Is it good to be a traitor? "What's question!? - a respectable reader will be indignant. - Of course not!" And he will be right. But, alas, today not everyone thinks so, thanks to the active propaganda of betrayal, implanted by the cinema. Why is this happening?
Black and white cinema
The topic of betrayal, treason, until recently, was unequivocally condemned by society. To be a coward, a turncoat, and therefore a scoundrel and a scoundrel, was considered shameful and brought universal and indelible contempt on the head of the bearer of these low qualities. And it was brought up from childhood.
I remember my own, which fell in the 70s of the last century (oh, how quickly time flies!), When in outdoor games in "war" no one wanted to voluntarily become a fascist or Vlasov, and in games of "mothers and daughters" among girls there was no one who wanted to have a lover or donate their dolls to an orphanage - in fact, to become the same traitor.
Why so and not otherwise? A similar question was not asked then, because the answer was “staked out” in the subconscious, where our gene code is written. Betrayal was equated to the most terrible Jewish sin of Christ selling, comparable in Soviet times only with treason.
Therefore, good remained good, and evil, respectively, evil, without mixing in semitones. And this is not our merit, but those who, educating us, shaped our traditions and culture, incl. composing epics, fairy tales and songs, making films.
Over the past 40 years, a lot has changed (oh, how quickly time flies!), There is neither a country that produced those films, nor the very concept of "children's cinema", and even today it has been seriously pressed by the Internet. However, what is being filmed nowadays, especially abroad, is more and more difficult to attribute to masterpieces, but just right to compare with the sophisticated propaganda of evil, when it dresses up in the well-known white clothes of goodness, truth and justice.
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This is easier to understand if we admit that the main supplier to the market of such cinematic sabotage is the Hollywood “dream factory” controlled by the Pentagon and the CIA, which has long turned from a supplier of quite decent “happy endings” into a producer of more and more aggressive films, thoroughly saturated with anti-Soviet and Russophobic propaganda. But today the creators of dreams have already surpassed this bar - supranational, religious and, if you will, universal values, which have been declared war, are on the agenda.
Such important categories for our national self-awareness as heroism, loyalty, love, duty, self-sacrifice fall under their target and precisely calculated blow. The technology here is quite simple and is designed for the gradual assimilation of new "truths" through the introduction of a new type of heroes into the plot, since the well-known old ones are not suitable for this role.
Or, a conscious reformatting is done, when the former negative character, without getting rid of old habits, is endowed with positive qualities, and the positive hero accordingly becomes a carrier of the negative, i.e. black becomes white and vice versa. Moreover, there is every reason to believe that this is being done quite deliberately.
Wow heroes
Consciously this is also done by those who received the vaccination of Arina Rodionovna and the "good old cinema", that is, the older generation, to which I include myself. Therefore, we notice, looking at the screen, that something is wrong here! After all, we know that "the tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it …". In our folklore and classical works, unlike life, there has always been a moral element, where evil is completely exposed and most often punished. Forces of good, personified by quite nice heroes, triumphed, and carriers of evil and traitors were punished. But sometimes, through their repentance, they said goodbye, and then reconciliation came - here's "… a lesson to good fellows."
But in recent decades, Hollywood cinematographers often have everything mixed up or turned upside down. In almost every second film, a positive character is clearly traced - a traitor. The plot is more and more often built according to one familiar template, so that the viewer does not have the opportunity to think and condemn, but can simply take his side. Heroes here more and more often become traitors, and traitors become heroes, but this is presented as a natural choice, without Shakespeare's torment and moral torment of Dostoevsky's heroes, as an uncontested necessity.
For example, favorite characters from the popular TV series Guardians of the Galaxy and Pirates of the Caribbean have become convenient characters to justify murder and betrayal. The tough guy and the head of the gang of space pirates Yondu, deserving the sympathy of the audience, contrary to the established stereotypes, ruthlessly kills his entire team - loyal to him, albeit unsympathetic characters. No regret, no remorse - and the viewer involuntarily agrees with him, they say, evil is punished. But by whom? True, a soulless villain commits - after all, a really correct act - he saves his own son …
For the sake of his treasures, the filibuster Hector Barbossa, who symbolizes in the film a leader endowed with clearly positive, masculine qualities: daring, courage, daring, goes to betray his team and friend Jack "Sparrow" quite easily. But money is still more important! True, in the end he saves his daughter from death … Both pirates perish, showing self-sacrifice and a halo of positive heroes is assigned to them. Forgiveness for betrayal has been simplified to the point of indecency: without regret, remorse, and even his slightest attempt!
The movie "Fast and Furious 6" from the popular TV series of the same name represents another attempt to mix the old canons of the genre. The leader of the gang, Owen Shaw, is an inhuman and tough killer with signs of a maniac, obsessed with the idea of mastering a chip that opens up great opportunities, and his brother Deckart, who more than once stepped over the corpses of the people he killed, still end up in prison thanks to the main positive character Toretto. Has justice been done? Not. According to the scriptwriter's idea, the evil that still exists in the world can be overcome only with the help of released murderers with the special charisma of "real men".
They are the unrepentant criminals who have not served their time in places of imprisonment who save the world from the next villains. And even the son of their enemy, Toretto, who was held hostage by them. Manipulation with children is generally a favorite move of scriptwriters, because for the sake of a child's tears, you can neglect everything else! How "humane" and almost according to Dostoevsky it is! The viewer who has let down a tear forgets who these saviors were before and applauds the noble heroes! The child's father is also grateful to them, as a result, the former enemies, a policeman and a gangster shake hands, the key word sounds: "Brotherhood!" Evil is punished by evil, and good rushes to meet it, to fraternize.
Not only the viewer should have a short memory, but also the characters. The villain, for no reason, suddenly joins the ranks of the defenders of good, and the goodies sink to low and vile deeds. This can be seen in the series about the mythical Asgard and the god brothers Thor and Locke. They, of course, like the main characters in "Transformers", are not really people, so the demand from them is low. So they allow themselves to change their behavior: yesterday they destroyed cities, and today they declare themselves the saviors of mankind, without removing the horned helmet from their heads! A good savior - isn't this a cinematic forerunner of the Antichrist described in the Apocalypse of John the Theologian? What is the conclusion? There is nothing permanent and sacred - there are emotions, feelings, passions that rule the world!
Often in such films there is a woman - a temptress, who, having received power over the positive hero, forces him to betray his ideals and friends. And he does this not even for the sake of love, but often for the sake of banal gain, gain or salvation of his skin. Wow hero!
Fairy tale is a lie
And now let's imagine in the spectator's place not a corrosive pensioner, but a teenager or a child who watches these films uncritically! What will they take out of them? That good is a relative and passing category, and that evil can be "very much even nothing", especially if it goes over to the side of … well, this very … good in time.
However, children and adolescents were taken care of separately and what is especially sad is not overseas, but our filmmakers. I would like to show this using the example of the film "The Last Hero", released in 2017 and filmed in the tradition of Russian fairy tales. (Script writers: Vitaly Shlyappo, Dimitri Yan, Vasily Kutsenko, Pavel Danilov, Igor Tudvasev. Stage director: Dmitry Dyachenko). It's a shame that the scale of the Russian fairy tale is purely overseas, worked on by a certain George Callis.
A characteristic feature of this film is the unusual presentation of the heroes traditional for this genre. Here, Koschey Bessmetny, and Baba Yaga, and Vodyanoy are shown as quite nice personalities, ready to disinterestedly help our contemporary Ivan, who accidentally found himself in the fabulous country of Belgorod. He needs to find a sword - kladenets in order to return home.
And where did the positive heroes - our heroes - go? But they are just shown by unexpectedly cruel and pragmatic people who do not evoke any sympathy from young viewers. They are at enmity with each other, constantly quarreling and betraying old friends. Thus, they are trying to instill the idea that the characters traditional for Russian folk tales, symbolizing dark forces, in essence, are not so bad, and are capable of generous deeds and even feats. But the heroes of the national epic and epics Ilya Muromets and Dobrynya Nikitich evoke rejection, hostility and condemnation.
A mature person will figure out where the truth is, and where is the evil fiction, and the teenager? Will he, after this very opportunistic and tolerant presentation of evil, consider that Hitler, Bandera, and Chikatillo are not such villains, but people who can also be understood, forgiven and justified. But our real heroes, no longer fabulous, but those with whose portraits we go to the "Immortal Regiment" and those to whom we put flowers on May 9, maybe not such heroes? And I immediately remembered "the boy Kolya from Urengoy", who, speaking in the Bundestag, took pity on the captured Germans from the Stalingrad boiler.
And finally - the main character of the fairy tale, Ivan himself, in the image of which the modern viewer is a teenager. He is not heroically ridiculous, at every step he "mows", constantly lets his friends down and causes a smile, which is not so scary, because the classic Ivanushka, the fool, had problems with this. But now the goal has been achieved - he has the sought-after sword of kladenets.
And then he must make a decision: in the hands of the enemies is the fabulous Vasilisa, who fell in love with him, whom, according to all the canons of Russian fairy tales and epics, he must save! But that was not the case, this Ivan turns out to be not at all a fool and is not going to save some fool, but prefers to save himself a beloved, avoiding the heroic deed, from the deed prescribed to the hero! This is no longer good for anything, because there is betrayal, which, however, does not in the least bother the creators of such a masterpiece, filmed with our money!
Doesn't this lay down a clear program for betrayal, for treason, for pragmatism and concentrated egoism? But what about Suvorovskoe "perish yourself, and help your comrade", and the feat of the crew of the cruiser "Varyag", who preferred death in battle to the shame of captivity? Or acting similarly to the current Heroes of Russia - pilot Roman Filippov, intelligence officer Alexander Prokhorenko or police officer Magomed Nurbagandov? At the heart of their feat is the cult of self-sacrifice and the right heroes instilled in them from childhood. According to the plot of the fairy tale film, it turns out that all this is complete nonsense and the main task of the hero, using other people, to save his own skin! Do we need such a movie?
So the question "is it good to be a traitor" has not lost its relevance, it must be asked. And not only for children and adolescents, but also for quite adult uncles responsible for the appearance of such films on our screens.
Author: Roman Ilyushchenko