"Hurt Locker": World a stage for Americans to deal with their demons, "a prize for American hubris"

FOLLOW THE LINK, PLEASE...

The Hurt Locker Oscar Win Is a Prize For American Hubris
By Robert Scheer, Truthdig
Posted on March 10, 2010, Printed on March 11, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145984/

What a shame that the one movie about the Iraq war that has a chance of being viewed by a large worldwide audience should be so disappointing. According to press reports, members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences finally found a movie about the Iraq war they liked because it is "apolitical." Actually, The Hurt Locker is just the opposite; it's an endorsement of the politically chauvinistic view that the world is a stage upon which Americans get to deal with their demons, no matter the consequence for others.

It is imperial hubris turned into an art form in which the Iraqi people appear as numbed bystanders when they are not deranged extras. It is a perverse tribute to the film's accuracy in portraying the insanity of the U.S. invasion -- while ignoring its root causes -- that the Iraqis are at no point treated as though they are important. They never have been, at least in the American view. No Iraqi had anything to do with attacking us on 9/11, and while we are happy to have an excuse to grab their oil and deploy our bloated military arsenal, the people of Iraq are never more than an afterthought. Whatever motivates Iraqi characters in the movie to throw stones or blow themselves up is unimportant, for they are nothing more than props for a uniquely American-centered show. It is we who matter and they who are graced by our presence, no matter how screwed up we may be.

SNIP (follow link, it's a shame to cut from this great piece!)

But the real addiction to war is not that of hapless soldiers, those troops that the filmmakers insisted on applauding as they clutched their Oscar statuettes. Rather, that addiction lies in the lust for power and profit among those who sent the soldiers to Iraq to kill and be killed in a war known to our leaders to have been undertaken for false purposes...

Bringing up such crass motives presents an inconvenient truth for those who believe that American foreign policy is driven by higher goals. For them I would point to the example of Clinton-era Ambassador Peter Galbraith, who became a cheerleader for George W. Bush's war. His hawkishness was supposedly based on concern for Iraq's Kurdish population, even though that group was living outside of Saddam Hussein's area of control. After the US invasion Galbraith was an active adviser on the writing of Iraq's constitution and lobbied to include language that gave the Kurds control over the oil in their region. Galbraith was at the time advising a Norwegian company that secured oil rights from those same Kurds, and he, in turn, received 5 percent of one of the most promising oil fields, worth an estimated $100 million.

Don't you think at least one of the soldiers in The Hurt Locker would have known that kind of stuff was going on? If so, it's disrespectful to our troops to have censored such innate GI wisdom.

Robert Scheer is Editor in Chief of Truthdig, where he publishes a weekly column, and author of a new book, The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America.
© 2010 Truthdig All rights reserved.

I'd be interested to see what those who have, think about this review.

Can someone, who actually saw it, provide his/her opinion?

What I saw was a portrayal of an American bad ass "Taking Care of Business" in an alpha-male cowboy way

I wasn't sure if it was pro war or anti war (you see what you want I guess). What I thought it was was pro-soldier glorification, which is what got under my skin

The film was pretty inauthentic according to real soldiers. So either Hollywood took some leaps to make it entertaining, or to create a modern day bomb defusing Rambo.

I saw the film a LONG time ago randomly. It didn't leave a big impression. I honestly thought it was mediocre and not worth discussing. I was very surprised to hear people talk about it in the last few months all of a sudden.

But he was also messed up in the head too, in a pointless war where people were dying without reason. So people thought that made it anti-war.

But Im still not sure. Is gloryfying a badass displaying loyalty and obedience in the face of a senseless war really anti-war? Or is it pro-soldier--a job that can only reach such a paramount existence in wars?

How many people watch it and say, "we should end this mess" (like those who may watch Platoon)?

How many young kids watch it and say, "I wanna be like that"?

Not that it isn't a technically good film- It is. There are some great set pieces. But at it's heart, it's really just an action movie.

The lead is your average lone wolf type. Not playing by the rules... Your typical American action hero. But his actions didn't inspire any of the other characters to act in the same manner. He was still considered a short fuse and I think the scene of him losing it in the shower showed hints to a character that does take extreme risks but doesn't necessarily want to be the way he is. Just my take.

I have not seen the film yet but by all accounts it is not an anti-war film, nor is it anti-soldier so I am not sure what their beef is, exactly.

But it does not seem to be pro-war propaganda, either.

Here is an example: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/for-soldiers-hurt-locker-sets-off-explosions-of-laughter/article1490605/

But those soldiers said they generally liked the movie in that article

I think the movie is definitely pro-soldier (but also depicts a dark side related to the mental effects). But being pro-bad ass American soldier in wartime could be construed as potentiating a pro-war stance (it gives people something to be proud of--to strive for--and a war is necessary for such).

But yeah, definitely strange if service people don't like it. I wouldn't 'get' that.

since it shows an aspect that they don't like portrayed. Like a few other MOS's you need to be particularly nuts to do this job.

And it shows something that NO EOD team would do... try to disable a device WITHOUT all the bulky gear. That is where their criticism is coming from, those few dramatic licenses taken.

Jesus Christ.

praise and awards to a film of this type? people should be able to write editorial comments without having the "one liner club" coming in and oversimplifying things by telling people to get over it.

Did you know that one can post links to articles they like, even if they're "over it"?

What I'm not over is the crime of aggressive war, mass murder, and profiteering by the war criminals, from which the focus on the tragic stories of individual soldiers on "our" side is a mere distraction.

That's all that article is. Self important bloated word vomit.

:puke:

thought provoking commentary from some who had seen it. Instead yet another dozen word attack on their post, and nothing about what you think of the film or anything to do with film whatsoever.

But I have answered posts like this on this board for over the past two weeks

I'm tired of being smart and eloquent about this topic because it obviously doesn't help.

The movie is excellent. It shows the mind set of modern-day Marines and Army Troops as they function in a battlefield where their only mission (to them) is to survive. Is it full of Machismo? Of course, cause so is the Army. Does it glorify what they do? No, but it sure as hell shows them enjoying it, because some of them do.

Anyone who thinks this movie is a piece of pro-war propaganda, or chauvinistic whatever obviously had bias going into the movie about how the Iraq war is all about corporations etc. Honestly troops over there don't really care, they honestly really truly don't. All they know is that they are there, and they are doing what they do, then they come home and desperately try to turn it off.

there. Happy now?

mean spirited at some point. it's a discussion board - if you get tired of posting eloquent responses - walk away. Thanks for the review.

Wasn't trying to being mean..just snarky, it's still early on the west coast and I'm only 2 coffees deep.

macho-BS wrapped up in a story about guys defusing bombs, or there really is something deep and amazing there that warrants it beating ever other film last year for Best Picture.

the plodding monotony. After the first twenty minutes I was about to switch it off, - is that all there is? what's the big deal about this movie - I've seen it in different titles about 1537 times already.

but
after giving it a few more minutes I found something quite different, at least in my movie experience. It was that minute by minute almost boring footage that brought me as close to a scene in a movie as I've ever been I think. I felt it, smelled it, was sort of really there all stressed out and melting in the Iraqi sun.

Maybe because it was from a woman's directors point of view? I don't know, but it 'felt' different from most movies of this kind.

but still its a piece of junk glorifying mass robbery of a nation and its peoples.

*spits

A decision to remove overt politics from an inherently political milieu IS a political choice.

It is much the same as deciding to not make a decision is, itself, a decision.

(edited for fumblefingers)

wimpering about soldiers fighting for our freedom in Iraq or some such stupid nonsense.

"I’d just like to dedicate this to the women and men in the military who risk their lives on a daily basis in Iraq and Afghanistan and around the world. And may they come home safe.”

No freedom fighting mentioned--just a plea for their safety.

You know, before they actually DO come home, before the truth that they have no business being where they are is universally recognized, they ARE going to be risking their lives, and there's nothing un-Liberal with acknowledging that fact.

iirc. I may be a bit off paraphrasing - I don't have the exact words of each time she spoke, but it certainly was the same old about how 'our' freedoms are protected. yada yada yada. that Bush and his stooges yammered on about for all those years.

btw. I suppose most know here that Bigelow is an ex of Cameron's, or vice versa.

I find it interesting that they were put against each other at the Oscars for such similar yet different concepts in their movies of conquest.

Cameron chose the more fantasical (and some say too simplistic) setting but much more realistic in the way of history and the world of the conquered and the conqueror, while Bigelow chose the more 'might is right' concept and the glorious U.S. and its mercenaries - rah rah rah.

For the people who serve, politics is the farthest thing from their mind during a combat situation.

This is a fictional story, based on the experiences of some of who HAVE been in that position, so the point still stands.

as the best cinematic effort from last year.

Has anyone seen it? Would like to hear DUers thoughts on the film.

That anyone could for a moment have the idea that a US movie that heroizes US soldiers in Iraq and tells the story entirely from their perspective, showing how they deal with their personal traumas as the 27 million Iraqis are reduced to extras, victims and monsters, is NOT POLITICAL, presents yet another holographic piece of why Americans are such willing idiots.

Did you see the movie?

When did it say "thank you for your service in Iraq"?

Was it when they were dying in the desert?

Or when they were disarming the body bomb?

OR how about when the specialist was dealing with the guilt of a death he thought he could've prevented

OR When he broke down crying when he thought the kid came back to life

OR when he couldn't adjust to living life with his wife and child and threw himself back into harms way?

OR when that poor man had the bomb locked to his body? Sure he was a victim but it is the truth. They have done that.

You tell me, what part of the movie specifically "Heroized" them?

I'll take her word over yours. More people saw her than will ever see the movie. She didn't lose a word on any Iraqis, who were exclusively extras, plus one child victim and a whole bunch of monsters.

Many movies show horrors of war and are still apologia or recruitment films.

Any movie exclusively from the perspective of a soldier in an invading army is an apologia.

For the rest, go to Post 23.

devastation to the people there... instead it was crickets unless I missed something.

or in the thinking of the Academy that gave the awards.

Which they would have never done last year, you can be certain. Now that Obama's in, it's all right to make up for their sin of not having supported Bush's war.

Below. Wikipedia is good for a lot of things!

I am NOT giving $11 dollars (actually $22, since I don't go alone) to obvious propaganda. It's on my Netflix queue (so they'll get 30 cents, whatever).

I have seen dozens of films in the genre, I know the director, I saw the trailer and I know the plot. The same way that I know what's in "Saw VI," I know what's in THIS without having to subject myself to it in a theater. It's war pornography and a recruitment film, like two dozen other propaganda vehicles I've seen. (Doesn't matter if war is depicted as horrific; if the perspective is entirely of the soldier on our side and his pathos, then it ennobles participation in the war.)

Above all, unlike apparently many people here, I know that the government of the United States, my country, planned and committed an aggressive war, invading a foreign country that posed no threat, resulting in the death of a million people and the displacement of four million refugees, as well as irreparable harm to that country and its future generations.

When the nation that perpetrated crimes against humanity produces a film that focuses entirely on the psychological struggles of one of its soldiers and completely ignores the Iraqis except as extras and a few evil monsters, then the last thing you can call it is APOLITICAL. It's an incredible dodge. Everywhere we turn, "the troops" have been used as the device for obscuring the crime of the war.

And it ends with the psychopath deciding his wife and little baby back in the US are boring, so he signs up and goes back to his beloved "drug" to participate some more in the crime, which supposedly he isn't even aware of because he's "apolitical."

"Apolitical" is the most craven justification for collaboration in crime yet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hurt_Locker

During the early stages of the post-invasion period in Iraq in 2004,<12><13> Sergeant First Class William James, a battle-tested veteran, becomes the team leader of a U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit, replacing Staff Sergeant Thompson, who was killed by a remote-detonated 155mm improvised explosive device (IED) in Baghdad. He joins Sergeant J.T. Sanborn and Specialist Owen Eldridge, whose jobs are to communicate with their team leader via radio inside his bombsuit, and provide him with rifle cover while he examines IEDs. During their missions of disarming IEDs and engaging insurgents together, James's unorthodox methods lead Sanborn and Eldridge to consider him reckless. Tensions mount between James and the other two team members. During a raid on a warehouse that contains a large amount of explosives, James discovers the mutilated body of a young boy. He has been carved up and planted with an unexploded bomb. James is upset, as he believes the boy to be "Beckham," a young Iraqi selling DVDs whom he had befriended.

In the aftermath of a massive car bombing, James leads the EOD team in a search for the perpetrators among a village's back alleyways. Upon separating in a shootout with the insurgents, Eldridge is captured. The other two soldiers then track down and kill the two perpetrators who are dragging an injured Eldridge along with them. He is airlifted to a hospital in Germany for surgery on his shattered leg. Eldridge blames James for his injury, referring to Sanborn's suggestion that the mission, which James had ordered, would have been better suited for an infantry platoon.

The next morning, James is approached by Beckham. The young boy tries to converse with James, who walks by without saying a word. After James fails to remove and disarm a time-bomb strapped to an Iraqi civilian's chest because he ran out of time, the Iraqi dies in the explosion. Sanborn later becomes emotional and confesses to James that he can no longer cope with the pressure of being in EOD. He looks forward to finally leaving Iraq and starting a family.

James returns home to his wife and child and is seen quietly performing various routine tasks of everyday civilian life. Then one night he finally confesses to his infant son that there is only "one thing" that he knows he loves. He is next seen back in Iraq, ready to serve another year as part of an EOD team with Delta Company.

It's on your netflix?

You haven't even seen it????

I can't even...wow.. really?

You are using it more as a vehicle to spout your own views..

You're ridiculous.

Can we lock this board since it obviously is only meant to feed a flame?

Why not? How dare you judge it!

I'm sorry but I didn't go around spewing my views on Saw VI was propaganda and a vehicle for serial killers to recruit and train. The way you are going around talking about the Hurt Locker.

Did you see the Hurt Locker or no?

Second, your beloved Avatar sucked ass. Just like Saw VI. It deserved to lose. Get over it.

wearing sackcloth and ashes, call all the soldiers babykillers, and dedicate the oscar to mumia...

:shrug:

than suck ass rah rah war is hell but aren't we doing great in that protectin' ar freedums thing.

Avatar was war for the grade school community. Good guys, bad guys, dragons, princesses, sword fights and shit.

Hurt Locker was about real war.

and how the conqueror didn't come off looking so great here - thats good enough for me if the warmongers got their shorts and gotch in a knot over it.

Too bad messages like this have to be hidden in 'good guys, bad guys, dragons and princesses' - do you really think a film could POSSIBLY be as popular if there were a real history of american intervention in 3D, about the dirty shitty things and lies that have been kept alive for all these years - the fact that soldiers are used for corporate interests more than the american publics interest?

ha ha.

and Hurt Locker was not about a 'real' war. Its an occupation, not a war. The 'war' is against the people of Iraq if anything else.

You're talking to the wrong person (as usual).

For starters, I'm aware that what the Academy thinks about film art is irrelevant. One need only look at the list of their "bests" through the years to know they are clueless, or themselves very bitter and trapped in their petty popularity politics, or that the process by which they choose ends up producing clueless choices.

They can be as stupid as they are every year, I wouldn't care. (Crash, really now.) In this case, the problem is they've endorsed an apologetic for this government's biggest war crime of the last 10 or 20 years, the reduction once again of a million dead and a nation destroyed to the backdrop of some complicated psychopath's inner struggle. (Even Platoon was like that, which was explicitly antiwar, so this is worse.)

a gnat.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Was it accurate in it's assessment of the way Iraqis were depicted?
Thanks for your input.

bombed at the box office. I would say it was less pro-war then it simply avoided dealing with it directly. It was about what a solider might go through if he was doing this particular job. Being Hollywood, it was not totally accurate. Is anything Hollywood does usually accurate?

In the same way that any movie from any country that focuses exclusively on the psychological troubles of one soldier on "our" side and reduces the other side to caricature or extras is making a statement.

In the same way that any movie about a war, produced in the country that started the war, makes a statement when it claims to be "apolitical."

...in which case, you should make your own goddamn Iraq War movie.

It's not a documentary and the filmmakers have no "responsibility" to stick in every possible facet of the war if they don't want to.

I have no idea how accurate it is, but the way other cultures are treated in film, is very relevant.

are inhuman monsters who mutilate boys and stick bombs in their bodies, just to blow up the grunts.

Whereas the grunts are just looking to defuse the bombs and save little boys who sell porn DVDs. What did the grunts do to those goddamn insurgents? It's not like they're part of an invading army that wrecked everything, killed thousands and then armed and encouraged different sides to massacre each other, is it?

Naw, they're just regular guys dealing with their own problems who want to get home - so they can sign up again!

What a moronic article. :eyes: Anything that doesn't portray soldiers as war criminals or tragic victims is "pro-war"? Really?

The film isn't "pro" or "anti" war. War exists, and the film understands this fact. It is about how individual soldiers deal with war. What this article proves to me is that there is a minority element of "anti-war" ideologues who are, in fact, not just "anti-war" but anti-soldier. This is an anti-soldier article, not an anti-war article. Because God forbid we see any military men or women as anything other than villainous bloodthirsty savages :eyes:

...of the country they represent.

Likewise, they can't see the experience of a soldier in a foreign country as anything other than a representation of the war itself. They expect a soldier's story to (wrongly) be political because they see the war (correctly) as political. It's very dehumanizing, although of course, so is war.

This is the same for people on BOTH sides of the spectrum.

Some comments in this thread suggested that anything that "celebrated" the "gladiator" (aka, soldier) mentality was Bad, which leads me to think that they just can't deal with anything that portrays soldiers fighting a war of which they disapprove in a positive or neutral light. But you're ultimately right, because they can't, in the words of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, separate the war from the warrior.

How were the Iraqi people portrayed in the film? Were they real, live human beings, or was Iraq and its people just the canvas on which the story was painted? It sounds from the posts so far that there was a lot of time devoted to the actions, feelings and relationships of the soldiers, but could the story have been told in Afghanistan or Vietnam or any other interchangeable war staging area? Was there anything unique to Iraq about the movie? That seems to be Scheer's beef with the movie, that the people and country of Iraq don't really seem to be a character.

Now, depending on the story the movie wants to tell, I don't suppose there's anything wrong with that. But it does point up a certain "America First, Last and Always" mentality that an American war movie doesn't really need a setting to be filmed, because it doesn't matter where our military goes, the story's always the same.

Distantly, suspiciously, foreign.

The film does exactly what it's supposed to, given the context.

Scheer's beef with the film is that it one best Oscar. He's grossly exaggerating the movie's faults because he's bitter. This happens every single year.

It's an exploration of how war can twist the mind of those who fight it, and how that damage can be both deep and permanent. It was set in Iraq because it's timely, but the same story could have easily been set in WW2, or Vietnam, or Korea.

The OP blasts it because it treats the Iraq war as a canvas, but that's sort of the point. It's not a film about the Iraq war, it's a film about the mentality of soldiers and the impact war has on their minds.

I didn't find that offensive at all. There are a million stories that a writer could set in the Iraq war, and he chose this one. I'm not going to blast him because the movie didn't adequately cover the other 999,999 stories too.

I appreciate the posts.

It was the story of how four soldiers were effected by performing terrible work in bad circumstances. That being said they did portray Iraqis as being excellent snipers.


FSH

Well there is the story of the boy who sells DVDs to the soldiers...to get close to them, and is used.

There is the story of the same boy killed in quite a gruesome way not by the Americans but the Iraqi resistance, and we all know that has not happened in any war evah.... :sarcasm:

There is the story of the suicide bomber that decides not to, but the poor EOD guy cannot disable the device in time... and yes I suspect that somewhere that has happened.

So no, it is not JUST about the Americans. It does try to show, albeit from the US POV, an alien culture that is also dealing with this.

So yes, they do show the IED operator watching from far away and running when the EOD team disables the device... that scene wasn't particularly jarring or surprising given who is telling the story.

Why it reminded me a LOT of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. Remember the scene where the German Soldiers go to the French Farmer's home? We never quite see that scene from the French POV, now do we? But it is effective.

Now truly what this is about is how war makes those involved in the act feel strangely alive. That is a message that sadly... unless you've been there done that, is not that clear. Nor is it clear in All Quiet, which is about the same as well. But on this one you will have to trust me, when you are under fire, you feel strangely, euphorically, alive. If you've live through it you know it, at a gut level. If you haven't, well you will have to trust me. And how war, for those involved in the act, is a drug, a powerful drug. It is the same as All Quiet, but I guess these days Erich Mariah Remarque's novel is pro war too. Partly this is the fact that less than 5% bear the burden, and the rest bicker about it on a good day, or chiefly go with their lives not giving a fuck. Why the movie got an Oscar, but wasn't that wide spread in theater distribution. Now talk about the demons of empire. Hurt Locker is a mirror, but not exactly the movie, the reaction to the movie.

They aren't being ignored. They are being paid.

Remember, its a movie to entertain people, not a social experiment or statement.

That claim IS a statement.

And how well the extras are paid isn't relevant.

At least The Hurt Locker had some depth.

Weirdly false dichotomy. Let me know if you can find me on record here supporting "Avatar."

I don't even care what the Academy picks - they're almost always embarrassingly wrong. In this case, however, they're providing a reward for pro-war propaganda disguised as a deep, psychological, understanding treatment of one soldier. It's not "apolitical," it's depoliticized as a strategic marketing move.

This week I'm probably giving my $11 to Green Zone. Looks like some great action, at least, and maybe I won't feel afterwards that I supported an apologetic for the US aggressive war and war crimes in Iraq.

Films don't necessarily have to be aimed at everybody. Film making is a business, not a humanitarian project.

"Hurt Locker" has grossed $14 million. "Green Zone" will beat that in one weekend.

Maybe American audiences aren't (always) the chumps you make them out to be.

For an award that is a product of audience popularity refer to the People's Choice awards.

Who brought "American audiences" into this?

The article mentions the film's possible worldwide appeal and also mentions the Academy Award voting system. My point is that movies are (usually) a money making project. I think it would be hard enough to aim at a worldwide audience appeal. I think the movie chose to aim at US audiences--it paid off in some ways.

instead of the movie they made. But the film didn't...

hey that's an interesting movie idea too, go write a script instead of complaining.

no film or literature departments, either. Really, no history or any examination of things as they are, since that would be empty bitching about how things should be. (End stage of this logic: If you don't like America, go live in __________!)

This is the same argument that people used in defense of Bush - he's doing what he and his voters want, if you don't like it, vote him out. Accusations of election fraud (or in this case propaganda) are sour grapes.

And I've heard a million other dodges in this vein. Anyone criticizes a "successful" phenomenon, they're called "haters" or "jealous."

Of course they didn't make the movie I wanted! They made a depoliticized apologetic for US genocide in Iraq. I guess that's the movie you wanted.

in fact, it is more like oh All Quiet in the Western Front kind of school.

But hey that wasn't an anti war movie either... :sarcasm:

Apolitical... my ass.