Rhetorical Answer
David Denby pans the latest Transformers in The New Yorker. I haven't seen the film, and doubt I will, but Denby's rhetorical question at the end doesn't make much sense.
In the middle of the battles, the American military, in the form of recruiting-poster scrambles in the Egyptian desert, joins the creatures in destroying the Pyramids and other temples, columns, and monoliths. It’s all a rambunctious movie lark, of course, but if you were an Egyptian wouldn’t you be a little annoyed by the casual imperial thwacking of sacred places?
The answer is no. Action films like Transformers are popular around the world, and I bet Egyptians think it's cool to see their corner of the planet take part in an inter-stellar battle. Lord knows we've seen other landmarks attacked or threatened in movies--the Statue Of Liberty, the White House, the Eiffel Tower, the Vatican and so on. It's all part of the fun. In fact, the Pyramids have already been attacked in the satirical Team America.
Denby has been offended by the politics of action films before. That's silly enough. But does he really need to get offended on behalf of other people who can take a joke better than he can?
posted by LAGuy @ 12:24 AM
3 Comments:
Maybe Egyptians don't like New Yorker's telling them how to feel.
Also, the last Egyptians who considered the pyramids "sacred places" converted to Christianity 1800 years ago.
The Christians ignored the old pyramids and burned the library of magical texts. A few centuries later, the Muslims burned the main library at Alexandria. And then nobody paid any attention to the pyramids (except as a convenient place to loot old valuables) until the French arrived in 1798.
Only Western neopagans and New Agers think of the pyramids as sacred places today.
You're leaving out the story of how Napoleon saw the Sphinx was black so blew odd its nose, because everyone knows denying dark Africans any credit for greatness millenia ago was central to his campaign.
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