USA Today's Brian Truitt describes himself as a "shameless geek," but oddly enough omits the fact that he is also just as shamelessly ignorant when it comes to the signaling of his own CorrectThink virtue. In his review of Dunkirk, director Christopher Nolan's big-budget look (opening this weekend) at an actual historical event that took place in the early days of World War II, Truitt offers potential ticket-buyers the following trigger warning:
The trio of timelines can be jarring as you figure out how they all fit, and the fact that there are only a couple of women and no lead actors of color may rub some the wrong way.
Where in the world do these freaks come from?
Did Truitt do any homework about the background of this movie? He does appear to know that Nolan's latest is based on a true story, which I guess is a start, but he probably learned that from the trailer. The real question, though, is just how clueless about history, about the biggest world event of the 20th century are you when you find it "jarring" that Wesley Snipes doesn't show up to save the day or that Sandra Bullock is not driving a tank that will explode if it goes under 50 miles per hour?
Complaining about the lack of women and minority actors in a movie about Dunkirk is like complaining about the lack of Sinatra music in Straight Outta Compton or wondering why cancer failed to get equal time in Philadelphia or hectoring Hollywood over the omission of realistic sex scenes in the Toy Story trilogy.
And we cannot only blame Truitt, who is probably a victim of public schools. How did his trigger warning, one so feeble-minded it ranks as a non sequitur, make it past the USA Today editors? Are they all half-wits or does someone personally dislike Truitt so much they have stopped protecting him from himself?
Sorry if the following is inconvenient to your McCarthyistic desire to bully filmmakers into thinking and believing a certain way, but the settled science tells us the following: Trapped at Dunkirk were young, white males. Saving those young, white males were other white males. Trying to kill those young, white males were other white males.
Journalism is dead, and it was a suicide.