[Peace-discuss] Surprise: NYT makes case for war (movie)

[C. G. Estabrook]

    "Whatever tactical misgivings sections of upper-middle-class liberals may 
have had about the war in 2003-2008 have largely given way to support, now that 
Barack Obama is president and the parlous state of the American economy has made 
even more urgent the US drive to dominate the globe ... An African-American in 
the White House, a female winning the Oscar for best director — all must be 
right with the world! This is a utopian moment for those heavily invested in 
identity politics ... It is disturbing ... how little sympathy the American 
people, so cold-hearted and unfeeling, are currently extending to the 
politicians who launched unprovoked and brutal wars, along with the bankers who 
looted the economy of trillions of dollars. Supposedly 'neutral' and 
'non-partisan,' Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker is now serving, for an unholy 
assortment of liberals and right-wingers, as a means of inducing political 
amnesia in the population. Such an effort needs to be strenuously rejected."


	The Hurt Locker and the rehabilitation of the Iraq war:
	New York Times journalists weigh in
	By David Walsh
	16 March 2010

On Sunday and Monday, the New York Times carried no fewer than
three columns in which the supposed merits of The Hurt Locker,
Kathryn Bigelow’s film about the Iraq war—which won major prizes
at this year’s Academy Awards—were extolled. The various writers
can hardly contain themselves.

As we have noted, honoring Bigelow’s film has become one of the
vehicles for rehabilitating the illegal invasion and occupation of
Iraq, now about to enter its eighth year. Whatever tactical
misgivings sections of upper-middle-class liberals may have had
about the war in 2003-2008 have largely given way to support, now
that Barack Obama is president and the parlous state of the
American economy has made even more urgent the US drive to
dominate the globe.

There is an overall understanding, in some cases perhaps only a
strong intuition, within these well-heeled circles that their
financial condition and creature comforts are bound up with the
ability of the American military to conquer territories, overthrow
unfriendly regimes, and generally make the world safe for New York
Times journalists, their families and friends.

It is repugnant.

On Sunday, television reviewer Alessandra Stanley, in a piece
purportedly devoted to a new HBO series about the Second World
War, felt obliged to include this penultimate paragraph out of the
blue: “ ‘The Pacific’ comes at a time when American troops are
once again fighting on two fronts against an implacable enemy that
combats advanced weaponry with fanaticism and suicide bombers. The
series makes its debut a week after ‘The Hurt Locker’ won the
Oscar for best picture, and like that film, its tone is in somber
tune with the times.”

Not for the first time, one wants to rub one’s eyes in disbelief.
Stanley, known for her right-wing views, is here conflating a war
against Imperial Japan and Germany’s Third Reich with the current
US military aggression in the Middle East and Central Asia, aimed
at securing that region’s oil and energy reserves for the American
financial-corporate elite.

If by today’s “implacable foe” the Times columnist has Osama bin
Laden’s Al Qaeda in mind, she is comparing a ragtag band of
Islamic fundamentalists (initially incited by the US in the course
of its efforts to destabilize the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s),
desperately operating out of caves and mountain hideouts, with the
millions-strong armies of two great economic powers. What world is
she living in?

That Stanley feels capable, without fear of rebuke, of resorting
to such an intellectual stupidity, which ignores every obvious,
defining historical and social difference between the two
conflicts—World War II being an inter-imperialist war and the
present “war on terrorism” being a cover for neo-colonial
aggression—indicates confidence that a good portion of her
readership will be receptive to her arguments. As for The Hurt
Locker’s “somber” tone, that seems entirely irrelevant. Whether a
film tells the truth about the Iraq war or conceals it, as The
Hurt Locker does, it is hardly likely to be cheery.

Another issue that resonates powerfully with the Times staff is
Bigelow’s gender. Her status as the first woman to receive the
Best Directing award overrides every other question as far as
certain sections of the complacent middle class are concerned. An
African-American in the White House, a female winning the Oscar
for best director—all must be right with the world! This is a
utopian moment for those heavily invested in identity politics.

Manohla Dargis, one of the Times film reviewers, devoted an
article March 14 to The Hurt Locker’s director and focused
entirely on this side of the matter.

Last year, it should be noted, Dargis penned a piece lauding
Bigelow’s career (“Action!,” June 21, 2009), as well as her person
(a typical passage: “She works to put you at ease, but even her
looks inspire shock and awe”). The comment was so fawning it could
have been released by the director’s talent agency.

The Times journalist labeled Bigelow “a great filmmaker,” without
making any effort to substantiate the dubious claim. In fact,
Bigelow has behind her a string of unappealing and unconvincing
genre films (focusing on vampires, bikers, bank-robbing surfers,
serial killers, and so forth), appropriate to a film school
graduate shaped by semiotics and various other fashionable trends
in the late 1970s.

In that June 2009 article, Dargis cited, with apparent approval,
Bigelow’s elaboration of her first film’s themes: that “in the
1960s you think of the enemy as outside yourself, in other words,
a police officer, the government, the system, but that’s not
really the case at all, fascism is very insidious, we reproduce it
all the time.”

In her latest piece, “How Oscar Found Ms. Right,” Dargis is
equally uncritical, and even more ecstatic. She describes
Bigelow’s win at the Academy Awards as “historic, exhilarating,
especially for women who make movies and women who watch movies….
It’s too early to know if this moment will be transformative—but
damn, it feels so good.”

Astonishingly, Dargis does not devote a single mention in her
article to the content of The Hurt Locker. The words “Iraq,”
“military,” “bomb,” “Hussein” and “Baghdad” do not appear. She
really couldn’t care less what Bigelow’s film is about.

Or, rather, what it is “about” is the Times reviewer’s own
extremely limited political agenda. If one confines oneself to
judging a film primarily on the basis of its maker’s gender, that
does make life and criticism a relatively simple matter. But why
then has Dargis not dedicated herself to publicizing the career of
the late German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, who celebrated
Hitler’s movement and regime in such infamous works as Triumph of
the Will, shot at the 1934 Nazi Party congress in Nuremberg?

The Times and its milieu collectively value The Hurt Locker so
highly because the latter is a work about the Iraq war that has a
semblance of “grittiness” and “realism,” has artistic pretensions
appealing to the pseudo-intellectual, and even purports to
disclose “the brutality and the futility of this conflict”
(Bigelow’s own words to an interviewer), without indicting the
American military and government for its criminal policy.

This is an “anti-war” film for those disturbed, in general terms,
by the “tragic” and “dehumanizing” character of military conflict,
but who see compelling reasons why the US, now that it’s involved
in Iraq, “can’t simply pull out.” This is an “anti-war” film, in
other words, for those who are not terribly opposed to the Iraq
war in particular, and who would prefer that its origins and aims
be left in the shade.

Times op-ed columnist Ross Douthat, in his “Hollywood’s Political
Fictions” published on Monday, spells that out rather clearly. In
his piece, Douthat, who joined the newspaper in April 2009 and
also functions as the film critic of the ultra-right National
Review, takes the new film, Green Zone, to task for allegedly
simplifying the complexities of the Iraq situation.

The latter movie, starring Matt Damon, according to the Times
columnist, “has the same problem as nearly every other Hollywood
gloss on recent political events: it refuses to stare real tragedy
in the face, preferring the comforts of a ‘Bush lied, people died’
reductionism.”

This “reductionism,” firmly grasped by millions and millions of
people worldwide, contains, of course, an essential truth: the US
government falsified claims about Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction and invaded a sovereign nation in contravention of
international law. Massive death and destruction, with no end in
sight, have followed. Bush, Cheney, Rove, Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld
and company should face war crimes trials.

Douthat plunges ahead, offering his “nuanced” account of events:
“The narrative of the Iraq invasion, properly told, resembles a
story out of Shakespeare. You had a nation reeling from a
terrorist attack and hungry for a response that would be
righteous, bold and comprehensive. You had an inexperienced
president trying to tackle a problem that his predecessors (one of
them his own father) had left to fester since the first gulf war.
You had a cause—the removal of a brutal dictator, and the spread
of democracy to the Arab world—that inspired a swath of the
liberal intelligentsia to play George Orwell and embrace the case
for war.”

This is preposterous and only worthy of derisive laughter. Douthat
proceeds from the premise, not to be challenged, that the
underlying motives for the Iraq war were honorable. Everyone, it
seems, simply got caught up in the inescapable, “Shakespearean”
tragedy of the post-9/11 condition. One would have to be a small
child, and intellectually stunted at that, to fall for this argument.

On the other hand, Green Zone has the audacity, according to
Douthat, to place the blame for the criminal invasion on
“neoconservatives…capable of any enormity in the pursuit of their
objectives.” The op-ed columnist contrasts the new film’s “glib
scapegoating” with Bigelow’s effort, “the first major movie to
paint the Iraq War in shades of gray. But The Hurt Locker, of
course, was largely apolitical. Throw politics into the mix, and
there seems to be no escaping the clichés and simplifications,”
writes Douthat, that mar the Damon film.

This is reactionary rubbish. But Douthat goes one better. He
informs his readers that the duty of art is “to be interested in
the humanity of all its subjects, not just the ones who didn’t
work for Rumsfeld’s Department of Defense.” On general principles,
art should regard all individuals as human beings, even mass
murderers, but that hardly exonerates the latter of their crimes,
which is what Douthat has in mind.

He complains that “radical sympathy, extended even to people who
presided over grave disasters, is in short supply all across
America at the moment.” It is disturbing, when one thinks about
it, how little sympathy the American people, so cold-hearted and
unfeeling, are currently extending to the politicians who launched
unprovoked and brutal wars, along with the bankers who looted the
economy of trillions of dollars.

Supposedly “neutral” and “non-partisan,” Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker
is now serving, for an unholy assortment of liberals and
right-wingers, as a means of inducing political amnesia in the
population. Such an effort needs to be strenuously rejected.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/hurt-m16.shtml

-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.