Okay, Hollywood. Get Into The War.
Author Andrew Klavin addresses an issue That I’ve wondered about for at least the past three years: why no war movies?
We need some films celebrating the war against Islamo-fascism in Afghanistan and Iraq — and in Iran as well, if and when that becomes necessary. We need films like those that were made during World War II, films such as 1943′s “Sahara” and “Action in the North Atlantic,” or “The Fighting Seabees” and “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo,” which were released in 1944.
Not all of these were great films, or even good ones, but their patriotic tributes to our fighting forces inspired the nation.
More than that, they reminded the country what exactly it was that those forces were fighting to defend. Though many of these pictures now seem almost hilariously free with racist tirades against “sauerkrauts,” and “eyeties” and “Tojo and his bug-eyed monkeys,” they were also carefully constructed to display American life at its open-minded and inclusive best.
Klavin notes, though, that there have been war movies lately, just not the war movies we’d recognize.
Since the ’60s, we have had, it seems, an endless string of war movies, from “Dr. Strangelove” to “Syriana,” in which the United States is depicted as wildly aggressive and endlessly corrupt — which, in fact, it’s not; which, in fact, it never has been.
Yes, sometimes the world is very complex and it’s most complex, it seems, when it comes to issues of morality and war. What is not complex is that when you get right down the the very core of things today, we are fighting a war against an enemy that declared it on us, that will use every possible weapon in its arsenal to defeat us, and is fighting us as fiercely as any enemy this nation has ever had.
It’s high time that Hollywood show us some heroes again. It doesn’t matter whether they believe they are heroes or not. In fact, I’m fairly sure that we will have to drag the movie industry kicking and screaming toward this. But we should because, folks, we need to see some heroes in thie war or it’s a distinct possibility that we will lose it entirely.
(h/t: Warren Bell at The Corner)
UPDATE: Welcome back readers of the Daou Report! I think it’s kind of cool that I get more consistently linked by a prominent site on the left than I do by any other prominent sites on the right. Must be something there worth reading. Thanks, guys.
One note. We’re not going to do the Talking Points thing. Comments here ought to be germane and at least generally thoughtful. If you read from the “Bush Lied” script, you’re going to get ignored in quick fashion and there’s a chance I’ll just deep six the comment because I don’t feel like debunking the cliches for the ten thousandth time.
Also a reading suggestion. While Hollywood doesn’t seem to be willing to put out movies where our soldiers are the heroes, the Islamists don’t seem to have a problem at all with it. They manage to save lots of money by not bothering with CGI or visual effects to simulate cuting off a woman’s head. They just cut off a woman’s head.
No related posts.
Category: Fighting the Islamists
Hey Tommo,
Nice Job Bitch Slappign these fools. (post 15)
Hey Mack, interpret that how ever you like. (post 27)
why no war movies?
I dunno, because watching scenes of women and children getting doused with white phosphorus is kind of a bummer for ma & pa, probably.
Thinking further about this, I think the 40's style war movie was killed by Vietnam. When people have had a look at the horror and carnage of war on their TV's, and seen the war movies that grew out of that experience, there's no way the fake heroics of John Wayne could ever be perceived again as anything other that patronizing horseshit. Nobody who didn't think Top Gun was a realistic depiction of pilots and the astrophysicists who love them would find any movie convincing that didn't come to grips with the brutality and futility of war.
If a film were made today portraying war as it appeared on film in the 40's, it would soon find itself laughed into the bargain bin with Invasion U.S.A.
Who came up with that idea? Bill Frist?
Aiabx – I still don't think that a movie is impossible. Think about "Blackhawk Down". A strong presentation of a bad situation that still let the strength and determination of the protagonists shine through. I don't think anybody has stipulated that any depiction of the action has to be a whitewash or a 1940's style John Wayne flag-waver. There are a lot of incredibly brave men and women out there doing some amazing things, and I think that there is plenty of good material out there.
Dom: durrr? eeeeuhhhh? erp?
> We need some films celebrating the war against Islamo-fascism
I have not seen BlackHawk Down, but I have heard from reliable friends that it is a good movie, and I am not under the impression that it is a morale-bulding celebration of intervention in Mogadishu.
The original article was calling for films celebrating war in the style of 40's flag wavers. This I do not believe is possible. I think any film which is honest about what real soldiers go through cannot be a celebration of war*, and that the Iraq war is too tainted in the eyes of the public for any morale-building effort to be viewed as anything but ham-handed propaganda.
*There's always an exception, and I think "Glory" works as a celebration of war, but only because I'm looking at it through the filter of a 21st century liberal who believes that wars are always bad, but not always wrong. But that's an argument for another day…
But aiabx, no one's talking about a "celebration of war". We're talking about a celebration of the heroes of war. Popular leftist opinion notwithstanding, there isn't a person in this country who isn't psychopathic who wants us to be at war. Even those of us who continue to support our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan would much rather we could live as we did in the halcyon days of the 1990s (except for the whole ignoring al-Qaeda and not jacking up Osama when we had the chances). I, for one, would much rather spend my blogging time talking about anything besides the maniacs who are trying to blow us up and the maniac-deniers who love them.
But that ain't where we are right now.
We are in a time when we could use a few heroes and, whether we like it or not, Hollywood is the Hero Maker.
>We need some films celebrating the war against Islamo-fascism in >Afghanistan and Iraq — and in Iran as well, if and when that becomes >necessary. We need films like those that were made during World War >II, films such as 1943’s “Sahara” and “Action in the North Atlantic,” or >“The Fighting Seabees” and “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo,” which were >released in 1944.
Read that first line carefully -"We need some films celebrating the war…" and later "We need films like those that were made during World War II…".
If you want to chuck that out and look for a celebration of the heroes of war, I think you could probably do something good with the Pat Tillman story
Sure you can do a heroes movie, but they only tend to work when the war is disparaged, or if the are set in WWII, where the bad guys are bad on a scale that dwarfs anything Al Quaeda could ever dream of. For a counterexample, see the critical and financial success of The Green Berets.
There's a difference, though, between a movie that celebrates war and one that celebrates the war in the style of WWII movies. If you watch those movies what they celebrate is not the war itself, but the men who fought the war and the victories over our enemies.
And I disagree that the enemies in WWII dwarf the enemies we face now. They both have the same goals. They both have no problem partaking in genocide wherever they get the opportunity. They both have a fanatical ideology that needs to be broke as surely as their desire to fight us. Where they differ is in how they are fighting us. In WWII, the enemy was right out there where we could see them, using tanks and planes and millions of soldiers in uniforms. The enemies today use roadside explosives, suicide bombers, children with explosives strapped to their chest, and a media that's either willing to peddle their propaganda uncritically ot ignorant about how badly they're being coopted by their own "go along to get along" philosophy.
I ran with the ball I was handed. "celebrates the war" seemed pretty clear and straightforward to me. My point has been made, and you can take it or leave it. But if Red Dawn has taught me anything, it's that Hollywood will make a movie about any nonsense if they think there's a buck in it.
The last thing I wanted to do with my limited spare time is to wander into a right wing blog and get suckered into an argument about Iraq, or the war on terror. So I will terminate the argument now by invoking Godwin's law up on myself, leaving you the rhetorical champion on your own turf.
Individually, the average AQ terrorist is a fairly small menace. They are poorly trained, there aren't very many of them and they are given only lukewarm support by their fellow Muslims, when they aren't detested as a threat to the current order. Like all weak powers, terror is their mode of operation. Occasionally, terrorists hit their mark; 9/11, the Oklahoma Federal Building, AIr India Flight 182, the Chechnya school massacre. Usually, however, they are stuck with the RPG and the car bomb. If we assume that AQ caused half of the casualties in Iraq (a generous assumption in my view), then they've managed to kill 1200 soldiers at much heavier cost to themselves. Elsewhere, they live in caves and ocasionally kill a teacher. They are fanatics, but there are a lot of fanatics in the world, and damned few of them are global threats.
On the other hand, let us briefly consider the Axis powers in WWII. Powerful, aggressive industrialized states with massive armed forces and violent racist ideologies. Let us consider Soviet civilian casualties. 11.5 million, over not quite 4 years. If we estimate 3 million a year (rounding off), I get a ballpark figure of 9000 civilian dead a day. That's 3 9/11's every day, day in, day out for almost 4 years, largely conducted at pistol range. That to my mind is evil on a scale that AQ will never be able to match. Chinese civilian casualties were almost as bad, but over a longer stretch of time.
If AQ managed to kill 4200 people in the time it took Germany and Japan to kill 50 million, I know which I consider to be the graver threat.
The ability for a nominally civilized society to be able to commit crimes like that speaks not only of evil ideological fanaticism, but the ability to apply that evil in an efficient ,industrialized manner with the armed force required to conquer its victims.
What is most upsetting about Naziism is that its roots are in western civilization. When the citizens of a free society give up their rights for protection from a perceived threat… well, you know.
So now I will bid you adieu. Arguing movies is fun, but I'm on a slippery slope to exasperation with the war, and I doubt either of us will comvince the other of anything important. But thanks for an interesting blab.