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Postmodernism meets the kamikaze: "Wings of Defeat" (2007)
Wings of Defeat
Directed by Risa Morimoto
Edgewood Pictures
2007
2009 February
"Wings of Defeat" is a documentary that purports to offer an
understanding of the Japanese kamikaze attacks during World War II
and of kamikaze pilots, an understanding correcting both Amerikan and
Japanese perceptions demonizing and glorifying the kamikaze pilots.
Former kamikaze pilots and former U.$. sailors who fought the
Japanese at Okinawa are interviewed.
An obvious problem with "Wings of Defeat" from a
communist-party-building standpoint is that it raises the Japanese
Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere propaganda, but seems to leave
it unrebutted. People cannot be learning communist theory properly if
they do not understand the united front against imperialism in China
and the international united front against fascism.
The idea that Asians have authoritarian and suicidal tendencies is
part of stereotypes about Asians in general, not just Japanese
people. The documentary reminds this reviewer of discussions of
Orientalism and Occidentalism, Occidentalism being an opposite of
Orientalism that supposedly exists among people with anti-Amerikan
views, including Japanese people during the Second World War. The
theme is that people need to find a common ground. These discussions
fail to understand power struggle as it actually exists. Regardless
of so-called understanding, all kinds of crazy and accidental things
can happen that may unleash events. More generally, the drive of
First Worlders to go to war is bound up with preserving high living
standards that only appear to be based on U.$. worker productivity
and entrepreneurship, aka "hard work" and "ingenuity," but are
actually based on the exploitation on proletarian workers outside the
United $tates.
The essential dynamic at work in "Wings of Defeat" is Liberalism,
specifically postmodernism. Sometimes, the documentary lets different
ideas clash without commentary. There is a science to reaching
certain goals, such as a world without war. This science does not
involve endlessly throwing things from different individual and group
perspectives up and seeing what excites people.
"Wings of Defeat" has former U.$. veterans as saying that Amerikans
would have kamikaze, too, if they were facing occupation and were
desperate. In addition, a Japanese veteran suggests that Japan would
have continued on its course without the atomic bombings. From the
standpoint that the United $tates actually faces an invasion in the
future and particularly from the standpoint that the United $tates is
an aggressor still on the offensive, these are not exactly the
messages that Amerikans need to be absorbing at this time.
Going by "Wings of Defeat," war could be explained primarily as a
consequence of propaganda, necessitating mutual understanding and
mutual identification for counteraction. For people who want a movie
that "humanizes" opponents, though, this reviewer would suggest
"Grave of the Fireflies" (1988) as an alternative in the Amerikan
context.(1) "Grave of the Fireflies" also suffers from problems of a
lack of commentary and a lack of explanation, but the postmodernism
is not as bad as in "Wings of Defeat," which has a story about
kamikaze pilots carrying special dolls with them to the grave, made
by Japanese females. "Wings of Defeat" leaves out that some Japanese
soldiers probably had these dolls on them while they were raping
people in China. "Wings of Defeat" depicts the whole population of an
imperialist country as being manipulated by alienated rulers while at
the same time portraying the United $tates as heroic and merciful. It
is better to have a sentimental movie about war's impact on children
in the vicinity, children of soldiers, etc., than a movie that adds
more confusing ideas than are necessary, even if in dealing with the
youth question that movie does not go far beyond Freudian ideas about
identification with the father.
Notes
1.
http://web.archive.org/web/20061025040724/http://etext.org/Politics/MI
M/movies/review.php?f=long/gravefireflies.txt