A look at a Hollywood film that, against its will, actually argues in favour of monarchism.
From The Mad Monarchist (10 March 2018)
The 1939 film "Juarez", a biopic of Mexico's most famous president, is
well worth looking at for monarchists, even if that seems odd. Juarez is
upheld as the 'Abraham Lincoln of Mexico' and this point is driven home
hard in the film to the extent that Juarez is rarely seen on-screen
without a portrait of Lincoln in the background. It is a love letter to
Benito Juarez and makes no apologies for that. However, it does not
vilify Emperor Maximilian and Empress Carlota either. Being all about
deifying Juarez, it certainly is against the monarchy and their very
presence in Mexico, however, it spares the idealistic couple and focuses
its wrath on the French Emperor Napoleon III. From the perspective of
this film, Napoleon was the real villain, a wicked tyrant on a mission
to eradicate democracy and republicanism in the New World whereas the
handsome young couple, Maximilian and Carlota, are pitiable dupes; good
people tricked into an "evil" enterprise by a manipulative Frenchman.
Because of this, the Emperor actually comes off as a rather sympathetic
figure. For a broad overview of the film, you can read a review of it here.
For me, one part of the film, two scenes, really stand out as being
worthwhile, though they will be of most benefit only to those who know
their history and in light of the events of our own time. In the first,
Emperor Maximilian comes to meet with the captured rebel General
Porfirio Diaz in his prison cell, in an effort to convince him to take a
message to his president, offering to make Juarez the Prime Minister of
the Mexican Empire. Emperor Maximilian has some very good lines as he
makes the case for having a free and liberal society with a benevolent
monarch at its head as a sort of safety valve. He presents such a good
case that he seems to have won Diaz over and convinced him that the
Emperor is a man of sincerity who wants the same things for Mexico that
Juarez wants and Diaz goes to deliver this message to the President
along with his offer to make Juarez his premier and allow him to run the
government of Imperial Mexico. The next scene is Juarez, with kindly
bemusement, listening to the naive, young general who has been duped by
Maximilian. Juarez then starts preaching the republican gospel to
Porfirio and showing him the error of his ways.
This scene, coming after the heartfelt speech of Emperor Maximilian in
the previous one, is enough to make any monarchist who is familiar with
the history of republicanism, and Mexico in particular, roar with
laughter at how Hollywood inadvertently shows just how painfully wrong
Juarez was in all of his speechifying on the glories of democracy. In
the first place, they make much about the constitution that Juarez
wrote, however, any honest historian of the period knows that Juarez
himself violated the constitution he wrote on numerous occasions. Part
of what makes constitutions ultimately worthless is that they can only
do good if they are adhered to voluntarily, which could be done without
them, and they have no power on their own to prevent anyone from
violating them. Even the United States is proof of that and it has a
record better than most republics in that regard.
Juarez explains to poor, ignorant, Porfirio that Maximiliano duped him.
When Diaz explained how honest and sincere the Emperor was, Juarez
responds that, "virtue is a powerful weapon in the hands of an enemy"
which is meant to sound "wise" but is absurd if you think about it for
more than a second. It essentially says that Maximilian is wrong
regardless of whether he is wicked or virtuous. He says that the
unbridgeable gulf between himself and Maximilian is "democracy" and that
this is the right of men to rule themselves. He explains that since a
man never rules himself into bondage, freedom flows from democracy like
the rivers flow from the mountains, just as naturally and serenely. This
is, of course, quite hilarious given that Mexico itself democratically
voted itself into bondage more than once. The PRI, for example, held
tyrannical control over Mexico for the better part of the last century.
Yet, the current President of Mexico was the leader of the PRI, voted
back into power after a break of only two non-PRI presidents. It is also
extremely laughable in the context of Juarez, a man who came to the
presidency not by election, speaking to Porfirio Diaz who would go on to
lead a rebellion against Juarez, then run for president himself,
winning on the promise that he would serve only one term, only to then
rule as dictator of Mexico for the next 35 years!
It is quite a howl that virtually everything Juarez and Diaz talk about
in these scenes as being the major problems of their country; too much
land owned by too few, a privileged elite prospering while the masses
are impoverished, freedom of speech being suppressed, even selling out
to foreign influences (such as the French) are ALL accusations made by
many against General Diaz himself during his hold on power from 1877 to
1911 (with a small break in there). At the end of the scene, Juarez
says, again, so profoundly, that when a monarch misrules, he changes the
people but when a presidente misrules, the people change him. A perfect
ending really, given that the liberal-democratic leaders of North
America and Western Europe are doing precisely what Juarez said the
wicked monarchs do, they are changing out their peoples for a new batch
that will keep them in power. Irony doesn't begin to describe it. And
yet, what is the final cherry on top of this heaping bowl full of
republican hypocrisy? The fact that Juarez, the native Mexican fighting
against an Austrian Emperor, was played by Paul Muni, real name
Friedrich Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund, a Jew from Galicia in what was
then Austria-Hungary. So, yes, instead of giving the part to a Mexican
actor, Benito Juarez was played by an actor from Austria.
Oh Hollywood, you really are too much sometimes...
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