Spoilers Civil War (2024) grade and discussion thread

Good. Great timing. Considering there are people out there drooling over a good civil war while cuddling their AR-15 on the bed. Because this film makes it clear how horrible war is. If it starts a conversation about "deromanticizing" the conflict, so be it.

 

Yeah... I don't think that's likely to happen. Those itching-for-civil-war types have social media too, and they're not likely to be snookered into watching this made-by-liberals movie even if it's mostly carefully apolitical.

An interesting review by MovieBob that pans the movie both on its own terms and on Bob's views of its political messaging:

 

When it comes to the real life people who want to overthrow the government, these are people who actually believe the "elites" in Washington are part of a vast conspiracy to steal children and sell them to the highest bidder, and that non-binary, non-white, non-Christians are the enemy of all American values--and that America was founded as some sort of evangelical Christian state that was stolen from them by the founding fathers or something. It is so bizarre how close their values are to those who control religious autocracies in the Middle East. I know someone here will argue against that--but really, look at what Trump supporters (and I don't equate Republicans or Conservatives with them) really believe and write about. And then look at what Trump has actually said about how he plays his supporters to win their support.

Honestly, creating a film about an American Civil War and then making it apolitical at this moment in time is just effing cowardly. Take a stand one way or the other and be judged on it.

 

Well, a lot of MAGA people are saying that this movie is leftist propaganda and that the President portrayed is obviously a stand-in for Trump.

 

So is this a Star Trek prequel?

 

And those are the same people who believe Sound of Freedom is a documentary. My point, in short, is why make this an apolitical movie when people are going to make their own judgments. Hell, that movie about Liberals killing "common folk" was, thanks to Trump's criticizing it, viewed as how "liberals" actually are.

 

This wouldn't be a movie for that crowd.

 

I enjoyed it. A bit simplistic, though I accept this movie had a specific story it wanted to tell and therefore had to streamline certain elements in order to tell that story in a reasonable running time. But hey, if all you want is an entertaining movie, this certainly is it. I recommend it.

 

Besides, it's already been made:

 

So is it about slaves again?

 

No. This is the movie where Iron Man is mad because Captain America's best friend killed his parents.

 

I was thinking of all the people who complain that the movie doesn't explain the political details of why the war happened. But in reality war films rarely do this.

Show "Apocalypse Now" to someone who knows NOTHING about the Vietnam War, and then ask them if they understood from the film why it happened.

Unrelated question: how much does the average twenty-year-old American know about the reasons that led to the Vietnam War?

 

Sure, but most war movies aren't about fictional wars.

Okay, but surely they'd get the movie's perspective on the war loud and clear: that the Americans had no good reason to be there, that they had little empathy for, and even less understanding of, the locals, and that the longer they fought, the more barbaric and primitive they became. Said viewer may not understand the historical/political dynamics of the war, but they'd understand it to be a pernicious and pointless effort.

From what I gather, on the other hand, Civil War doesn't have any discernible opinion about its fictional war other than "war is bad, mmmkay?". That doesn't make it a bad movie in itself - lots of good war movies, such say, 1917, depict their conflicts as horrific wastes of life without explaining the larger context. But taking such an approach to a completely fictional conflict, where bringing outside knowledge to the story is impossible, sounds to me like a massive distraction for the audience.

 

I was listening to a conversation on the radio that said something really interesting. That the concept of the movie basically says that there's bad things done on both sides. The critic said that this argument, which is often used by extremists, is an argument that ultimately helps fascists in that fascists can push their agenda further to the right forcing the centrist to move along with them.

Alex Garland, in an interview this week, said that he feels the opposite about his movie in that it is basically a warning about fascism. His point in the movie was to portray journalists as heroes as they are our best defense against fascism--which is why the extreme right works so hard to undermine their legitimacy in the modern era. I would argue that this is why Fox news and similar organizations are so popular with the extreme right because those organizations act as a Trojan horse in the movement to de-legitimize actual journalism. Garland also talked about how his movie wasn't about the specific politics as he wants the movie to be as much about the fascist movement in Europe and other democratic parts of the world as about the U.S.

I think there is room for both arguments; however I still lean toward thinking that creating a story stripped of actual politics and just saying war is bad, and people do bad things in war, is an error in judgment as it leaves room for extremists to read their own agenda into it.

 

Ok, but the movie clearly implies that the President is a Fascist. Would the film have been improved if they had said that, I don't know, he nationalized major industries or sent homosexuals to concentration camps?

 

I am doing a horrible thing: commenting on a movie I haven't seen. I'll let you know when I see it what I think of the specifics. Garland did say something about having Texas and California joining forces was his hope that the danger of a fascist government would be enough for people to forget their differences. Garland is European and doesn't appear to understand that outside of the stretch between San Francisco and Los Angeles, there is a lot of conservatism in the state.

 

Ok, it's also hard for me to talk to someone who hasn't seen the movie, but what if the President was a bona-fide fascist? Not "fascist" as the Americans understand it, who use this word a little too freely, but someone truly and ideologically fascist. Fascists have historically done things that would bother an American conservative such as:

• The aforementioned nationalization of industries
• Universal Healthcare and pensions for the less well-off classes
• Centralization of power and strong statism.

It wouldn't be absurd for conservatives to form an alliance with progressives, just to get rid of such a person.

Garland, being European, probably has a better understanding of fascism than the average American, who is in trouble when can't fit a certain political belief into "Democrat" or "Republican."

 

Texas Secessionist Warns US Over 'Civil War' Movie

 

For almost a decade now, the Republican party has embraced Cheeto, who has openly called for, and never retracted such calls, the suspension of the Constitution to return him to power. So, you'll excuse me if I express skepticism that a majority of American right-wingers would object to a right-winger like Cheeto becoming an authoritarian who might nationalize certain industries and centralize power based on their nominal "conservative," small-r republican values.

Er, citation needed? Famously, fascists haven't been terribly interested in providing social welfare to historically under-appreciated minorities such as Jews and Roma, and in this country, right-wingers have shown a consistent disinterest in funding social programs that tend to benefit people of color. So, you'll excuse me if I express skepticism that any kind of American fascist leader would promote policies that would significantly benefit non-white ethnic groups.

But, most of all... from Wiki's Definitions of Fascism:

A significant number of scholars agree that a "fascist regime" is foremost an authoritarian form of government; however, the general academic consensus also holds that not all authoritarian regimes are fascist and require more distinguishing traits to be characterized as such.​

[...] Historian of fascism Stanley G. Payne created a lengthy list of characteristics to identify fascism in 1995: in summary form, there are three main strands. First, Payne's "fascist negations" refers to such typical policies as anti-communism and anti-liberalism. Second, "fascist goals" include a nationalist dictatorship and an expanded empire. Third, "fascist style", is seen in its emphasis on violence and authoritarianism, and its exultation of men above women, and young above old. (emphasis added)​

I don't know of any widely accepted instance of a fascist government or even movement that isn't highly militaristic in the sense of being adversarial to a particular (as in, ethnic or nationalistic) enemy. In Europe today, movements that are called fascist are generally highly opposed to non-white immigration in particular.

Any remotely plausible American fascist movement, therefore, would have to prominently and primarily define itself in opposition to a neighboring country or a particular ethnicity... and we only have two national neighbors, one of whom is 70% the same ethnicity as that which happens dominates the US' right wing. So again, to be even remotely plausible, we'd be looking at theorizing an anti-white movement from the left, or an anti-Latino one from the right. Of course, the American left would not likely support a movement that "exulted men above women," and the US is so ethnically mixed it's hard to imagine even a right-wing specifically anti-Latino movement really taking root, even taking into account Cheeto's inflammatory rhetoric about the "blood" of the country.

Sidebar: I think a lot of the contemporary American confusion around the term fascism is it's been liberally (pardon the expression) applied to Cheeto, but Cheeto and the MAGA movement are notably lacking in a militaristic ideology. He's more of a wannabe 18th-century style monarch than a 20th-century fascist. Heck, his whole style is more Versailles than Kehlsteinhaus. And his policies and ideology are absurdly vague and variable, with almost no core tenets besides keeping himself in power, lowering taxes for the rich, and restricting immigration along almost entirely geographic and class lines.​

Now, here's an idea for a fiction American fascist movement and civil war: since the early 2000s, for whatever reason, almost all Central/South American nations suddenly becoming overwhelming Islamic, with American persons of Central/South American heritage mostly unaffected. Said Central/South American nations start forming a tight-knit regional union, with rapidly deepening ties to all Middle Eastern countries apart from Israel. In the States, a right-wing anti-Islamic movement therefore agitates for imposing secular/non-Islamic governments on those countries, by force if necessary, while the left wing favors diplomacy and resists militarism. A national geographic sorting follows, in which militaristic Christians of all ethnicities flock to Southern/middle states, while similarly diverse others flee to the coasts. The right wing then tries to establish a new, Christian Evangelical national capital in Dallas, and the Coastal Alliance threatens invasion if they don't knock it off and recognize the supremacy of the Constitution. Then a civil war follows.

Obviously, that sort of story wouldn't be plausible in the geo-social sense (why would overwhelmingly Catholic Central/South American societies suddenly adopt Islam?), and it would be extremely controversial to both the American left (who'd see it as anti-Islamic) and right wing (who'd denounce it as anti-Christian), but at least it would be a coherent premise.

 

Citation: I live in Italy and we study fascism in school. Anyway if you need sources:
Social policies during fascism

I assure you that many of Mussolini's policies on public health, pensions, workers' compensation insurance, income support, etc. would be called "socialist" by the average American.

Racial politics did not begin immediately. At the beginning there was no particular discrimination against Jews and other minorities. Some Jews had also become part of the fascist party at birth and played important roles before the promulgation of the racial laws.

Then if we want to play on semantics, for me fascism is fascism, that is to say the far right movement and ideology founded by Mussolini.