I wasn't going to see Priest until I read Noah Berlatsky's critique. I could tell from the trailer that it wasn't offering anything new, nor was it going to even try. Indeed, it is cobbled together from clichés, tropes and designs borrowed from other films -- many of which would best be forgotten, as well. There's not one, but two "I won't let you / don't you let go" scenes as someone is dangling from the hero's hand. The villain conducts while his minions play a catastrophe on a town, just so you know how evil he is. Black Hat, the villain, is a former member of the superpowered priesthood, now corrupted by vampire blood, making him more powerful than both the pureblood vamps and the priests. The vampires are based on the same boring, wormlike design that was used in I Am Legend -- preferred, I guess, because it's generic and doesn't require eyes. Black Hat's main plan is get his old friend, Priest, to join him as a halfbreed and take over the world for the vampire queen. The worst offense is that the action is yet another uninspired appropriation of The Matrix's bullettime. Why, then, did I see it? Because Berlatsky argues that the film is virulently racist, and I can't stay away from films that unintentionally go horribly ideologically wrong. He had my hopes up for another 300 or the aforementioned I Am Legend, but is it a "racist piece of shit," or just shit?
The film's one innovation -- if you can call it that -- is borrowing the basic plot from The Searchers. In John Ford's classic, the Comanche kidnap Ethan Edwards' (John Wayne) niece, torch his brother's homestead and kill most of the family. The vampires do the same to Priest's (Paul Bettany) family, bringing him out of forced retirement to find his "niece" (actually, his biological daughter), and, thus, against the direct commands of the church state that he serves. The heroes are accompanied by the nieces' suitors, both of whom intend to keep the girls alive against the uncles' vows to kill their nieces if they show signs of infection -- cultural in the case of the Indians and genetic in the case of the vampires (or, I guess you might say, genetic mutation determines an ideologico-moral shift in the latter). It's the substitution of vampires for Indians in the plot that is central to Berlatsky's condemnation:
[I]f the Indians are vampires, suddenly you don’t have to shilly-shally. One by one the Western set pieces are trotted out and stripped down to their primal level of racist hatred and fear. The (white) family of peaceful farming folk out on the frontier is beset, utterly without cause, by slavering, hideous eyeless beasts. The reservation on which the vampires are herded is an impoverished, backwards tract of dirt—surrounding a slimy, stinking pit of sub-human insectoid breeding and bloodletting.
[...] But, of course, where Ford’s film at least intermittently sees Ethan’s bloody-minded racial panic as a monstrosity, in Priest there is no such bleeding heart nonsense. Racial mixing deserves death, period, and even Hicks has to admit that Priest’s absolute anti-miscegenation stance is the only true morality.
His hyperbolical reaction rests on one faulty assumption that seems to me fairly obvious: borrowing a plot doesn't entail the same intent or interpretation of that intent for the stories sharing the plot. As Roger Ebert put it, The Searchers has a nervous racial politics in the way it attempts to walk the line between the legitimate fear Euro-American settlers had for the Comanche and the genocidal solution that many, such as the character of Ethan, promoted. Berlatsky would have it that by substituting the vampires in the role of the Other, the nervousness is taken away, making genocide a moral solution to the settlers fear of the Comanche.
Even though he refuses to admit it (confer his article's comments section), the use of monsters of pure evil instead of humans from a different cultural tradition necessitates a different interpretation of storytelling intent. Granted, monsters often serve an allegorical role, but this role isn't merely determined by their placement within a plot. Rather, I suggest content of the villain role is crucial here -- i.e., the form doesn't determine (top-down) the way the content is to be interpreted. When Dirty Harry rails against the liberal bureaucrats in San Francisco, that suggests (regardless of the intent of the filmmakers) something about the realworld bureaucratic organization of a realworld city. It asks the audience to temporarily identify with a perspective (right-wing and reactionary) about something that actually exists for the movie to work the way it does. The vampires represent the Comanche (or Indians in general) only if one assumes that they do. And the only reason for assuming that they do is because of Priest's sharing a plot with a film about white settlers and the Comanche. But imagine a story where a girl is kidnapped by a Nazi group who intend on raising her with pure Aryan racialist beliefs (this idea shares similarities with the horror film Frontier(s)). Her uncle, a vehement Nazi-hunter, goes after her with the intent of killing her if she's been ideologically contaminated. I suspect his intention would find more sympathy from contemporary audiences than Ethan's, based as it is on a hatred that's considered more morally justified than hatred of Indians. Using Berlatsky's rationale, the Nazi-hunter would be just as bigoted as Ethan.
However, even for the individual who finds Comanche beliefs as insidious and heinous as the Nazi's, there would be a monstrousness to either of the uncles' decisions to kill his own kind that simply doesn't obtain in Priest's situation: the ideological change in the niece is psycho-cultural in the former two instances, but genetic in the latter. One doesn't learn the evil of vampirism; it's a cancer that rapidly takes over the mind and body with the exchange of blood. The person that you were is really dead; what remains is an evil simulation. A white girl raised as a Comanche or Nazi continues to possess agency and can, therefore, be responsible for her actions. Her beliefs could change again. Ethan's racism is shown in the way he takes the Comanche and their culture to be something like vampirism, robbing his niece of her agency and replacing it with an evil, inhuman mockery of her former self. He finds some redemption when he embraces her in the end, despite her Comanche ways. Contrariwise, Priest would be mistaken to assume a vampiric version of his niece still possessed moral accountability -- a mistake that would result in more people being killed as the undead virus spreads like the pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The vampires in Priest represent a pure, evil Otherness, a group that shares no moral beliefs with and has none for the Orwellian church-state that the humans live under. (As dumb as this film is, it's actually a good deal more politically complicated than Berlatsky makes it out to be: many human ethnicities live under the totalitarian regime that probably isn't much better than the collectively minded existence of the vampires.) Whatever fear the filmmakers attempt to create using vampires is rooted in an abstract fear that underlies all fear of things we don't understand, or can't integrate within our own cultural codes. Who the hell fears the Indians these days? Racism enters the picture only when someone chooses to treat real humans as if they were these vampires. But the only person making that connection is Berlatsky.
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Priest (2), Noah Berlatsky (1), Fantasy (19), Western (2), Vampires (4), John Ford (1), John Wayne (4), The Searchers (1), Racism (7)Recent Posts From Charles Reece
Comments
Argh; should have said "the point about racist fantasies is that they're not real" — racism is real of course.
Also...are you contending that the transformations in Invasion of the Body Snatchers have no metaphorical connection to ideological transformations? The film is often interpreted as parable about communism (though I think it can also be read as capitalism too.) Similarly, I think the Thing can be read as homosexual panic. The transformation in Lovecraft's Innsmouth is pretty strongly linked to racial otherness (as is always the case in Lovecraft.) Are all those illegitimate interpretations? Is abstract Otherness always absolutely divorced from cultural otherness? Even in something like (say) Romero's films, where the zombie transformation is fairly strongly linked to racial otherness, often on behalf of anti-racism? Is Romero just making shit up, or is he maybe possibly alert to the underlying mechanics of his genre, which he would not be able to subvert and rework if, as you claim, they didn't exist.
Hiya, Noah, I agree with you about the allegorical potential of monsters and that their use could be racist (or anti-racist). (Lovecraft was a racist, yes.) And I agree that the abstract/literary/fictive fear isn't really different from the very real fear that racists feel towards whatever other they hate. But sharing that reaction isn't the same as sharing the content; fear of the other isn't equally justified in all cases where it's present. Fear of Nazis or bureaucracies is more legitimate than a fear of Indians, these days (but fear of Comanches was legitimate in the past, just as they had a legitimate fear of whites -- well, Indians should still not trust whites). The monstrous metaphor has to be particularized toward a real other in some way in order to be considered racist, and not merely eliciting a fear that racists share with non-racists. That's what Priest doesn't do. I don't see any intentional connection between the vamps and Comanche other than the borrowing of a plot, which if you substitute Nazis in the place of the vamps shows (I think) isn't sufficient for your claim of racism. Yes, it's racist when someone takes another human as something like one of these vampires, but I don't see that the movie is doing that. In fact, it pretty clearly resists such an interpretation by the use of multi-ethnic priests -- although, you might point out that there were no Indians among them. If the movie is simply promoting the complete annihilation of the vampires (which is somewhat questionable, given the harsh depiction of the human civilization), it certainly isn't meant to be linked to anyone considered an other in reality (as in 'annihilate all who are fearfully different'). I think it's simply using the vampires as a purely evil/anti-human force that all humans (including Indians) are rightly fearful of. They're intended as pure fantasy. Any implications for reality are in the way humans are shown to develop against this evil: falling into authoritarianism, religious dogma, etc..
Verhoeven's a favorite of mine. I love ST! But I haven't read the book, so can't comment on its differences from the adaptation. Although from what I've read, the movie seems pretty critical of Heinlein. I think the film quite clearly is meant as a critique of fantasy's relation to reality. Verhoeven both delivers the generic goods and makes the viewer feel guilty for enjoying it. Anyway, the movie deserves a whole essay on its relation to otherness and the way genre relates to reality. The bugs (unlike the vamps) are humanized by the end, and meant to reflect the way imperialism et al. has dealt with very real humans in the world based on a fantasy.
Another favorite of mine is Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Yes, it is/was a metaphor for communism, but as I discuss here, it functions as a critique of conformity (communism is a cold war metaphor for conformity), as well. The aliens don't have to communists, even though that was the original intent. That's why a person with leftist sympathies can still find its horror affect so resonant.
ST isn't just critiquing fantasy; it's specifically critiquing the genocidal fantasy of the book. (The book links the bugs to communism, and specifically to the Chinese.)
I think the movie pretty clearly is getting off on the idea of total war; the church is weak and decadent because it's pacifist. It's also Catholic...and the vigilante Priest's make a case for a more personal relationship with God (i.e., protestantism.) In that context, I think the movie can be seen as placing a decadent, overweening, insufficiently militant totalitarian government in opposition to the individual, evangelical (?) Priests — who have what it takes to fight the evil undifferentiated and infectious hordes. I think that maps quite easily onto our current foreign policy.
The twist is that the current foreign policy is then conflated with our past foreign policy. You claim that the vampires can't be a racist other because there's no current fear of Indians. But racism is about history too, and even about nostalgia. The film uses the Western genre to reactivate, romanticize, and justify an earlier imperial moment — and that earlier imperial moment maps quite nicely onto our current imperial moment. The vampires are directly Indians — but the atmosphere that makes it exciting/fun/worthwhile to fantasize again about killing Indians and eliminating the racialized other has everything to do with our current historical moment.
Along those lines...I think our current imperial moment is definitely about justifying our obliteration of various other cultures on the grounds that we're more multi-ethnic than they are. It's also worth noting that the white guy is still in charge; the hot Asian girl is his sidekick,and the other multi-ethnic priests all get murdered in short order.
I love Body Snatchers too. As I think I mentioned somewhere in comments, I think metaphors in horror films are a lot more complicated, and a lot more multi-layered, than the metaphors in this kind of simple-minded war movie.
Regarding the church, there were only 2 priests who went the independent route, the others followed orders (and were killed). And remember that it turns out that the council was somewhat correct: Priest shouldn't have left, since the kidnapping was to lure him into a trap and leave the city with fewer defenses. He wound up back at the city having to defend it. Going it alone almost resulted in the destruction of the city. But I think the film is too incompetent to clearly map it onto much of anything. "You claim that the vampires can't be a racist other because there's no current fear of Indians." I'll try to clear this up. The film suggests that there's good reason to wipe out the vampires, we agree. But in order to attach that to any particular, realworld, genocidal fantasy, there has to be some justification for connecting the vampires to a realworld group. As it stands, I don't see the movie as saying anything more than we should vanquish pure evil. What is considered pure evil in the realworld? Even racists don't much think about Indians these days. The vampires stand for anything that one wants to substitute for them depending on his or her inclination. The target of vampires makes the genocidal fantasy innocuous. Again, borrowing a plot, even with genre tropes, does not entail borrowing all the content and surrounding moral issues that the source material contained. Every possible use of an uncle going after his kidnapped niece by a group he despises and fears isn't necessarily about Indians. It matters who the group is within the story in determining whether the uncle's intentions are racist or not.
Did you ever read the dismissal of Inglourious Basterds by Jonathan Rosenbaum and Daniel Mendelsohn? I wonder if you're not of a like mind, that even the fantasy of wiping out the Nazis is dangerous and vile and probably racist. Seems like you might be saying something like that. Is that accurate? I think it's okay to dream about slaughtering Nazis. But, then again, there's a problem with not being able to see evil within ourselves (a problem both Rosenbaum and Mendelsohn have in their reviews).
I'll just sum up by saying I don't see anything necessarily (morally) wrong with fantasies involving notions of pure evil.
Not all fantasies about vanquishing evil lead to the same place.The realworld problem comes in when such fantasies are applied to real people as Others. 300 clearly does this (which is why I find it so fascinating, a contemporary film that's as racist, if not more so, than anything by Griffith, Riefenstahl or the Nazis), but I don't see the racist connection between the vampires and the Comanche.
Sorry...getting back to this after awhile.
I love Inglourious Bastards! There's a bunch of differences form Priest...in the first place, the Nazis aren't in fact pure evil, or entirely unsympathetic. Some of them get to act with courage, and others are allowed a certain level of charm.
I also just really appreciated that Jews were not portrayed as victims, but got to play another minority stereotype (dangerous, effective, cool.) That sort of juggling of tropes is why I love Tarantino; I think it really calls into question how we think about Jews and the Holocaust; how our understanding of the Holocaust is in the imaginary, not the real.
IB is also just so clearly about filmmaking as filmmaking; it's about wwii films, not about wwii (though, like I said, I think it's got very smart things to say about wwii by talking about wwii films.)
We can agree to disagree on Priest. Thanks for a fun discussion!
Hey Charles! I should have known you'd disagree. "Who the hell fears Indians these days?" You don't think imperialism and racial otherness continue to be live topics? The allure of total unending war in the name of genocidal victory has no effect on our politics of the moment? Our past with Native Americans has no relevance to what we're doing around the world today?
Your argument is basically they can't really be Indians, or can't be seen as Indians, or can't fill the Indians place in any meaningful way, because vampire infection doesn't work like ideological infection; racial contamination isn't really vampiric contamination. But (as I said in the comments) the point about racism is that it's not real. Hyperbolic fears of contamination don't make those fears unracist just because they're hyperbolic. "Whatever fear the filmmakers attempt to create using vampires is rooted in an abstract fear that underlies all fear of things we don't understand, or can't integrate within our own cultural codes" It's an abstract fear that is linked in particular to Native Americans. The place where fear of the Other intersects with fear of other humans and is used to justify genocidal fantasies and paranoid fears of contamination is a place where you get racism.
I'm curious what you think of the film Starship Troopers. Do you think it's an unfair take on the book?
I'm glad you wrote this though. You don't exactly bring up new arguments, I don't think, but it's definitely the best response I've had...and it really doesn't smack of anti-anti-racism, which is a relief.