Dunkirk: We Can't Even Name True Fascism

By David Wrolson

Dunkirk: We Can’t Even Name True Fascism

I mentioned in a previous essay that I hate the movie Dunkirk to the core of my soul and with the heat of a thousand suns. Dunkirk almost feels demonic to me. The movie is perfectly aligned to fit modern sensibilities.

Less than a minute into the movie; the following word crawl appeared on the screen.

“The Enemy have driven the British and French armies to the sea. Trapped at Dunkirk they await their fate.”

“The Enemy”

My hatred for the movie started from that point. I could instantly see where the filmmakers were going. The other team was going to be a nameless, faceless “Enemy” and not Nazis. For all the current talk of standing against Fascism and so forth, we can’t even name true Fascism when we were battling for our lives against it.

The movie starts with a squad of soldiers in a deserted town that come under machine gun fire and are almost completely wiped out except for the main character in the movie.

We are then dropped with no context on a beach full of confused, frightened men. However, the real Dunkirk men had context.

They had just fought a bitter, fighting retreat and they had fought as well as they could under the circumstances. They, and countless others who didn’t make it to Dunkirk, had cost the Germans 156,000 casualties. Among those casualties, they had killed 27,000 Germans. The movie takes that honor away from them.

Throughout the movie, the British soldiers call the other team “The Enemy.” In real life, they called him “Hun, Jerry or Kraut.” In the Far East, they called him “Jap” or “Nip.” The movie dehumanizes the British soldier by having him call the enemy, “The Enemy.” To me, it is one of the ugliest features of the movie.

I think calling the other team “The Enemy” also does a disservice to the German soldier as well. He was caught up in service to a monstrous regime, but he was a flesh and blood man and it is important to remember that.

Ad-Hoc Units

We see the main character hiding on the pier to try sneak on a ship. He displays no courage or selflessness. His actions in the movie mirror what we in modern times expect that the typical behavior of a soldier is because it is what we see ourselves doing.

He is separated from his unit and appears to be alone. However, throughout history, ad-hoc units of soldiers separated from their units during confusing retreats or defeats or even advances fought well and they earned their place in Valhalla.

War Is Hell

Every scene of the movie seems geared to one objective. That objective is to show that “War is Hell.” That seemed to be all the filmmaker was after. In that aspect, once again, the movie is perfectly aligned with modern sensibilities. We think there is nothing worse than war.

Au contraire, there are many things worse than war. The Soviet Gulags were worse than war. The loss of the buffalo to the Cheyenne was worse than war. I fear that the outcome of the rapid move to artificial intelligence will be worse than war.

“The Enemy Could Be Right Over There”

Midway through the movie, our “hero” (loosely speaking) is with a group of soldiers who find a beached boat that might be usable at high tide. As the soldiers enter the boat they glance toward some sand dunes and one says “The enemy could be right over there.”

However, they just hide themselves in the bottom of the boat and post no sentries. Knowing what the movie is: it would be a bridge too far to expect them to scout the dunes, but they could have at least posted a sentry. This scene is the burning focus of my hatred for the movie.

So who are these Germans of whom you speak?

The only reference to Germans in the movie that I am aware of are when the Dutch boat captain comes back to his boat and the soldiers grab him and ask him if he is German and why he left the boat. He says “In case the Germans come back.”

Wow, completely out of the blue we hear of Germans. Given the lack of historical literacy among our youth I am not certain that very many know that “The Enemy” at Dunkirk was the Germans.

A Part of Something Larger Than Yourself

The only ones in the movie who are shown as a part of something larger than themselves are the crew of the small boat who are on their way to Dunkirk to rescue soldiers.

However, even this storyline is irretrievably marred by the inclusion of the shell-shocked soldier picked up in the channel who fights against going back to Dunkirk to pick up his comrades.

Once again, courage and self-sacrifice find no place in this movie. The film makers can’t begin to grasp that wounded soldiers throughout time have fought to get back to their comrades.

The shell-shocked soldier storyline is just another way of stripping honor from soldiers. It fits with our modern sensibilities of every one as a victim and that is how we see ourselves acting in that position.

One of the things I hate the most about the times we find ourselves living in is that we have stripped the honor from soldiers and, instead, we view them as victims.

They Paved Paradise and Put Up a Waterpark

By David Wrolson

My wife just saw an ad that Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines just finished a 250 million dollar makeover of their small private Bahamian island named Coco Cay.  Their new name for the place is "A Perfect Day at CocoCay."

The following is taken from a CNN story on the transformation

>>>"Thanks to a $250 million transformation, Royal Caribbean's once-sleepy private island retreat in the Bahamas is offering eye-opening travel amenities to its cruise passengers.

The island, Perfect Day at CocoCay, offers everything from a record-setting water slide and a massive wave pool to five new complimentary dining venues and quiet sandy beaches.

"We are so proud to bring our 50-year legacy of innovation ashore to transform an incredible island that now completely revolutionizes private destinations in the vacation industry," said Michael Bayley, Royal Caribbean International's president and CEO, in a statement".<<<<

I grow wistful when I think of my perfect day at CocoCay almost 20 years ago. I previously described this in another blog, but I bring it forward here. There is obviously no room on the new plasticized CocoCay for someone like me to visit with a Bahamian cop and have him make me a fresh conch salad. I thanks the Lord I wasn't born no later than I was.

http://thesmokeofafrica.blogspot.com/2012/12/safari-19-encyclopedia-boy-goes-to.html

I had always feared a cruise. I get restless easily and I figured I would find a cruise confining. It was not as bad as I thought. 

Anyway, the ship stopped in Nassau. Having read about the Bahamas, I wanted to eat their national dish, conch, a mussel-like thing that they fix in many forms.

We stopped at a little restaurant  and had conch fritters. This is when Encyclopedia Boy stepped into action. I started visiting with the owner about the Bahamas and where he was from. I will remember to my dying day that he was originally from Andros Island, but I can't remember to take out hamburger for supper.

My favorite memory of the cruise happened on the private island where the ship docked for a day of island activities. Lori was on the beach most of the day and I went wandering off. I had a long visit with a Bahamian police officer, mainly about hunting and fishing. 

I told him that I wanted to eat conch while in the Bahamas and that there were some in the water on the beach where Lori was sitting. He had me catch one and he walked me back to an area near the worker's quarters.

He told me to stay there and he would be back. It took about 20 minutes and I figured he was playing a joke on the American tourist. But, eventually he came back with another guy and they cut up my conch and made a salad. That was really neat. I am proud of myself that within the structured confines of a cruise I was able to have an experience that none of the hundreds of thousands of tourists who have been on the island have likely had.

My point is, that I really like to feel the geography of a place when I am there and I am hoping for that in Africa.

We will probably go back to Mexico or another tropical beach site, but I think a repeat visit to an all-inclusive resort would have the feel of "Been there, done that-let's do something else." In this case, something else is a hunt in Africa.