My girlfriend and I saw "Signs" last night and we both thought it was about the most offensive, racist and xenophobic piece of sentimental propaganda to come out of Hollywood since... well, maybe since "Birth of A Nation." That might be an exaggeration, but I'm serious here— this movie was downright scary, and quadruply so when you think that it was a box-office winner this past weekend and yet there's no national outcry over the film's repulsive message. What is that message? Well, you tell me, because as my girlfriend and I cringed and guffawed at a show that everyone around us seemed gripped by, we gradually began to think we'd lost our minds.

The movie we saw looked like it was going to be a sort of campy parody of those who are terrified by "outsiders" (i.e., people of national and ethnic origin other than the U.S.) and the prospect of some force (i.e., terrorism, Al Qaeda) invading and destroying our peaceful and wholesome U.S. lives. The whole thing with the Doctor/wife-killer being the only non-white person in the show was such an obvious and racist decision on the part of the film's makers, that we just assumed that they were going to do something with the second half of the show to mock American racism and xenophobia. But no, it only got worse because the Doctor/wife-killer turns out to be a nice guy -- it's just that he couldn't help being bad because "it was meant to be." Translation: U.S. minorities aren't bad people, but they'll fuck up your life anyway because they just can't help it -- it's meant to be.

(I've since learned that the writer/director himself, M. Night Shyamalan, plays the Doctor/wife-killer, but that only adds to the bizarre horror at such a plot/characterization choice. The pseudo-"bad guy" in the film is a person of color, while all other major characters are white. This was an intentional choice. Why was this choice made?)

Then there's the whole "believe" thing. At first, judging from the whole scene on the couch where the Joaquin Pheonix character is begging Mel Gibson's character to give him some hope, this "spiritual" thread also looked like it was going to parody people who are saying we should do nothing about the problems in the world except pray and believe in a higher power so that if the shit hits the fan we'll see it as a "sign" of hope instead of becoming hopeless. That's what we thought, but no -- in the end, the movie reinforces this hokey "don't worry, be happy (and pray and believe)" message w/Pheonix lecturing Gibson in what is perhaps, save the bad aliens, the most unconvincing turn of bad acting in the whole film.

Finally, the "aliens" turn out to be terrorists (of course!), and since they're "aliens" we should feel free to just "swing away" at them if we don't like them or if we feel threatened by them. Translation in context of current events: It's ok for us to declare people "hostile combatants" and take away all their rights because they're not people, they're hostile combatants (didn't you get the memo?). It's also ok for the U.S. to bomb the shit out of (swing away at) anyone who seems even remotely threatening to anything we even remotely want or have an interest in.

Oh yeah, and when Gibson puts on the clerical collar at the end, I just burst out laughing -- it was so, so, so awful and predictable and unconvincing and... ugh! Needless to say, we got some disturbed looks moments later when the lights went up; apparently everyone else bought it.

Ok, so we left the theater thinking we were crazy, baffled that we hadn't heard anything about this awfulness before we saw the film. (Salon and Ebert both liked it, and neither said anything about it being racist/xenophobic, or campy.) So in order to maintain some sanity and find an explanation for this, here's what I'm hoping: Shyamalan originally wrote the parody that this movie flirts with being. Note that the aliens turn out to look like and do exactly what everyone in the movie fears the most, making it seem like the aliens are a product of the characters' imaginations -- thus, the movie attempts to mock xenophobia (at least in parts). Note also the campy, cartoony aliens who can be overcome just by splashing some water on them -- we can't be meant to take this at all seriously, right? So the movie was originally a super-parody of American xenophobia and racism, but then 9-11 happened and the studio (Disney, isn't it?) told Shyamalan he couldn't do a movie like that. So Shyamalan revised the script, built up the "believe, it was meant to be" thing, and the studio bought it. So now Shyamalan laughs bitterly all the way to the bank as U.S. audiences flock to this movie that only confirms their racism and xenophobia.

If you've seen this movie: Am I crazy, or what? How is this film not awful, offensive, and scary in a much more real way than little green men and UFOs will ever be?