Scott Kelston

When I was growing up, one of my favorite things was getting to watch the annual network presentation of The Ten Commandments on television. Despite growing up in a Christian household, my favorite part of the film was the special effects of the plagues, burning bush, and so on. Coming back to it over twenty-five years later, I was really caught off guard by the ideology prescribed in the piece, not that it’s particularly shocking that it espoused a very American brand of Christianity, but put into historical context, there are many interesting parallels between the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt the Exodus of Jews from Germany and to Israel. Is it possible that The Ten Commandments was put out as a propaganda film to generate sympathy for Jewish interests in the postwar landscape of the 1950’s?

It’s modern incarnation having been founded in 1948, three years after the end of World War Two, Israel officially took root in what was previously Palestinian territory (to much Palestinian chagrin). To so much chagrin, in fact, that this act started the conflict known as the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Led by Egypt (!), several Arab nations stepped up to support the Palestinians between 1948 and 1959. Is it any wonder that The Ten Commandments popped up in 1956, the middle of this crucial period for Israel?

Dear reader, did you know that in the original script for Forrest Gump, all of the members of Forrest’s platoon were special needs? I can say this because I have in my possession a document from the United States Department of Defense provided to me courtesy of the Freedom of Information Act that contains sixty-six megabytes of information on decades of Hollywood filmmaking projects that have requested assistance from the Department of Defense in exchange for Government approval of the script. In the document it stipulates that the DoD found Forrest’s company of special needs recruits to be unrealistic, and that in order for the DoD to supply vehicles and equipment, this aspect of the film would need to be rewritten. In the same section, it notes that the film was indeed rewritten as requested, however the film was still denied assistance.

“It is the best $3 billion investment we make. If there weren’t an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region.” - Joe Biden, in a 1986 senate session. This last year the director David Fincher treated us to Mank, a film whose plot revolved around Hollywood conspiring to rig the 1934 California gubernatorial election against the socialist Upton Sinclair. The DoD document doesn’t go as far back as the 1950’s, but given the instance detailed in Mank and the instance in Forrest Gump, among thousands of others noted in the document, I would argue that it’s not a stretch to imagine this relationship between Hollywood and the DoD occurring before this list was began.

Since the creation of Manifest Destiny, American Christianity at its core has been about allowing the individual to step out in the morning and do some of the worst things imaginable to further the state’s colonial project, then at night come home to salvation through prayer. The Trail of Tears, Slavery, The Haymarket Riot, Project Manhattan, The Tuskegee Experiments, just ask for forgiveness and it shall be yours. It works fantastically well, the only catch is that it takes a true believer to put the ideology into action. How is a true believer created? By the constant, carefully curated inundation of propaganda. This is also how consent is manufactured. Consent as in convincing Americans that it was right to arbitrarily take Palestinian land and give it to another nation. Consent as in convincing Americans that Arabic people are our enemies. Consent as in convincing Americans that Israel deserves to be given billions of dollars in aid every year. Consent as in convincing Americans that a reasonable reaction to a Palestinian child throwing a rock is for Israeli snipers to shoot them. It may seem like simple business decision that the heroes of The Ten Commandments are all white stars, but I would argue that it is intended to get the average white 1950’s American to subconsciously identify with the Jewish struggle presented in the film, while simultaneously further alienating the Arabic cause in American hearts and minds. It’s also very important to note that PoC Yul Brynner being cast as the Egyptian villain Rameses is doubly concerning, given that Brynner was born in Russia, and Israel would go on to serve as a home base for American agents in the Middle East during the Cold War.

I have no official documentation that The Ten Commandments is a propaganda piece, but, as I’ve hopefully laid out in the piece above, there’s an awful lot of smoke to be found surrounding this film, and as the popular adage goes, where there's smoke, there's fire.

As hollow as the body of the actual Wicker Man, and does the disservice of wasting Florence Pugh.

Strangeness is not substantive in and of itself. It’s becoming clear that what Aster brings to table is discomforting to be sure, but his imagery is devoid of any symbolism for it to refer back to. Rather than building to fold into the larger ideas of the film, his images serve as surface level non-sequitur, relating in no way to anything that has come before or will come after. One instance of this is his inclusion of a disabled character, suffering from encephalitis,who is insensitively brought in to ook the audience out, then promptly abandoned in a corner of the film to rot.

Not a fan of the extra bright editing choice (gamma shift), or the decision to once again employ camera moves to the effect of exhausting the audience. Making the audience physically uncomfortable through the container of presentation, rather than through the encryption of content is a cheap and uninteresting way to work.

How is it that in 2019, the representation of women in his work isn’t more heavily scrutinized? He’s two for two, having used the nude bodies of elder women solely in attempt to make the audience uncomfortable.

There has been a strange emergence of reactionary ideas in film over the last year, first with CLIMAX insinuating that a leftist/artistic lifestyle will kill you (Drugs and sex are bad, m’kay?), now again with MIDSOMMAR (Drugs and foreign cultures are bad m’kay?).

Aster’s emphasis on technical filmmaking taking precedence over that of the responsibility of storytelling outs him as more of a director of photography than a director or writer

I award this film no stars, and may god have mercy on any film students that stan this exercise in public masturbation.