low level can be imagined.
Let us now examine the American social context during the period from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. American historians refer to this period as the Dark Ages in American history, an era of disintegration. Following the Cold War and militarism, Kennedy, Martin. Luther. Kim, along with other political assassinations and Watergate, shook Americans' faith in the American system of government. The human rights movement brought black and student revolts. The black human rights movement, following the demands against racial segregation, put forward the slogan for racial segregation, that is, black power, and in 1967 it developed to the point where black people hold guns in Detroit, Chicago, and even in the capital, Washington, and other cities. There was a shootout with the police. The college students suspended classes to make a revolution and rebelled on the campus. The government dispatched the military and police to suppress them, killing four college students before and after, causing an uproar in the society. In addition, the failure of the war of aggression against Vietnam was a foregone conclusion in 1970, the first indisputable failure of the United States. American youths refused military service and burned their military service cards in public. It was at that time that boxing champion Ali was sentenced to prison for resisting military service. This is the first complete failure in the history of the American military, and even the war genre films that have always ended with the victory of the U.S. military as their big reunion went bankrupt. Facing the reality of the defeat in the Vietnam War, war genre films can no longer exist. The only film in 1968 to promote the Vietnam War "Green Beret" (GreenBeret), although still played by the American hero John. Wayne (J.Wayne) starred, but it was still a box office failure and critics, critics called it the final demise of war movies.
"Barton" came out under this special historical condition. Please don't forget that, in the same situation, the Hollywood movie "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" that was released at the first American Film Week held in our country was also shot in this era (1967), and its content is It was in opposition to the slogan black regime put forward by the black liberation movement in the anti-government human rights movement at that time, that is to say, when the black liberation movement put forward the slogan of apartheid, this film said let's intermarry. The Chinese subtitles were played in Hong Kong, and the subtitles deliberately removed the two references to denying the black regime in the dialogue of the film. We openly insist on proletarian ideology, but we are actually propaganda for works that oppose our ideology.
At first glance, this film about the legendary heroes of World War II seems to be outside the social politics of the time, so it is more like a biographical film about a real historical figure. So people often overlook that it is a Hollywood film first, a Hollywood film shot in 1970. This kind of neglect will inevitably lead to people's wrong value judgments about the film, which is exactly what Hollywood wants to happen, just because any naked preaching will inevitably arouse the disgust of the audience, thus failing to achieve its true publicity purpose. Hollywood is very good at this. There is a famous saying in Hollywood, "Preaching? Rent an auditorium." So behind the guise of Patton, a real historical figure, there is a Patton who is saturated with the whole Hollywood value system and who relies on to achieve the Hollywood myth. This myth is hero worship.
The theme of the film is American martial arts. Although the U.S. government does not have a propaganda agency in charge of ideology to formulate propaganda policies for literary and artistic works, the Hollywood production industry, which starts from business and is therefore based on the collective cultural concept of society, has never violated the U.S. government’s internal and external policies. policy. In addition, Hollywood has a group of audiences who like watching war movies and worship individual heroism, and meeting the requirements of this group of audiences is one of its sources of revenue. Therefore, it selected the life of General Patton, a war hero in the hearts of the American people during the Anti-Fascist War, as the theme to evoke the war adventure spirit of American youth. In this way, the subject matter of Patton's biography avoids the controversial and thorny sensitive subject of the Vietnam War, but also has a strong anti-communist color. Know that, for Americans, communism is communism, no matter what differences exist among socialist countries. Not to mention that in the early 1970s, the Cold War was not over (the Cuban missile incident was not long after), and these issues were still very attractive to American audiences.
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