There’s a war going on,
but it’s not the one on the screen, in which Chris Kyle is fighting the Iraqi
Army. It’s the propaganda
war on the internet, in which the Right and Left are
battling it out using opinion pieces, blogs and magazine articles as their
weapons. Since the internet was first introduced, both sides have saturated it
with words and images to get their ideas across. And I’m no stranger to this
war. At times I’ve picked sides and shared articles, written opinion pieces and
even made videos articulating my thoughts on how the government should be run.
But now those I usually side with (the Left) are employing tactics I typically
equate with the other side (the Right). And by that I mean they’re reacting to American
Sniper with hysterical, surface-level interpretations that would
make a Fox News morning co-host gleam with pride.
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| Bradley Cooper as Chris Kyle |
Political Questions
about an Apolitical Film
The Right has always
taken things out of context to prove political points. Most famously Ronald
Reagan misinterpreted “Born in the USA” as a nationalistic anthem when it was
actually a song about how America turned its back on a soldier
returning from
war. Conversely, the writers on the Left I’m referring to have been covering
the events of the last ten years with the finest journalistic skills
imaginable, exposing the lies of the Bush Administration, the schemes that
caused the housing crisis, Obama’s drone program and other injustices that would
have otherwise gone unreported. So why are they so off the mark when it comes
to American Sniper? I suspect when your job is fighting the
propaganda war you have trouble separating politics from all aspects of life,
so when you see a film like American Sniper,
a story set against the backdrop of the Iraq War, your first reaction may be,
“Why aren’t they mentioning George Bush? How can you tell this story without
mentioning him or Cheney?” The thing is, this story is told from the
perspective of Chris Kyle, so he isn’t asking those questions. He thinks he’s
fighting that war against evil. Does that mean that Clint Eastwood thinks Kyle
is fighting a war against evil? No, Eastwood is just presenting the character
and what he’s thinking. How are we supposed to know what’s going on in the mind
of someone who thinks he’s fighting a war against evil if we don’t get inside
his mind and tell the story from his perspective? If we were to make the claim
that Eastwood is pro-war for portraying Kyle as ambiguous and wanting to fight
in the Iraq War, then we have to make the claim that Shakespeare is pro-suicide
because the character of Hamlet is considering the act during his infamous “To
Be or Not to Be” speech. We would also have to make the claim Martin Scorcese is
pro-domestic violence for his unapologetic portrait of Jake Lamotta in Raging
Bull. But as Kathryn
Bigelow said in defense of Zero Dark Thirty,
“depiction is not endorsement”.
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| 'Born in the USA" |
When Stanley
Kubrick expressed his desire to make a war movie (Full Metal Jacket),
screenwriter Michael Herr replied, “You already made Paths of Glory,“ to
which Kubrick replied, “People think of that as an
anti-war film. I want to make a war movie.” Kubrick had already been interested
in exploring the nature of violence in both Clockwork Orange
and The
Shining. Full Metal Jacket
was a continuation of that examination. (SPOILER ALERT!) In it, a simpleminded
soldier becomes a killing machine, so much so he eventually murders his drill
sergeant and himself. The film does not judge the soldier, the sergeant or the
war. It presents war as a troubling aspect of life. With that depiction, one
can start asking the most important question, “Why?”. Had Kubrick tried to get across a political point about war,
the question would’ve been answered already, “War is bad”. With that, we don’t
get to heart of what makes war bad and why it happens. We don’t have a clear
understanding of it, except that it is bad. Clint Eastwood took the same
approach to American Sniper. We all know war is bad,
but unless it is depicted honestly and without judgment, we will never get to
the heart of why it exists.
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| Full Metal Jacket |
Admittedly,
I found certain moments of the film to be riddled with Hollywood hokey-ness and
that’s why American Sniper
won’t go down in history one of Eastwood’s great, like Unforgiven and Letters from Iwo Jima. But it is bold how Kyle is
neither portrayed as a hero nor a villain. He is instead portrayed as a human
being. Any and every human being on Earth is a possible movie subject,
regardless of their occupation or their politics. People are just inherently
interesting. To expect a director, writer or actor to judge a character would
be contrary to what they do. Judging is not their job. Their job is to hold a
reflection up to the world. It is the audience’s job to process what they see
and draw their own conclusions. Had Martin Scorcese judged Jordan Belfort, The
Wolf of Wall Street would’ve been far less complex a film. Instead
he unapologetically presented Belfort’s greed and gluttony and left it to the
audience to decide whether Belfort was a villain or a hero. That is why the
film works so well. Otherwise, it would’ve come across as a pamphlet against
the evil of excess and who the hell wants to read a pamphlet?
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| The Wolf of Wall Street |
The 9/11-Iraq War Connection
The claim that Eastwood
is making a connection between 9/11 and the Iraq War is a reactionary and
misinterpreted one,
as well as the weakest argument against the film. I can
only assume Michael Moore’s interpretation is based on his past experience with
Eastwood’s clunky attempt at humor and not on an actual viewing of the film,
because it was Chris Kyle who made the connection in his mind between 9/11 and
the Iraq War, not Clint Eastwood. This was a story from Kyle’s perspective. How
a creative filmmaker like Michael Moore and comprehensive writers like Matt
Taibbi and Chris Hedges could so easily confuse the director’s intentions with
the character’s is mind-boggling. Blaming the filmmaker for the thoughts of the
character is reflective of the type of hysterical, reactionary thinking one
would expect from Pat Robertson or Bill O’Reilly (And we know how brilliant
they are at movie criticism).
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| BIll O'Reilly |
Obsession and PTSD
At the start of the film,
the country is in favor of the Iraq War and Kyle is ready to serve his country,
but over its course the war becomes increasingly unpopular at home and in Iraq.
The depiction of the war becomes more complex. Who still supports it? Who are
we fighting? Where is the enemy? At one point, Kyle’s brother, who once looked
to impress Kyle by joining the Marines, appears frazzled and shell-shocked from
when they meet in Iraq. “Fuck this place,” he hells Kyle. This depiction of a
unnerved soldier is hardly the pro-war statement writers on the Left will lead
you to believe. At this point in the film, the war becomes a symbol of
uncertainty, not a celebration of the politics of George Bush, as the Left
claims. By the time Kyle finds Mustafa, the sniper who has also been hunting
him, he has put his fellow troops in danger. His determination to kill Mustafa
becomes an obsession. His experience of the war becomes singular. Obsession is an
element of war that can prove deadly. Considering Kyle’s inability to think of
his fellow soldiers at that moment, this scene can be read as an anti-war
statement.
When Chris Kyle returns
home after a tour of duty, he has trouble adjusting to home life and wants to
return to Iraq, where he knows his purpose. He has trouble communicating with
his family and functioning in society. He jumps at the slightest sound and
confuses his life at home with his life at war. How this was perceived as a
pro-war is beyond me. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is the first talking point
the Left uses when arguing about war. Yet, this major theme of the film has been
completely ignored. This leaves me with no other recourse then to wonder, “Did
they even see this movie?”
Historical
Inaccuracies
Claims that American
Sniper is not historically accurate are inapplicable to the
arguments about the film, since American
Sniper
is a work of fiction based on true events. Fictional stories
need not concern themselves with facts, only truths. Facts are for the
documentarian to present—perhaps this is another reason Moore was unable to
comprehend the film’s intentions. A work of fiction can go anywhere it wishes
and should not be obligated to the original source. Had Martin Scorcese not
taken liberties with Jake Lamotta's story, Raging Bull
would've been far less interesting and I'm not sure if there's anyone who
wouldn't consider Raging Bull one of the greatest
works of the Twentieth Century.
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| Raging Bull |
Hysteria
Demonizing a movie to prove
a political point is a tactic usually employed by institutions like Fox News
and the Christian Right, which have never been afraid of taking things out of
context and creating mass hysteria over works of art. Their
maniacal reaction
to rock music, hip hop, video games, television shows, movies, etc. has been
well documented, going back to Elvis Presley. They have been a troubling force
for anyone who believes in free expression. Now the Left seems to be using the
same tactics to express their views.
The question then becomes, what if one day these great minds from the
Left actually obtain the political power they seek? Could the hysteria they are
capable of creating lead to censorship? And who decides what should be censored
and on what criteria it will be based? If someone can watch American Sniper
and ignore the complexities presented, then they are the last people I would
want deciding the fate of art. The demonization of American Sniper
is a dangerous moment in the history of the American Left because it reveals
their inability to see a work of art as it is when driving home a political
point is more important than grasping a clearer understanding of the work.
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| PMRC |
Propaganda
I can almost understand
where the confusion lies. In the Chuck Norris films of
the 1980’s, Chuck jumped out of helicopters and karate kicked the Viet Cong
until justice was served. Those were propaganda films, as are the ones made
today in
which America is attacked, an invasion follows and racist depictions
of the enemy draw a clear line between who is right and who is wrong. But American
Sniper is not one of these films. It does not depict the two sides
of war as black and white. It lives in the grey area of war, where all the
important cinematic questions are asked. And if the Iraqi people are only
depicted as enemies, that’s because Chris Kyle perceived them that way. That
doesn’t mean Clint Eastwood does. Martin Scorcese used the same technique in Taxi
Driver to depict Travis Bickle’s racist perception of
African-Americans. In a very troubling shot, Bickle eyes the black
patrons of a coffee shop. From his view, he only sees pimps and criminals. Does
that mean Martin Scorcese is a racist? No, Scorcese is showing us what is
happening in Bickle’s mind. If we are to give Scorcese the consideration
necessary to understand his film, we must also give it to Clint Eastwood.
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| Taxi Driver |
Clint Eastwood
I suspect the Left is
confusing Clint Eastwood’s personal politics with his films. That is
unfortunate because, with the
exception of Scorcese and Kubrick, there is no
other director in the history of cinema who has so unapologetically depicted
violence in an attempt to understand it. Unforgiven, A Perfect World, Gran
Torino and Letters of Iwo Jima have all helped me
shape an understanding of the world. That is what I get out
of movies. That’s not to say I know what is at the heart of violence. I don’t
and neither does Clint Eastwood. But he is asking those brave questions that
great filmmakers ask. That is all we can expect from him.
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| Unforgiven |
