel the propaganda and are reinforced by it continue because audiences themselves do not demand change.29 Hence, the singular occurrence of the sympathetic Nazi in Fury; It leaves us with the question of “who in the audience would be clamoring for such a change?” Living Germans, resentful of being associated with the indisputably evil Nazi legacy? Certainly not. Therefore, perhaps it is not too far-fetched to see it as a deliberate effort to shape and direct public perceptions towards a desired outcome that reduces enmity and hostility between “us” and the “other”? 1

“‘The Spanish-American War’-1898- Edison’s Famous Movies - Films from the Battlefield.” Cinema History. Accessed 15 June 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9fxS86QjuE. 2

Rune Ottenson, ‘Enemy Images and the Journalistic Process,’ Journal of Peace Research 32, no. 1 (1995): 99, viewed 17 June, 2015, https://www.jstor.org/stable/425470. 3

Fury, directed by David Ayer. Los Angeles: QED International, 2014, DVD. Time 0:37:29.

4

Ibid., Time 1:57:49.)

5 Tina

Daunt, ‘How President Obama's Election Win Impacts Hollywood (Analysis),’ The Hollywood Reporter, November 7, 2012: np, viewed on 26 June 2015, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com. 6

Noah Gittell, ‘How Obama Blurred the Border between Hollywood and Washington...When did Movies and Politics Start Cohabitating?’ The Guardian, 2 June 2015: np, viewed on 24 June 2005. http://www.theguardian.com/ film/2015/jun/02/how-obama-blurred-the-border-between-hollywood-and-washington. 7

Daunt, ‘How President Obama's Election Win Impacts Hollywood…’

8

Paul R. Frazier, ‘Cultural Aspects of American Relations with the Middle East,’ OAH Magazine of History 20, no.3 (May 2006):33, viewed 17 June 2015, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25162048. 9

Kenneth Katzman, Paul K. Kerr and Mary Beth D. Nikitin, Iran: Interim Nuclear Agreement and Talks on a Comprehensive Accord (Washington DC: Congressional Research Service, 2014), 1, viewed 9 July 2015, http:// fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/234999.pdf.

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10

Gregg Kilday, ‘QED International Picks Up David Ayer's World War II Script 'Fury',’ The Hollywood Reporter, February 3, 2013: np, viewed 26 June 26 2015, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com. 11

Katzman, et al., Iran: Interim Nuclear Agreement, 5.

12

Ibid., 10.

13

Fawaz A. Gerges, ‘The Obama Approach to the Middle East: The End of the American Moment?’ International Affairs 89.2 (March 2013): 311. 14

Steven E. Lobell, ‘Engaging the Enemy and Lessons for the Obama Administration,’ Political Sciences Quarterly 128.2 (2013): 287, viewed on 24 June 2015, http://www.psqonline.org. 15

Ibid.,, 263.

16

‘Propaganda,’ Oxford Dictionary of Current English, 3rd Ed. 2001.

17

Paul Pllar, ‘The Role of Villain: Iran and U.S. Foreign Policy,’ Political Science Quarterly 128.2 (Summer 2013): 217, viewed 24 June 2015, .http://www.psqonline.org, 18

Jack G. Shaheen, ‘Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People,’ Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 588 (July): 187, viewed 17 July 2015, http://wwwjstor.org/stable/1049860, 19

Pllar, ‘The Role of Villain,’ 218.

20

Ottosen ‘Enemy Images,’ 98.

21