Overlord is a war horror film that takes place during the day before D-DAY when allied military forces invaded Normandy during World War II. The goal was to liberate France from German occupation. The film follows the main protagonist soldier paratrooper Boyce and his comrades as they attempt to complete their mission of destroying a German radio tower. It is discovered that the Germans were experimenting on the French indigenous residents of the occupied lands while attempting to perfect a serum that transforms humans into super soldiers. This has left residents grotesquely disfigured and zombie like. The film relates to the themes of colonialism, hyper-masculinity, patriarchy, and racism. The cinema Overlord has a hidden message of dual consciousness of the primary character with allegorical implications.
Although the film does not depict colonialism verbatim, there were many factors and similarities of it visualized throughout the film. Colonialism occurs when a foreign organization seeks to gain authority over another country occupying it with their settlers while simultaneously exploiting the land of its natural resources. Their ultimate goal is to increase their power and wealth. Colonists have no regard for native life, customs, or beliefs. The colonized are essentially quarantined on their lands and forced into disenfranchisement. Warmongers use similar tactics to subjugate the indigenous populace. For an example, in the movie Overlord, the antagonists kept the citizens in closely guarded “ghettos” where they had no free will to live their traditional lives.
The Germans created a panoptic system in which the citizens were consistently surveilled leaving them with a feeling of always being observed enhanced their fears of attempting to resist. Accessing basic resources was a process that had to be distributed by the Germans. Frantz Fanon knew how important land and resources were to natives and contended that control over these resources is crucial to reclaim freedom. Indeed, the allied forces intervention is what ultimately leads to Germany’s demise. However, as Fanon would contend, the people of that small county in France were dominated but not domesticated. This left some finding ways to push back against their aggressor. A few villagers aided the American soldiers in their quest while beginning to reject their oppressor by matching their violence with force. If it were not for the help of the people, the mission of the Americans would have failed. Fanon argues that violence is not only cleansing, it is a conduit for unification.
Besides the struggle of war-time freedom, there is an internal dichotomy that the main character, who is African American, must contend with. He finds himself at a crossroads of what W.E.B. Du Bois called double consciousness. At its crux, double consciousness is the individual perception of self is seen through the eyes of others as ones identity is diverged into two parts.3 As a black man, he finds himself struggling with one trying to find a single identity. He is not just a man such as his Caucasian counterparts. He cannot escape his curse of his phenotype. He is fighting and representing a country, the United States, which continues to systematically deprive him and his race from basic humanity. Yet, while he is overseas, he is fighting for individuals that look like the same people who oppress him back home. There is a scene in the film where the main character and his comrades are witnessing an attempted rape of a female French citizen by a Nazi Officer.
Although the mission was to bomb the Nazi tower, the main character could not watch and not assist. In that moment, it was not about what country she is from, what she looks like, or whether saving her was in his directives. He, like Fanon, understood that liberation is not about the ‘whom’; rather freedom is everyone’s entitlement. I argue that the officer Boyce shared a common sentiment with the victims of Nazi German occupation. He is forced into a war that is not his own. After the war is over, he must return to a land of state and social sanctioned violence where his community might be displaced. He will not return home to be greeted with a parade and celebration of his contributions to war. Instead, he’s likely to return to poverty, discrimination, and bigotry. Perhaps the Black man is the most equipped to handle the atrocities witnessed during war. After all, conflict has been at the epicenter of the power relations between the dominate class, and people of color for millennia.
One would be remiss not to acknowledge the patriarchal and gendered mentality of both the Allied officers and their enemies. Patriarchy, a socially constructed system in which men maintain power and prevailing roles in every fiber of life, yielded its face heavily in the film. The women were treated as property and insignificant to the bigger motif. Historically, women have been crucial during moments of resistance. For an example, during the African Liberation of the 1960s and 1970s, women were warriors, thinkers, and just as important as their male compatriots. They were able to have roles other than traditional gendered norms. They had equal roles and operated outside of the gendered hierarchy system. In the film, one of the female sub-protagonists assisted the American team by providing vital information of the routine the German officers. Moreover, she exhibited bravery by using the German’s weapons of death against them.
The greatest element of the film Overlord is the concept of racism and the ideology of Herrenvolk. Cedric Robinson, a former professor, scholar, and writer, reminds readers that the dogma of Herrenvolk, where Germans considered themselves inherently superior to others including their fellow Europeans of different regions, was heighten at the time of the Holocaust and during the war.4 Nazi Germany and its leaders decided to use race as justification to exterminate an entire population and in the film excuse the horrendous acts of experimentation on humans. Racialism, the idea that race is natural and normalized, allowed for the legitimization of subjugation of the “other.”
The film Overlord depicts a scene where the main antagonist is being questioned about the secret formula used to experiment on the natives. He is not only proud to be a Nazi officer; he feels it’s the proper thing to do to cleanse the world of inferiority. The concept of difference is used to legitimize power. In contemporary America, this is practiced in how agents of control view and treat immigrants, minorities, women, and member of the LGBTQIA. One could argue that immigrants are feeling the brunt of Herrenvolk more than any other marginalized group in the United State. The leader of America has deployed troops to the border as if they were preparing for war. Akin to the German Nazis, many American military personnel believe their quest to refuse refugees, is the best thing for society. The question is whose society would it be good for?
Though the movie Overlord is a work of fiction with some factual historical content, its allegorical meaning has important significance for the political climate of the contemporary world. The symbolic meaning of Overlord is that the real enemy is self and individual philosophies. It represents the internal conflicts that are produced when a group or individual has access to absolute power. War is materially produced as a byproduct of the internal battles of mankind.
