Annotated 48-33
Little character moments from the triumvirate here. Syr’Nj manages to find compassion even for those raining explosive death down on her and on innocent civilians. Even at this juncture, she needs to understand. She always will. Byron’s quicker to condemn, using a phrase (“not distinguishing between friend and foe”) that could just as easily describe a berserker…except that Taro’s regime chose to be one. Penk stands outside it all, feeling ever more justified in his choices as both his allies stumble. Even as they turned against Gastonia, they never thought its leadership could get this inhumane. Penk never expected anything else.
Meanwhile, Mich and Franz find a new wrinkle in their prisoner’s dilemma. If they both attacked Taro, the odds are very good that one of them could overcome him, but the one who attacked first has too great a risk of dying for either of them to initiate it. But if there’s a chance they can escape their current hell by staying silent, they’re sure gonna take it.
Taro’s prepubescent “o-face” is as disturbing as it should be.
(Thought about putting Pocahontas’ “Savages” with this one, but I just couldn’t bring myself. Talk about a Disney song that hasn’t aged well.)
So… We are thinking the pioneers didn’t view the natives as simpler folk or…?
Or that the natives didn’t see the newcomers are greedy brutes?
Never watched it but must criticism is aimed at that particular animated feature as something aimed at children and having chalk full of stereotypes and continuing to potentially a certain myth that it’s more harmful than anything else.
It’s the moral equivalency. By presenting both sides as succumbing to blind xenophobia, the song tries to send the message that they were wrong to hate, fear, and scorn each other. But against the larger backdrop of American history, the natives’ fear and hate looks a heck of a lot more justified than the Englishmen’s.
Even at the time the movie came out (and rumors swirled of Disney building a history-themed park in my home state of Virginia), my friends and I were not exactly thrilled 😑 about Disney’s approach to history. There’s a reason Disney never did any more “inspired by true events” movies set in America after Pocahontas.
Nowadays, the song feels like those who insist America’s only real problem is that it’s “divided.” It’s divided all right…into a camp that may have a few impractical ideas about enforcing equality, and an insane power-worshipping cult that chases a mythical past, craves fascism, and despises democracy. THESE TWO THINGS ARE NOT THE SAME, and the fact that they use some of the same language to describe each other does not make them the same. It’s more like the old “one knight speaks only truth and one always lies” thought exercise: ask either one if the other one’s the liar and they’ll both say yes, but only one of those statements will be false.
I disagree that “Savages” has not aged well as it perfectly demonstrates that genocide and even the ability to kill your fellow human beings in war is justified by portraying them as less than human. It is the reason that antisemites like Charles Lindbergh could claim we actually lost World War II.
Addressed most of this in the response above, but to boil it down: it’s important to recognize when one group is doing a lot more of that than the other. The Rebels, as Penk observes, are chooser in their kills than Iwatanians. If they were true “savages,” they’d just kill any commoners who stood between them and the capital.
In the fictional movie the Powhatan tribe was ready to kill John Smith over the death of a tribe member without hearing him or Pocahontas out. They did not really care if John Smith was guilty or not. Are you saying that the tribe was justified in that moment in killing John Smith or are you imposing your modern viewpoint and full knowledge of what would eventually happen to the Navtive American to the story?
100% this.
We have to judge people, and cultures, based on the context of the time when they make a questionable decision or action. No one gets a free pass because, later on, other people did worse.
Sorry to tell you this, but it took me a couple re-reads of the panels after seeing the commentary to figure out when “Syr’Nj manages to find compassion”… I thought her line was another one of Byron’s due to how he was positioned relative to the speech bubble, and also Syr’Nj’s colors fade a little too easy into the panicked civilians behind her.
(It actually parsed interestingly when I thought Byron had all the non-Penk lines in that panel: a moment of understanding for what the leadership must be thinking, perhaps trying to defend his own kind out of instinct or obligation, only for that to fade rapidly into anger as he realizes no, still inexcusable.)
Same here
Ditto.
I read it as Syr’Nj as Byron’s tone is quite different screaming for civilians to run in the same panel. Syr’Nj needs to logic it out as she is both a combatant and a commander who could never even consider ordering artillery on common grounds while Byron is simply angry and disgusted.
I can see that. Lettering issue.
For the record, I never thought it was ambiguous who had Syr’Nj’s lines here.