No your eyes are not deceiving you. Robert Downey Jr. is set to play the most bad ass, abdominal rippling, super stylized re-imagining of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's legendary Sherlock Holmes since the misanthropic and crippled Gregory House. I've had the idea for this post percolating for quite a while so I am taking advantage of my brief respite from exams to make the most of it. The upcoming film, set for release next November, will be directed by former Madonna Flame and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels director Guy Ritchie and will feature Jude Law as sidekick Dr. Watson and Rachel McAdams as "The Woman" aka Irene Adler. What's the plot? Well I have no idea but just look at Downey Jr! Knowing that Irene Adler, Holme's only potential love interest in the canonical literature, is set to be a character, maybe things start to get personal and Holmes has to lay down the law old school style with his fists as well as his brains. Either way, with such a strong cast and cult-favored director, I have high expectations for this film.That said, however, the new Holmes flick represents a radical departure from the Sherlock
Holmes films of yore, helmed by such legendary actors as Sir Basil Rathbone in a string of films in the 1930s-1940s. No longer, perhaps, will Holmes so elegantly and demurely puff at his Calabash and explain his "elementary" logic to his adoring fans as he apprehends Britain's most ruthless criminals. As much as recent revamps such as the Batman franchise have turned darker and more ominous, in a sense all Christopher Nolan had to do was to update the grim Gotham universe that Tim Burton conceived 16 years ago for a new generation of movie-goers. As much as I would love to see the notion of genius stylized on film, I can't help but worry that the incorporation of a literal ass-kicking Holmes may somehow taint the charm that the character had always had for me.Not only that, but in my mind I will always miss the Sherlock Holmes who I grew up with on film, as my family had all of the Rathbone-Bruce films on VHS at home. I loved the films growing up as an extension of my love for all of the Conan Doyle short stories I had read even earlier, for Rathbone's now prototypical portrayal of the iconic character, and most of all for Bruce's comic relief as an inaccurately bumbling Dr. Watson. As I grew older however, particularly once I began studying diplomatic history in college, I grew to love the films for a new reason. You see, although the first two films in the series were set in Victorian England, as were the original novels and serials, the remainder of the series was itself "revamped" to take place in contemporary (read 1939-1945, WWII ravaged) Great Britain. Once I began actually learning about the history of the era, I noticed all of the references not just to the war as a backdrop to the films' setting, but I noticed the blatant propaganda that the producers must have injected into the films against Germany and for the UK, US, and Canada.
Take, for example, this clip (skip to 4:00) from the end of The Voice of Terror, a film based heavily upon the experience of Nazi radio propagandist Lord Haw-Haw. Not only does Holmes refer to the recent Battle of Britain, but at the end there is even an advertisement for war bonds to help subsidize the effort against the Nazis. Similarly, in the later Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon, Holmes defeats a now Nazi-sympathizing Professor Moriarty to again save Britain in the face of annihilation (skip to 8:30). In another film set in Washington DC, Holmes also goes on to quote PM Churchill's oratory delivered to the US Congress stressing the need for the world's great democracies to protect the freedom of the world (skip to 8:45).
Even those who don't have an unhealthy obsession with ancient Sherlock Holmes movies have likely seen similar overtly propagandistic scenes in classic film. The most famous film I can think of is Casablanca, released in late 1942 at the height of German expansion in Europe. Not only does the film plainly depict the freedom fighter Victor Laszlo as a hero, but the film also takes some below the belt jibes at the Nazis while they're at it. There's that time when Laszlo instructs Rick's orchestra to drown out the Nazi national anthem with the Marseillaise. And how about when Captain Renault throws out the bottle of Vichy water at the very end (skip to 5:00)?
During WWII, in fact, the US commissioned some of the era's greatest directors to produce military indoctrination and propaganda videos for the nation. The most famous of whom, Frank Capra, produced a slew of films and shorts that have become textbook examples of propaganda, namely Why We Fight (clip here), Know Your Enemy: Japan, and Your Job in Germany. Even children's cartoons of the era made vicious fun of the Japanese enemies at the time and likely played into some of the most egregious (yet also so bad they're good) examples of racial stereotyping in film: Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's and the infamous Long Duk Dong of Sixteen Candles fame.
So what has become of propaganda in mass market film in America? Well the US agency in charge of placing propaganda was dissolved in 1999 (great timing right?) and by no means did Watergate or the Vietnam War experience help matters. In fact, throughout the course of the war there was only one film that positively portrayed the struggle in Vietnam, John Wayne's The Green Berets (the closing song, which is worth a listen, was even a hit single). Contrasting with The Green Berets is a whole genre of films representing America's national catharsis with respect to the Vietnam War, some of the most famous of which may be Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, Born on the 4th of July, and Platoon. This trend continues today even, as movie executives have learned the hard way that, just as one should never get involved in a land war in Asia, you should never set a film in the Middle East lest it suffer at the box office. Case in point? See The Kingdom, Jarhead, and Body of Lies just for a few. Just imagine though what the impact on public opinion could have been during the Bush administration if there were a centralized force disseminating pro-war material to all outlets of the media. Would we have accepted it? Would our views on the war have changed? Well I don't know about that, but I can tell you for a fact that Israel is milking its propaganda for all its worth, and I can promise you that young men the world over are all about the what Israeli Defense Forces are doing for its nation and for democracy and freedom in Middle East...or at least they're really into the women of the IDF.
I figured that I would just embed that video as a reward for any men that made it to the end of this beast of a post. Women, I'll keep my eye out for a men of the IDF calendar for you.
PS. Seriously!? The week after I say how wholesome guests on Sesame Street are Chris Brown had to go and beat the living daylights out of Rihanna before the Emmys? Come on!
