Has the unusual amount of publicity for the upcoming movie "Jarhead"

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

raised eyebrows with you?

You see it continually on every network, broadcast or satellite, it's on The Onion site, tivo gives you a chance to see the trailer...

I'd give a lot to see the money trail to who is financing this publicity. I cannot remember such bombardment of a flick other than "The Passion of the Christ."

Or... Is my tin foil wound too tightly?

[NMDemDist2]

1. it offends me

they are romanticizing death in a war based on criminal lies

but hey, that's just me :shrug:

[Inland]

2. You might be thinking of the wrong war

This one is Gulf I, although there were a few lies to Congress orchestrated in that one, too.

[jobycom]

16. Gulf War I was unjustified, too, IMHO

Bush knew Iraq was going to invade Kuwait, he practically encouraged it, and he invaded only to boost his poll numbers because his previous bloody invasion of Panama had helped him shake the "wimp" image. If you remember at the time, everyone was just waiting for him to invade someone after Panama. When Iraqq invaded Kuwait, it was like his 9-11; he used it as an excuse to make everyone forget how sorry they had governed for a decade.

And there were constant lies. Bush claimed the Iraqis were massing on the Saudi border, and claimed he had satellite photos to prove it. He used that as an excuse to send troops to Saudi Arabia, to escalate a conflict that no one wanted. Bush had people lie to Congress about the Iraqis in Kuwait, claiming they were dumping babies out of incubators, and other standardized accounts of horror.

Gulf I was just as much a lie as Gulf II, but the normal American spin has made it seem justified. The same will happen to the current invasion. Fifteen years from now some Republican will invade another sovereign nation for no reason, and people will look fondly back to the Iraq Invasion as a justified war to stop tyranny, or whichever of Bush's excuses stick.

We had sanctions in place for Gulf War I, yet Bush invaded before the sanctions had a chance to take effect. he lied us into that war, too.

ANd estimates are that over a quarter million people were killed by our troops, and even more by the aftermath as Hussein tried to regain control of Iraq and as the Kuwaiti family purged Kuwait of everyone they felt had been too nice to Hussein. It was a more bloody war than W's war, so far.

[acmavm]

3. Gotta make that war look like a good thing. Enlistments are DOWN.

.

[Catch22Dem]

6. It's a movie about the first gulf war

Not sure we care about enlistments there

[acmavm]

8. War is war is war. Even if it was glorifying WWI it would be the same

thing.

[Howardx]

14. i read the book

it doesnt glorify war imo.

[Telly Savalas]

37. I was gonna say...

I've just seen a TV ad for the movie and it really wasn't clear from the ad that the movie was pro-war. Just because war is the subject matter of the film, doesn't mean it's being glorified.

[Catch22Dem]

42. You said "gotta make that war look like a good thing"

So, to make a war glorifying WWI wouldn't do much for recruitment today. That's all I was saying. My apologies.

Either way, this movie has such an awesome cast, I'm dying to see it.

You know what movie they ought to re-make? All Quiet on the Western Front. I had to read that in college. Would love to see a modern re-make of the movie version.

[jobycom]

4. It's a big udget,big star movie. Promotion seems about right.

Jamie Fox is coming off an Oscar, the movie has a topical interest. IIRC, the book was successful, too. They are hyping it because they think they can rake in big bucks with it.

As for your tin foil hat, everyone's here at DU is wound way too tightly. That's the good and the bad part of DU, rolled into one. :-)

[Catch22Dem]

5. EVERY movie is advertised that way

Every big studio blockbuster movie anyway. Personally, I think it looks like a great movie. I love the cast. Foxx, Gyllenhall, Saarsgard (forgive me for name mispellings)

[enlightenment]

7. Nah. Your tin foil is fine.

Think back to other wars -- movies as propaganda. Hell, without war movies, Reagan would never have become president . . .

This one is annoying, as is the video game (may be more than one, I don't pay too much attention beyond shaking my head) that is promoting the same tired crap.

War is good, war is fun, war will make you a MAN (and you can get close and intimate with other men in a totally non-homosexual kinda way, 'cause everybody knows that soldiers are all about the macho)!

sorry. cranky this morning.
:banghead:

[fudge stripe cookays]

11. Bingo...

Don't worry. I'm cranky too. Our Halloween party was last night, and my head feels like it's going to explode.

This movie sounds exactly like what it is-- an attempt to pull on the sentiments of the public and get enlistments up for all this machoness. I have no desire to see it.

fsc

[RazzleDazzle]

33. I think those of you condemning the movie ought to read the book

on which it's based. You know, develop an informed opinion.

Personally, I have a hard time believing that Jamie Fox would accept a role in a propagandist, pro-war, militaristic movie. I could be wrong, but at least my opinion is based on more than just a few TV commercials. (It's based on seeing various interviews with him in which he revealed himself to be a thoughtful, liberal guy with some depth.)

[LostinVA]

26. No, I think the tin foil hat should come off

The book was 100% not pro-war, and the trailer to me, having read the book, comes off as it should. Jake Gynhall (sic) stars in it, and he and his sister have been outspoken about both Bush and the invasion of Iraq.

Not every movie about war glorifies war; actually, many don't: Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, The Deer Hunter (although that one is sooo racist), movies based on James Jones' books, etc.

[still_one]

9. this is just a movie studio trying to make a buck

if you look at the popularity of the Iraq war, they may not get the audience they want

[LostinVA]

27. This movie isn't about the invasion of Iraq

[still_one]

30. that may be but the previews sure give the impression that it is

[ourbluenation]

10. It's made by the guys that brought us American Beauty...

I'm guessing it will be a quiet indictment of war.

[shoelace414]

12. Saving Private Ryan was a great war movie

was it a pro enlistment movie? was it an anti-war movie? IMHO is was neutral on that point

[belle]

22. Word. Allan Ball is hardly a rightwinger. And it's got Jake Gyllenhaal.

And Kanye West working the soundtrack, and did you see the same trailer I did?? because that sure as shit did not look like a "war is GOOD" promo to me.

I think you guys are seriously leaping to some conclusions that are probably way, *way* off. like, 180 degrees.

[merwin]

13. Aside from being a shameless plug for the Marines,

I think it's going to be a pretty good movie.

Basically, I think that the Marines are a much more disciplined branch of the military. From what I recall, they also weren't really involved in the torture crap that was going on (someone correct me if I'm wrong on that). All I've heard is Army people getting in trouble for that. But the marines are also a tiny part of our military (second only to the coast guard).

But I'm a bit biased on the issue I think, because I've got a lot of family (past and present) who've been in the military.

[Howardx]

15. once again

i read the book and i doubt it will help the marines any, it doesnt paint them favorably.

[RobinA]

18. This Was My Impression

I haven't gotten to the book yet, but when it came out I marked it as something I wanted to read specifically because it was by a Marine and was NOT a rah-rah war piece. They can't market it as being in anyway an anti-war movie, even if it is, because that would kill it before it even opened. This isn't 1968. We just had a presidential candidate who went to war, came home and protested that war based on what he experienced there, and was seriously dinged by voters for doing so. This is an "up is down" era, you can't overtly say "war is hell" and expect to be applauded by Joe and Betty Average.

[unrepuke]

17. Pure propaganda, my 2¢, from the trailers. Haven't read the book,

or seen the movie, but I know far more many people will see the flick than will read the book. Any book. Especially young people. Having seen Hollywood productions before, I doubt the movie will follow the book very closely.

Every time that trailer comes on I cringe. Hooo - yah. "Bring 'em on"

The kids don't even need to see the movie to get all Gung Ho, just the ad.

[FlashHarry]

19. Did we watch the same trailer?

It looked like an anti-war movie to me. Taking a young, naive fresh-faced recruit and turning him into an angry, disillusioned vet.

This is from Sam Mendes. There's no way this is a pro-war flick. Trust me. This is the Three Kings of the 00s.

[belle]

23. THANK you. honestly, some people here...

[unrepuke]

29. Maybe there is more than 1 trailer. The one I've seen looks just like

the Rah Rah Be All You Can Be promos.

[Qanisqineq]

35. Me too

that's all I've seen... no disillusioned angry vet in the trailer. Just Jamie Foxx saying he loves his job while things blow up and an annoying song playing over it all about "Jesus walks" or something.

Oh yeah, and a whole lot of "hoo-yahs" -- or whatever, silly marines :P (but that's coming from an army wife).

[LostinVA]

28. I absolutely don't see the trailer like that

Kanye Wes is playing, for goodness' sake, and I guarantee the movie will be close to the book, and thus against war. Why? Because of who is making and starring in the movie! You have some of the most progressive people in Hollywood doing this....

Geez. The trailers are no different from Platoon. Sometimes people on DU just like that tinfoil hat a bit too much. Sometimes, it doesn't fit. Alan Ball is most certainly NOT making a pro-war movie. Ever watch "Six Feet Under"?

[RazzleDazzle]

38. It's not tin foil, it's that goddamned knee-jerk reaction

They can't even bother to observe the trailer with anything but a knee-jerk mentality on the subject of war.

I LOVE that trailer. I love the music (glad to hear it's Kanye West), I love everything about it except how short it is. And I definitely want to see that movie.

My take on the movie from watching the trailer a couple dozen times: it hints at a movie about a young man who wanted the Marines to give him the world and he ain't gonna get nothin' but disillusioned, and maybe worse.

That's no pro-war, pro-Marine message in my book. Of course, that's MY TAKE on the move from MY TAKE on the trailer, and I could be wrong but I'll lay odds my take is closer to the real movie than some of the knee-jerk anti-war assumptions about it posted here.

[Lexingtonian]

20. Naw.

It's an old saw in the movie industry that all war movies are anti-war movies. The more actual warfare you show, the more the audience understands that on the battlefields all wars run out of rational reasons, that it's just barbarism in that time and place.

Have a look at reviews of the book 'Jarhead' at e.g. Amazon. It's not a pro-war book. And the promo clips shown on TV are clearly high grim irony and gallows humor: look at us, we're sweet and pretty and proud...now watch us fall into the shit and drown.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

21. "Jarhead" (book) is NOT a "hoo-ah" celebration of war. But the author,

Swofford, has an interesting take on war films in general:

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...

As a young man raised on the films of the Vietnam War, I want ammunition and alcohol and dope, I want to screw some whores and kill some Iraqi motherfuckers.

Swofford is a guy with some brains and education who joined the Marines and was a sniper in Gulf War I. Subsequent to getting out, I think he trained at the writer's workshop in Iowa, and wrote "Jarhead". He also wrote some kind of op/ed piece in the NYT either during or after his Marine stint.

I do view the promotion for "Jarhead" to be about typical for a big budget film release of any type.

[alcibiades_mystery]

31. You read the Harper's article too, huh?

I thought it was super interesting.

:-)

His conclusion was that perhaps Jarhead can escape the fate of all the other supposed anti-war films (that of being turned into war-pornography, essentially), both by highlighting the role films play in producing that kind of war fever among the troops (the Apocalypse Now scene) and by being a weird kind of war inversion, in that the hero, a trained Marine sniper, never fires one shot the entire war. It is a war film without any actual....fighting. And in being so, it may escape the comic inversion whereby an anti-war film is shown to Marines at Twenty-Nine Palms in order to get them psyched up for the war.

[sleipnir]

24. My guess is that it's probably Hollywood hoping to have one hit this year.

It's not a Pro-War or Pro-Marines film, BTW.

From what I hear, it's not really even a "WAR" film...It's more like a Post-Modern play in which little happens and what does seems mundane, in spite of the extraordinary circumstances.


My bets are on this to be one of the best films of the year.

[LostinVA]

25. The book "Jarhead" was not pro-war, and the actor starring

in it is very anti-war and anti-Bush.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

32. Sam Mendes is a good leftie too

I'm intrigued to see how they pull off the abject terror that Swofford describes.

[Lisa]

40. and another actor, Chris Cooper, spoke out during his Oscar speech

... in favor of peace. (His comments were almost overlooked because most of the media attention focused on Michael Moore's speech later that evening.) Besides "Jarhead", Cooper is also appearing in "The Road Back", which examines the impacts of the war on the soldiers' families -- and "Syriana" (with George Clooney), which criticizes the role of the oil industry in causing conflict.

With his "Best Supporting" award, Cooper has plenty of offers coming in, I'm sure -- but I think it says a lot that he's going with films like these.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

34. This is one of the greatest things about DU.

I was not aware of the book or its writer, but am still out on if the movie is pro or anti war (however, after the reports from those who are familiar with the source, I would hope that it maintains integrity to the original story).

You guys are a great and informative group of folks!

[LiberalPartisan]

36. Righties are up in arms over Jarhead

They say it spits on our troops.

Apparently only movies that show complete dedication to our righteous and God given mission will suffice: read - any and all application of US military force is always a good thing and to be encouraged.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

39. Welcome to DU, LiberalPartisan!

I wonder how they know b4 the movie has been released....

Reminds me of Al Franken's pointing out how he got bad reviews B4 his book was even on the shelves.

[demobabe]

41. The production notes and HBO preview...

...keep comparing Jarhead to Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye, which to me doesn't sound like it's going to be any glorified view of war or the Marines.

It is directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty), a leftie - should be interesting to see what he does.

I haven't read the book, but from the previews I've seen, it looks like it's going to be another "this is what the war is really like" - a la Full Metal Jacket or Apocalypse now - except it's dealing with the first Gulf War where boredom comes into play.

Each war is different, and I'm really not looking forward to the movies that come out of the current Iraq War.

[DanCa]

43. Good point but I can't see this film regardless of the politics.

I have lost all desire to see "war and killing films" since the invasion of IRAQ. I hope this doesn't make me a whimp, I just can't stand the thought of someing getting shot at.