“America suffered, but America grew stronger”:
Teaching Pearl Harbor post-9/11
Iain Barbour
Rationale
S5/6 students have analysed Pearl Harbor during the past two school sessions as part of coursework focusing upon the events of September 11, 2001; the course also included analysis of the documentary 9/11 and of newspapers reporting the attacks and their anniversary. Each class that has followed this unit of work has had a combination of Intermediate 2 and Higher students.
Pearl Harbor fitted perfectly the demands of the course for several reasons.
Firstly, it is a good example of ‘cinema as product’: students can see how much it owes to other films that they have seen (in particular, they are aware of its similarities to Titanic). This helps to make the point that Hollywood likes to give audiences a new product that follows an established, and profitable, formula; it can also be used to teach one aspect of intertextuality.
Students could also appreciate why the project had been green-lit once they considered filmographies (on www.imdb.com) of director Michael Bay, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and writer Randall Wallace. Bay and Bruckheimer had collaborated on action movies such as Armageddon (1998), The Rock (1996) and Bad Boys (1995), Bruckheimer’s track record in the genre stretching back as far as Top Gun (1986), while Wallace had written historical epics such as Braveheart (1995) and The Man in the Iron Mask (1998).
Secondly, students are already acquainted with the film, thus allowing teachers to begin where the students already are.
Finally, and most importantly, the study of Pearl Harbor enables the class to consider ideologies of US supremacy at a time when these are being used to legitimise military action in various arenas around the globe.
The main areas of study were: representation of the US, Japan and Britain; representation of gender and race. (Due to constraints of space, gender will not be explored here.)
Representations of the US
By means of the character of Rafe (Ben Affleck) in particular, America is represented as brave and heroic. Rafe joins the war effort in Britain after General Doolittle (Alec Baldwin) tells him that “only a few British pilots” stand between Hitler and Britain.
The first shots of Rafe in Britain are from low angles, emphasising strength and stature. He is received by a British officer who observes that, if all US pilots are like him, then “God help anyone who goes to war with America”, a message likely to chime with the popular mood in the US post-September 11th 2001.
In Pearl Harbor, the US are not aggressors – if anything, they have been too reluctant to fight. We see Roosevelt having to goad his cabinet into action, and scenes of US servicemen getting drunk or playing golf during the build-up to the attack. Parallel editing of these latter scenes and the Japanese preparations for attack underlines the contrast between them. Students were aware of differential decoding at this point – was America merely innocent, or complacent?
In another parallel with September 11, the US are represented as victims of attack, their victimhood emphasised by a lengthy montage of injured and dying personnel once the Japanese planes have departed. Mournful non-diegetic choral music, a blue/grey filter, and mise en scène (actors positioned with heads bowed) help to create a mood of grieving during this sequence.
Although they are victims, the US is ready to fight back: General Yamamoto (Mako) fears, in words drawn from historical records, that the attack has woken a “sleeping giant”. Interestingly, it is with these words that Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) ends, suggesting that it originated in a historical context in which there was no necessity to ram home US retaliation and the re-establishment of US military supremacy in the film’s final “act”. This might indicate the national self-doubt and moral ambiguity of the [Vietnam] era in which the earlier film was made. It also reflects different commercial imperatives: there is no romance narrative in Tora! Tora! Tora! to draw in a wider audience.
US retaliation in Pearl Harbor is morally unambiguous. Again the film relies on historical record for the President’s speech proclaiming, “The American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory”, rhetoric that President Bush sought to emulate following the September 11 attacks. The Doolittle raid in which US bombers mount an aircraft-carrier borne raid upon Japan – albeit a ‘pinprick’ by comparison to the Pearl Harbor attack in the words of Doolittle himself – moves the narrative towards a strong sense of resolution and emotional pay-off; audiences are clearly intended to find them equivalent.1
Evelyn (Kate Beckinsale) provides a voiceover in the last minutes of the film anchoring images of shipwreck (one of many ways in which the film references Titanic). Her words help to impose closure, ending the film with America redeemed and more powerful: “America suffered, but America grew stronger; the times tried our souls and through the trial, we overcame.” Thus, to some audiences, the film appears to justify America’s post-war, and post-Cold War, supremacy.
Representing the US in such a positive light for a predominantly US audience means several obvious absences from the narrative: no mention of Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 under which 120,000 Japanese Americans were evacuated and interned without trial (students could be shown Snow Falling on Cedars for a depiction – albeit a rather plodding one – of this episode), and no reference to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Students can go on to discuss whether it matters that America represents itself in such a positive light in blockbusters such as Pearl Harbor, Independence Day and Armageddon, and what effect those representations may have, in the US and beyond. (They might wish to consider newspaper articles published after September 2001 which suggested that, if we were to understand the motives or mind-set of the attackers, then we should consider the way in which Hollywood flooded the world with images of US military supremacy.)2
Representations of Japan
Japan is represented as having been forced into the attack by the US cutting off oil supplies: in the first scene set in ‘Japan’ (no filming was done in Japan for the film – locations were the USA, Hawaii, Mexico and England) Yamamoto is heard to declare, “We have no choice but war.” The eyeline match from him to a group of children playing creates the impression that military action is being taken for the sake of the children.
Although the languages of the film suggest coldness and ruthlessness at times (aggressive drumming, blue filter and grim expressions as planes take off from an aircraft carrier), the film takes care to humanise, and not simply demonise, the Japanese, eschewing the crude binary opposition of good and evil common to action blockbusters. The audience is shown a Japanese pilot in his cockpit looking at a photo of his sweetheart as he goes into battle; a Japanese pilot gestures a warning to American children who are playing as the attack on Pearl Harbor begins; another engages in a warmly-lit, quasi-religious pre-battle ritual as we hear him (in voiceover, and in English) explain that to fight is to “fulfil (his) destiny”.
The film was re-edited for the Japanese market. Evelyn’s voiceover was cut (as it was for the huge German market, even though the film – purposely – makes virtually no reference to Germany), and stereotypical images of Japanese women in kimonos were also removed (the equivalent, perhaps, of establishing 1940s Scotland as a setting with a shot of men in kilts!). The selection of historical events in the film also helped to shape the representation of the Japanese – it refers only fleetingly to the country’s invasion of China, for example.
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer approached the Japanese American Citizens League before shooting began for advice on the script and acted on its recommendations that certain changes be made. The film itself is careful to clarify that the enemies were the Japanese, and not Japanese Americans: we see a Japanese American dentist tricked into unknowingly giving the enemy information; he is contrasted with the wicked Japanese agent who gathers intelligence whilst posing as a tourist. (Watching the film, it is impossible to get a sense of the true racial profile of Hawaii: at the time, only about 25% of the population was white; 60% was Asian – mostly Japanese and Chinese - and around 15% was native Hawaiian.)
The representation of the Japanese can be related to both Audiences and Institutions: Japan contributed 20% of the audience for Titanic and, given the similarities between the two films and the ways in which they were promoted, plus the importance of maximising revenue from such a big-budget project, the studio could not afford to alienate this audience.
Given unlimited time, students could compare the representation of the Japanese in Pearl Harbor with that in Tora! Tora! Tora! and consider in what way the latter film’s employment of a separate Japanese screenwriter and director for its Japan sequences have shaped its representation of the country.
Representation of Britain
Britain is represented in the film through class stereotypes. (Compare Independence Day and the ‘cut glass’ accents of the British pilots.) Commander Tubbs speaks impeccable Oxbridge English, while the Plucky Working-Class Scot is a stereotype common to many British war films (and akin to the type parodied by The Simpsons’ Groundskeeper Willie).
The British setting is quaint and old-fashioned, again upper-class (a mansion) and gives the impression of amateurish British forces flying from makeshift airfields. The US are the saviours of a weak Britain – a country said to be “struggling” against “relentless bombardment” in the faux American newsreels used in the film. So begins the Special Relationship.
Representation of Race
One of the film’s narratives follows the historically-based character Dorie Miller (Cuba Gooding Jr). It quickly establishes him as a hero: his first appearance is in a boxing match where his victory is redolent of David’s over Goliath. Students recognised that this was a conventional narrative common to many Hollywood films. During the attack sequence, Miller operates a machine gun and shoots down Japanese planes despite not having received combat training. (In Tora! Tora! Tora! a black sailor in cook’s uniform is depicted operating a machine gun, but only a few seconds on screen are given over to this action; the character is not shown elsewhere in the film and is given neither dialogue nor name.)
In one sense, then, the film constructs a positive representation of black people by means of this narrative of black heroism, yet it is perfectly possible to watch the film and remain unaware that the US forces were still racially segregated at the time (becoming integrated only in the late 1940s). Although there are references to Miller being consigned to “potscrubbing, dishwashing”, and to his boxing in order to gain “respect”, the film stops short of explicitly addressing the racial politics of the forces. The context of racism is slightly more obvious in the DVD Special Edition which, with a 15 rather than a 12 certificate, includes ethnic slurs in the boxing scene (as well as swearing and more graphic images of injury and death). Students can use this example to reflect on the influence upon the text of a different target audience.
Miller was the first black American to win the Navy Cross (after pressure on the navy from the black press but no coverage of his story in the white press) at a time when the navy permitted black people to serve only as servants and labourers. After Pearl Harbor he requested combat training and was sent to cooking school.
Although the film makes glancing reference to the reality of racism experienced by Miller, other aspects of the way his character is constructed make the representation of race more problematic. Miller’s faithful attendance upon his white officer has echoes of the trusty, obedient black servant in many Hollywood depictions of the American South (students could follow this up in Donald Bogle’s Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: an Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films, 1997): despite having to fight for respect, he seems to accept unquestioningly the rule of his white master. When Connor tells Miller, “The ship’s proud of you, son”, the “son” is clearly racially inflected, but Miller’s reaction is hidden from the audience as he turns towards the Captain and away from the camera.
The ambiguity observed here allowed students to explore the concept of differential decoding and to debate preferred and oppositional readings of the film’s representation of race.
They went on to consider why Miller’s narrative features at all. Their answers to this were refreshingly cynical. Having analysed posters and video covers of the film, they noticed that Cuba Gooding Jr’s face featured much more prominently than one might have expected from his (relatively) few minutes on screen – Jon Voight’s face might have seemed a more obvious choice given the importance of his role. Students identified the link between Representation and Audiences here, arguing that Gooding’s face would attract a black audience. (This is particularly important in the US where black people are the most frequent movie-going demographic, and where black viewers make up 25-30% of the audience for action films, a figure that can double if there is a black star.) His status as an Academy Award Winner would add gravitas to a project desperately in need of it, as could Voight’s to those with a longer memory (Coming Home, 1979).
The prominence of Miller (though to many it will look like tokenism) might help the film-makers to avoid accusations of racism, yet by exploring racial segregation no further than it does, the film avoids running the risk of producing a negative portrayal of the US armed forces. This appears to be crucial to the success of a military-themed US film, with smaller films such as Three Kings and Buffalo Soldiers experiencing difficulties in attracting funding and distribution, and failing to reach mass audiences in the US. Indeed, the release of Buffalo Soldiers was delayed twice for a total of twelve months – firstly following the September 11 attacks, then again after the invasion of Iraq, during which period it seemed commercially impossible to show US forces in a less than flattering light. The stakes would be much higher in a project such as Pearl Harbor with its blockbuster budget.
A less positive representation of the US forces would also be likely to rule out their approval for the project. Michael Bay noted that the Pentagon “worked closely” with him on the film, providing access to military bases, hardware and airspace, though not quite as cosily as with the makers of Men of Honor, where the relationship with the military went so far as the inclusion without charge on US video copies of a navy recruitment advertisement complete with excerpts from the film.
Despite the economic necessity of appealing to a global audience, the picture of the US that results will appear jingoistic and triumphalist to many viewers – amongst them, those who feel aggrieved about US foreign policy.
The film will be read differently by audiences depending not only on who and where they are, but also on when it is viewed. In the US, Pearl Harbor was released on Memorial Day weekend (25th May 2001) in order to reflect and capitalise upon the prevailing national mood of respect for those who had died at war. (This is comparable to Independence Day’s release on the July 4th holiday.) Although the film took around $430 million worldwide making it the top-grossing film of 2001, a budget of $145m makes it debatable whether it would have broken even once advertising, merchandising and exhibition costs had been considered.3
However, on its release on video and DVD in December 2001, three days before the sixtieth anniversary of the attacks, the film appears to have tapped a different national mood; as one reviewer (in US magazine Entertainment Today) observed, “There’s no denying that Pearl Harbor is a different movie in December than it was in May.” The film went on to sell twice as many copies as Buena Vista, the division of Disney that made it, had expected.4 The president of Buena Vista attributed this to the increase in patriotism after the September 11 attacks. The parallels are obvious and needn’t be laboured here too far, but it is clear from a perusal of newspapers’ front pages in the days following the attacks that the rhetoric of the earlier event had influenced reportage: many paraphrased Roosevelt’s words, used in the film, “A date which will live in infamy.” See, for example, ‘New Day of Infamy’, The Boston Globe; ‘Infamy’, Washington Times.5 The continuing narrative of the September 11 attacks – the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in particular – has given a continuing currency to the study of Pearl Harbor. This has itself changed in the context of world events: our reading of the scenes in which Dan Aykroyd is trying to warn a complacent military about the possibility of attack (themselves somewhat sweetened by low-key lighting and ‘spy movie’ ambience) has altered as more and more information has entered the public domain about the run-up to September 11 and what President Bush knew at the time, whilst the sabre-rattling of the film’s final act appears increasingly shrill and portentous as we watch the US government enforcing its military dominance around the world.
The study of Pearl Harbor provides Intermediate 2 and Higher students an excellent opportunity to analyse Representation in the context of Audiences and the differential decodings they produce, of Institutions and the ways in which their interests shape the text, and of world events as they unfold around them.
Notes
© 2004 Iain Barbour - Craigroyston Community HS, Edinburgh