The Kaleidoscopic Vision in Black Hawk Down

Reviewing movies is something which I never attempted before; it is not that they are not worth talking about, but there are only few movies which will compel you to talk out something. Black Hawk Down (2011) is a movie like that, especially in the contemporary scenario, where the world police, the USA is trying for a war against Syria. In other words, it’s the time I saw the movie that compelled me to write this, rather than the movie itself. Whenever any conflicts happen in the other nations, the US Govt takes it granted that it is their duty to intervene in the issue, often with the justifications such as to ‘save democracy, war on terror’ and so on. Though we can find a ‘colonialist ideology’ in the approaches of the ‘self-declared savior of the world’, it has been criticized often that the US Govt has some special interests such as oil, arms trade, etc in the move. During the time of Iraq war, the armed forces reiterated the claim that Saddam Hussain had had ‘weapons of mass destruction’. In the same way, in order to interfere in the Syrian Civil War, they are alleging that the Syrian forces have used ‘chemical weapons’ in the war. In fact, the US often makes these kinds of allegations without much scrutiny. American films also cater to these ideas of the US Govt, for which the best example is the movie, Black Hawk Down.

The movie was based on an actual event happened during the Somalian Civil War in which the US forces tried to capture the Somali warlord Mohammad Farrah Aidid. The movie celebrates American heroism even at the time of great difficulties. One dialogue in the movie shows the ideal of the common American soldier:
Hoot: When I go home people'll ask me, "Hey Hoot, why do you do it man? What, you some kinda war junkie?" You know what I'll say? I won't say a goddamn word. Why? They won't understand. They won't understand why we do it. They won't understand that it's about the men next to you, and that's it. That's all it is.”

When the American soldiers are portrayed as the symbols of courage, brotherhood, and men of great ideals, their opponents are the epitome of cruelty, brutality, savagery and even their women take weapons to kill the angels in the world, the American soldier.
At one instance, the Somali leader, Atto says to the general “You shouldn't have come here. This is a civil war. This is our war, not yours.” Then, the general, General Garrison replies, “300,000 dead and counting. That's not a war Mr. Atto. That's genocide.” If we applies the same logic on what the Americans did in the Iraq or Afghan war, we can see the same ideology working.

The narration is one-sided; we can easily see the construction of the ‘other’ and the ‘self’ in the movie. When each soldier getting killed by the Somali is shown with great sentiment and extreme feelings, the Americans killing the Somalis were being justified, since they are eliminating the ‘evil’. When the American soldier is portrayed as a gentleman in his captivity, the opposing war leader is shown as arrogant and brute. See his conversation,
Abdullah 'Firimbi' Hassan: You Americans don't smoke anymore. You live long, dull and uninteresting lives.

[Durant is being interrogated]
Durant: My government will never negotiate for me.
Abdullah 'Firimbi' Hassan: Then perhaps you and I can negotiate, huh? Soldier to Soldier.
Durant: I am not in charge
Abdullah 'Firimbi' Hassan: Course not, you have the power to kill, but not negotiate. In Somalia, Killing is Negotiation.

Abdullah 'Firimbi' Hassan: Do you think if you get General Aidid, we will simply put down our weapons and adopt American democracy? That the killing will stop? We know this. Without victory, there will be no peace. There will always be killing, see? This is how things are in our world.

The American soldiers are still possessing what we call the ‘white-man’s burden’, thinking that it is their duty to civilize the exotic, Asian-African tribes. The character Eversmann at one point declares, “Look, these people, they have no jobs, no food, no education, no future. I just figure that we have two things we can do. Help, or we can sit back and watch a country destroy itself on CNN. Right?” This is the justification, I believe, each American man has to defend the US intervention in the affairs of other nations, right?