A Soft Focus on War: How Hollywood hides the horrors of war

[marmar]

from In These Times:



A Soft Focus on War
How Hollywood hides the horrors of war.

By Slavoj Žižek


When Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker won all the big Oscars over James Cameron’s Avatar, the victory was perceived as a good sign of the state of things in Hollywood: A modest production meant for independent festivals clearly overran a superproduction whose technical brilliance cannot cover up the flat simplicity of its story. Did this mean that Hollywood is not just a blockbuster machine, but still knows how to appreciate marginal creative efforts? Maybe—but that’s a big maybe.

For all its mystifications, Avatar clearly sides with those who oppose the global Military-Industrial Complex, portraying the superpower army as a force of brutal destruction serving big corporate interests. The Hurt Locker, on the other hand, presents the U.S. Army in a way that is much more finely attuned to its own public image in our time of humanitarian interventions and militaristic pacifism.

The film largely ignores the big debate about the U.S. military intervention in Iraq, and instead focuses on the daily ordeals of ordinary soldiers who are forced to deal with danger and destruction. In pseudo-documentary style, it tells the story—or rather, presents a series of vignettes—of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) squad and their potentially deadly work of disarming planted bombs. This choice is deeply symptomatic: Although soldiers, they do not kill, but daily risk their lives dismantling terrorist bombs that are destined to kill civilians. Can there be anything more sympathetic to our liberal sensibilities? Are our armies in the ongoing War on Terror (aka The Long War), even when they bomb and destroy, ultimately not just like EOD squads, patiently dismantling terrorist networks in order to make the lives of civilians safer? ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5864/a_soft_focus_on_war

[saulmart]

1. "Redacted" came the closest (of the ones I've seen)

But I don't think for half a second that it truly came anywhere near the actual horror!

[paulsby]

2. i just rented avatar last night and... blech...

i hadn't seen it at the theaters. the imagery was great, of course (and of course would have been much better on a huge screen and in 3-d)...

but the movie itself? regardless of the theme, it was simply mediocre at best

i thought hurt locker was far far better

fwiw, i admit i did not even finish the movie. i watched all but the last 1.2 hr. i became so bored, i decided to go to bed. will watch the rest tonight probably, just to see how it ends

[Crabitha]

3. To hell with Hollywood, why is the media not covering the war?

If I want to find out what's going on in Afghanistan or Iraq, I have to watch the BBC news.

[Bluenorthwest]

4. This writer is an idiot. It is that simple.

The writer does not understand film, much less how to write about film. And of course the irony of journalist pointing fingers at artists for not telling the truth about war at this time in history is startling.
This drooling coward is not talking about the Hurt Locker, he's whining about the film he imagines it should be, not the film Bigelow made, the film the author never bothered to make, the one he could not make, that was different from, and would have been better than Hurt Locker, had he actually been capable of making it. The Hurt Locker simply is not the film this writer wanted it to be. He demands a film about the 'debate on intervention'. Ok. He should make one. The Hurt Locker is not that film, does not need to be, should not be, and is perfectly sufficient as the film it wanted to be and the film it is. Like the 'critics' who hated Stone's WTC film because it was about people not about politics, or those that whine that while Woody Allen shows NY beautifully, he never addresses the transportation or housing issues of that metropolis, he is failing his job, because he is not talking about the film at hand. Do we complain about Shrek not addressing divorce, or about Citzen Kaine not having musical numbers? Same thing.
The author should get up and make the didactic, pedantic, plodding, debate movie he envisions as being 'the right movie'. A film all about the debate over invasion. Seems the author dreams that those who defuse bombs do so while debating fine points of geo politics. He should make that film. He really should. If he is able to. Or, he could do some reporting on the war, the debate, the crimes. Instead, he 'reports' on films. Whatever. I think this review should have been a look at the reasons for the continued invasion, as seen from the perspective of a tea vendor in Bagdad, but it was not. It was a whining film 'review' instead.

[Paladin]

5. Nicely Put. (n/t)

[alarimer]

8. I agree. The film was fine as it was.

It wasn't pro-war or anti-war and yet it STILL got criticized by military types for not glorifying war enough.

[proteus_lives]

6. The author of this dreck seems to take offense at what?

That the film didn't have a 20 minute speech on why we shouldn't be there?

That U.S. soldiers weren't depicted eating babies and shouting, "Oil! Empire!"

I don't think he even saw the movie.

[alarimer]

7. Because our tax dollars pay for military consultants for some pictures.

But, notably, not The Hurt Locker. The military was very involved in Transformers for example, lending support and equipment. I would guess that buys them a more favorable treatment. (But I never saw that piece of crap Transformers so I can't say for sure).

I honestly do not think our military needs to be involved in making movies, any movies. For one thing, it creates an air of propaganda to a film, at least for me it does, if I know that the military had a hand in making a film. I think a film like The Hurt Locker is going to be more honest in its portrayals.

But I suspect money and support from the military is one reason why Hollywood portrays war the way it does.