Has there EVER been a Hollywood film that criticises or even challenges the assumption that the United States is the greatest most noble most selflessly benevolent country to have ever existed on Planet Earth? I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that EVERY single Hollywood film i have ever seen propagates - to a greater or lesser extent, either implicitly or explicitly - such myths. And, surprise surprise, "Pentathlon" is no exception.
Yes, once again, the bogeyman is Caaaaamunism, this time in the shape of the former German Democratic Republic, as Yankee meathead Dolph Lundgren stars as an East German pentathlete who ends up escaping from the evil clutches of the nasty old GDR, by defecting to the good old Land of the Free and Home of the Brave (don't laugh!) during the '88 Seoul Olympics.
I mean, it says a lot about the US film industry, that even in 1994 (when this appalling film was made) they just couldn't resist the temptation to drag the memory of Communism through the dirt some more. The truth of course is that, while the former Communist regimes of the Eastern Bloc were far from perfect, they did provide a substantial social safety net for their people in terms of relatively good working conditions, pensions, free health care, free education (including at university level!), affordable housing, etc, etc. The destruction of this social safety net since the collapse of Communism has resulted in widespread misery across Eastern Europe, particularly in the former Soviet Union itself, where at least 3 million are estimated to have died as a direct result of the wiping out of the old Soviet welfare state.
In response to my comments here, the apologists for western capitalist imperialism will no doubt point to the likes of those who were killed whilst trying to flee across the Berlin Wall from East to West. To those people i would say the following: Firstly, how many people were actually killed in such circumstances during the lifetime of the wall (1961-1989)? Answer: 171. While terrible (as any deaths are), this number pales into insignificance when compared with (to pick just one example from the many available), say, the number of Afghan civilians killed during the US bombardment of that country in late 2001 (scholarly estimates put the figure at at least 3,700). The difference is, of course, that the US capitalist ruling class cares passionately about civilian death when it can be used as a stick to beat Communism with, yet remains blissfully nonchalant about civilian death when it occurs as "collateral damage" during one of the countless wars of US imperial expansion. And it can hardly be argued that the US ruling class at least cares about its own people. How many have perished as a result of the perennial refusal to go against the interests of the Health Insurance industry lobby by establishing a free national health service for America? How many have perished as a result of the relentless attacks on welfare support since the late 70s? And this is before you've even mentioned things like Huricane Katrina, or the small matter of whatever happened to the Native Americans (can genocide only be something that the Nazis did to the Jews?).
Now the supporters of American Imperialism here might well still argue that surely the very fact that people attempted to escape across the Berlin Wall from East to West, demonstrates just how repressive the GDR regime was. Well actually, all it demonstrates is how much more affluent life in West Berlin was. Such a point is hardly controversial. Everybody knows that capitalist First World societies have a lot of wealth. What fewer people appreciate is that most of this wealth comes from the intensive exploitation by western corporations of cheap industrial and agricultural labour in the West's neo-colonies in the Third World. The Eastern Bloc (on principle) had no such neo-colonial relationships with Third World countries (Cuba, for example, sold sugar to the USSR at six times the market value, because the USSR believed in helping Third World countries rather than exploiting them). As a result, of course life in East Berlin was grim and grey and austere compared to West Berlin - a fact the US exploited to the hilt by pumping more and more money into West Berlin, effectively dangling the consumer lifestyle before the eyes of the East Berliners. "Anything", in the words of an internal CIA memo since declassified, "to make the Commies look bad". The idea, of course, was to bleed the GDR of its productive population, and thus bring the Communist state to its knees. With the end of the GDR, western big business could look forward to the opening up of vast new labour and consumer markets to exploit. This was always the goal of the US anti-Communist strategy. As with the more recent example of the Iraq War, it was never anything to do with "spreading democracy" (capitalists do not know the meaning of the term). On the contrary, it was everything to do with advancing the economic interests of the mega-rich US big business ruling class.
And finally, why is it that apologists for western imperialism have a problem with a wall built in Berlin to keep Western spies out, yet have no problem whatsoever with a wall built in the Occupied Territories to keep poor Palestinians out of the luxurious villas of the Israeli colonists, nor with a proposed wall built along the Rio Grande to keep poor Mexicans out of the US? In fact, isn't every anti-immigration law enacted by a rich western state effectively a wall? It appears that, for the imperialist apologists, some walls are more equal than others.
For an honest view of the history of the German Democratic Republic, i strongly recommend you read Mary Fulbrook's excellent 2004 book, "The People's State". Don't expect films like "Pentathlon" to tell you the truth!!
Yes, once again, the bogeyman is Caaaaamunism, this time in the shape of the former German Democratic Republic, as Yankee meathead Dolph Lundgren stars as an East German pentathlete who ends up escaping from the evil clutches of the nasty old GDR, by defecting to the good old Land of the Free and Home of the Brave (don't laugh!) during the '88 Seoul Olympics.
I mean, it says a lot about the US film industry, that even in 1994 (when this appalling film was made) they just couldn't resist the temptation to drag the memory of Communism through the dirt some more. The truth of course is that, while the former Communist regimes of the Eastern Bloc were far from perfect, they did provide a substantial social safety net for their people in terms of relatively good working conditions, pensions, free health care, free education (including at university level!), affordable housing, etc, etc. The destruction of this social safety net since the collapse of Communism has resulted in widespread misery across Eastern Europe, particularly in the former Soviet Union itself, where at least 3 million are estimated to have died as a direct result of the wiping out of the old Soviet welfare state.
In response to my comments here, the apologists for western capitalist imperialism will no doubt point to the likes of those who were killed whilst trying to flee across the Berlin Wall from East to West. To those people i would say the following: Firstly, how many people were actually killed in such circumstances during the lifetime of the wall (1961-1989)? Answer: 171. While terrible (as any deaths are), this number pales into insignificance when compared with (to pick just one example from the many available), say, the number of Afghan civilians killed during the US bombardment of that country in late 2001 (scholarly estimates put the figure at at least 3,700). The difference is, of course, that the US capitalist ruling class cares passionately about civilian death when it can be used as a stick to beat Communism with, yet remains blissfully nonchalant about civilian death when it occurs as "collateral damage" during one of the countless wars of US imperial expansion. And it can hardly be argued that the US ruling class at least cares about its own people. How many have perished as a result of the perennial refusal to go against the interests of the Health Insurance industry lobby by establishing a free national health service for America? How many have perished as a result of the relentless attacks on welfare support since the late 70s? And this is before you've even mentioned things like Huricane Katrina, or the small matter of whatever happened to the Native Americans (can genocide only be something that the Nazis did to the Jews?).
Now the supporters of American Imperialism here might well still argue that surely the very fact that people attempted to escape across the Berlin Wall from East to West, demonstrates just how repressive the GDR regime was. Well actually, all it demonstrates is how much more affluent life in West Berlin was. Such a point is hardly controversial. Everybody knows that capitalist First World societies have a lot of wealth. What fewer people appreciate is that most of this wealth comes from the intensive exploitation by western corporations of cheap industrial and agricultural labour in the West's neo-colonies in the Third World. The Eastern Bloc (on principle) had no such neo-colonial relationships with Third World countries (Cuba, for example, sold sugar to the USSR at six times the market value, because the USSR believed in helping Third World countries rather than exploiting them). As a result, of course life in East Berlin was grim and grey and austere compared to West Berlin - a fact the US exploited to the hilt by pumping more and more money into West Berlin, effectively dangling the consumer lifestyle before the eyes of the East Berliners. "Anything", in the words of an internal CIA memo since declassified, "to make the Commies look bad". The idea, of course, was to bleed the GDR of its productive population, and thus bring the Communist state to its knees. With the end of the GDR, western big business could look forward to the opening up of vast new labour and consumer markets to exploit. This was always the goal of the US anti-Communist strategy. As with the more recent example of the Iraq War, it was never anything to do with "spreading democracy" (capitalists do not know the meaning of the term). On the contrary, it was everything to do with advancing the economic interests of the mega-rich US big business ruling class.
And finally, why is it that apologists for western imperialism have a problem with a wall built in Berlin to keep Western spies out, yet have no problem whatsoever with a wall built in the Occupied Territories to keep poor Palestinians out of the luxurious villas of the Israeli colonists, nor with a proposed wall built along the Rio Grande to keep poor Mexicans out of the US? In fact, isn't every anti-immigration law enacted by a rich western state effectively a wall? It appears that, for the imperialist apologists, some walls are more equal than others.
For an honest view of the history of the German Democratic Republic, i strongly recommend you read Mary Fulbrook's excellent 2004 book, "The People's State". Don't expect films like "Pentathlon" to tell you the truth!!