Kanye now helping recruit troops!

[Kevin Spidel]

This bugs the hell out of me.

I posted this here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=164395&mesg_id=164683

But had to repost it here.

Can you belive that of all of what Kanye West stands for... event the lyrics in "Jesus Walks" is not that of a fundi' christian right winger. It is about HIS faith, and the war we have inside of US.

But that music is now being used to pimp out Jarhead.

A movie about Desert Storm.

But what will America see...

War against Sadam... in Iraq... for a legit reason... with hiphop music being used to inspirational to take arms and serve your country.

I am NOT against taking arms and serving your country.

I am all about calling this an illegal, immoral war. Many youth will see this movie, get inspired, and sign up to serve.

They will be taken to Iraq, just like the movie. But they will join an illegal, immoral war. They will kill for this President.

And this movie... this trailer... is a recruiting tool!

Damn it.. Kanye.. why did you let them use your track!

sad.


On edit: I have not read the book, nor the movie. This is about the trailer, and the message the TRAILER sends. It is very much a cheerleading movie. I was in a classroom of kids who said "Bad ass!" "Look they are going to kill Sadam!" "My brother is in the army and is in Iraq, I will be there too when I get out of school." This is only about my reaction to hearing High School kids see this as a cheerleading movie for the war in Iraq. Most of these kids, when asked, did not plan to see the movie. All they see is the trailer. The trailer, is the recruiting tool. Is all I am saying. And I am bummed Kanye's song is on it.

[unpossibles]

1. I don't know much about it

but I heard this was not a very pro-war movie. I plan on looking into it more.

[Kevin Spidel]

3. that is not the point.. the trailer is...

Most youth and minorities will not see the movie. Most only see the tv trailer. And that is billed as a recruiting tool. With his music.

[vi5]

15. Can you explain how it is being "billed as a recruting tool"

Honestly I really can't make heads or tales out of anything you are posting in this thread.

[villager]

2. the book it's based on doesn't seem very pro-war, either

n/t

[rinsd]

4. How can you call it a recruiting tool before you see it?

A bunch of people did the same with "Over There" and to be frank if someone signs up based on that show they should be rejected for lack of intelligence. Of course that should be true of any film or tv show but still.

[Kevin Spidel]

5. I am talking about the TRAILER - NOT the movie...

Most of the innercity youth just see the trailer... not the movie.

[rinsd]

14. Just watched the trailer....

...didn't find it pro-war or badass at all.

We'll just have to have a difference of opinion on this.

[BL611]

6. What!?

Have you read the book the movie is based on? I t happens to be an excellent, even handed book, and as someone who has served in the desert I can say a very accurate book. If after watching a fair, even handed movie about war a young person decides that they want to serve their country, more power to them. As for your quote "I am NOT taking arms and serving your country", assuming your an American its your country too, maybe when the left stops acting like hypocrite's just trying to abdicate the responsibilities of living in our nation this country will stop electing jackasses like Bush.

[msongs]

7. making up lost income because of file "sharing" ? :-)

he is in it for the money and the commerce as well as any art that may be created, if any art is created by him at all.

why not make a few bucks from movie sound tracks?

its america, baby.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/clark2008.htm

[nonconformist]

8. I saw the trailer yesterday... didn't strike me as pro-war at all. nt

[neoteric lefty]

17. exactly. I got the exact opposite feeling as the original poster.

It seems very gritty and realistic (along with a few funny moments). Looks very interesting and has a lot of actors that I like. Plus, it is from the director of American Beauty, which is stil one of my personal favorites.

Sorry, but I totally disagree with the trailer being pro-war. If someone joins up because of this trailer, then chances are he/she was going to join up anyway. Nothing is wrong with young men and women, like myself, joining the armed forces for any number of reasons. The problem is when our "leaders" send them to kill and die for no reason (and when I say no reason, I mean no worthy reason). I for one am going to see this film.

[Lucille]

9. Why do you think "Jarhead" is prowar ?

In the Truthout article you linked to, the Cindy Sheehan told how she had to close her eyes when the trailer came on because it brought to life her son's tragedy. However, no where does she give the sense that her discomfort was because of the pro-war slant of the movie.

This is IMDB plot summary, which hardly makes it sound like a recruitment film:

Jarhead (the self-imposed moniker of the Marines) follows "Swoff" (Gyllenhaal), a third-generation enlistee, from a sobering stint in boot camp to active duty, sporting a sniper's rifle and a hundred-pound ruck on his back through Middle East deserts with no cover from intolerable heat or from Iraqi soldiers, always potentially just over the next horizon. Swoff and his fellow Marines sustain themselves with sardonic humanity and wicked comedy on blazing desert fields in a country they don't understand against an enemy they can't see for a cause they don't fully fathom... Foxx portrays Sergeant Sykes, a Marine lifer who heads up Swofford's scout/sniper platoon, while Sarsgaard is Swoff's friend and mentor, Troy, a die-hard member of STA-their elite Marine Unit.

The director is Sam Mendes, whose previous work includes "Road to Perdition," "Caberet," and "American Beauty," films that have a little more nuance than a recruitment film.

[LoKnLoD]

10. George Bush hates black soldiers

[Kevin Spidel]

11. Cindy mentions this movie in her latest article...

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/101305Y.shtml

[Lucille]

16. Yes, she says she kept her eyes closed when the trailer came on

because of her grief she couldn't bear to watch. All she heard was a someone tell the soldiers "good luck."

[neoteric lefty]

19. Can you blame her for not wanting to watch it.

I don't think she really has a problem with the movie itself. Her grief and anger at the situation and our so-called "leaders". Can you blame her?

[belle]

12. Uhhh, Jarhead is being directed by Allan Ball, no? Hardly pro-war.

[vi5]

13. Uh, you might want to see the movie or read the book first...

First off it's about Gulf War 1 not this war (at least the book is/was). Secondly it's a fairly unflinching look at the dehumanizing aspects of being a marine in that war and how fucked up it was.

Sorry, but if you think any kid is going to join the military based off of a movie trailer you seriously must be really hard up to find a boogey man to rant about.

If a vague trailer gets them in the theater to see a movie or read the book which enlightens them to how things REALLY are then good for the trailer.

[madfloridian]

18. Here is a Salon review from 2003....

I don't think this movie is supposed to glorify war.

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2003/03/10/jarhead/index.html

The last 3 paragraphs are powerful:
But Swofford is smart, and, like most of his fellow Marines, he knows he suffers and may die to secure America's access to oil fields he'll never profit from. "None of the rewards of victory will come my way, because there are no rewards, not on the field of battle, not for the man who fights the battle -- the rewards accrue in places like Washington, D.C., and Riyadh and Houston and Manhattan, south of 125th Street." This is how it works now; a nation's rulers no longer lead their people into battle as Charlemagne once did. Even the middle class mostly manages to keep itself out of the fray. The soldiers come from a social strata that's not "us," which makes it that much easier for those who watch from the sidelines to wax hawkish -- and turns the lives of fighting men into an object of marveling curiosity.

Not surprisingly, his tour of duty makes Swofford feel like a chump, and in the portions of "Jarhead" that describe his life after he gets out of the Marines, he wants nothing more than to shake off his former identity. Hatred of the Corps feeds into self-hatred for being the type of guy who enlisted, like a snake eating its own tail. The feeling that he and his comrades "would always be jarheads" plagues him. There are varieties of pain in "Jarhead," submerged beneath the terrors of battle and the pangs of a rotten crotch, so exquisite they'd do a torturer proud.

The biographical information on the book's jacket flap explains that Swofford attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and it's easy to imagine him there, this guy who read "The Iliad" during breaks in weapons training. I can picture him striving to make a new, better life that transcends the "loneliness and poverty of spirit" of his jarhead adventures, while surrounded by fresh-faced, unscarred young aspirants who envy him his fabulous, fabulous material."

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

20. Interesting quote from the book "Jarhead":

Vietnam films are all pro war, no matter what the supposed message, what Kubrick or Coppola or Stone intended…because the magic brutality of the films celebrate the terrible and despicable beauty of fighting skills. Fight, rape, war, pillage, burn. Filmic images of death and carnage are pornography for the military man, with film you are stroking his cock, tickling his balls with the pink feather of history, getting him ready for his First Fuck.

[madrchsod]

21. don`t know about the film

but i doubt west had alot to say about the song in his movie,unless he owns everything involved with that song. if he does maybe he thinks the song and movie fit