There’s been a lot of commentary recently about certain major Hollywood productions that are less than sympathetic to groups that have been historically maltreated and maligned. As I have yet to see the primary transgressor (a position I hope to remedy this Thursday in dazzling IMAX 3D), I do not feel qualified to comment on the validity of these criticisms. I do however, feel that I need to comment on another film that attempts to alleviate white liberal guilt for a historical encounter that resulted in the deaths of many tens of thousands of individuals widely regarded as “the other”. I’m speaking of course, about the new romantic comedy from Universal Pictures, Leap Year, directed by Anand Tucker and starring Amy Adams and Matthew Goode.

The plot of the story is simple, one that you will no doubt be familiar with if you have seen other films like My Best Friend’s Wedding or Forces of Nature.  A professional young woman experiences grave misgivings because her longtime boyfriend is just not proposing. She is worried that she will die old and alone, a withered shrew who wasted her youth and beauty on a man who was unwilling to commit. But whereas those films dealt thoroughly and intelligently with these all too common anxieties, Leap Year places its central conflict squarely within terms of territorial expansion and encounters with culturally distinct populations. To apply Annalee Nevitz’s just inquiry of Avatar, “When will white people stop making movies like Leap Year?”

In the film, Amy Adams plays Anna, the aforementioned lady with the gnawing impression that her beloved Jeremy (Adam Scott) does not wish to tie the knot at a reasonably soon date. When her mildly drunk father Jack (John Lithgow) alerts her to the ancient Irish tradition of the leap year, the otherwise inconceivable conceit that a woman can ask a man to marry her, Anna becomes dead set on making the trek to that magical isle of Eire. Luckily Jeremy has a cardiology conference in Dublin in late February, so it’s just a matter of getting there. Of course, it’s not always that simple within this witty genre, so Anna ends up on the opposite side of the island and is forced to bum a ride from the irascible Declan, as played by Englishman Matthew Goode. Follies and fatuities undoubtedly transpire, and once in Dublin, Anna must choose between her longtime partner and her newfound soul mate. Torn between two cultures, Anna follows her heart and goes fully native.

Make no mistake, our protagonist and her love interest come from two distinct and largely incompatible cultures. Anna is your stereotypical upper middle-class American, seen shopping for classy dresses and dining in swanky restaurants. Her job pays nicely and gives her significant freedom. She knows and cares very little about the natural world though, exhibited by her casual littering in the beautiful Irish countryside and her inability to speak the language of cows. The advanced Blackberry technology that she uses on a daily basis overwhelms entire towns in Ireland. She arrives at the island solely through misnavigation and plans to remain there only long enough to achieve her own selfish ends. She is expansionistic, militaristic and blind to her surroundings.

Now, contrast this with the depictions of the Irish. They are largely cartoonish characters filled in from centuries-old stereotypes of the wild Irish. The island itself is a magical and primitive land of pristine beauty, untouched by the horrors of industrialization. The roads are barely paved; the houses have an endearing ramshackle simplicity to them. And the characters that populate this land could well be fairies or leprechauns themselves. The taxi driver is too drunk to stand; the bed-and-breakfast owner is so conservative with her beliefs that she won’t let the two travelers share a room unless they are married. The bawdy old Irishman asks, no, demands that ritualized sexual acts be performed in public at his dinner table. Into this swirling mist descends Anna, a powerful colonizing force, who immediately so entrances Declan, the most exalted of the Irish, that he is willing to ferry her across the island in order to be near such an angelic presence. Although he is the exemplar of the natives, his childlike naïveté allows him to be easily tricked into sacrificing his time and money to help a total stranger.

And in the end [SPOILER ALERT], it should not be surprising to learn that Anna does not return to her rightful ethnic group. She refuses Jeremy and shacks up with Declan in his hotel/bar/cabstand in Dingle (just one of the many examples of the mockery of the native language for broad comedic purposes). Erin is finally conquered. Anna arrives in Ireland with clear intentions but utilizes her superior wit and technology to exploit the natural resources and people of the land. She wins the heart of the best among the natives and settles down as a paragon in her adopted land. This type of postcolonial narrative should not be surprising to those who have seen films such as The Last Samurai, Dances with Wolves or Avatar.

Unfortunately, this surreptitious commentary undergirding the entirety of this film would go unnoticed if those with the appropriate knowledge of history and cultural encounters did not do the right thing and stand up and make their voices heard. These types of films attempt to assuage previous conflicts between groups of people, but they often end up recapitulating the same tired arguments. By having the beautiful Anna wed the ruggedly handsome Declan, our collective guilt should be alleviated. As if this meager act would make the audience forget about the Statues of Kilkenny. These legal restrictions were passed in 1367 in order to prevent the growing problem of Englishmen adopting Irish pastoral traditions while attempting to subject the natives to English suzerainty. Under these laws, Englishmen were forbidden to “wear Irish dress or hairstyles, to speak the Irish language, or to intermarry or trade with the Irish.” (Smedley A, Race in North America, pg 56). As Smedley nicely articulates, the attitude toward the Irish was one of extreme contempt. And there is probably no better way to describe the way Anna feels after sliding down the hill into all that mud.

While postcolonial films like Leap Year make efforts to resolve great historical pains, it does not take but a moment to see through the thin veneer and notice continued aggressively paternalistic attitudes toward other cultures. In the case of Avatar, James Cameron wants to rewrite the expansionist history of America, as noted by Lisa Wade on her blog Sociological Images:

The Sully character is white redemption embodied; he “…is liberal guilt made flesh.” His character redeems the human race (i.e., people of European descent) by proving that at least some of us (guilty liberals) are good. Whites can identify with Sully instead of the humans who orchestrate the genocide and displacement. But Sully is not only a superior human being, he is also a superior Na’vi…

I’m going to speculate that, if this were a fantasy written for a colonized population, the hero would come from their own ranks and, at the end of the movie, they would continue life on their land, with their culture intact, under Na’vi leadership, without a human in sight.

But that would be a movie that alienated the colonizer. And since history is written, and rewritten, by the victor, Avatar is what we get.

Europeans can enjoy Avatar precisely because there is no risk to admitting that colonization was wrong. We can wallow in guilt about it and, still, the likelihood that power dynamics will be reconfigured in any meaningful way is just about zero.

It takes but a moment to reconfigure the notables in this passage and come to an equally condemning conclusion of Leap Year.

The Anna character is English redemption embodied; she “…liberal guilt made flesh.” Her character redeems the English race (i.e. people of Anglo-Saxon descent) by proving that at least some of us (guilty liberals) are good. English can identify with Anna instead of Jeremy who advocates cultural separation and consumerism. But Anna is not only a superior human being, she is also a superior Irish…

I’m going to speculate that, if this were a fantasy written for a colonized population, the heroine would have come from within Ireland and, at the end of the movie, she would marry Declan and they would continue life on their land, with their culture intact, under Irish leadership, without an Englishman in sight.

But that would be a movie that alienated the colonizer. And since history is written, and rewritten, by the victor, Leap Year is what we get.

The English can enjoy Leap Year precisely because there is no risk to admitting that colonization was wrong. We can wallow in guilt about it and, still, the likelihood that power dynamics will be reconfigured in any meaningful way is just about zero.

And enjoy it they have. Leap Year has lapped up a whopping $9.1 million over its opening weekend alone. The fact that a film as blatantly racial as this one could do so well in a depressed economy is a truly sad sign of our lack of progress since the Desmond rebellions of 1569.  Attitudes such as these are truly beyond the pale.