Samuel Au
Th 5-6 pm
Film Response #3
The Dragon Has Not Fallen

In Olympus Has Fallen, Hollywood attempts again at an action-packed, thriller prolepsis of a terrorist attack on the White House (Olympus). Bullet torned and blasted by explosives and rockets, the remnants of the White House provides a provocative reaction that quickly turns into a war for glory to reestablished America’s power and the superiority of its military power. Patriotism becomes justified killing of the North Korean terrorists as represented by the stereotypical Asian villains created by the social construct of race through mediums such as the media to perpetuate ideas and use facets of militarism such as war to instill these ideas and further reinstitute power and superiority of whites. The marginalization of Asian roles in militaristic movies allows for a profitable scapegoating of minorities. As seen in the gender roles of Asian men, the male Korean terrorists were prevalent, vicious, and needed to be exterminated, similar to Hollywood’s Rambo who slaughters many Vietnamese enemies in an act of justice and valor to protect one’s country. On the other hand, female Asian roles reflected Suzy Wong influences of a sexualized and submissive underling of the antagonist. But, the prevalence of Asian men in the movie, serves to out shadow the power of female roles of Asian (Dragon Lady – powerful and manipulative) to lesser roles of passiveness and controllability: the character serves no further purpose than doing the antagonist’s biding and be used as a sacrifice to divert attention of the soldiers and create a ruse for the others to escape. The limit-ness of an Asian’s role in the screen seems almost secondary and undesirable as if to construct an anti-sentiment of inferiority towards Asians, which creates a perfect counterpart: a hero to save America from the evil Koreans. The