Ah yes, because when I think “movies that aren’t right wing” I think “There’s no way that movie where Tom Cruise is a white saviour for the Japanese Samurai and helps them rediscover their honour by being a better samurai than any of them could be and completely ignores all of the actual realities of the Boshin war and turns it into a basic “tradition vs modernity and modernity bad” conflict could ever possibly be right wing. Because most of the actors aren’t white, just the lead.”
The movie isn’t about the Boshin war, it’s a fictionalising of the Seinan war. Ken Watanabe plays a fictionalised version of Saigō Takamori rather than the shogun, and the culminating battle is a thinly veiled battle of Shiroyama.
Issues such as existing trade, the issues of whether the shogun or the emperor were the traditional seat of acctual power, and whether the country should modernise were settled.
Saigō Takamori killed hundrds of his countrymen (With modern weaponry, including a gatling gun at the battle of Toba–Fushimi) to make his country more racist and put Meiji on the throne. He was directly behind the abolishment of the Han system and backed Meiji as he ended Shizoku feudal privileges. He only flipped because the Meiji government was not imperialist enough (Yes really) and the betrayal of the principles of sonnō jōi (Anti western reactionary politics).The man left government in anger after the emperor refused to allow him to go to Korea on his own to stir up enough trouble that war would become inevitable.
Oh you’re right, it’s been ages since I’ve seen this movie, so I didn’t realise. Glad all that doesn’t mean the movie is right wing though, it’s not like right wingers are always idolising some kind of “lost cause” myth or something.
Weeb right-winger guy who does the Lost Cause Myth but about the Boshin War instead
The message of the last samurai is that the emperor betrayed sonnō jōi.
But I mean, yeah, the movie is about how the traditional Japanese order of society is good actually and western influence is corrupting it. Which is a surprisingly often employed motif by western filmmakers making fiction about Japan.
Like the only way western filmmakers can imagine appealing to a japanese audience is making movies about how ending Sakoku was a mistake.
Which is ironic, as the common Western notion of the samurai is based on a flimsy pseudo-history intended to make feudal Japan seem heroic by Western standards. So it’s this weird ouroboros of the West lamenting that they’ve sullied the old ways of Japan, but the vision of Old Japan they’re painting is itself a Western dilution.
I don’t think we can solely blame the west on this one. While orientalism (Both the artistic movement and the actual concept) have totally warped what a samurai is, Japan has had a 400 year long history of their own of lying about what a samurai was same as western europe does for knights.
But I think making “Fuck yeah Sakoku FOREVER” a central theme is a thing I’ve never seen in anything actually Japanese, although I’ll admit my actual experience with Japanese media is limited.
The best part of the last samurai is asking “and then what happened?” at the film’s end.
I mean, the Meiji Restoration was, broadly speaking, a Liberalizing (if not Liberal) movement.
I think people are using words as synonyms of “good” and “bad” instead of actually looking at what they mean.
The Meiji Restoration overturned a stagnant feudal order and implemented in its place a modern, liberalized economy.
In much the same way, Britain was a Liberal country in the interwar period compared to its peers in Western Europe, but was certainly an objectively right-wing country.
Regardless of wether they improved the lives of common people, events like the Meiji Restoration or the signing of the Magna Carta or the Declaration of Independence are objectively historically progressive in a Marxist sense.
How would Mateix be a right wing film?
because right wingers are illiterate
Because they have very shallow media literacy because they don’t even understand how reality works. They think the entire world is a communist, gay, atheist, free love dystopia while right wingers are an incredibly small resistance movement. They sincerely think because they can’t say slurs in public that they’re enemies of a massive control mechanism.
They are in fact subjects of a control mechanism but it’s capitalism. They’re only able to see the masks that capitalist imperialism adopts. They’re unable to fundamentally understand that the mask of liberal tolerance, dei, corporate rainbow logos, etc, that these are simply affectations that the machine takes to hide the reality of its brutality. Right wingers have broken brains, so they can’t realize liberal messaging isn’t for them, it’s for comfortable liberals who consciously realize imperialism is bad, but cognitively disassociate because the CIA will do ads about racial tolerance or whatever. Right wingers think those ads are sincere, not simply a soothing balm for liberals.
So right wingers think escaping the matrix would involve breaking free of liberal messaging and doing imperialist brutality for real, since they are so confused they believe the brutality isn’t happening, or that it isn’t brutal enough
Reminds me of the thing from Wake Up Dead Man. “You know it’s like Star Wars, we are like the rebels”
rightists think they are the small resistance being beset on all sides by the evil system that tries to brainwash them. they think mainstream media is communist. they think the educational system is woke and leftist. they think big corporations are socialist. they think bill gates wants to make you a communist slave with his woke vaccine and lab grown meat.
Because of the so called redpill ideology, I presume.
I guess the same reason right wingers love american history x. Because they don’t understand it
they also only watch the first half of it
In group and everyone else is a likely enemy.
I’ve never read the novel version but is any amount of time spent on how the samurai were outright pedophiles with young boy companions? Because that was one of the things that got outlawed in the Meiji industrialization period.
Okay but just like the Taliban were anti pedohile, that doesn’t make the movement as a whole good.
i dont think this one’s based on a book. that was shogun.
Apparently there is a novel with the same title, but it’s completely unrelated to the Tom Cruise movie. I saw it in a bookstore like 20 years ago and assumed it was the same thing I guess.
Pederasty was practiced in a whole lot of places around the world, it seems to be pretty naturally dropped from most stories. Otherwise you couldn’t tell stories about Ancient Greece or Rome, parts of Africa and Australia, China, etc etc. Turns out when people form hierarchies, sexual abuse in those hierarchies occurs and is often codified.
Paul Mooney’s bit about The Last Samurai lives in my head eternally. (CW: Slur)
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Wow, so sneaky. I thought the movie was woke because of all the non-white people, but it turns out it was actually right-wing
I think a problem with narrative story telling is that most are implicitly fascist in nature. Trying to tell a narrative that truly reflects the real material motivation of an event is too complicated and boring for most readers, and so we just end up with tales of “great men” solving complicated problems with simple actions.
There is a reason why nearly every fascist dictator was at one time obsessed with fictions. Nearly all fiction reinforces the idea that if someone is brave enough, strong enough, or resilient enough they can become the main character of their own world and save it through desisive action.
I too love reading of all types, but it worries what it says about humans in general that we are so attracted to narrative story telling that has gone basically unchanged since the iliad that idolizes heroes.
Fascists like Great Man Theory and Great Man Theory is certainly reactionary, but I don’t think Great Man Theory is inherently fascist.
I also think that a lot of fiction is not substantially Great Man Theory for a litany of different reasons. Many stories are on a personal scale where the agency of individuals makes more sense (even if there is often still elements of idealism) and even stories on a civilizational level are often operating in large part on different kinds of reactionary idealism, like the gods ordaining this or that.
Hitler was a big fan of Wagner, and to be honest I don’t know the Ring Cycle very well, but my impression of it is that the civilizational stuff is in very large part oriented around the gods and magical objects (like the eponymous ring).
Fascists like Great Man Theory and Great Man Theory is certainly reactionary, but I don’t think Great Man Theory is inherently fascist.
I would say it fits within the motif of how fascist present their world view through art.
also think that a lot of fiction is not substantially Great Man Theory for a litany of different reasons. Many stories are on a personal scale where the agency of individuals makes more sense (even if there is often still elements of idealism) and even stories on a civilizational level are often operating in large part on different kinds of reactionary idealism, like the gods ordaining this or that.
I think my point is that because stories are told on the personal scale it usually resonates with fascist ideology. The very idea of a protagonist meeting circumstance with their will and determination resonates with how fascist portray their own society. Yes the gods may be ordaining this or that, but who is answering the call of the gods, or standing up to their demands?
One of Hitlers favorite authors of fiction was Karl May, who’s most popular works were about Old Shatterhand. A fictional autobiographical series about his supposed adventures being a vigilante cowboy/pioneer in America. The stories were always about how one mans cunning, bravery, and determination were always enough to defeat any odds. Even though it was a young adult series hitler would often quote or reference the books to his own military leaders about how to win battles.
Could’ve done a more interesting film about the Satsuma Rebellion and how the heroes of the Boshin war turned coat after realizing modernization and getting rid of the feudal structures included them, the butchers of the imjin invasions.
Saigō Takamori was fully aware of the loss of feudal privileges to the lower nobility involved, as indeed he had been the guy behind the abolishment of the han system and the enshrinement of the Kazoku/Shizuku divide. He had overseen the initial handover of feudally held land to the central government (The daimyos who held the land were then appointed as governors of the domain)
The shizoku (The minor samurai nobility) formed the bulk pf the “Military power” of the rebellion, but the leadership had lost little and were indeed the ones who had set the course.
Saigō Takamori instead was primarily mad that Meiji didn’t wanna do Imjin 2 electric boogaloo, even after he offered to provide a pretext for the war by going to Korea and making enough of a nuisance of himself that they would have to execute him.That’s why it’s great, that dog got put to pasture
Agreed. And I think it’s great that the people who kicked his ass in the satsuma rebellion included a bunch of the people he had fought in the boshin war Get owned asshole.
Now if only Meiji had also died.
![[Scribbling in giant notepad titled WOKE THINGS] Meiji Restoration](https://thelemmy.club/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fhexbear.net%2Fpictrs%2Fimage%2F09928224-0418-4806-8356-7c0d5461112d.jpeg){kind=link}