Another Terrible, Terrible Movie Device

I'm willing to retract my "Kelsey Grammer is a Bad Movie Device," stance but only because he's had a rough life and because I thought of a better one anyway. Here it is...

3.) Ethnic Wailing. The Ethnic Wail is used almost exclusively in epic war movies that have budgets over $100 million. These are your Gladiators, your Bravehearts, your Kingdoms of Heaven, and your 300s. What is it? I can only sum up a cinematic Ethnic Wail as a soft and sorrowful Tarzan yell but usually by a woman. It's generally used to illustrate the "foreignness" of a certain land or people. Sometimes, they lay it onto a sad scene like in Gladiator when Russell Crowe dreams of walking through a wheat field to meet his very much alive wife and child. They took a regular sad scene and Wail'd the shit out of it 'til it became Sad Scene: Full Throttle. 

Troy. That's another one. What is it with these sepia-toned war pics? Brad Pitt was literally golden in that movie! Nevermind. The Ethnic Wailing needs to stop. We got it; this is not the Battle at Gettysburg. The opposing sides are fundamentally different. It was ancient times. 

If Ethnic Wailing wasn't an established trend in big-budget movies, then the terrorist scenes in Team America: World Police would not be satirical. They would be racist.