MovieChat Forums > Priest (2011) Discussion > Kinda Offensive.

Kinda Offensive.

posted 13 years ago by vibgyor1
13 replies | jump to latest

Not talking about the religious aspect but...

Evil Monstrous Vampires who have been defeated and forced on to reservations attack frontier towns slaughter families kidnap an innocent white girl. Sounds a lot like old westerns films and stories like The Searcher which tend to demonize Native Americans.

I will say the movie is still entertaining but do we really need to still tell these sort of stories? The equating of the vampires in this movie with Native Americans is quite of obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of American Mythology.

[–] joegerardi-1 13 years ago

It's only offensive if you actually equate them to Indians. Why not just take it for what it is- an action flick, and enjoy it. Life's far too short to go looking for subtexts that aren't there.

..Joe

[–] vibgyor1 13 years ago

The parallel is very obvious. Movies don't exist in a vacuum separate from reality, history, mythology, morals and ideology. To think otherwise is pretty delusional and perhaps dishonest.

If you've seen older westerns like The Searchers you would see the parallels. I am sure the writers of this film did.

That being said, I wouldn't call this film a particularly good action movies, pretty derivative stuff on all levels.

[–] joegerardi-1 13 years ago

I've watched The Searchers probably 15 or 20 times. I've defended it as one of the greatest movies ever made, here on these fora. My ex-wife and children are Indians. (Seneca tribe.) So, I do have the background...

First off, the Vampires didn't kidnap the "white girl," the former "white" priest did. That was his plan to lure the Bettany character and the other priests out. So it was planned from the start; The searchers was about a Comanche raid on whites, which - aside from them NOT being on reservations to begin with - was a completely different thing. In that, Ethan's prejudice against the Comanche was because they killed his mother (young Debbie is standing by her headstone when Scar takes her- look and you will see her name, date of death, and that she was killed by Comanches); because they raped Laurie to death, they killed Martin Pauley's mother (her scalp is on the lodgepole older Debbie shows Ethan and Martin); for the fact that Debbie has (probably) been raped or married off to an Indian buck, for the very strong probability that Debbie is Ethan's daughter, and for other reasons. So for him, (Ethan) it's about racism and revenge. For Black hat (Karl Urban) it was the same, and he used the girl to get to the priest.

So, no: I don't see the parallel, but that's because I don't believe it exists.

..Joe

[–] vibgyor1 13 years ago

Believe what ever helps you sleep at night.

[–] joegerardi-1 13 years ago

Shiny! I will!

..Joe

[–] shelby0296 13 years ago

Nathan,

I'm an American Indian, and I wouldn't compare the story to what happened in America several centuries ago. Nearly any story, that has a protagonist and an antagonist is going to have parallels to any incident of one race over powering another.

There are good guys and bad guys. Once, the bad guys were "barbarians", then Romans, then Celts, then the French, then the Germans, then the American Indian, then the African-American, now the Muslim (yes, I'm aware I've skipped a great many "bad guys"). Stories don't change much, only the "baddies" do.

[–] GaelinW 13 years ago

It's no more (or less) offensive than making every terrorist a Middle Easterner. Every thief or murderer black. Every drunk, Irish. And so on.

Oh, and, "American mythology"? Is there even such a thing? And how does it relate to the demonization of Native Americans?

If you can't walk and talk/text at the same time, do the rest of us a favor and get out of the way.

[–] rick-deckard45 13 years ago

Oh, and, "American mythology"? Is there even such a thing?

you know, american folklore. he was talking about how the vampires are playing the native american role in the traditional american western.

baby can you dig your man?
he's a righteous man.

[–] jerzy1 13 years ago

You're reading too much into it...or seeing what you want to see. The parallels with "The Searchers" is so obvious that a deaf blind man with a sack over his head in a dark cellar could see them.

The way I see it is that the scriptwriter(s) lifted a great deal of plot from "The Searchers" because they were too lazy to come up with any original ideas. That's not to say the movie wasn't entertaining. Rather enjoyed it, but so much more could have been done with it if you're familiar with the source material.

[–] lithium099 13 years ago

Vampires are scary creatures who live/hunt in darkness. They're going to have correspondences with a lot of other real and fictional threats that attack by stealth. Plus the fear that "they" will turn you or your loved ones into one of "them" is a primal fear that has little to do with Indians in particular. Vampires have a vague resemblance to the way people thought of Indians at one time, but that's because those people were scared of Indians at that time, not because these filmmakers are racist. You can draw comparisons to serial killers, terrorists, Nazis/fascists, drug addicts criminals in general, disturbing subcultures, wild animals, crazy people, cultists, "the rich," you name it.

[–] oystergirl94 13 years ago

I see what you're saying, but the movie itself doesn't show this as a positive thing.

[–] electrique 12 years ago

I agree with you. I felt this way while watching it too. Makes me glad that I didn't pay to see it in theaters.

Le temps détruit tout.

[–] 12 years ago

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