What’s wrong with The New World?
After seeing The New World in theaters with some friends, I just couldn't sleep. I had never seen a movie that I found so artistically brilliant but, at the same time, so politically repugnant. At 3:00am I started writing, both to get clear to myself what was wrong with the movie, and to craft a document describing my conflict to friends who loved the film. By the end of the night, I'd come up with the section below. It's the first of what will, eventually, be a 3-part article covering colonialism, male supremacy and noble savage mythology in Malick's movie. Let me know how it's coming.
What’s wrong with The New World?
Of course, the question isn’t really fair; what we should be asking is: “what’s wrong with any story similar to that found in The New World?” But since that’s a pretty long sentence, let’s go ahead and ask what The New World does wrong – but with an understanding that:
Going with that, let’s try to name some of the things that are troubling about The New World, in the hopes that someday we can make movies that are as brilliantly-constructed as Malick’s film – while being more conscious about what we choose to tell, and what change it will bring into the world. Let’s start with a simple list.
It’s told, overarchingly, from the colonizer’s point of view.
We know it from the first ten seconds of the movie. As music and wild sound wash over us, the credits appear in a colonial-era map that spreads across a blank piece of parchment. Coastlines materialize, followed gradually by hills and rivers as the map pushes inland, and the metaphor is clear: we are entering into Malick’s film as one might enter an unknown land. All the mystery and fascination that a colonial explorer might project onto the unknown landscape around him, we are invited to project into the world of the film. Right off the bat, we’re made to feel like colonizers. Why? Because there’s something romantic about it. To the degree that our society is still a colonialist one, the myths created during conquest and exploration will continue to enthrall more than the mundane familiarity that indigenous peoples – as yet unrepresented in Malick’s film except through lithograph-style graphics – must have had with their land. The fetish continues to fascinate.
But let’s step back. What does it mean that, for most of The New World, we’re grounded in the subjectivity of the colonizer? For starters, it means we spend far more screen time watching characters interact and themes play out from inside the colonizers’ community than in the indigenous community. As a result, we have a fairly comprehensive sense of Smith’s background, the roles of the supporting characters in the Jamestown colony, and the internal politics that unfold between those characters. Most of the plot twists that affect our story take place in the colony, through the actions of white people.
From what we see of the indigenous community, by contrast, we have very little sense of the young woman’s background, and know nothing about her past or her current motivations besides finding true love; maybe the only indigenous supporting character whose action affects the development of the story is her father; and the internal politics of the indigenous community are skeletal at best – we have no idea, for instance, how they fare the winter, why they decide to bring the colonists food, or how different indigenous people are rationalizing the presence of white people in their land. This unequal representation makes it so that all the important decisions affecting the world of the protagonists come from the colonizers – they are made the think-ers and the do-ers, while the indigenous people are made set pieces, or at best, inconsequential.
“So what if the representation is unequal?” I find myself thinking, “It’s not supposed to be a political story of two communities. It’s supposed to be a love story about two people.” For the sake of a good romance, we’re asked to go from what we know, which is a white, English-speaking, colonial context that we all read about in Social Studies and therefore doesn’t require complicated exposition. For Malick, the politics and power dynamics of first contact are peripheral to an intimate story of two people, and the movie asks us to “fill in the blanks” on all the unimportant stuff to make way for that romance.
And that would be all fine and good, if it weren’t for the fact what the movie asks us to accept as important and unimportant is a reenactment of colonialism. Read: the colonists’ society is important, while indigenous society is not – that is, unless it makes our female love interest idyllic, mysterious, or exotic. White people have personal histories, aspirations and ambitions, while indigenous people emerge from nowhere (or out of the tall grass) and remain hopelessly reactionary. The colonizer’s context is the center, and the indigenous context is the periphery. And when we as an audience accept this point of view unquestioningly, we’re participating in one of many rituals in which we practice ignoring the hideousness of colonialism. We’re stepping, comfortably, into the shoes of the conquerors.
True, we might be able to fill in the political blanks in Malick’s movie with a complex understanding of imperialism, balancing out the film’s unequal representation with our own. But we have to acknowledge that the film could work equally well for someone who just wants to see an Indian princess in form-fitting deerskin fall in love with a hard-working, powerful man. The movie doesn’t require you to know anything about these issues to get swept up in the love story, and doesn’t prompt you to ask any of those kinds of questions. That makes The New World a political don’t-ask-don’t-tell, which translates from pig latin as “let’s accept the status quo as a given for this one.”
(Okay chill out, you’re saying, not all stories have to be political. And you’re right – but depending on what a given story asks us to ignore, we might start to worry. For instance, would we accept a movie about the epic romance of Joseph and Magda Goebbels, in which the Holocaust served as little more than a convenient backdrop? Clearly, some apolitical love stories are more justifiable than others. The tricky part is not saying whether The New World is justifiable or not, but being clear about which parts are which.)
What’s wrong with The New World?
Of course, the question isn’t really fair; what we should be asking is: “what’s wrong with any story similar to that found in The New World?” But since that’s a pretty long sentence, let’s go ahead and ask what The New World does wrong – but with an understanding that:
- Terrence Malick didn’t invent colonialism, and outing the distasteful elements of The New World won’t dismantle it, either.
- But like any other work of art (or work of anything) The New World is a product of its context.
- By examining the rotten parts of the film, we can uncover aspects of our own context. Learning how to do this is important, because things aren’t just “oppressive” or “not oppressive.” Anything, art included, can embody both tendencies at once – and it’s useful for anyone seeking liberation to be able to pick things apart, saving what’s helpful and discarding the hurtful.
Going with that, let’s try to name some of the things that are troubling about The New World, in the hopes that someday we can make movies that are as brilliantly-constructed as Malick’s film – while being more conscious about what we choose to tell, and what change it will bring into the world. Let’s start with a simple list.
It’s told, overarchingly, from the colonizer’s point of view.
We know it from the first ten seconds of the movie. As music and wild sound wash over us, the credits appear in a colonial-era map that spreads across a blank piece of parchment. Coastlines materialize, followed gradually by hills and rivers as the map pushes inland, and the metaphor is clear: we are entering into Malick’s film as one might enter an unknown land. All the mystery and fascination that a colonial explorer might project onto the unknown landscape around him, we are invited to project into the world of the film. Right off the bat, we’re made to feel like colonizers. Why? Because there’s something romantic about it. To the degree that our society is still a colonialist one, the myths created during conquest and exploration will continue to enthrall more than the mundane familiarity that indigenous peoples – as yet unrepresented in Malick’s film except through lithograph-style graphics – must have had with their land. The fetish continues to fascinate.
But let’s step back. What does it mean that, for most of The New World, we’re grounded in the subjectivity of the colonizer? For starters, it means we spend far more screen time watching characters interact and themes play out from inside the colonizers’ community than in the indigenous community. As a result, we have a fairly comprehensive sense of Smith’s background, the roles of the supporting characters in the Jamestown colony, and the internal politics that unfold between those characters. Most of the plot twists that affect our story take place in the colony, through the actions of white people.
From what we see of the indigenous community, by contrast, we have very little sense of the young woman’s background, and know nothing about her past or her current motivations besides finding true love; maybe the only indigenous supporting character whose action affects the development of the story is her father; and the internal politics of the indigenous community are skeletal at best – we have no idea, for instance, how they fare the winter, why they decide to bring the colonists food, or how different indigenous people are rationalizing the presence of white people in their land. This unequal representation makes it so that all the important decisions affecting the world of the protagonists come from the colonizers – they are made the think-ers and the do-ers, while the indigenous people are made set pieces, or at best, inconsequential.
“So what if the representation is unequal?” I find myself thinking, “It’s not supposed to be a political story of two communities. It’s supposed to be a love story about two people.” For the sake of a good romance, we’re asked to go from what we know, which is a white, English-speaking, colonial context that we all read about in Social Studies and therefore doesn’t require complicated exposition. For Malick, the politics and power dynamics of first contact are peripheral to an intimate story of two people, and the movie asks us to “fill in the blanks” on all the unimportant stuff to make way for that romance.
And that would be all fine and good, if it weren’t for the fact what the movie asks us to accept as important and unimportant is a reenactment of colonialism. Read: the colonists’ society is important, while indigenous society is not – that is, unless it makes our female love interest idyllic, mysterious, or exotic. White people have personal histories, aspirations and ambitions, while indigenous people emerge from nowhere (or out of the tall grass) and remain hopelessly reactionary. The colonizer’s context is the center, and the indigenous context is the periphery. And when we as an audience accept this point of view unquestioningly, we’re participating in one of many rituals in which we practice ignoring the hideousness of colonialism. We’re stepping, comfortably, into the shoes of the conquerors.
True, we might be able to fill in the political blanks in Malick’s movie with a complex understanding of imperialism, balancing out the film’s unequal representation with our own. But we have to acknowledge that the film could work equally well for someone who just wants to see an Indian princess in form-fitting deerskin fall in love with a hard-working, powerful man. The movie doesn’t require you to know anything about these issues to get swept up in the love story, and doesn’t prompt you to ask any of those kinds of questions. That makes The New World a political don’t-ask-don’t-tell, which translates from pig latin as “let’s accept the status quo as a given for this one.”
(Okay chill out, you’re saying, not all stories have to be political. And you’re right – but depending on what a given story asks us to ignore, we might start to worry. For instance, would we accept a movie about the epic romance of Joseph and Magda Goebbels, in which the Holocaust served as little more than a convenient backdrop? Clearly, some apolitical love stories are more justifiable than others. The tricky part is not saying whether The New World is justifiable or not, but being clear about which parts are which.)
posted by oknotes at 12:35 PM
1 Comments:
Hi, I'm a Malick-fan who stumbled across this blog entry and I hope you don't mind if I post this rather lengthy reply. Part of the imbalance in whose POV is used more often and whose story is more complete may have to do with parts of the script that either weren't filmed or didn't make it into the 135 min. theatrical cut. Here is an early draft that Malick tinkered with for years, but it's interesting to see what the original scope of the story and character development was: http://www.movie-page.com/scripts/the-new-world_early.pdf
I would have also liked to see much more of the naturals' POV and character development. I especially missed that at the end, when the tables are turned and the Old World is seen as a new world in the eyes of Pocohantas and her uncle (OMG - Magua in Hampton Court!). Anyway, there are those who think the New World is not only political, but even overtly so. One of them is the film's producer, Sara Green. Here's an excerpt from Stephen Applebaum's article (link at bottom of post), "End of a world as they knew it" , with Sara Green's comments in quotes:
---------------------------
Ultimately, the core message of The New World is that people and nations must learn from the past. The political overtones are obvious and the film has lost none of its relevance since Malick wrote his original draft more than two decades ago.
"It's about people coming in and stomping all over something, thinking, in their naivety, that it's all theirs for the taking, without actually looking past their nose to see that people are being wildly affected," Green says.
"I like to think we can still find our higher self as a nation. There are enough people in America who I know care about the morals of the country and I think we just need a gentle reminder that how we started wasn't quite as high-minded as we like to think and that we might try to keep those high-minded ideals in mind as we try to go forward."
-----------------------
I, too, think TNW is full of political commentary of the kind Sara Green mentioned, but Malick tempers it with the filter of philosophy. Aristotle described the subject of his 'Politics" as the "philosophy of human affairs", and that would also be a fitting description of Malick's politics in TNW. Instead of political "overtones", I would say the film is full of political UNDERtones that are allowed to jump to the surface at key moments. One of these is the blatantly "My Lai-like" scene when English burn down the naturals' village in classic southeast Asia mode, with tight shots of women and children clutching bits of food and clothing while they scatter before the torch-bearing colonists, making one wonder if Malick didn't get Oliver Stone to guest direct. Other such moments take the form of painfully ironic juxtapositions, as when we see Pocohantas hobbling about in her tight shoes and corset while we hear Capt. Newport give an inspired Manifest Destiny speech.
In essence, politics is the process through which different human groups distribute power and exercise it over themselves and each other, no matter what the end purpose is. TNW explores and contrasts the world views that compel humans to relate to each other politically, whether greed or idealism is the driving force, or non-politically, in which individual existence and social interaction is not defined as a contest for power.
Equal doses of irony are administered to Capt. Newport and John Smith's dreams of a new commonwealth, the colonists digging for gold instead of hunting for food, and the idyllic Eden of the noble savage. Newport and Smith's almost utopian idealism is painful to hear in the light of present day circumstances: "Here the blessings of the earth are bestowed upon all. None need grow poor...We shall have no landlords to exploit the fruits of our labour.... Men shall not make each other their spoil" (I only have Smith's quotes at hand, but Newport makes similar statements). The sight of starving men digging desperately with their hands for gold speaks for itself. Smith's pastoral description of the naturals' character ("they are gentle, loving...they have no guile"... etc.) and the images of them in perfect harmony with nature and each other are ironically contrasted with images of the indian "plebs" dropping in obeisance whenever royalty passes by, the scenes of indians learning the value of money over barter and selling Pocohantas to the English for a stew pot, and their ferociity in battle over land ownership. TNW shows any modes of existence based on - or tainted by - greed and the exercise of power to be a fallacy. That is what I think lies at the root of the more topical or accesible political content of TNW mentioned by Sara Green. Just like in The Thin Red Line and Days of Heaven, an original goodness and bounty have been cast aside by greed and ambition, by "politics" you could say. It is harmony within the individual, and between each person and their human and natural surroundings, that is presented without irony and put forward as the best mode of earthly existence and the only way to attain true freedom. This is also shown as a path people can choose to follow, and Pocohantas serves as Malick's "exemplum".
Perhaps I am cynical, but it seems to me that this sort of harmonious co-existence is by definition non-political, and therefore, perhaps, but a dream, as we are by nature political animals. But Smith's first VO is very telling in this respect: "Who are you whom I so faintly hear, who ever gently urges me on? What voice is this that speaks within me - guides me towards the best?". That is the voice (some might say of conscience) of "our higher self", in Sara Green's words. Malick's political commentary is definitely trying to make us listen to it, but haranguing us from atop a soapbox just isn't his style.
Full article: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,18786031-16947,00.html
A fellow Malick fan over at terrencemalick@yahoo.com has just posted an extremely lucid examination of Malick's views on class by looking at the dividing line between those characters in his films who have privilege and/or property (remember Welsh's "it's all about property" in TTRL) versus those who don't or who don't care about them.
Check us out if you like or are interested in Malick's films. I think there's definitely more thn meets the eye where political content in TNW is concerned.
Best wishes,
Agape
Post a Comment
<< Home