Hacksaw Ridge and American Exceptionalism

 

The 2016 war film Hacksaw Ridge directed by Mel Gibson spares no gory detail during the depiction of a gruesome WWII battle. The film centers around a battle that occurs on a large ridge, appropriately named “Hacksaw Ridge” after the incredibly large amount of deaths that took place there. After watching the film, your initial reaction might be that of pride. After all, an American soldier risks his life to literally drag many of his fellow wounded soldiers to safety away from the imminent dangers of the Japanese soldiers. Seems like a great feel good story, right?

 

While this effort is noble, buried underneath the feel-good story line, we are able to see the film perpetuating aspects of American exceptionalism, a concept touched on by Marouf A. Hasian, Jr in his publication¹about the film Zero Dark Thirty. In the article he describes the concept of American exceptionalism to be a believed intrinsic righteousness of America in foreign endeavors, and he specifically points out that in the film, “…there is not a word uttered about the loss of Iraqi, Afghan, or Pakistani lives,”¹ and we see this idea translate to Hacksaw Ridge.Through the film we see the Americans thoroughly developed, we see their struggles, what makes them tick, and even the loved ones they want to make it home to. Cue the water works…

But what do we never see? That’s right- what humanizes the Japanese soldiers. The film shows the most violent of deaths under the guise of realism to add a shock factor for viewers. But really, we as viewers are meant to feel immense hurt and loss at the death of an American soldier and really just flinch at the death of a Japanese soldier. The film failing to humanize the Japanese soldiers allows the viewer to become desensitized to the violent deaths of this group. We are quick to remember that Americans were putting their life on the line for something they believed in but fail to realize the Japanese were doing the same. The instinct latch on to the idea of an intrinsic American righteousness shows that American exceptionalism is so deeply engrained in our subconscious that we may initially fail to critically view the film through a lens in which the Japanese also live complex, beautiful lives with their own loved ones to return home to.  Doesn’t everyone deserve to be treated as human?

 

1. Hasian, Marouf A. “Military Orientalism at the Cineplex: A Postcolonial Reading Of Zero Dark Thirty.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, vol. 31, no. 5, 2014, pp. 464–478., doi:10.1080/15295036.2014.906745.