The trope
"It's a siege. We're under goddamned siege!"
— Lieutenant Bishop, Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
Show me a fortress and I'll show you a ruin.
— Captain Eddan Bourne of the Silver Skulls, Warhammer 40,000
"A Fortress circumvented ceases to be an obstacle. A Fortress destroyed ceases to be a threat. Know the difference."
— Warhammer 40,000, "The Tactica Imperialis"
"I don't wanna nitpick Tom, but is this really your plan
Spend your whole life locked inside a mall?
Maybe that's okay for now,
But someday you'll be out of food and guns,
And you'll have to make the call.
I'm not surprised to see you haven't thought it through enough
You never had the head for all that 'bigger picture' stuff.
But Tom, that's what I do,
And I plan on eating you, slowly!"
Spend your whole life locked inside a mall?
Maybe that's okay for now,
But someday you'll be out of food and guns,
And you'll have to make the call.
I'm not surprised to see you haven't thought it through enough
You never had the head for all that 'bigger picture' stuff.
But Tom, that's what I do,
And I plan on eating you, slowly!"
— Jonathan Coulton, "Re: Your Brains"
"Whether it's The Trojan War, The Battle of Thermopylae, or the last stand at The Alamo, many of the famous battle in history were sieges in which small forces took on much larger armies. Unfortunately sieges don't make good stories because the smaller force won. They make the history books because the little guys fought well before they died."
—Michael Westen doing a voiceover, Burn Notice
"While medieval law made a distinction between combatants and civilian in combat this not the case in siege of a city that refused to surrender. Against a city that refused to surrender it was acceptable that the norms of law that regulated discipline on the battlefield would be suspended, the local population shared the same fate as the defending troops. Responsibility was shifted to the defender for the ‘harm befalling non-combatants as a result of a siege – starvation, bombardment, sack—was understood as incidental effects of warfare’....Sieges in the medieval period began typically when a herald went forward and demanded that a town or city surrendered. If this was accepted it was expected that the inhabitants would be protected. If the population refused ‘this was regarded by the besieging lord as treason’ and all rights were revoked...Quarter was denied to all who had failed to surrender under the proper conditions."
— Leonard F. Taylor, There Shall Be Survivors: The Prohibition of the Denial of Quarter in International Law
Sowande: That army you used to fight alongside, the Chaste. They captured me once. This was years ago, long before you were born. I had been captive three days when they heard my soldiers approach. The fortress fell silent. The gates remained locked. (laughs) The Chaste couldn't comprehend it but the soldiers outside, they were following my orders. They sealed the gates, allowed no-one in or out. On the third day your soldiers turned on each other. By the fourth, they'd run out of water. By the sixth, no food. I believe it was the tenth day that they knelt before me. Begging to make it stop.
Stick: Well, if I kneel before you right now, shithead, will you shut up?
— The Defenders (2017), "Take Shelter"
The film
I'm not arguing that The Siege is a deliberately offensive movie. It's not that brainy. In its clumsy way, it throws in comments now and then to show it knows the difference between Arab terrorists and American citizens. But the prejudicial attitudes embodied in the film are insidious, like the anti-Semitism that infected fiction and journalism in the 1930s—not just in Germany, but in Britain and America.
