The Four Feathers

Unsurprisingly I chickened out and pulled the note off the neighbors door this morning. Grr. On some level I wish I had left it, but on others I don't. After all, I never want to actually hurt anyones feelings. Or maybe I am just chicken.
So with that in mind and, a little discouraged to be honest with you, after reading another 75 pages of pre-U.S. history in regards to Native Americans, I just did not feel like reading more tonight. So I decided to watch a movie which I picked sort of randomly. It turned out to be The Four Feathers.
Ironic, isn't it? This is an epic about the British and their dominant role in imperialism at a time when the "White Man's Burden" was openly discussed as a good thing and proper justification for European subjugation of any non-whites they can find.
Heath Ledger is given the white feather of cowardice by his three friends and his fiancee (one friend refuses to give him one) when he decides not to go to war. Naturally, this is presented as the wrong decision.
He spends the rest of the movie trying to redeem his honor by proving he is not a coward. Interestingly enough, the background discussion could be made that he was more courageous for NOT going to a war that, as he states, "I just don't understand what a desert in the middle of nowhere has to do with Her Majesty the Queen."
I think he makes an excellent point. A lot of wars are fought in places and over things that have nothing to do with the people directing the war.
Wars are fought over stupid concepts such as "National Honor". Countries formed by killing and enslaving the indigenous peoples somehow feel they must go to war in the 21st century if some other country says they have poor economic structures or their bridges sit over the river funny. After all, National Pride has been insulted.
Huh? Maybe National Pride should be based on something real...such as being a good international citizen or actually caring effectively for their own people. And please note this is directed at many countries other than the U.S. The India-Pakistan shout-offs, for instance, over elements of National Pride while millions of their people are mistreated by the governments are just as silly.
National Pride is such a nebulous concept anyway. Look at the current debate over Cindy Sheehan. Half the nation is proud of her courageous stand on behalf of her dead son while the other half of the nation is proud of the President for refusing to listen to the side-switching publicity hound. Personally, I think both views are wrong, but that is neither here nor there.
The real point is both sides believe their position brings honor to them. No doubt some people would be willing to fight on behalf of their position...people actually act as if they have personal stakes in this issue.
Personal pride is just as nebulous and nefarious. Curious choice of word, that nefarious...or is it? Look at all the damage done in interpersonal relationships because of "personal honor".
Husbands and wives fight over the toilet seat because apparently male wrists flick up but not down and female wrists flick down but not up. Both sides are too prideful to admit the other has a point. Personally, I hate a toilet seat up, but that is perhaps because I do not particularly care for the smell of urine and do not want it wafting around me. So perhaps this example is a disingenuous one for me to use.
So often fights continue because one person or the other has too much pride to say they are sorry. Events fester and worsen because of an abstract notion...pride.
What exactly is pride, whether personal or national? It is nothing but a construct of how you believe other people perceive you. In truth, no other person can hurt your pride but you can choose to have your pride offended based on how you relate to their actions.
How did I get here from a discussion of the movie? I guess I should not have turned on Shrek...
But back to the movie, I was quite disappointed with a couple things. For one thing, Jack, the true blue guy, ends up losing the girl to Ledger because that is how Hollywood has to be. Even sadder is the way Djimon Hounsou is treated.
Who? How would you know. After all, the stars were Heath Ledger, Wes Bentley, and Kate Hudson. The movie is positioned as a love triangle against a search for courage. That is, until you look at screen time.
Hounsou plays the part of the "member of a slave tribe" who saves Ledgers life and immediately takes on, without explanation or logic, the role of protector and guide for Ledger. I mean, a nod is given to him believing God put Ledger in his path, but it is a very casual and, in the context, unsatisfying and fairly unbelievable.
He immediately stops whatever he was doing...apparently sitting alone in the desert waiting for Ledger to pass out and need rescuing, because he has no backstory and, to finish it off, no future in the movie once he is done rescuing Ledger several times...to help out.
Despite the fact he is desert wise while Ledger would definitely die if left to his own devices, Hounsou also being an accomplished warrior while Ledger, by his own admission, deserted because he was afraid, and being in a land overpowered by white men because they were white, Hounsou uncomplainingly takes Ledgers orders and does his bidding.
This includes a scene that was hard to watch where Hounsou tries to warn the stubborn British they are entering a trap. He is commanded not to speak English (because balcks, you know, should never speak a civilized language, and he is then whipped for his insolence in trying to warn the British.
He then continues, without complaint, to help Ledger...the friend of the man who had him whipped.
I suppose this would be cinematically acceptable if any point was being made. But it wasn't. He was simply a plot point. He was simply a device to allow Ledger to get out of trouble. He had no goals of his own, no ambition, and once there is no longer physical danger he fades into the desert from whence he came...no going to civilization for him. No need for the savage, the symbol of what the British did not believe to exist, an intelligent, capable, good human being who was non-white...no, that cannot be allowed into the beauty and pageantry of late 19th century London. He does not belong there.
So the movie ends with Jack giving up the woman he has always loved to the man who quit on her because she quit on him while the REAL hero of the movie is not seen in the final 15 - 20 minutes...nor is it ever acknowledged by Ledger that he could not survive without Hounsou.
Thus what could have been a decent morality tale become nothing but an empty, shallow shell that is deservedly relegated to the 4.99 racks at Walmart. At least, I hope that is where I bought it because otherwise I got robbed.