Many years ago I made one New Years resolution that I have never
broken. I resolved to never pay for a ticket to any films made by
Hollywood about war, spies and under cover espionage.
This was because even as a young, and somewhat more innocent youth, I
knew the smell of crap when I sniffed it.
The Empire's media feeds me enough propaganda and biased news that I
do not need to have more poured on me in the theaters.
While many of my buddies swooned over the likes of John Wayne and
Clint Eastwood, I saw them as a part of our national problem. That
problem is the one we are seeing explode out of control. Conquest.
Conquest by any means at hand.
Carl Jarvis
On 1/9/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> Maass writes: "Just a few pages into 'American Sniper,' Chris Kyle used an
> epithet to describe the Arabs on the wrong side of his gun scope. 'A lot of
> people, myself included, called the enemy 'savages,'' he wrote. 'I only
> wish
> I had killed more. Not for bragging rights, but because I believe the world
> is a better place without savages out there taking American lives.'"
>
> Actor depicting Chris Kyle in Clint Eastwood's new film, "American Sniper."
> (photo: Warner Bros. Pictures)
>
>
> How Clint Eastwood Ignores History in 'American Sniper'
> By Peter Maass, The Intercept
> 09 January 15
>
> Just a few pages into "American Sniper," Chris Kyle used an epithet to
> describe the Arabs on the wrong side of his gun scope. "A lot of people,
> myself included, called the enemy 'savages,'" he wrote. "I only wish I had
> killed more. Not for bragging rights, but because I believe the world is a
> better place without savages out there taking American lives." A decorated
> Navy SEAL, Kyle killed more than 150 "savages" in Iraq, becoming the
> deadliest sniper in the annals of American warfare.
> Kyle's memoir has been turned into a film starring Bradley Cooper and it's
> an Oscar contender even before its national release on January 16. The Los
> Angeles Times hails its action scenes as "impeccably crafted," while The
> New
> Yorker salutes Clint Eastwood for making other directors "look like
> beginners." Unfortunately, Hollywood's producing class, taking a break from
> exchanging catty emails about A-list stars, has created another war film
> that ignores history, and reviewers who spend too much time in screening
> rooms are falling over themselves in praise of it.
> They should know better. In 2012, "Zero Dark Thirty," about the hunt for
> Osama bin Laden, was lavishly praised by most reviewers, and it wasn't
> until
> criticism emerged from political reporters like Jane Mayer and others (I
> wrote about it too) that the tide turned against the pro-torture fantasy at
> its core. The backlash, coming after the film made "best of the year"
> lists,
> was probably responsible for it (fortunately) being all but shut out of the
> Academy Awards. Hopefully the praise-and-reconsider scenario will recur
> with
> "American Sniper."
> Just as ZDT director Kathryn Bigelow insisted her movie took no position on
> the use of torture, the makers of "American Sniper" tell us the film takes
> no position on the war in Iraq. Cooper, who in addition to having the lead
> role was one of the producers, has said "it's not a movie about the Iraq
> war; it's about the horror of what a soldier like Chris has to go through.
> It's not a political movie at all. It's a movie about a man-a character
> study." I talked to the movie's screenwriter, Jason Hall, and he said, "For
> me, this is not a war movie."
> The film faithfully recycles Kyle's crude language, and while shocking to
> some viewers, his slurs are the least surprising or objectionable part.
> Dehumanizing the enemy is common in almost any conflict, particularly for
> snipers, who see their foes up close. If you regard your target as a savage
> or an infidel, it's easier to squeeze the trigger. Kyle's blinkered
> attitude
> was not unusual among the fighters I spent time with in Iraq. It's the
> truest part of the movie and belongs in it.
> The problem is that the film makes no attempt to tell us anything beyond
> Kyle's limited comprehension of what was happening. More than a decade
> after
> America invaded and occupied Iraq, and long after we realized the war's
> false pretense and its horrific toll, we deserve better. There's a dilemma
> at work: a war movie that is true of one American's experience can be
> utterly false to the experience of millions of Iraqis and to the historical
> record. Further, it's no act of patriotism to celebrate, without context or
> discussion, a grunt's view that the people killed in Iraq were animals
> deserving their six-feet-under fate. When the movie's villain, an enemy
> sniper named Mustafa, was killed by Kyle, the crowd at the theater where I
> was watching broke into applause.
> If Cooper, the film's star, means what he said about its lack of politics,
> he fails to understand how war movies operate in popular culture. When a
> film venerates an American sniper but portrays as sub-human the Iraqis
> whose
> country we were occupying-the film has one Iraqi who seems sympathetic but
> turns out to be hiding a cache of insurgent weapons-it conveys a political
> message that is flat wrong. Among other things, it ignores and dishonors
> the
> scores of thousands of Iraqis who fought alongside American forces and the
> hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians who were killed or injured in
> the crossfire.
> While it is about a certain type of bravery, the film itself is not brave.
> One of the things it does well is highlight Kyle's post-traumatic stress
> disorder. But there is no mention of the problems returning soldiers often
> encounter when they try to get treatment at military hospitals-even though
> the disturbed veteran who killed Kyle in real life, at a Texas shooting
> range in 2013, had been denied the care he desperately needed. Why ignore
> an
> issue of national importance that is also the reason Kyle is no longer with
> us? I asked Hall, the screenwriter, and he said that while the government's
> inadequate care of veterans is worthy of criticism, this was a movie about
> Kyle's experience, and he didn't have problems with the Department of
> Veterans Affairs. "I think that without the time to adequately explore
> that,
> and just take a swing at the VA-that's ill-mannered and ineffective," Hall
> said.
> I'm not so surprised about Hollywood-the making of great and true movies is
> not a feature built into its strange operating system amid the palm
> trees-but I am dismayed with the reviewers who should know better. As
> Alissa
> Quart wrote for Reuters during the backlash to ZDT (full disclosure: Quart
> is my wife), today's critics tend to avoid cinematic politics, in contrast
> to their predecessors, like Mary McCarthy and Pauline Kael. If a movie is
> well acted and nicely shot and carries the viewer along, that is enough to
> earn five stars in their reviews, because history does not matter to them.
> They are ideology-agnostic formalists, and this hurts us.
> We got Iraq wrong in the real world. It would be nice to get it right at
> the
> multiplex.
>
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
> valid.
>
> Actor depicting Chris Kyle in Clint Eastwood's new film, "American Sniper."
> (photo: Warner Bros. Pictures)
> https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/08/clint-eastwood-ignores-history
> -american-sniper/https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/08/clint-eastwoo
> d-ignores-history-american-sniper/
> How Clint Eastwood Ignores History in 'American Sniper'
> By Peter Maass, The Intercept
> 09 January 15
> ust a few pages into "American Sniper," Chris Kyle used an epithet to
> describe the Arabs on the wrong side of his gun scope. "A lot of people,
> myself included, called the enemy 'savages,'" he wrote. "I only wish I had
> killed more. Not for bragging rights, but because I believe the world is a
> better place without savages out there taking American lives." A decorated
> Navy SEAL, Kyle killed more than 150 "savages" in Iraq, becoming the
> deadliest sniper in the annals of American warfare.
> Kyle's memoir has been turned into a film starring Bradley Cooper and it's
> an Oscar contender even before its national release on January 16. The Los
> Angeles Times hails its action scenes as "impeccably crafted," while The
> New
> Yorker salutes Clint Eastwood for making other directors "look like
> beginners." Unfortunately, Hollywood's producing class, taking a break from
> exchanging catty emails about A-list stars, has created another war film
> that ignores history, and reviewers who spend too much time in screening
> rooms are falling over themselves in praise of it.
> They should know better. In 2012, "Zero Dark Thirty," about the hunt for
> Osama bin Laden, was lavishly praised by most reviewers, and it wasn't
> until
> criticism emerged from political reporters like Jane Mayer and others (I
> wrote about it too) that the tide turned against the pro-torture fantasy at
> its core. The backlash, coming after the film made "best of the year"
> lists,
> was probably responsible for it (fortunately) being all but shut out of the
> Academy Awards. Hopefully the praise-and-reconsider scenario will recur
> with
> "American Sniper."
> Just as ZDT director Kathryn Bigelow insisted her movie took no position on
> the use of torture, the makers of "American Sniper" tell us the film takes
> no position on the war in Iraq. Cooper, who in addition to having the lead
> role was one of the producers, has said "it's not a movie about the Iraq
> war; it's about the horror of what a soldier like Chris has to go through.
> It's not a political movie at all. It's a movie about a man-a character
> study." I talked to the movie's screenwriter, Jason Hall, and he said, "For
> me, this is not a war movie."
> The film faithfully recycles Kyle's crude language, and while shocking to
> some viewers, his slurs are the least surprising or objectionable part.
> Dehumanizing the enemy is common in almost any conflict, particularly for
> snipers, who see their foes up close. If you regard your target as a savage
> or an infidel, it's easier to squeeze the trigger. Kyle's blinkered
> attitude
> was not unusual among the fighters I spent time with in Iraq. It's the
> truest part of the movie and belongs in it.
> The problem is that the film makes no attempt to tell us anything beyond
> Kyle's limited comprehension of what was happening. More than a decade
> after
> America invaded and occupied Iraq, and long after we realized the war's
> false pretense and its horrific toll, we deserve better. There's a dilemma
> at work: a war movie that is true of one American's experience can be
> utterly false to the experience of millions of Iraqis and to the historical
> record. Further, it's no act of patriotism to celebrate, without context or
> discussion, a grunt's view that the people killed in Iraq were animals
> deserving their six-feet-under fate. When the movie's villain, an enemy
> sniper named Mustafa, was killed by Kyle, the crowd at the theater where I
> was watching broke into applause.
> If Cooper, the film's star, means what he said about its lack of politics,
> he fails to understand how war movies operate in popular culture. When a
> film venerates an American sniper but portrays as sub-human the Iraqis
> whose
> country we were occupying-the film has one Iraqi who seems sympathetic but
> turns out to be hiding a cache of insurgent weapons-it conveys a political
> message that is flat wrong. Among other things, it ignores and dishonors
> the
> scores of thousands of Iraqis who fought alongside American forces and the
> hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians who were killed or injured in
> the crossfire.
> While it is about a certain type of bravery, the film itself is not brave.
> One of the things it does well is highlight Kyle's post-traumatic stress
> disorder. But there is no mention of the problems returning soldiers often
> encounter when they try to get treatment at military hospitals-even though
> the disturbed veteran who killed Kyle in real life, at a Texas shooting
> range in 2013, had been denied the care he desperately needed. Why ignore
> an
> issue of national importance that is also the reason Kyle is no longer with
> us? I asked Hall, the screenwriter, and he said that while the government's
> inadequate care of veterans is worthy of criticism, this was a movie about
> Kyle's experience, and he didn't have problems with the Department of
> Veterans Affairs. "I think that without the time to adequately explore
> that,
> and just take a swing at the VA-that's ill-mannered and ineffective," Hall
> said.
> I'm not so surprised about Hollywood-the making of great and true movies is
> not a feature built into its strange operating system amid the palm
> trees-but I am dismayed with the reviewers who should know better. As
> Alissa
> Quart wrote for Reuters during the backlash to ZDT (full disclosure: Quart
> is my wife), today's critics tend to avoid cinematic politics, in contrast
> to their predecessors, like Mary McCarthy and Pauline Kael. If a movie is
> well acted and nicely shot and carries the viewer along, that is enough to
> earn five stars in their reviews, because history does not matter to them.
> They are ideology-agnostic formalists, and this hurts us.
> We got Iraq wrong in the real world. It would be nice to get it right at
> the
> multiplex.
>
>
>
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