'American Sniper' Is Almost Too Dumb to Criticize

Let's see....how can I make clear what I'm attempting to get at. I
guess that because of the multiple-complexities I get my fingers
tangled in my thoughts and nothing but gibberish comes out.
Of course I understand what the roadblocks are in our path leading to
a People's World. It is complex and the complexities exist on many
layers going back thousands of years. It is all these layers and
piles of mental conditioning that blocks our progress toward any
fundamental System change. Suppose that we decide to solve our issues
by sorting out the complexities, number them and dealing with them
one at a time.
We can be assured we will be kept busy for generations. But in the
end we will still be no closer to making the fundamental changes we
need to make, in order to survive.
Just because we have created the complexities does not mean we should
wallow in them and allow them to block our progress. We Human Beings
brought this strange Topsy turvy system of governing into existence,
and if we choose, we can send it packing.
I know full well that I am reaching for pie in the sky. And I know
that in 100 years we will look back and see that not all that much has
changed. That is, if we haven't suffocated in our own waste. Folks
will continue to quibble over pointless details and make believe
differences. And the Ruling Class will continue to rule. We will
still be wondering why there is so much starvation in the world, and
war, and rape and plunder. We will still be trying hard to analyze
the causes, still trying to identify the causes, still keeping busy
doing everything except developing a true People's Government and
laying plans as to how it can be put in place.
We are prisoners of our own doing. We have built up a system that is
near impossible to tear down. We have become slaves to the System.
Vast numbers of people will spend their lives defending the System.
Regardless of the destruction being caused by it.
For some of us it is important to continue to ask "Why?" Why do we
need a Class System? Why do we need a world where a privileged few
are maintained by the masses? Why do we put material possessions
ahead of People? Why do we tolerate violence and starvation among so
many, while a very few are allowed to take all they can grab? Why do
we measure a person's worth by their material possessions rather than
by their Human Compassion? And most important of all, Why did the
Green Bay Packers whip the Seattle Sea Hawks for three quarters and
then lose the game in the Fifth quarter?
The very fact that Seattle pulled victory from the jaws of defeat is
evidence enough for me, that the Masses can set aside the Ruling Class
and build a better future.

Carl Jarvis



On 1/23/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> Well, my problem with your analyses of all these situations is that they
> seem reductionist. I mean, whatever the situation, you see it in terms of a
> Marxist framework. I'm not saying that this view is invalid. What I am
> saying is that there are many factors involved which make the situation
> more
> complex. In this particular instance, these people are imbued with a view
> of
> good and evil, of patriotism, of right and wrong, that are antithetical to
> everything that I believe, regardless of why. Their view is held by many
> people, across socio/economic class lines. Some members of the 1% or, to
> use
> your term, "the ruling class", also hold this view. Some do not.
>
> Miriam
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Blind-Democracy [mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On
> Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
> Sent: Friday, January 23, 2015 10:55 AM
> To: Blind Democracy Discussion List
> Subject: 'American Sniper' Is Almost Too Dumb to Criticize
>
> The message I get is that the Ruling Class in this country is firmly
> entrenched and can profit by playing one faction against others, using the
> power of the Empire's military and government to walk a fine line and avoid
> either a civil uprising or a collapse.
> Think of our nation as a very large family. Our parents have total control
> over our well being. But imagine that as we grow older, they put each of
> us
> to work and take a large portion of our earnings to run the household. Our
> parents have the power, and they determine what the family will do with our
> collective income. We children develop a pecking order outside the
> structure enforced by our parents. We interact in various ways, at times
> supporting this faction or that.
> Our parents allow this to go on as long as it does not interfere with their
> plans. If one or more of us get out of line, they slap us back into place.
> Still, once every while we are called together for a family conference. We
> are to discuss problems and issues and speak up with our concerns. Our
> parents listen and take note. We may even vote on various issues. But in
> the end, it is their decision that directs us. Still, we have parents who
> see the value of allowing us certain latitudes. We go about our lives
> believing that we actually have a say in the running of our family. But it
> is a sham. Until we arrive at an age where we can set out on our own, only
> then do we begin to see just how controlled we had been.
> Once we understand that our lives were not our own, and once we have
> escaped
> from the shelter of our family, the real question is how do we proceed?
> Can
> we learn from our own family experience and build a better system for our
> own family, or will we simply follow the same pattern, setting ourselves up
> as parent/dictators?
>
> Carl Jarvis
> On 1/23/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>> What that tells me is that it's amazing the America has held together
>> as a country, given the sharp differences in cultural values among its
> people.
>>
>> Miriam
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Blind-Democracy [mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org]
>> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
>> Sent: Friday, January 23, 2015 1:50 AM
>> To: Blind Democracy Discussion List
>> Subject: Re: 'American Sniper' Is Almost Too Dumb to Criticize
>>
>>>> Subject: FW: A Texas Goodbye
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 07:34:03 -0600
>>>> Subject: Fwd: Fw: Fwd: A Texas Goodbye
>>>> From:
>> missedem103@gmail.com
>>>> To:
>> seedstarint@hotmail.com
>> ;
>> maxson103@gmail.com
>> ;
>>>>
>> russ.deb@frontiernet.net
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>>> From: Hal Smithson <
>> suprsax316@gmail.com>
>>>> Date: Mon, Jan 19, 2015 at 1:42 PM
>>>> Subject: Fwd: Fw: Fwd: A Texas Goodbye
>>>> To:
>>>>
>>>>
>> Here is one of the most underhanded slurs upon the President of the
>> United States that I have had the displeasure of reading. >>
>>>>Disguised as a wonderful community joining together to moarn the
>>>>death of
>> one of their own, the writer actually uses this gathering as an
>> opportunity to spread venom.
>> Carl Jarvis
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Subject: A Texas Goodbye
>>>>
>>>> For those of you that are going to see the movie "Sniper," this is
>>>> the story in addition to the story in the
>> film.............................
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> TEXAS GOODBYE
>>>>
>>>> This is why America will remain strong. We take care of our own as
>>>> well as others who may not deserve taking care of. I just wanted to
>>>> share with you all that out of a horrible tragedy we were blessed by
>>>> so
>> many people.
>>>>
>>>> Chris Kyle was Derek's teammate through 10 years of training and
>>>> battle.
>>>> They both suffer/suffered from PTSD to some extent and took great
>>>> care of each other because of it.
>>>>
>>>> 2006 in Ramadi was horrible for young men that never had any more
>>>> aggressive physical contact with another human than on a Texas
>>>> football field.
>>>>
>>>> They lost many friends. Chris became the armed services number #1
>>>> sniper of all time. Not something he was happy about, other than
>>>> the fact that in so doing, he saved a lot of American lives.
>>>>
>>>> Three years ago, his wife Taya asked him to leave the SEAL teams as
>>>> he had a huge bounty on his head by Al Qaeda. He did and wrote the
>>>> book "The American Sniper." 100% of the proceeds from the book went
>>>> to two of the SEAL families who had lost their sons in Iraq .
>>>>
>>>> That was the kind of guy Chris was. He formed a company in
>>>> Dallas to train military, police and I think firemen as far as
>>>> protecting themselves in difficult situations. He also formed a
>>>> foundation to work with military people suffering from PTSD. Chris
>>>> was a
>> giver not a taker.
>>>>
>>>> He, along with a friend and neighbor, Chad Littlefield, were
>>>> murdered trying to help a young man that had served six months in
>>>> Iraq and claimed to have PTSD.
>>>>
>>>> Now I need to tell you about all of the blessings.
>>>>
>>>> Southwest Airlines flew in any SEAL and their family from any
>>>> airport they flew into ...free of charge.
>>>>
>>>> The employees donated buddy passes and one lady worked for four days
>>>> without much of a break to see that it happened.
>>>>
>>>> Volunteers were at both airports in Dallas to drive them to the hotel.
>>>>
>>>> The Marriott Hotel reduced their rates to $45 a night and cleared
>>>> the hotel for only SEALs and family.
>>>>
>>>> The Midlothian, TX Police Department paid the $45 a night for each
>>>> room.
>>>> I would guess there were about 200 people staying at the hotel, 100
>>>> of them were SEALs. Two large buses were chartered (an unknown
>>>> donor paid the bill) to transport people to the different events and
>>>> they also had a few rental cars (donated). The police and secret
>>>> service were on duty 24 hours during the stay at our hotel.
>>>>
>>>> At the Kyle house, the Texas DPS parked a large motor home in front
>>>> to block the view from reporters. It remained there the entire five
>>>> days for the SEALs to congregate in and all to use the restroom so
>>>> as not to have to go in the house. Taya, their two small children
>>>> and both sets of parents were staying in the home.
>>>>
>>>> Only a hand full of SEALs went into the home as they had different
>>>> duties and meetings were held sometimes on a hourly basis. It was a
>>>> huge coordination of many different events and security. Derek was
>>>> assigned to be a Pall Bearer, to escort Chris' body when it was
>>>> transferred from the Midlothian Funeral Home to the Arlington
>>>> Funeral Home, and to be with Taya. A tough job.
>>>>
>>>> Taya seldom came out of her bedroom. The house was full with people
>>>> from the church and other family members that would come each day to
>>>> help. I spent one morning in a bedroom with Chris' mom and the next
>>>> morning with Chad Littlefield's parents (the other man murdered with
>>>> Chris). A tough job.
>>>>
>>>> George W Bush and his wife Laura met and talked to everyone on the
>>>> Seal Team one on one. They went behind closed doors with Taya for
>>>> quite a while. They had prayer with us all. You can tell when
>>>> people were sincere and caring
>>>>
>>>> Nolan Ryan sent his cooking team, a huge grill and lots of steaks,
>>>> chicken and hamburgers. They set up in the front yard and fed
>>>> people all day long including the 200 SEALs and their families. The
>>>> next day a local BBQ restaurant set up a buffet in front of the
>>>> house and fed
>> all once again.
>>>> Food was plentiful and all were taken care of. The family's church
>>>> kept those inside the house well fed.
>>>>
>>>> Jerry Jones, the man everyone loves to hate, was a rock star. He
>>>> made sure that we all were taken care of. His wife and he were just
>>>> making sure everyone was taken care of....Class... He donated the
>>>> use of Cowboy Stadium for the services as it was determined that so
>>>> many wanted to attend.
>>>>
>>>> The charter buses transported us to the stadium on Monday at 10:30 am.
>>>> Every car, bus, motorcycle was searched with bomb dogs and police.
>>>> I am not sure if kooks were making threats trying to make a name for
>>>> themselves or if so many SEALs in one place was a security risk, I
>>>> don't know. We willingly obliged. No purses went into the stadium!
>>>>
>>>> We were taken to The Legends room high up and a large buffet was
>>>> available. That was for about 300 people. We were growing.
>>>>
>>>> A Medal of Honor recipient was there, lots of secret service and
>>>> police and Sarah Palin and her husband. She looked nice, this was a
>>>> very formal military service.
>>>>
>>>> The service started at 1:00 pm and when we were escorted onto the
>>>> field I was shocked. We heard that about 10,000 people had come to
>> attend also.
>>>> They were seated in the stadium seats behind us. It was a beautiful
>>>> and emotional service.
>>>>
>>>> The Bagpipe and drum corps were wonderful and the Texas A&M men's
>>>> choir stood through the entire service and sang right at the end.
>>>> We were all in tears.
>>>>
>>>> The next day was the 200-mile procession from Midlothian, TX to
>>>> Austin for burial. It was a cold, drizzly, windy day, but the
>>>> people were out. We had dozens of police motorcycles riders,
>>>> freedom riders, five chartered buses and lots of cars. You had to
>>>> have a pass to be in the procession and still it was huge. Two
>>>> helicopters circled the procession with snipers sitting out the side
>>>> door for protection. It was the longest funeral procession ever in
>>>> the state of
>> Texas. People were everywhere.
>>>> The entire route was shut down ahead of us, the people were lined up
>>>> on the side of the road the entire way. Firemen were down on one
>>>> knee, police officers were holding their hats over their hearts,
>>>> children waving flags, veterans saluting as we went by. Every
>>>> bridge had fire trucks with large flags displayed from their tall
>>>> ladders, people all along the entire 200 miles were standing in the
>>>> cold weather. It was so heartwarming. Taya rode in the hearse with
> Chris'
>>>> body so Derek rode the route with us. I was so grateful to have
>>>> that
>> time with him.
>>>>
>>>> The service was at Texas National Cemetery. Very few are buried
>>>> there and you have to apply to get in. It is like people from the
>>>> Civil War, Medal of Honor winners, a few from the Alamo and all the
>>>> historical people of Texas. It was a nice service and the Freedom
>>>> Riders surrounded the outside of the entire cemetery to keep the
>>>> crazy church people from Kansas that protest at military funerals
>>>> away
>> from us.
>>>>
>>>> Each SEAL put his Trident (metal SEAL badge) on the top of Chris'
>>>> casket, one at a time. A lot hit it in with one blow. Derek was
>>>> the only one to take four taps to put his in and it was almost like
>>>> he was caressing it as he did it. Another tearful moment.
>>>>
>>>> After the service Governor Rick Perry and his wife, Anita, invited
>>>> us to the governor's mansion. She stood at the door, greeted each
>>>> of us individually, and gave each of the SEALs a coin of Texas. She
>>>> was a sincere, compassionate, and gracious hostess.
>>>>
>>>> We were able to tour the ground floor and then went into the garden
>>>> for beverages and BBQ. So many of the Seal team guys said that
>>>> after they get out they are moving to Texas. They remarked that
>>>> they had never felt so much love and hospitality. The charter buses
>>>> then took the guys to the airport to catch their returning flights.
>>>> Derek just now called and after a 20 hours flight he is back in his
>>>> spot, in a dangerous land on the other side of the world, protecting
> America.
>>>>
>>>> We just wanted to share with you, the events of a quite emotional,
>>>> but blessed week.
>>>>
>>>> Punch-line:
>>>>
>>>> To this day, no one in the White House has ever acknowledged Chris
>>>> Kyle.
>>>>
>>>> However, the President can call some sport person and congratulate
>>>> him on announcing to the world that he is gay? What the hell is
>>>> happening to our society, our honor and our pride??
>>
>>
>> On 1/22/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>>> I would comment that on BARD, I've seen bunches of suspense novels
>>> and human so called relations novels about soldiers, their families,
>>> and the Iraq war and spin offs on the War On Terror, all of which are
>>> pure commercial entertainment without any context. Of course, the
>>> books don't earn the millions that movies do.
>>> Miriam
>>>
>>> Taibbi writes: "I saw American Sniper last night, and hated it
>>> slightly less than I expected to."
>>>
>>> Bradley Cooper in 'American Sniper.' (photo: Warner Bros/Rolling
>>> Stone)
>>>
>>>
>>> 'American Sniper' Is Almost Too Dumb to Criticize By Matt Taibbi,
>>> Rolling Stone
>>> 22 January 15
>>>
>>> I saw American Sniper last night, and hated it slightly less than I
>>> expected to. Like most Clint Eastwood movies - and I like Clint
>>> Eastwood movies for the most part - it's a simple, well-lit little
>>> fairy tale with the nutritional value of a fortune cookie that serves
>>> up a neatly-arranged helping of cheers and tears for target
>>> audiences, and panics at the thought of embracing more than one or
>>> two ideas at any time.
>>> It's usually silly to get upset about the self-righteous way
>>> Hollywood moviemakers routinely turn serious subjects into baby food.
>>> Film-industry people angrily reject the notion that their movies have
>>> to be about anything (except things like "character" and "narrative"
>>> and "arc," subjects they can talk about endlessly).
>>> This is the same Hollywood culture that turned the horror and
>>> divisiveness of the Vietnam War era into a movie about a
>>> platitude-spewing doofus with leg braces who in the face of terrible
>>> moral choices eats chocolates and plays Ping-Pong. The message of
>>> Forrest Gump was that if you think about the hard stuff too much,
>>> you'll either get AIDS or lose your legs. Meanwhile, the hero is the
>>> idiot who just shrugs and says "Whatever!" whenever his country asks
>>> him to do something crazy.
>>> Forrest Gump pulled in over half a billion and won Best Picture. So
>>> what exactly should we have expected from American Sniper?
>>> Not much. But even by the low low standards of this business, it
>>> still manages to sink to a new depth or two.
>>> The thing is, the mere act of trying to make a typically Hollywoodian
>>> one-note fairy tale set in the middle of the insane moral morass that
>>> is/was the Iraq occupation is both dumber and more arrogant than
>>> anything George Bush or even Dick Cheney ever tried.
>>> No one expected 20 minutes of backstory about the failed WMD search,
>>> Abu Ghraib, or the myriad other American atrocities and quick-trigger
>>> bombings that helped fuel the rise of ISIL and other groups.
>>> But to turn the Iraq war into a saccharine, almost PG-rated two-hour
>>> cinematic diversion about a killing machine with a heart of gold (is
>>> there any film theme more perfectly 2015-America than that?) who
>>> slowly, very slowly, starts to feel bad after shooting enough women
>>> and children - Gump notwithstanding, that was a hard one to see coming.
>>> Sniper is a movie whose politics are so ludicrous and idiotic that
>>> under normal circumstances it would be beneath criticism. The only
>>> thing that forces us to take it seriously is the extraordinary fact
>>> that an almost exactly similar worldview consumed the walnut-sized
>>> mind of the president who got us into the war in question.
>>> It's the fact that the movie is popular, and actually makes sense to
>>> so many people, that's the problem. "American Sniper has the look of
>>> a bona fide cultural phenomenon!" gushed Brandon Griggs of CNN,
>>> noting the film's record
>>> $105 million opening-week box office.
>>> Griggs added, in a review that must make Eastwood swell with pride,
>>> that the root of the film's success is that "it's about a real
>>> person," and "it's a human story, not a political one."
>>> Well done, Clint! You made a movie about mass-bloodshed in Iraq that
>>> critics pronounced not political! That's as Hollywood as Hollywood
>>> gets.
>>> The characters in Eastwood's movies almost always wear white and
>>> black hats or their equivalents, so you know at all times who's the
>>> good guy on the one hand, and whose exploding head we're to applaud
>>> on the other.
>>> In this case that effect is often literal, with "hero" sniper Chris
>>> Kyle's "sinister" opposite Mustafa permanently dressed in black (with
>>> accompanying evil black pirate-stubble) throughout.
>>> Eastwood, who surely knows better, indulges in countless crass
>>> stupidities in the movie. There's the obligatory somber scene of
>>> shirtless buffed-up SEAL Kyle and his heartthrob wife Sienna Miller
>>> gasping at the televised horror of the 9/11 attacks. Next thing you
>>> know, Kyle is in Iraq actually fighting al-Qaeda - as if there was
>>> some logical connection between 9/11 and Iraq.
>>> Which of course there had not been, until we invaded and bombed the
>>> wrong country and turned its moonscaped cities into a recruitment
>>> breeding ground for. you guessed it, al-Qaeda. They skipped that
>>> chicken-egg dilemma in the film, though, because it would detract
>>> from the
>> "human story."
>>> Eastwood plays for cheap applause and goes super-dumb even by
>>> Hollywood standards when one of Kyle's officers suggests that they
>>> could "win the war"
>>> by taking out the evil sniper who is upsetting America's peaceful
>>> occupation of Sadr City.
>>> When hunky Bradley Cooper's Kyle character subsequently takes out
>>> Mustafa with Skywalkerian long-distance panache - "Aim small, hit
>>> small," he whispers, prior to executing an impossible mile-plus shot
>>> - even the audiences in the liberal-ass Jersey City theater where I
>>> watched the movie stood up and cheered. I can only imagine the
>>> response this scene scored in Soldier of Fortune country.
>>> To Eastwood, this was probably just good moviemaking, a scene
>>> designed to evoke the same response he got in Trouble With the Curve
>>> when his undiscovered Latin Koufax character, Rigoberto Sanchez,
>>> strikes out the evil Bonus Baby Bo Gentry (even I cheered at that
>>> scene).
>>> The problem of course is that there's no such thing as "winning" the
>>> War on Terror militarily. In fact the occupation led to mass
>>> destruction, hundreds of thousands of deaths, a choleric lack of real
>>> sanitation, epidemic unemployment and political radicalization that
>>> continues to this day to spread beyond Iraq's borders.
>>> Yet the movie glosses over all of this, and makes us think that
>>> killing Mustafa was some kind of decisive accomplishment - the single
>>> shot that kept terrorists out of the coffee shops of San Francisco or
>>> whatever. It's a scene that ratified every idiot fantasy of every
>>> yahoo with a target rifle from Seattle to Savannah.
>>> The really dangerous part of this film is that it turns into a
>>> referendum on the character of a single soldier. It's an unwinnable
>>> argument in either direction. We end up talking about Chris Kyle and
>>> his dilemmas, and not about the Rumsfelds and Cheneys and other
>>> officials up the chain who put Kyle and his high-powered rifle on
>>> rooftops in Iraq and asked him to shoot women and children.
>>> They're the real villains in this movie, but the controversy has
>>> mostly been over just how much of a "hero" Chris Kyle really was. One
>>> Academy member wondered to a reporter if Kyle (who in real life was
>>> killed by a fellow troubled vet in an eerie commentary on the
>>> violence in our society that might have made a more interesting
>>> movie) was a "psychopath." Michael Moore absorbed a ton of criticism
>>> when he tweeted that "My uncle [was] killed by sniper in WW2. We were
>>> taught snipers were cowards ."
>>> And plenty of other commentators, comparing Kyle's book (where he
>>> remorselessly brags about killing "savages") to the film (where he is
>>> portrayed as a more rounded figure who struggled, if not verbally
>>> then at least visually, with the nature of his work), have pointed
>>> out that real-life Kyle was kind of a dick compared to movie-Kyle.
>>> (The most disturbing passage in the book to me was the one where Kyle
>>> talked about being competitive with other snipers, and how when one
>>> in particular began to threaten his "legendary" number, Kyle "all of
>>> the sudden" seemed to have "every stinkin' bad guy in the city
>>> running across my scope." As in, wink wink, my luck suddenly changed
>>> when the sniper-race got close, get it?
>>> It's super-ugly stuff).
>>> The thing is, it always looks bad when you criticize a soldier for
>>> doing what he's told. It's equally dangerous to be seduced by the
>>> pathos and drama of the individual solider's experience, because most
>>> wars are about something much larger than that, too.
>>> They did this after Vietnam, when America spent decades watching
>>> movies like Deer Hunter and First Blood and Coming Home about vets
>>> struggling to reassimilate after the madness of the jungles. So we
>>> came to think of the "tragedy" of Vietnam as something primarily
>>> experienced by our guys, and not by the millions of Indochinese we
>>> killed.
>>> That doesn't mean Vietnam Veterans didn't suffer: they did, often
>> terribly.
>>> But making entertainment out of their dilemmas helped Americans turn
>>> their eyes from their political choices. The movies used the
>>> struggles of soldiers as a kind of human shield protecting us from
>>> thinking too much about what we'd done in places like Vietnam and
>>> Cambodia and Laos.
>>> This is going to start happening now with the War-on-Terror movies.
>>> As CNN's Griggs writes, "We're finally ready for a movie about the
>>> Iraq War."
>>> Meaning: we're ready to be entertained by stories about how hard it
>>> was for our guys. And it might have been. But that's not the whole
>>> story and never will be.
>>> We'll make movies about the Chris Kyles of the world and argue about
>>> whether they were heroes or not. Some were, some weren't. But in
>>> public relations as in war, it'll be the soldiers taking the bullets,
>>> not the suits in the Beltway who blithely sent them into lethal
>>> missions they were never supposed to understand.
>>> And filmmakers like Eastwood, who could have cleared things up, only
>>> muddy the waters more. Sometimes there's no such thing as "just a
>>> human
>> story."
>>> Sometimes a story is meaningless or worse without real context, and
>>> this is one of them.
>>>
>>> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
>>> valid.
>>>
>>> Bradley Cooper in 'American Sniper.' (photo: Warner Bros/Rolling
>>> Stone)
>>> http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/american-sniper-is-almost-t
>>> o
>>> o-dumb
>>> -to-criticize-20150121 -
>>> ixzz3PZYbcdmhhttp://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/american-snipe
>>> r
>>> -is-al
>>> most-too-dumb-to-criticize-20150121 - ixzz3PZYbcdmh 'American Sniper'
>>> Is Almost Too Dumb to Criticize By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
>>> 22 January 15
>>> saw American Sniper last night, and hated it slightly less than I
>>> expected to. Like most Clint Eastwood movies - and I like Clint
>>> Eastwood movies for the most part - it's a simple, well-lit little
>>> fairy tale with the nutritional value of a fortune cookie that serves
>>> up a neatly-arranged helping of cheers and tears for target
>>> audiences, and panics at the thought of embracing more than one or
>>> two ideas at any
>> time.
>>> It's usually silly to get upset about the self-righteous way
>>> Hollywood moviemakers routinely turn serious subjects into baby food.
>>> Film-industry people angrily reject the notion that their movies have
>>> to be about anything (except things like "character" and "narrative"
>>> and "arc," subjects they can talk about endlessly).
>>> This is the same Hollywood culture that turned the horror and
>>> divisiveness of the Vietnam War era into a movie about a
>>> platitude-spewing doofus with leg braces who in the face of terrible
>>> moral choices eats chocolates and plays Ping-Pong. The message of
>>> Forrest Gump was that if you think about the hard stuff too much,
>>> you'll either get AIDS or lose your legs. Meanwhile, the hero is the
>>> idiot who just shrugs and says "Whatever!" whenever his country asks
>>> him to do something crazy.
>>> Forrest Gump pulled in over half a billion and won Best Picture. So
>>> what exactly should we have expected from American Sniper?
>>> Not much. But even by the low low standards of this business, it
>>> still manages to sink to a new depth or two.
>>> The thing is, the mere act of trying to make a typically Hollywoodian
>>> one-note fairy tale set in the middle of the insane moral morass that
>>> is/was the Iraq occupation is both dumber and more arrogant than
>>> anything George Bush or even Dick Cheney ever tried.
>>> No one expected 20 minutes of backstory about the failed WMD search,
>>> Abu Ghraib, or the myriad other American atrocities and quick-trigger
>>> bombings that helped fuel the rise of ISIL and other groups.
>>> But to turn the Iraq war into a saccharine, almost PG-rated two-hour
>>> cinematic diversion about a killing machine with a heart of gold (is
>>> there any film theme more perfectly 2015-America than that?) who
>>> slowly, very slowly, starts to feel bad after shooting enough women
>>> and children - Gump notwithstanding, that was a hard one to see coming.
>>> Sniper is a movie whose politics are so ludicrous and idiotic that
>>> under normal circumstances it would be beneath criticism. The only
>>> thing that forces us to take it seriously is the extraordinary fact
>>> that an almost exactly similar worldview consumed the walnut-sized
>>> mind of the president who got us into the war in question.
>>> It's the fact that the movie is popular, and actually makes sense to
>>> so many people, that's the problem. "American Sniper has the look of
>>> a bona fide cultural phenomenon!" gushed Brandon Griggs of CNN,
>>> noting the film's record
>>> $105 million opening-week box office.
>>> Griggs added, in a review that must make Eastwood swell with pride,
>>> that the root of the film's success is that "it's about a real
>>> person," and "it's a human story, not a political one."
>>> Well done, Clint! You made a movie about mass-bloodshed in Iraq that
>>> critics pronounced not political! That's as Hollywood as Hollywood
>>> gets.
>>> The characters in Eastwood's movies almost always wear white and
>>> black hats or their equivalents, so you know at all times who's the
>>> good guy on the one hand, and whose exploding head we're to applaud
>>> on the other.
>>> In this case that effect is often literal, with "hero" sniper Chris
>>> Kyle's "sinister" opposite Mustafa permanently dressed in black (with
>>> accompanying evil black pirate-stubble) throughout.
>>> Eastwood, who surely knows better, indulges in countless crass
>>> stupidities in the movie. There's the obligatory somber scene of
>>> shirtless buffed-up SEAL Kyle and his heartthrob wife Sienna Miller
>>> gasping at the televised horror of the 9/11 attacks. Next thing you
>>> know, Kyle is in Iraq actually fighting al-Qaeda - as if there was
>>> some logical connection between 9/11 and Iraq.
>>> Which of course there had not been, until we invaded and bombed the
>>> wrong country and turned its moonscaped cities into a recruitment
>>> breeding ground for. you guessed it, al-Qaeda. They skipped that
>>> chicken-egg dilemma in the film, though, because it would detract
>>> from the
>> "human story."
>>> Eastwood plays for cheap applause and goes super-dumb even by
>>> Hollywood standards when one of Kyle's officers suggests that they
>>> could "win the war"
>>> by taking out the evil sniper who is upsetting America's peaceful
>>> occupation of Sadr City.
>>> When hunky Bradley Cooper's Kyle character subsequently takes out
>>> Mustafa with Skywalkerian long-distance panache - "Aim small, hit
>>> small," he whispers, prior to executing an impossible mile-plus shot
>>> - even the audiences in the liberal-ass Jersey City theater where I
>>> watched the movie stood up and cheered. I can only imagine the
>>> response this scene scored in Soldier of Fortune country.
>>> To Eastwood, this was probably just good moviemaking, a scene
>>> designed to evoke the same response he got in Trouble With the Curve
>>> when his undiscovered Latin Koufax character, Rigoberto Sanchez,
>>> strikes out the evil Bonus Baby Bo Gentry (even I cheered at that
>>> scene).
>>> The problem of course is that there's no such thing as "winning" the
>>> War on Terror militarily. In fact the occupation led to mass
>>> destruction, hundreds of thousands of deaths, a choleric lack of real
>>> sanitation, epidemic unemployment and political radicalization that
>>> continues to this day to spread beyond Iraq's borders.
>>> Yet the movie glosses over all of this, and makes us think that
>>> killing Mustafa was some kind of decisive accomplishment - the single
>>> shot that kept terrorists out of the coffee shops of San Francisco or
>>> whatever. It's a scene that ratified every idiot fantasy of every
>>> yahoo with a target rifle from Seattle to Savannah.
>>> The really dangerous part of this film is that it turns into a
>>> referendum on the character of a single soldier. It's an unwinnable
>>> argument in either direction. We end up talking about Chris Kyle and
>>> his dilemmas, and not about the Rumsfelds and Cheneys and other
>>> officials up the chain who put Kyle and his high-powered rifle on
>>> rooftops in Iraq and asked him to shoot women and children.
>>> They're the real villains in this movie, but the controversy has
>>> mostly been over just how much of a "hero" Chris Kyle really was. One
>>> Academy member wondered to a reporter if Kyle (who in real life was
>>> killed by a fellow troubled vet in an eerie commentary on the
>>> violence in our society that might have made a more interesting
>>> movie) was a "psychopath." Michael Moore absorbed a ton of criticism
>>> when he tweeted that "My uncle [was] killed by sniper in WW2. We were
>>> taught snipers were cowards ."
>>> And plenty of other commentators, comparing Kyle's book (where he
>>> remorselessly brags about killing "savages") to the film (where he is
>>> portrayed as a more rounded figure who struggled, if not verbally
>>> then at least visually, with the nature of his work), have pointed
>>> out that real-life Kyle was kind of a dick compared to movie-Kyle.
>>> (The most disturbing passage in the book to me was the one where Kyle
>>> talked about being competitive with other snipers, and how when one
>>> in particular began to threaten his "legendary" number, Kyle "all of
>>> the sudden" seemed to have "every stinkin' bad guy in the city
>>> running across my scope." As in, wink wink, my luck suddenly changed
>>> when the sniper-race got close, get it?
>>> It's super-ugly stuff).
>>> The thing is, it always looks bad when you criticize a soldier for
>>> doing what he's told. It's equally dangerous to be seduced by the
>>> pathos and drama of the individual solider's experience, because most
>>> wars are about something much larger than that, too.
>>> They did this after Vietnam, when America spent decades watching
>>> movies like Deer Hunter and First Blood and Coming Home about vets
>>> struggling to reassimilate after the madness of the jungles. So we
>>> came to think of the "tragedy" of Vietnam as something primarily
>>> experienced by our guys, and not by the millions of Indochinese we
>>> killed.
>>> That doesn't mean Vietnam Veterans didn't suffer: they did, often
>> terribly.
>>> But making entertainment out of their dilemmas helped Americans turn
>>> their eyes from their political choices. The movies used the
>>> struggles of soldiers as a kind of human shield protecting us from
>>> thinking too much about what we'd done in places like Vietnam and
>>> Cambodia and Laos.
>>> This is going to start happening now with the War-on-Terror movies.
>>> As CNN's Griggs writes, "We're finally ready for a movie about the
>>> Iraq War."
>>> Meaning: we're ready to be entertained by stories about how hard it
>>> was for our guys. And it might have been. But that's not the whole
>>> story and never will be.
>>> We'll make movies about the Chris Kyles of the world and argue about
>>> whether they were heroes or not. Some were, some weren't. But in
>>> public relations as in war, it'll be the soldiers taking the bullets,
>>> not the suits in the Beltway who blithely sent them into lethal
>>> missions they were never supposed to understand.
>>> And filmmakers like Eastwood, who could have cleared things up, only
>>> muddy the waters more. Sometimes there's no such thing as "just a
>>> human
>> story."
>>> Sometimes a story is meaningless or worse without real context, and
>>> this is one of them.
>>>
>>>
>>>
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