Critical Review:Red Tails
By I. Scott
Irscott05@yahoo.com

　

Red Tails (2012) is a must see movie for all Americans because it bring into full light a critical element of United States national history willfully kept from mainstream US military history of World War II. The film is a story of African American fighter squadron known as the Tuskegee Airmen or 332nd. While the Black fighter squadron had thousands of missions, the fighters most important mission was the protection of US long range bombers in groups as many as a thousand planes on 200 critical bombing missions over Germany and East-Central Europe that shorten the war and saved thousands lives, many fellow American airmen.

While the film Red Tails had many problems and omissions, the editing out of African American women is a criminal omission and is a good example of the Euro centric nature of the film and its dehumanization of the emotional dimensionality of African Americans. But on balance the film located the critical heroism of the efforts a very small group of American fighters that has been lose in racism.

The critical political dimensionality of Tuskegee Airmen heroism is framed in the film when Col. A.J. Bullard (Terrence Howard), is approached by a high ranking white general(no named) from the USAAF Bomber Command in Washington DC behind closed doors, who was impressed with the Tuskegee Airmen's covering of a landing that he asked him to use his fighters as bomber escorts due to unacceptably high casualties among bomber crews because his bombers are being used as bail. Bullard accepts the deal on the condition that his unit be supplied with the new P-51 Mustang. Bullard understands he will be knowingly breaking the “de facto”rules of engagements Allied Bomber Command in London. This crisis in Bomber Command sub-plot is never developed. The audience leaves with this critical unanswered question.

Remarkably the escort African American fighters, never lose a bomber to enemy fighter attack and forever changed the way fighters protected bombers. US Bomber Command loses in Europe were as high as 40 per cent or 4100 bombers lost. The 332nd squadron itself lost 63 pilots and 150 wounded of 450. Because of the white washing of US military history, this much-decorated African American squadron remains unknown to most Americans. On a deeper policy level, the Tuskegee Airmen success challenged and finally forced Generals like James Doolittle to abandon the human bailing doctrine and increase fighter protection of the bomber streams.

Red Tails film provide new critical light on the unnecessary lost of thousands of airmen and bombers over the skies of western Europe caused by the Jimmy Doolittle doctrine. Hollywood is invested with the maintenance of the Doolittle cover by up by pushing the negative social conditioning it carefully created about degraded image of African American men and the passive role of American women during the air war of WWII.

Red Tails is forcing the destruction of part of this Hollywood-ized myth of the air war. The naïve American middle class movie goer have willing accepted a false Hollywood mythos or representation of the role of Black fighters during WWII “, because it reinforced the self-destructive drug culture of the ghetto, Hollywood has historically represented as the Black community. By viewing the Red Tails, one is forced to step outside the Hollywood myth and ask critical questions about the role of Black Americans really played in the war and the distortion in their Hollywood-ized understanding of WWII.

One of the most important reasons to make the time to see Red Tails is the fact that the film demystifies while informing a new generation of American youth to one of the best kept secret about the critical role played by African Americans and American women in the defense of the free world. The Red Tails film is very though provoking for both the questions the film answers and the ones skillful left unanswered like the genesis of the beloved P51 fighter and the feared German Me 262 jet plane. This is a serious omission in the final cut of the film. Much of the film center around the use of the powerful American made P51 fighter planes that was used to protect bomber groups, but nothing was said about the fact that the P51 was mostly manufactured by American women employing the most advanced modular component manufacturing methods in the world, not men.

The Red Tails film poses serious policy questions about the conscious “go get them” strategy of US Air command and generals like Jimmy Doolittle, who used unprotected bomber crews essentially as human bait to draw out the Luftwaffe fighters in order to destroy them. The film poses, but never answer the question of why human bait - hundreds of bombers and German civilians and workers were needlessly exchanged for dogfights. A white general desperate to stop the US Army Air Force horrifying strategy of using US bombing groups as human baiting, not racism, gave the Red Tails the tactical opportunity to demonstrated black creativity and skill as fighter pilots. The film Red Tails is not just a Black story, but a major change in American air doctrine forced into existence by the conscious efforts of a very small group of African American fighters.

Over 26,000 American Airmen were lost in the air war in western Europe. At the end of each day, white fighter escorts had to answer to their bomber groups why they did not match the protection of their bomber crews, as their African American fighters counter parts were able to. By the end of WWII it was unthinkable for fighter escorts planners to use bombers as human bail. This unthinkably, not their color was the real gift of the African American fighters.

There is a direct and powerful human emotional fusion that takes place between the audience and the characters in the action felled air dogfights of the film” Red Tail”. But after experiencing the struggles of African American fighter pilots, the critical question of why the US Army Air Force would knowing employ thousands of US bombers as human bail remains unanswered in the viewer mind. Because of the political toxicity of the true of this failed air campaign by General James Doolittle, the much-decorated Tuskegee Airmen story is rarely featured even on the Military Channel.com or other TV programming. As a direct response to Red Tails, the Military Channel has put a new coat of white washing of the US Army Air force horrifying strategy.

However rich in historical information and details about African American fighters personals and their contribution to the defeat of Germany, Red Tails is a carefully written and financed Euro-centric interpretation of a Black historical event using a African American cast to make the film sensual.

The danger of the film Red Tails, like other white films about Black Americans, i.e. Roots and the American Gangster, is lacks real insight into the Black reality and the tendency to distort events with critical omissions.. This Euro-centric lens of Red Tails allows the on going official cover up of key mistakes of WWII to remain hidden from the general public. The film suffers from lack of critical character dimensionality and development which is replaced with superficial rage, fear, sex, racism and feel good drama. Like rap music, the real the target audience is uniformed white. Over 10 million people have viewed Red Tails, most are young and have no historical reference point for the political economy of WWII or the major contributions of African Americans.

In the larger political history of WWII it is interesting that African American fighter pilots would be the savers of thousands of white American airmen from a policy of the US Army Air Force of knowing using them as bail to lure Germany best fighters into dogfighters to the death over Berlin. This exploitation of US airmen as human bail frames the central theme of the “Red Tail” story, hidden from the general public. This ruthless US Army Eight Air Force policy that cost 250,000 airmen, 26,000 of which were American and millions of German people. Red Tails has reopened the exploitive controversy surrounding the failure of President Roosevelt to order a single bombing raid of Auschwitz or any other known death camps. There were more concern for the production of Me262 German jets than six million Jews in death camps right next to the Me262 plant.

Hollywood has created the culture for Red Tails. Hollywood has refused to make either a film about the Tuskegee Airmen or the American women who played a major role in design and construction of the most deadly P51 fighter used by the African American during WWII. The African American fighter pilots story is the tip of the iceberg of a very costly human bailing policy used by the US Army central commend to try to destroy German air power.The lack development of role of the black Jesus in the Tuskegee Airmen’s spirituality was revealed the Euro centric to point a blind man could see.

The major Hollywood studios didn’t want to touch the film Red Trails because it challenges the Hollywood zed notion of the air war over Western Europe. Even Spielberg would be hard pressed to cover up the ruthlessness of the human baiting strategy and the massive cost in human life of the failure of the white fighter escorts to stay with the B17 bomber groups. According to Wikipedia :” Destroying the Luftwaffe“, 1944 in late 1943 the USAAF (U.S. Air Force) suddenly realized the need to revise its basic doctrine: strategic bombing against a technologically sophisticated enemy like Germany was impossible without air supremacy. General Hap Arnold replaced Ira Eaker with Carl Spaatz and Jimmy Doolittle, who fully appreciated the new reality. They provided fighter escorts all the way into Germany and back, and cleverly used B- 17s as (human) bait for Luftwaffe planes, which the escorts then shot down(German fighters). Doolittle's slogan was "The First Duty of 8th AF Fighters is to Destroy German Fighters."

From 1944 onwards, the Allies were in control of the skies over Europe. The 15th U.S. Army Air Force Italy had the range and capability to strike Auschwitz from early May 1944, but elected to ignore the death camps and attack synthetic oil , Me 262 jet fighter and missile production infrastructure. From October 1940, Polish resistance networks sent numerous reports about Jew death camps and genocide to the British Government. These reports known as the Witold’s reports were a principal source of intelligence on Auschwitz and other death camps.

The official cover story is Auschwitz was first overflown by an Allied reconnaissance aircraft on April 4, 1944, in a mission to photograph the synthetic oil plant at Monowitz (Auschwitz )On July 7, shortly after the U.S. War Department refused requests from Jewish leaders to bomb the railway lines leading to the camps, a force of 452 15th Army Air bombers flew along and across the five deportation railway lines on their way to bomb oil refineries nearby.
　

The Allied response was the "Big Week," (20-25 February 1944, code named ARGUMENT), when 2400 bombers from the RAF Bomber Command and 3800 bombers from US 8th
and 9th Air Force based in England, and the US 15th Air Force based in Italy, launched a full-scale assault against the German jet aircraft industry. They dropped 20,000 tons of bombs, the British at night, the Americans by day. American losses amounted to 254 aircraft, including 28 fighters, while RAF lost 157. Flak accounted for most of the losses; flak seldom downed a bomber but instead knocked it out of formation, allowing the Germans to pounce. According to official Allied 500 German planes were downed during “Big Week” and 2,600 American airmen lost and unknown numbers of Germans. There would not be a “Big Week” ordered by General Doolittle on Jewish death camps.

Even high profile Black producers like Tyler Perry and the “Big O” Oprah Winfrey in Hollywood, New York and Atlanta black film community were missing in the attempt to fund the film because of their fear of the political fall out. Hiding behind the fear of all black cast and the History Channel.com 1995 white wash series on the Tuskegee Airmen, critical Black financial support remain absence, just as in the case of Spike Lee’s film about Malcolm X. Mr. Lucas was forced to finance the $100 million movie and marketing out of pocket.

The “New York Times Review” set the standard for early negative critique of the film via four different reviews and summaries of Red Tails from 1/18 to 1/22. The film was rate a two stars on a scale of five stars. This negative review set the national tone and framework for local and regional media negative commentaries. The TIME of London article “Red Tails So Square It Can Baraely Fly” came out the day after the first New York Times Review. The TIME of London was so much more comprehensive from a cinematic perspective of the film, the New York Time was forced to write a more in depth second review series. Both the TIME and New York Times Review took the racism aspect of the film as the point of departure of their narrow critical reviews. Neither review touch the very sensitive issue of the gross failure of the early fighter escort policy of the British and US Army Air Force Command that directly contributed to the massive lost of life and bombers, Both the TIME and New York Times Review fail to connect the window of opportunity for the Tuskegee Airmen to take center stage because no white fighter pilots could be found and trusted to protect the massive bomber groups during strategic day light bombing. The central issue of the lack of bomber protection was never addressed by any review across the country.

Most newspaper reviews followed the New Times Review template and played the racist card in the framing of the film, focusing the viewer attention on the oppression of the Negro pilots and the struggle of Black airmen to have the right to defense and die for their country, never asking who is allowing thousands of bomber crews to be unprotected. The critical review then turns to the cinematic perspective of the film, over focusing on the film’s application Industrial Light & Magic (a pioneer in special effects) and lighting treatment. The British review while negative, offered a wealth of information and context missing in the New York Time analysis. The British review note the Oscar winner Cuba Gooding, jr is Maj. Emmanuel Stone, and Howard an Oscar nominee (Hustle & Flow) , but attack the strong hand of Lucas and his poor execution.

The New York Time review suggested that real questions have been raised by some film critics about whether older reviewers will be able to follow the emotional virtual reality dogfights of the film. The responses on the Internet and the $20 million in sales does not support the New York Times analysis.

The New York Time Review called the film a “live-action comic book” representation.
Most viewers according to post film comments on the Internet, are dawned into the near overwhelming helplessness of the bomber crews and tasks faced by the African American airmen fighting intuitional racism and the superior Germans Me 262 jet fighter at the same time. Many viewers report being amazed by the skill of the Black fighter pilots in the face of superior Me262 German jet planes. The application of Wingmen strategy of entrapment detailed in the Hollywood film “Top Gun” had it roots in the 332nd rules of engagement. The critical application of FM radio communication in the role of the forward air traffic controller pilot selection and assignment of German targets during dogfights was skillfully embed in the cockpit view dogfights in the Red Tails.

The movie’s most exciting moment are when the Red Tails are requested by the bomber group leaders, but denied by central command the task of escorting the first 1,000 bombers to Berlin, the fortress capital of Nazi Germany. The US Army Air Force white fighter escort fighters assigned the mission, never arrived, so the Red Tails against direct orders from Central Command, took the massive bomber stream to Berlin. The African American airmen were attack by waves of German Me262 jet fighters, the most advanced aircraft of WII and were still able to protect all the bombers in the massive strike.

The dogfights were computer-generated aerial battle sequences. Unlike PlayStation and Xbox video games virtual characters, the film’s pilots names, character and personalities had been developed in the story line before the dogfight starts. There is a direct and powerful emotional fusion between the viewer and the characters in a action felled air battle setting. When the black pilots are wounded, the viewer sees , feels and connects with their pain. When the fighter plane are destroyed in a giant fireball, the viewer experiences the destruction on a very personal level. Unlike like old period combat films and wartime newsreels, the viewer experiences the full virtual sense of real time emotional reality. More importantly, the viewers follows the fighters back to base to experience the emotional stress of battle and the after effects of dogfights.

As the story begins, the 332nd Fighter Group in based at the Ramitelli Airfield in Italy. No background is given on the status of the war or the North African campaign that led to relocation to Italy. The viewer is dropped into the German army retreat North out of Italy. The 332nd Group is being purposefully left out of the air war over Italy and willfully frustrated by white field commanders with meaningless ground attack missions that keeps it from coming into direct contact with German air forces and scoring aerial German kills in order to demonstrate the unit’s combat worth in Washington . As a reaction to this frustration campaign , some 332nd pilots engage in passive aggression behavior, one of which is Joe Little(David Oyelowo), known as Lightning. Some times he breaks protocol. His friend and superior, Marty Julian (Nate Parker), nicknamed Easy, is the wing leader and person in control and who sees the big picture from a critical standpoint. He has a drinking problem and perfection issue. To a lesser degrees, there other pilots reflect both these two behavior poles of passive aggressive behavior. On a deeper level, the viewer gain insight into the emotional problems of all fighter pilots face for self-express by watching the group dynamics. Also, the viewers sees the added stress of institutional racism on the effectiveness of Black fighter pilots.

The fighter pilot code name Lightening developed a love relationship with a Italian young woman, which has provoked critical comments from African American women. By Spike Lee standards the relationship lacks any sexual dynamism and is very shallow in it character development and the nature of the bond between. The film suffers because Italian fascism is a non-issue.

Cuba Gooding, jr is Maj. Emmanuel Stone, the unit commander and Terrence Howard is Col A.J. Bullard, Major Stone’s Washington -based superior. While their role strong but silent centers are around keep the unit from being shut down by lobbies in Washington, D.C. and ready for the coming major confrontation with the Luftwaffe. There is no development of how the unit culture and where the critical thinking comes from. This is a serious challenges the film writers never addresses. Lack of development of the political economy of the White House agenda after the WWII leave a major gap in the ending that was much developed in the History Channel.com series “Tuskegee Airmen” .

By today standard, the movies is very blunt about racism and verbal abusive. The racism in both personal and institutional. The viewer will be shocked by the outspoken bigoted (Bryan Cranston). In many ways the German air command has a much more lighten attitude toward the 332nd Fighter Group, than the top American air commanders, both in the field and Washington, DC.

The American population knows more about the 1967 Arab/Israeli war or the film “Top Gun“ application of the Tuskegee dog fighting doctrine, that the African AmericanAirmen major contribution to WWII.

By the end of WWII, the Red Tails marking on the back of African Americans fighters was a warning to German pilots, most Germans fighters would choose not to engage the Tuskegee Airmen for fear of death. The de facto official Luftwaffe, German Air policy to avoid air combat with the 332nd if possible.

The film has open a new series of questions and exchange in America about the missing elements of our critical history in particularly the issue of the use of human bail and the failure to bomb death camps that cost six million Jewish lives. The final word on the film will come from the American youth and grass root movie community.

Red Tails is not a black film. There is a real danger of falling into the false belief the film Red Tails is a black film, as many Americans still believe Roots is a black film. The film Roots reinforced the white myth of slavery, was made for white TV and was watch on TV by 100 million mostly white American every night for a week, yet Black Americans still fail to understand that Roots was a white mythical story about a African to America slave story, that encoded the most toxic aspects of the North Atlantic slave trade. At the time, the film Roots was the only historical reference most Americans had for slavery. As such, most Americans were defenseless against the encode racist manipulations of the film. The American Gangster film which was little more than a white idealization of the drug felled ghetto culture of Harlem New York, followed the same Hollywood model. Many Americans think it to be a black film, but in point of fact, it is a Euro centric view of Harlem that omitted any reference to Malcolm X who was a major force in Harlem during the time period of the film.

The danger of the film Red Tails, like the film Roots and the American Gangster, is it is a Euro centric distortion and omission of critical facts about the Allied air war over Europe that allows the on going official cover up of critical aspects of the war to remain hidden from the general public. Thousands of German cities were destroyed and millions of German people were needlessly killed in a terror campaign per portly to stop the production of German weapons. The face is that most mission critical German war production was moved underground, Allied bombers ran out surface targets to bomb and German military production expanded. Like the film Roots, the writers and directors of Red Tails skillfully used the emotionalism of racism, as a means to seduced the view into the false belief of the distorted storyline. The development of the realism of the Tuskegee Airmen story is replace with the illusion of the virtual reality of the Red Tails. Critical dramatic character development is replaced with rage, fear, sex, racism and feel good drama.
　

Like Roots and the American Gangster, the viewer is seduced into believe that the film is Afro-centric, when in fact it is a Euro-centric interpretation of a Black historical event using a African American cast to make the film sensual. Over 10 million people have viewed Red Tails, most are young and have no historical reference point for the political economy of WWII or the major contributions of African Americans. The film is now moving out of the inner city segment first goers into the white urban layer. A growing segment of these viewers are white Americans who never hear of the Tuskegee Airmen or their story.

Again, however rich in historical information and details about African American fighters personality and their contribution to the defeat of Germany, Red Tails is a carefully written and financed Euro-centric interpretation of a Black historical event using a African American cast to make the film sensual. One of the most serious omissions is the lack of development of the emotional connection and support of the Black family back home. This is a serious limitation because most of the characters are a historical, and lack any background.

Red Tails is a serious step in the right direction.

The end.