- Also Known As:
- Older than America
- Year:
- 2008
- Country:
- Predominant Genre:
- Drama
- Director:
- Outstanding Performances:
- Premiss:
- Woman’s haunting visions reveal a plot to silence her mother from speaking the truth about the atrocities that took place at her boarding school.
- Themes:
- Alienation
- Christianity
- Coming-of-age
- Compassion
- Corporate Power
- Courage
- Curative
- Destiny
- Emotional repression
- Empathy
- Erotophobia
- Ethnicity
- Family
- Friendship
- Genocide
- Grieving
- Gynophobia
- Identity
- Individualism
- Justice
- Loneliness
- Love
- Loyalty
- Materialism
- Narcissism
- Nationality
- Nostalgia
- Personal
- Political
- Political Correctness
- Preventive
- Republicanism
- Sadomasochism
- Schizophrenia
- Sexual Repression
- Snobbery
- Solipsism
- The State
- Stereotyping
- White culture
- White guilt
- White supremacy
- Similar to:
- Candyman
- Poltergeist II
- Review Format:
- DVD
Summary: Horrorific Psychological Affects of White Supremacy on Victims and Victimizers: The Genocide that Never Appears in White History Books.
Clever horror-movie-that-isn’t-really-a-horror-movie about White supremacy where the abused ghosts of the past return to haunt the present. These ghosts are both the underlying progenitors of ones culture and the traumatized dead who refuse to let the living alone until they are properly laid to rest; making the horror format an ideal vehicle for this story of the return of the repressed.
The depiction of Whites here is spot-on in revealing them to be people who instinctively-believe themselves superior to People of Color POC - in both overt and covert ways such as condescension and the belief Indian land can be exploited without permission, respectively. The irrational selfishness and lack of human warmth is palpable and profoundly-accurate and a perfect analogy to the leech-like nature of Whites within the context of a horror movie.
Whites here are especially affectionless and emotionally-blackmailing as regards other Whites who possess empathic human emotions; expressing the price Whites are expected to pay if they wish to grow to affective maturity: Social ostracism from other Whites.
White attempts to brainwash Native-Americans into believing White is best is shown via so-called Indian Schools whose sole purpose was to destroy Indian culture and history by separating children from parents and brainwashing them into becoming red-skinned Caucasians - or literally kill them. All this to suppress the White guilt feelings concerning the genocide, rape and looting so prevalent in the White sense of who they are: As if Whites are the landlords of the world to whom everyone else must pay rent. (One wonders if Whites invented ECT precisely for the purpose of committing emotional murder of undesirables in the guise of science: A demented desire to forestall revenge for past abuse by neutralizing the source of the potential threat. That such behavior proves White guilt is lost on Whites.)
Needless to say, all this is ably-supported by the usual Christian backing for genocide that made Christianity the global political force it is today; enabling the White Christians (people who do not believe in god so much as believe they are god) to patronize the Indians foolish enough to believe in a White Jesus who hates Red culture: Collaborators in claiming POC are paranoid schizophrenic savages
. Whites definition of civilization is to call others savage and then murder, sexually assault and use them in medical experiments.
The film falters in trying to encapsulate all Native-American experience into a simplistic genre format like a horror movie (there is enough material here for half-a-dozen movies) but it proudly wears its ethnic identity on its sleeve to present both a convincing horror movie and a searing indictment of endemic Caucasian injustice; while creating reasonable characterizations.
A perfect dramatic argument against racial integration or assimilation and a savage indictment of the physical abuse, emotional violence and barely-suppressed anger inherent in Christianity as it is actually practiced - as well as of White psychiatry and its desire to pathogise anyone not White. Facing-up-to the ghosts depicted here keeps us grounded and far less prone to the self-delusion and lack of cultural rootedness arising from unresolved issues that is so common among Whites.
