That’s Propa-tainment!
Despite Hollywood’s best efforts, it just can’t get war right. Filmdom’s fiery-eyed zealots have never quite managed to fake the 1,000-yard stare.
The point has been underscored this week by “The War,” a documentary that for all its shortcomings has performed a great service, bringing to light previously unseen combat footage. That footage demonstrates what combat veterans and combat photographers know, but many filmmakers and ordinary Americans, innocent of that variety of carnal knowledge, do not appear to fully grasp. The most extraordinary things can be quite ordinary, the most unbelievable events playing out in matter-of-fact fashion. Without drama. Without irony. War, the stuff of the world’s greatest drama, is in fact very hard to film, as any combat cameraman can tell you. To do it effectively is to put yourself in a position where you very likely will be killed. To capture any of the drama you expect war to have, you have to capture the faces. And if you are successful, what you see then is often a void. An evocative, soul-chilling nothingness.
Hollywood’s longstanding failure to capture the reality of war is in part anchored in Hollywood’s tiresome, anti-American, multicultural agenda, but goes beyond that.
Hollywood came closest when it dispensed with moral lessons and just tried to be faithful to reality with docudrama “Band of Brothers,” safe territory deep in the heart of the Good War. A brief faithfulness to recorded reality that allowed Hollywood to explore the practical, ground-level execution and experience of war. Another rare departure from Hollywood’s typical moralism was “We Were Soldiers,” on the horrific battles of the Ia Drang in 1965, that attempts to understand the fighting spirit of professional soldiers. (Actual survivors of near massacres there consider themselves victors, tragically, deeply wounded though they were by their experience. They held their ground, giving better than they got. Despite their pain, the stuff of Hollywood epics, they understand the fundamentals of the execution of war.)
Hollywood’s moralistic monkey has climbed back up on its shoulder with “Flags of Our Fathers,” an attempt to tell the story of Iwo Jima without telling the story of Iwo Jima, paradoxically attempting to underscore the heroism of Iwo by pointing out how it was used for propaganda purposes, in effect diminishing the heroism and sacrifice of the Marines at Iwo by reducing it to a propaganda exercise. That was followed quickly by an odd exercise in political correctness, “Letters from Iwo Jima,” which through the eyes of that rarest of Japanese soldiers on Iwo … one that wanted to live … spins a tale of meaningless, futile sacrifice in war that, with its ennobling of the Japanese commander, paradoxically seeks meaning and exalts sacrifice in the futile effort to make futile sacrifice meaningful.
Now, Hollywood swan dives into the moralism tank with “In the Valley of Elah,” a movie that reportedly condemns the Iraq war by cherrypicking and embellishing a tragic tale without addressing any of the war’s fundamental issues, to convey the age-old message, “war is bad,” with its modern addendum, “and never worth it.” Disclosure: I haven’t seen this movie, and don’t intend to spend my money on it. The rave reviews told me all I needed to know. Forget self-defense, national security and the complexities of geopolitics in a dangerous world wherein dwell people that wish us ill. It is praised as a “Coming Home” for our time: War makes you crazy and kills people. These are the messages they choose to send in wartime, when our nation has soldiers in the field. Good luck. It’ll make you crazy. It’s never worth it. Your fanatical, suicidal enemy is human, too.
Meanwhile, the simple values, determination and sacrifice of soldiers who give their lives selflessly in defense of their nation … as well as the way in which the bloodlust that is a fundamental human trait can be channeled for noble purposes … gets bizarre, distorted comic book treatment in “300.”
Hollywood is in the fiction business, and has a bad irony addiction. Hollywood is, of course, the original drama queen. Hollywood remains on a quixotic crusade to belabor the obvious: war is bad, and any government that fails to use its words to resolve problems, evil. Hollywood fails to understand that war remains a necessary, ugly business and will be for the foreseeable future.
It may be that it is impossible for zealots with a drama jones to grasp the banality of extreme events, when they require them to be fraught with meaning, particularly when the filmmakers are today, almost without exception, uninitiated. It may also be impossible for actors to feign the subtle expression of faces of men in combat, intent on their business, or in the extreme, utterly expressionless, evocative of the void. You can’t fake those eyes.
As a technical matter, the combat footage of “The War” shows the emptiness of Hollywood’s best efforts, and directors should be forgiven if they give up on reality and honestly devote themselves to cartoons. It’s art, and where they succeed is when they fool people into thinking they have actually represented a reality. The reality can only ever be suggested, and fiction should never be mistaken for anything but a funhouse reflection. But filmmakers will try, doggedly and maybe sometimes admirably.
But here’s some advice to Hollywood. I know It’s too much to ask that you simply honor the sacrifices and the accomplishments without throwing in disparaging moral lessons, and anything that portrays what is happening now in a favorable light is out of the question. So perhaps you can attempt to tell the real stories of Iraq, World War II and Thermopylae, Vietnam and Korea honestly. You might look to the soldiers’ blogs and memoirs already emerging for your guide. Books by combat veterans and embeds, Nate Fick’s “One Bullet Away,” David Danelo’s “Blood Stripes,” and David Zucchhino’s “Thunder Run” can give you an unvarnished picture. “Generation Kill” is already taken, and we’ll see how they do. Blogs like Acute Politics, BadgersForward, Desert Flier and ADayinIraq will tell you what you need to know. You’ll find stories that will spare you the contrived “Private Ryan” or “Elah” plot devices.
Forget the drama and the labored, moral-shoving plot lines that actually have nothing to do with combat and everything to do with your politics. Focus on depicting something that approaches the reality, and its utter disregard for your moralism.
Read more from Jules Crittenden at Forward Movement
“…convey the age-old message, “war is bad,” with its modern addendum, “and never worth it.”
Don’t forget that you wrote these words on Election Day 2008. The pacifist mindset has captured the Democratic Party. And yet, I am sure that the very same people who presently write the scripts for movies like “In the Valley of Elah” will market Hillary Clinton as the next Golda Meir and Margaret Thatcher! On the evening of her nomination, Senator Clinton will be surrounded by retired military officers. They will do their best to convince the American voters she is another warrior queen ready to kick some butt.
I watched Susan Sarandon on The View with her puppet, Jake McLaughlin, as he explained how he was their “expert” on war. How the whole production would stop so he could show them what war was really like.
They can bill him as a “veteran” but that assumes that he has some age and experience behind him. What he has is four years in the army before he left to be an actor. Now he can bill himself as an expert on being a solidier… because he did it, but it’s no more than a bullet point on his resume. Platform building.
Real soldiers are the ones STILL THERE. Want a perspective on being a soldier… ask one actually doing it. Not one who, at age 24, already had two kids and a went to be a soldier to pay the bills for a while.
There is a book out there, “Invasion 1940″, published back in 1957 which is totally wonderful. Peter Fleming (brother of Ian) wrote it, from his experience in the intelligence aspect of that war. It is about how England faced that summer’s invasion threat… with not much intelligence, but a LOT of spirit, and NO WHINING (amazing!)
As a part of the Home Guard, there was a brigade comprised of men with cutlasses…and an invasion would probably have succeeded if it had been pressed right after Dunkirk. As he says, everyone knew (unofficially) that when Invasion came, their leader would be an ex cavalry officer with a cigar.
Anyway, the movie industry is now international, and is catering to non – and anti-American markets.
I am going to see “the Kingdom”, though.
Jules:
Believe I used to enjoy reading your columns in the Bangkok Post. Good seeing your work now on the internet.
Regarding war blogs; how could you leave out Michael Yon? He’s about the best there is.
I just finished reading the “Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant” – available on-line for free at the Project Gutenberg website. He makes clear the qualities of a true patriot and those of courageous soldiers. He also makes no excuses for the traitors hiding behind the masks of news reporters or Democrat politicians. Those were evil days, and many of those who made it so are still with us in spirit. Thankfully, to counter them as before we also have with us the true inheritors of our country’s greatness.
Take care.
Jules, I can’t disagree in any particular point, but it seems if you’re going to criticize the themes of a particular film (“In the Valley of Elah”) you ought to spend the eight bucks and make sure you get it right.
Last night I watched the French film “A Very Long Engagement” (2003). I highly recommend it. World War I story, with amazing battle sequences.
Although the ending was a tad anemic, the movie as a whole had a unique, imaginative take on the old “war is bad.” Imagine “Saving Private Ryan” with humor, genuine emotion instead of schmaltz, no gaseous score, and no sledgehammer moralizing to pound your aching head.
One thing the Euroweenies do better than us is war films. Theirs tend to lack the self-consciousness and callowness of ours. Europeans understand that low-key is often the best way to depict horror.
Here, we ram home our messages with all the subtlety of Hugo Chavez bloviating at the UN.
Unnecessary. People are smarter than that.
They did get one other war movie right… “Gettysburg.” That, however, was produced by Ted Turner, and was taken almost verbatim from The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara.
The extras were Civil War re-enactors, and the producers also had the undivided attention of the National Park Service and any number of museums and research groups (the closing titles, acknowledging all of the assistance the producers received, are the longest I’ve ever seen for a film).
Hollywood hasn’t produced anything that I’d pay to see, much less a decent war movie, in more than a decade. If I decide I like something, I’ll rent the DVD when it comes out.
I’m currently more interested in Ranma 1/2 than “The Kingdom.”
I am a bit baffled by the assertion that Burns is using “never before seen” footage. While this may be technically true, I saw nothing in his pile of drek I hadn’t seen before in vastly superior documentaries.
I did find it very grating how much of Burns’ footage is misidentified and/or misleading. For example, he clearly mixes footage clearly from 1944 and 1945 with events during 1942. This isn’t simply nit-picking, it’s an illustration of how ignorant the filmmaker is of his own subject.
I thought “Letters from Iwo Jima” a great movie. The Japanese could be individually virtuous even if embedded in an evil machine which captured almost every one of the Japanese. The individual Americans were capable of the most horrendous evil, but the American army was pictured as virtuous and overwhelmingly powerful.
Although I agree in spirit, I would have to disagree with individual details.
I thought Iwo Jima was brilliant because it showed that soldiers’ sacrifices aren’t limited to combat. I figured that it wasn’t successful precisely because it pointed out that propaganda is part of war, and most of the media is essentially on the other side of this prpaganda war. (I’m not sure what other conclusion you could come to, really.)
I agree with “levi from queens” that Iwo Jima didn’t glorify the Japanese so much as humanized them. There was no implication that they weren’t, at the national level, absolutely demanding to be put down.
Meanwhile, it’s fashionable to diss Private Ryan but give it credit for bringing the war film into a new age. Besides, what’s wrong with a message that says: Not just Ryan, but all of us, owe it to those who have sacrificed to be worthy of those sacrifices?
Note that 300 is a comic book, and uses all the conventions thereof. The underlying moral is painted with broad strokes, naturally, but–it’s a comic book!
Which sort of brings me around to this: Arguing against contrived plot devices is like arguing against narrative in drama. If that sort of thing’s not your bag, then go to a documentary, not a fictional feature.
Levi –
Letters from Iwo Jima was lying multicultural garbage from a desperate-for-approval Eastwood that did not distort history, but actively lied to get approval from Hollywood’s power brokers (who hate America).
Individual Japanese were NOT virtuous, rather they were guilty of appalling cruelty: from the Rape of Nanking where even hard core Nazis like Matthias Rabe were appalled: bayoneting infants, beheading girls, etc. To the beheadings and tortures of the surrendering Marines at Wake Island. To the horrors of Manila, equal to that of Warsaw during either the Ghetto uprising or the revolt against the Nazis.
On Iwo specifically, the individual Japanese soldier booby trapped his own wounded and dead, as well as ours. To kill US Navy Corpsman. The individual Japanese soldier would pretend to surrender under flag of truce and then shoot or grenade Marines accepting his surrender. After that was common knowledge, no surrenders practically were taken.
Conduct of the US Marines on Okinawa (particularly their care for the wounded civilians when they found them) brought huge shame to Okinawan civilians when they realized the US Marines possessed greater humanity and compassion than the Emperor’s soldiers. Who uniformly were cruel and sadistic to civilians and captured enemy alike. [Okinawa's fortifications were built by forced civilian labor.]
Clint LIED: Americans did not commit acts of “horrendous evil” it was the Japanese (who’s commanders sacrificed their men on the gamble that killing enough Americans would allow Japan to keep it’s slave empire) who did so over and over and over again. Particularly at Iwo Jima.
Read the accounts of MEN WHO WERE THERE, particularly E.B. Sledge of “With the Old Breed.”
Interestingly enough, Eastwood refused to comment on the Japanese strategy at Iwo and elsewhere: to kill enough Americans so that Japan could keep it’s slave empire. Deterring final attacks through slaughter, thinking Americans “weak” and casualty averse. It’s been the standard method of defeating America ever since.
In short I find you ignorant of history Levi, and filled with self-hatred for your own nation and military of which you should be proud of not ashamed. But then multi-culti nonsense is a religion.
Nice, post – Tom W., I have to comment (sorry, OT) on ‘A very long engagement’.
A brilliant move. The war sequences, done in surrealistic style, are perfectly suited to the graveyard-humour remembrances of the characters.
And what a great ending…
(spoiler alert)
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The male romantic lead was caught by a shell blast and suffered total amnesia. He doesn’t remember anything of the war, and is as innocent and happy as the boy the heroine remembers!
Poignant and pitiful; comic but deadly serious. Man, I love French movies.
I have to agree with your assessment of Eastwood’s PC effort to paint the murderous commanders on Iwo as some sort of modern day ‘saints’, and Americans as ruthless killers of unarmed captives (which I’ve never heard happening on Iwo). It was an awful film, and Eastwood should hang his head in shame for what he was attempting to do (same for his Million Dollar Baby, a careful retelling of Goebbels award winning film at the Venice Film Festival).
I very much disagree that Hollywood thinks war is bad. But since the late 1970s, Hollywood tends to think that Republicans conducting wars are bad. A film about Clinton’s deployment into the Balkans would be very different, and the same for his failed effort into Haiti. If a Dem is elected President in 2008, all association with foreign wars will be lionized as in the 1940s, because it is a Democrat. Hollywood doesn’t hate war – they hate conservative Republicans. People just don’t get that, even in the 21st century.
Interesting inclusion of “300″ in the litany of recent bad war films, Mr. Crittenden. Many of those who’ve negatively reviewed to the film are deeply-seated pacifists, responding to the film with an admirable Pavlovian predictability. Most people in the younger age bracket (say, late high school through college) who’ve seen the movie take it as an affirmation of those virtues that the Spartans were fighting for: defense of one’s home, family, and the Western way of life; against those who would destroy such things that make life worth living. It fits with the tale of the battle itself — Herodotus was never accused of writing in a “documentary” style for the earliest records of the battle, after all. The detached historian viewpoint wasn’t even invented until a generation later (Thucydides), for a war that practically screamed for the modern-Hollywood “irony” treatment. In fact, Zack Snyder’s film is almost the “Tora Tora Tora” of the younger set–perhaps even on the level of Rockwell’s “Four Freedoms.” If losing the reality of the thousand-yard stare is what it takes to reinvigorate pride in the Western way of life among younger people these days, I’m all for it.
Jim Rockford doesn’t sound like his mellow alter-ego at all. More importantly, he doesn’t sound like he’s actually SEEN the movie in question.
The Japanese are portrayed as (essentially) crazed cultists, at a national and individual level. The hero of our story–the one who humanizes the Japanese–is shown as an aberration, along with one (or two?) high-ranking official, and they’re under constant scrutiny and threat of death from others, living in a society that completely controls the flow of news, and where people chastise (or report!) each other for anything that suggests they might achieve less than full victory.
Also, the technique of booby-trapping corpses is shown.
There is one scene in “Iwo” where one American soldier kills a Japanese soldier who has surrendered (after managing to escape his own people trying to kill him). It’s not portrayed as an admirable thing, but the two guys have the option of sitting around waiting to be ambushed, or killing the guy and moving on. That hardly strikes me as an act of “horrendous evil”, and is the worst thing I can recall any American soldier doing in either film.
Just like I don’t think you could walk out of FOOF without appreciating the value of propaganda, I don’t think you could walk out of LFIJ without realizing that little short of an A-bomb was going to get the Japanese’s attention.
Unless, I guess, you thought US involvement in WWII was of no value. (There are people like that of course but Eastwood surely isn’t one of them.)
Rockford, in your anger, you overlook a few things. No one said that the US was wrong, no one is saying he’s ashamed of the US or the US military, esp. not the American role in WWII. Pointing out the rather obvious fact that there were both admirable and wicked people in both the Japanese and American armies is most certainly not saying their causes were the same or that the US was wrong or Japan right.
Likewise, the Japanese cause being wrong and the Japanese Imperial Army being capable of horrific acts of inhumanity does not at all mean that each individual Japanese conscript was evil or some kind of bloodthirsty, unthinking barbarian.
On the American side, the justice of the American cause and the generally good behavior of American forces does not mean that each individual American was a saint or a hero.
Take a look at what happened at the end of WWII. American Occupation Forces committed thousands of rapes, thefts, and scores of murders. Their behavior, while not among the worst that occupying armies have shown, was bad enough that it was of great concern to GHQ.
You accuse Levi, who made a perfectly valid point, of being ignorant of history, but the writings of many men who were there do not paint a picture of good vs. evil or heroism, but of men in the most terrible situation in which a man could find himself.
And what of the writings of Japanese soldiers?
If you’re actually interested in history, why attack people? Why not study a bit more, grow up a bit, and realize that even soldiers and foreigners are human, with the highest and basest of inclinations.
As for being proud of America, wouldn’t you agree that part of lovign your country or having pride in it is a willingness to asees it honestly while defending it tirelessly? What’s the point in trying hard if America is incapable of wrongdoing?
Garrett,
“As for being proud of America, wouldn’t you agree that part of lovign your country or having pride in it is a willingness to asees it honestly while defending it tirelessly? What’s the point in trying hard if America is incapable of wrongdoing?”
The key word in your question is “honestly”. You won’t get much argument from anyone on the center-right until you veer off into moral equivalence. Nobody claims that our guys, past, present or future are/were choirboys. But it’s statements like this which lead many to question the critics’ motivations:
“Take a look at what happened at the end of WWII. American Occupation Forces committed thousands of rapes, thefts, and scores of murders. Their behavior, while not among the worst that occupying armies have shown, was bad enough that it was of great concern to GHQ.”
I would venture to say that even one incident of the sort you describe was of great concern in 1945 as well as 2007. That’s what separates us from those we fight/fought. Failing to recognize this is where many of us take exception to the Hollywood/leftist characterizations.
Ok. Got it, Hollywood people. War= Icky. Bad. Yuck. Peace= Nice. Good. Yum.
Now, where’s my reality show?
“Disclosure: I haven’t seen this movie, and don’t intend to spend my money on it.”
Then why should I listen to anything you have to say about it?
“Your fanatical, suicidal enemy is human, too.”
As a matter of fact, yes. It would be so much easier if they weren’t, wouldn’t it?
“As a matter of fact, yes. It would be so much easier if they weren’t, wouldn’t it?”
Either way, we’re still going to have to kill them. Deliberately attempting to hamper the ability to do so is not at all helpful.
That footage demonstrates what combat veterans and combat photographers know, but many filmmakers and ordinary Americans, innocent of that variety of carnal knowledge, do not appear to fully grasp.
The use of the phrase “carnal knowledge” suggests that you look to war for whack-off material. Might want to get an editor to check that one out.
Heather:
How is Jules Crittenden’s from-a-safe-distance perspective on soldiering somehow more valid than Susan Sarandon’s?
This is good news for those who want to see success in Iraq and bad news for defeatists.
Movie-makers want all wars, including the one in Iraq, to simply end. So do I, but as it pertains to the situation in Iraq, I suggest this:
Let’s…
End the War (By Winning It)!
Dr BLT (c) 2007
http://www.drblt.net/music/LetsWIN2C.mp3
I say that it’s not time to bring the troops…
Home
Dr BLT & The Coalition of the Willing
Dr BLT (c) 2007
http://www.drblt.net/music/Home.mp3
Disclosure: I haven’t seen this movie, and don’t intend to spend my money on it.
Disclosure: I haven’t read this post, but it is rife with boring, played out conservative hand wringing over the evils of hollywood.
Crittenden: “Your fanatical, suicidal enemy is human, too.”
Dave Trowbridge: “As a matter of fact, yes. It would be so much easier if they weren’t, wouldn’t it?”
As a parent who watched cartoons with children back in the 80′s and early ninteties, I noticed how the Teenage Mutant Turtles and the Transformers and such heroic bands invariably fought off hordes of robots rather than living, sentient beings. They waded into the violence with no reservations, experiencing all the goodness of battle’s adrenaline rush, not having to worry that they were murdering some poor sap who had been forced into killing for the villain of the week. They never had to be concerned about innocent victims in bombarded houses. They never had to face a parent holding the tiny dead body of a son or daughter. Nor did they ever suffer from crippling mutilations or permanently debilitating head wounds.
Sometimes I think people like Crittenden want that kind of experience from a war movie.
The Kingdom is a good, action packed thriller. I think, for people who know nothing about Wahabbi Arabia, this is a good introduction. The last comments made: by a person in Saudi Arabia, “we will kill them all;” and the promise made by the American FBI: “we will kill them all.”
I wonder, where was it filmed?
Also, as to War and its discontents: I have a book by Nicholas Mosley (His father was THAT Mosley), about his time in WWII. His assessment? “War is both senseless and necessary, squalid and fulfilling, terrifying and sometimes jolly. This is like life. Humans are at home in war (though they seldom admit this). They feel they know what they have to do.”
Templar (a revealing nom d’ascii, BTW), killing them merely pushes the problem downstream. Until we address the systemic causes of jihadism, we’ll get nowhere, and dehumanize ourselves in the process.
Cowalker: exactly. As (Lt. Col.) Dave Grossman demonstrates in his wonderful book, On Killing, the only way you can get normal (i.e. non-sociopathic) people to kill other human beings to to train them not to think of them as human.
BTW, I recommend highly Walter Wink’s treatment of systemic violence (what he calls the “Domination System”) in The Powers That Be, where he points out that the longest-lasting myth in human history, which informs both our politics and our entertainment, is the very myth of redemptive violence that you saw in those cartoons. We’re not a Christian nation, but we are trinitarian: unfortunately, the trinity we worship with our actions comprises Tiamat, Marduk, and Moloch: chaos, creative violence, and child sacrifice.