The End Of Cinema As We Know It: American Film in the Nineties

11. Empire of the Gun: Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan and American Chauvinism

11 Empire of the Gun Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan and American Chauvinism Frank P. Tomasulo The cinema, as the world’s storyteller par excellence, [is] ideally suited to project narratives of nations and empires. National self-consciousness . . . [is] broadly linked to cinematic fiction. —Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media AS THEY HAVE throughout literary and cinematic history, nationalistic and patriotic sentiments persist in today’s historical dramas—particularly in the Hollywood spectacles of the 1980s and 1990s. Indeed, the war movie and action-adventure genres underwent a resurgence in that era, paralleling and epitomizing the “America First” and “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” ethos of the Ronald Reagan–George Bush era and its immediate aftermath.1 Despite Steven Spielberg’s early reputation as a “popcorn ” director of “kidult” movies and his more recent incarnation as a “serious” filmmaker and liberal “FOB” (Friend of Bill [Clinton]), his oeuvre stands as one of the chief cinematic purveyors of American exceptionalism and triumphalism in contemporary filmdom. He could rightly be called the American Kipling.2 Six of the top twenty box office hits of all time have been Steven Spielberg films. In addition, eight of his seventeen features to date have dealt with the World War II epoch.3 In most of Spielberg’s feature films, the Americans win the day—either 115 through their quick wits or superior firepower—a resolution that the Pentagon could be proud of.4 Thus, in most of his movies, as in most Hollywood films of the 1980s and 1990s, the United States is the empire of the gun. Even Spielberg’s flops contain the seeds of a chauvinistic and possibly racist worldview. In 1941 (1979), for instance, the focus is on the possibility that a Japanese submarine is going to attack the coastline of California. Though Americans had no actual fear of a Japanese military invasion in 1979, there was popular hysteria over the much-reported Japanese economic invasion of U.S. markets for automobiles, electronic equipment, cameras, and other consumer goods, not to mention the purchase of landmark U.S. buildings, corporations, and motion picture studios. In that context, 1941 became a disguised national allegory about the perils of globalization and world trade that tapped into a putative mood of economic xenophobia.5 SAVING PRIVATE RYAN As Spielberg’s first major contribution to the DreamWorks SKG company , in which he is a partner, Saving Private Ryan (1998) grossed more than $30 million domestic in its opening weekend. Within a year, domestic gross receipts reached $216 million and more than $224 million in the rest of the world.6 When one factors in the various videocassette, DVD, and other ancillary merchandising commodities (including the soundtrack album, the novelization, the “making of” book, and the ever-popular “G.I. Joe” action figure), the movie’s profitability was impressive, even against the backdrop of its $70 million production budget. In addition to its box office success— but linked to it—Saving Private Ryan garnered a number of critical kudos and prestigious nominations and awards: Oscars for best director , best cinematography, best film editing, best sound, and best sound effects editing; Academy Award nominations for best actor, best picture, art direction, makeup, music, and screenplay; the Directors Guild of America Award for best picture; the Golden Globes for best picture and best director; a Grammy for best instrumental movie score; the New York Film Critics Circle Award for best film; the Chicago Film Critics Association Award for best picture; among many others.7 116 FRANK P. TOMASULO EMPIRE OF THE GUN 117 Hero, martyr, schoolteacher: Tom Hanks as the ever decent Captain John H. Miller in Steven Spielberg’s nostalgic war epic, Saving Private Ryan (DreamWorks , 1998). (ALL-)AMERICAN VALUES Saving Private Ryan begins—and ends—with a close-up shot of a translucent American flag blowing in the breeze, an image and narrative positioning that suggest that the United States is the alpha and omega, the be-all and end-all, of human civilization. To say that the film is a sentimental “flag-waver” may therefore be stating the obvious. Nonetheless, the visual transparency of the “Stars and Stripes” used in the opening and closing images may just reflect Spielberg’s transparent and obvious propagandistic meaning: in the Second World War, America saved the world, pretty much unassisted, and emerged victorious despite great sacrifices. As...