Matt Taibi rips into 'American Sniper'

[Cyborg Girl]

I'll let him speak for himself, as I don't really have much to add:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/ne ... e-20150121

[Rommie]

So this is one of those moments where I feel out of the loop- I've seen several people criticizing... something... about snipers on Facebook, perhaps movie related, but no idea what triggered them or what people are really upset about. Help?

[Cyborg Girl]

It's a movie purportedly about Chris Kyle and his time as a sniper in Iraq. Like I said, the article speaks for itself.

[Rommie]

Not really, that's why I asked. To me it reads like a guy who's never seen a bang-'em-up action flick in his life and is surprised someone tried to set it in a recent war.

[Cyborg Girl]

I think you're missing his point, Rommie.

Maybe action movies are an American mythical archetype, like the Hero WIth A Thousand Faces. Okay, fine. What Eastwood is doing then is building a simple archetypal fantasy around a morally complex (and questionable) ongoing war. He's presenting a real, violent situation through the rose-colored lens of a feel-good story. He is using saccharine fairy-tale bullshit to justify ethically questionable actions on part of his country. IOW, he's creating propaganda, and I think it's perfectly reasonable to call him out on that.

Edit: and not just Eastwood. I think Taibbi also correctly points out that action movies have a history as propaganda, and not necessarily for just causes.

[SciFi Chick]

I'm pretty sure this guy would love The Hurt Locker. It doesn't matter if Hollywood makes a bullshit war film as long as it agrees with one's particular politics.

Kathryn Bigelow (director of The Hurt Locker) was absolutely amazed that a sniper could shoot something like 500 yards, if I remember correctly. The idiot writing this article thinks it's impossible for a sniper to shoot a miles+ target. He's just flat out wrong, and he's so fucking arrogant and full of himself, that I'm not much interested in his pompous opinion about the movie American Sniper.

[Rommie]

I think you're missing his point, Rommie.

Maybe action movies are an American mythical archetype, like the Hero WIth A Thousand Faces. Okay, fine. What Eastwood is doing then is building a simple archetypal fantasy around a morally complex (and questionable) ongoing war. He's presenting a real, violent situation through the rose-colored lens of a feel-good story. He is using saccharine fairy-tale bullshit to justify ethically questionable actions on part of his country. IOW, he's creating propaganda, and I think it's perfectly reasonable to call him out on that.

Edit: and not just Eastwood. I think Taibbi also correctly points out that action movies have a history as propaganda, and not necessarily for just causes.

Dunno man, you're talking to a girl who thinks Casablanca is the best movie ever made, and it was made when WW2 was still raging. Soooooo...

(Keep in mind, I had no idea who this guy or movie was until I read the wikipedia article a few hours ago after you posted it, so I may have issues if I look into it more, but what you just described here isn't one of them to me.)

[SciFi Chick]

I think you're missing his point, Rommie.

Maybe action movies are an American mythical archetype, like the Hero WIth A Thousand Faces. Okay, fine. What Eastwood is doing then is building a simple archetypal fantasy around a morally complex (and questionable) ongoing war. He's presenting a real, violent situation through the rose-colored lens of a feel-good story. He is using saccharine fairy-tale bullshit to justify ethically questionable actions on part of his country. IOW, he's creating propaganda, and I think it's perfectly reasonable to call him out on that.

Edit: and not just Eastwood. I think Taibbi also correctly points out that action movies have a history as propaganda, and not necessarily for just causes.

Have you actually seen the movie? Because I'm pretty certain it's not a rose-colored lens or a feel-good story. Kyle has to shoot a woman and a boy in the movie to stop them attacking his fellow troops. He dies at the end due to trying to help someone with post traumatic stress. Where is the "feel-good" in that?

[Cyborg Girl]

Taibbi can frankly be a schmuck from what I've read about him, but I wouldn't discount his opinion on journalism and the media (which is his domain) because of his ignorance of marksmanship and modern weaponry (which is not).

Edit: the "feel good" is the glossing over of war crimes, and turning it into a sob story about the noble heartfelt sacrifice of one American soldier. Five hundred thousand civilians died in our little invasion of the wrong damn country. Who's telling their story?

Edit 2: look - I know I'm waxing way political here, but politics can be a moral issue. Killing hundreds of thousands of people for political reasons is in the wrong, regardless of how noble the political goals behind it (supposedly) are.

Nazis murdered for a biologically perfect vision of humanity. Communists murdered for a socially perfect vision of humanity. What's to keep Americans from murdering for their own political vision of perfection? Being somewhere in the fuzzy middle of the political spectrum won't help us, if we don't stop and think about what we're doing from time to time.

[brite]

1. Politics is not moral. It’s situational ethics.
2. There is no morality in war. There is, however, collateral damage.
3. Soldiers are people who are doing a really sucky job that most people don’t want to do, but are willing to sit back and pontificate about.
4. Mr Kyle was in all probability suffering from undiagnosed PTSD and very highly functioning at that. Doesn’t excuse his character flaws, but it does kind of explain them. (take this from someone who is a high functioning sufferer of PTSD)
5. Mr Taibi is a jackass.

[SciFiFisher]

Edit: the "feel good" is the glossing over of war crimes, and turning it into a sob story about the noble heartfelt sacrifice of one American soldier. Five hundred thousand civilians died in our little invasion of the wrong damn country.

Edit 2: look - I know I'm waxing way political here, but politics can be a moral issue. Killing hundreds of thousands of people for political reasons is in the wrong, regardless of how noble the political goals behind it (supposedly) are.

Nazis murdered for a biologically perfect vision of humanity. Communists murdered for a socially perfect vision of humanity. What's to keep Americans from murdering for their own political vision of perfection? Being somewhere in the fuzzy middle of the political spectrum won't help us, if we don't stop and think about what we're doing from time to time.

GJ I agree that thinking about what we are doing from a moral POV from time to time is not a bad thing. But, here is where you and I must diverge.

1. I disagree with your war crimes statement. Are you saying the U.S. committed war crimes? Or is it Chris Kyle you are accusing of war crimes? Because as far as I know neither of those two have been charged with war crimes. You can toss accusations of war crimes around but I don't that means what you think it means.

2. 500,000 to upwards of 1,000,000 civilians died in the Iraq war and it's aftermath. True statement. And the U.S. was not responsible for killing 99% of them ( Ok I will admit. I made up the 99%). The truth is that it was Iraq terrorists and fundamentalists of Sunni and Shia persuasion who killed the vast majority of those civilians. Unless you take the attitude that it is the U.S. fault for creating the conditions that allowed these criminals to be tuckfards then I suppose you could say it was our fault they died.

[Cyborg Girl]

1. Politics is not moral. It’s situational ethics.

And this is not a problem why? Shouldn't it be about improving the human condition?

2. There is no morality in war. There is, however, collateral damage.

aka real people with real lives getting snuffed out. Any of those people could be a friend, family, someone you love. I won't argue that war is never necessary, but maybe we should try to, you know, keep a lid on it?

Again: how is this not a problem?

3. Soldiers are people who are doing a really sucky job that most people don’t want to do, but are willing to sit back and pontificate about.

I don't see how that makes a difference. Being a soldier doesn't make one, or one's country, always in the right.

4. Mr Kyle was in all probability suffering from undiagnosed PTSD and very highly functioning at that. Doesn’t excuse his character flaws, but it does kind of explain them. (take this from someone who is a high functioning sufferer of PTSD)
5. Mr Taibi is a jackass.

I'll give you both of these points.

Because as far as I know neither of those two have been charged with war crimes.

Chris Kyle -> can't say, not enough info.

The United States -> absolutely yes, and we have a long history of it. Crimes are crimes, even if nobody takes a country to task for them (because it's the 800 pound gorilla and nobody wants to threaten it).

And note I'm not saying that we're worse than other nations. As an imperial power, the US has been one of the better ones by a wide margin.

500,000 to upwards of 1,000,000 civilians died in the Iraq war and it's aftermath. True statement. And the U.S. was not responsible for killing 99% of them ( Ok I will admit. I made up the 99%). The truth is that it was Iraq terrorists and fundamentalists of Sunni and Shia persuasion who killed the vast majority of those civilians.

The figures for American bombing campaigns were IIRC over 100,000, at a low estimate.

[brite]

And this is not a problem why? Shouldn't it be about improving the human condition?

Not always... see the definition of situational ethics. Also, you are assuming that the government is a kind helpful thing. It’s not. While a governmental system looks really good on paper, once you add the human element to the mix, it goes to hell in a hand basket.
In a time of war, improving the human condition, is NOT the primary consideration. Winning is. We are NOT winning.

aka real people with real lives getting snuffed out. Any of those people could be a friend, family, someone you love. I won't argue that war is never necessary, but maybe we should try to, you know, keep a lid on it?

Yes, real lives are getting snuffed. People you might know and love in a war zone may die. Such is the nature of war. War sucks. As for keeping a lid on it?? Well... here’s the deal -- through out history, war is usually fought over 3 things - land, resources and religion. The current conflicts are being fought over at least 2 of the 3...
War is also the failure of diplomacy. So who failed?

I don't see how that makes a difference. Being a soldier doesn't make one, or one's country, always in the right.

And yet you are willing to pontificate about it.

[Cyborg Girl]

Not always... see the definition of situational ethics. Also, you are assuming that the government is a kind helpful thing. It’s not. While a governmental system looks really good on paper, once you add the human element to the mix, it goes to hell in a hand basket.
In a time of war, improving the human condition, is NOT the primary consideration. Winning is. We are NOT winning.

We aren't winning what? What exactly are we fighting for? We've been fighting "terrorism" for over a decade while people freeze to death in our major cities.

Yes, real lives are getting snuffed. People you might know and love in a war zone may die. Such is the nature of war. War sucks. As for keeping a lid on it?? Well... here’s the deal -- through out history, war is usually fought over 3 things - land, resources and religion. The current conflicts are being fought over at least 2 of the 3...
War is also the failure of diplomacy. So who failed?

You tell me. Who preemptively invaded a country that hadn't attacked us yet, based on dubious and possibly falsified intelligence?

(Yes, I know; 20/20 hindsight. Even so.)

And yet you are willing to pontificate about it.

Yes, I am. With the rights I have as an American citizen, even, thanks in part (but not fully, mind) to soldiers who fought and died for schmoes like me.

Think about it. For every American who considers foreigners to be appropriate targets for violence, there are a dozen foreigners who think you are an appropriate target for violence, because you are an American. As far as they're concerned, you are an unperson, because you're a citizen of a country that their own considers hostile. Don't you think this is all part of the same pattern?

[SciFi Chick]

You walk a dangerous line when you conflate soldiers with government. Deciding that Chris Kyle is not a hero because the U.S. government shouldn't have been in Iraq is just wrong. Soldiers have to follow orders. And don't start in about Nazis and how maybe they shouldn't have followed orders. There is a world of difference between a legal and an illegal order, and yes, you can have legal orders within an illegal war. This shit is complicated. Don't oversimplify it by going after the easy target of just saying all soldiers should question every order they're given.

Chris Kyle risked his life for his fellow soldiers, and he got shot in the process, more than once. He ended up dying, here in the U.S., because he was trying to help yet another soldier with PTSD. So, whatever flaws he may or may not have had, he was a hero, and it doesn't matter whether the war he fought in was perfectly honorable or not.

[Cyborg Girl]

Thanks very much for the thoughtful input, SFC.

Perhaps Taibbi is ripping on Kyle himself unfairly - I don't know, I didn't read Kyle's book.

I think the point is more that the mode of storytelling of the movie - in context, and alongside dozens of similar movies - cannot help being political. It's portraying a humanitarian disaster (for Iraqis) as background decoration, preferring to focus on the emotional story of one American guy and the people he knows. One white American guy, at that.

Yes, he's a soldier. But the formula here seems to me to be a very generic action/drama one regardless. The lead role is White American Hero Dude, he's the "default" guy (for a "default" white male American audience) who people imagine themselves in the shoes of and connect with emotionally. It's his story. Other people are viewed more abstractly. They're background.

I'm not saying Chris Kyle's story doesn't deserve to be told. There are lots of white American guys with interesting stories that people should hear; it's just that we have a huge media bias towards presenting white American dude stories, and there are even more people with interesting stories who aren't white American dudes. And when you think about Iraq, the vast majority of people affected by the war are not white American dudes. Given that, I think that singling out another white American dude story out of the whole situation, and making it another white American dude action/drama flick, is... well, at least a little tasteless.

Hope I'm making sense here (and not being too 'splainy).

[Swift]

Dunno man, you're talking to a girl who thinks Casablanca is the best movie ever made,

You have excellent taste in movies.

You walk a dangerous line when you conflate soldiers with government. Deciding that Chris Kyle is not a hero because the U.S. government shouldn't have been in Iraq is just wrong. Soldiers have to follow orders. And don't start in about Nazis and how maybe they shouldn't have followed orders. There is a world of difference between a legal and an illegal order, and yes, you can have legal orders within an illegal war. This shit is complicated. Don't oversimplify it by going after the easy target of just saying all soldiers should question every order they're given.

I've thought that was one of the few things this country learned from Vietnam (and it took a long time to learn it): not to blame the soldiers, even if you don't like the war.

One white American guy, at that.

What the heck does his race have to do with anything? Are you just looking for things to hate?

[SciFiFisher]

You tell me. Who preemptively invaded a country that hadn't attacked us yet, based on dubious and possibly falsified intelligence?

(Yes, I know; 20/20 hindsight. Even so.)

Factually speaking it was a UN coalition acting on a UN resolution. Just sayin. Yes, the U.S. had the largest number of troops and was the front runner. But, (I will repeat it because it is worth saying again) It was a UN backed coalition of countries that invaded and maintained a military presence in Iraq. And they were acting on a UN Resolution. Keep repeating that. Because you keep talking as if the U.S. acted unilaterally and without any regard to what the rest of the world was doing.

And as for your claim that the U.S. has committed war crimes I would suggest you research the definition. and look at what the U.S., the U.N., and the rest of the world consider to be a war crime. Because I think you are confusing your own decision that the war was immoral and therefore illegal with what constitutes a truly binding case of war crimes committed by a sovereign nation. Crimes committed by individuals may have been "war crimes" but to best of my knowledge the U.S. as a country has not committed a war crime. If you have factual proof that you can cite please do.

[Cyborg Girl]

@swift, I'm not blaming every single soldier. I'm not even putting particular blame on Chris Kyle, though Taibbi seems willing to.

Re race, I'm not just being a hater, I think that it also figures into the picture. Maybe not as hugely in this movie elsewhere, whatever, but the problem is that White American Hero Dude (or whatever you want to call him) is a... I guess I'll call it an anti-stereotype. It's like the opposite of a Magic Black Man or a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. White American Hero Dude isn't a plot device, a token, or background decoration. If he's there, the story is absolutely emphatically his story. The whole thing revolves around him.

I guess one could describe this as a watered down, culturally sanctioned, publicly acceptable version of the Mary Sue.

BTW I don't think White American Hero Dude stories are necessarily bad. I've read and watched and liked lots of them. Some of them broke the mold when they were created (e.g. look at some of the better episodes of Star Trek, James T. Kirk was totally a White American Hero Dude). The problem is that they are far, far more ubiquitous on this planet than actual white American dudes are, so they feed into the current giant skew of bias we've got going.

Tell you what - there are writings about this stuff (both scholarly and for lay audiences) that do a way better job of explaining it than I could. I'll post some links later, I should stop trying to mansplain this stuff myself anyway.

[vendic]

I think Taibbi also correctly points out that action movies have a history as propaganda, and not necessarily for just causes...

...I'm not saying Chris Kyle's story doesn't deserve to be told. There are lots of white American guys with interesting stories that people should hear; it's just that we have a huge media bias towards presenting white American dude stories, and there are even more people with interesting stories who aren't white American dudes. And when you think about Iraq, the vast majority of people affected by the war are not white American dudes. Given that, I think that singling out another white American dude story out of the whole situation, and making it another white American dude action/drama flick, is... well, at least a little tasteless.

Considering the way Hollywood has portrayed soldiers as near sociopaths over the last few years and no one calls it propaganda or even biased, why is this film considered propaganda?
Is it simply because it has a different perspective to the one you want?

If you're not saying this film doesn't deserve to be told, but think it shouldn't have been done because there are other stories to do, then what you are saying is you don't approve of a film maker to do what story he/she wants to do. That's some seriously dark road you're headed in.

My suggestion is to watch the mini series, "Band of Brothers" for some brilliant film making.

r.e. "The Hurt Locker", the director was surprised that the military has weapons that can shoot 300 yards...she must have been a history buff as that happened many centuries ago. Off the shelf Walmart hunting rifles do far better than that.

[vendic]

You tell me. Who preemptively invaded a country that hadn't attacked us yet, based on dubious and possibly falsified intelligence?

(Yes, I know; 20/20 hindsight. Even so.)

Factually speaking it was a UN coalition acting on a UN resolution. Just sayin. Yes, the U.S. had the largest number of troops and was the front runner. But, (I will repeat it because it is worth saying again) It was a UN backed coalition of countries that invaded and maintained a military presence in Iraq. And they were acting on a UN Resolution. Keep repeating that. Because you keep talking as if the U.S. acted unilaterally and without any regard to what the rest of the world was doing.

"You are either with us or against us", G.W. Bush.
One can't claim it was a U.N resolution when the USA made that statement above, has huge influence in the U.N. and also went in even though the U.N. specifically asked for more time to perform their searches. It was at best a forced resolution, initiated before the U.N was willing and used limited countries, the C.O.W.

And as for your claim that the U.S. has committed war crimes I would suggest you research the definition. and look at what the U.S., the U.N., and the rest of the world consider to be a war crime. Because I think you are confusing your own decision that the war was immoral and therefore illegal with what constitutes a truly binding case of war crimes committed by a sovereign nation. Crimes committed by individuals may have been "war crimes" but to best of my knowledge the U.S. as a country has not committed a war crime. If you have factual proof that you can cite please do.

That all depends on who you listen to.
Likewise, no country has ever committed a war crime, it's individuals that do, sometimes under the orders of other individuals who happen to be running the country, with or without the support of the people within it. Otherwise every German in WWII would have been committing a war crime, for being German.
So we look at the sum of war crimes to determine just how well the government keeps things to the rules.
The U.S. does not allow international investigations of their troops behavior and won't be held liable in international rulings.

[Cyborg Girl]

Hi @vendic, welcome to FWIS!

Considering the way Hollywood has portrayed soldiers as near sociopaths over the last few years and no one calls it propaganda or even biased, why is this film considered propaganda?
Is it simply because it has a different perspective to the one you want?

No, because its perspective is skewed to the point of being totally screwed up. Believe me, I would dearly like to believe that it's "just another story" and has no greater significance. The problem is it has a very specific kind of perspective, that is way too common in the media to be healthy.

Portraying American soldiers as being entirely a bunch of nutcases is also BS, but not propaganda IMO. I would say that's more like feeding on public guilt. (Remember, liberals make up half the market here, and are more populous in most cities.)

Not sure about what Taibbi thinks on this, I think that demonizing individual soldiers is not helpful. We can't just point the finger of blame at Bad People.

If you're not saying this film doesn't deserve to be told, but think it shouldn't have been done because there are other stories to do, then what you are saying is you don't approve of a film maker to do what story he/she wants to do. That's some seriously dark road you're headed in.

Not sure I follow? I'm talking criticism, not censorship. I don't want Clint Eastwood's movie censored. OTOH, if it's a turd, I'm very much for people calling it out as one. Freedom of speech, etc.

Also, the slippery slope argument can be fallacious. Many countries have specific restrictions on "hate speech" and don't run into serious problems with them.

[Swift]

@swift, I'm not blaming every single soldier. I'm not even putting particular blame on Chris Kyle, though Taibbi seems willing to.

Why do you care what Matt Taibbi thinks, he sounds like a jerk. LINK

In 2001, Taibbi wrote an article about a dispute he had with a New York Times writer. Taibbi gleefully described how he prepared a cream pie made with horse sperm and humiliated the writer by throwing it at his face and photographing the encounter.

...

Journalist James Verini, while interviewing Taibbi in a Manhattan restaurant for Vanity Fair, said Taibbi cursed and threw a coffee at him, then accosted him as he tried to get away, all in response to Verini's volunteered opinion that Taibbi's book, The Exile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia, was "redundant and discursive".

Tell you what - there are writings about this stuff (both scholarly and for lay audiences) that do a way better job of explaining it than I could. I'll post some links later, I should stop trying to mansplain this stuff myself anyway.

If you want to, be my guest, but don't do so for me. I said my little piece and I'm done with this thread.

[vendic]

I'll let him speak for himself, as I don't really have much to add:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/ne ... e-20150121

I do. That guy is an idiot who can barely string two connecting concepts together. Ok, he doesn't really rate that high.

There's the obligatory somber scene of shirtless buffed-up SEAL Kyle and his heartthrob wife Sienna Miller gasping at the televised horror of the 9/11 attacks. Next thing you know, Kyle is in Iraq actually fighting al-Qaeda – as if there was some logical connection between 9/11 and Iraq.

No logical connection between 9/11 and Iraq?
What plane is he from?
Iraq was a direct consequence of 9/11, maybe it shouldn't have been, but none the less it was.
Any moron can understand that connection.
And that's where I stop reading his article and replying to it, because rebutting a moron can only lead to one outcome.

[pumpkinpi]

Thanks very much for the thoughtful input, SFC.

Perhaps Taibbi is ripping on Kyle himself unfairly - I don't know, I didn't read Kyle's book.

I don't think it's fair to make such an in-depth critique of the movie without having read Chris Kyle's autobiography. (Not just you GJ, but I get the impression that most people on the intertubes haven't.)

Here is a good article about what Eastwood chose to include and not to include, and thus makes the movie an incomplete portrayal of Kyle.

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/comm ... 89291.html

In the film, Kyle uses the word “savages,” but “American Sniper” doesn’t make room to explore the depth of his contempt for Iraqis that comes through in his memoir. He drove remote-controlled cars at them at high speed for the pleasure of watching their alarm: “Their high-pitched screams, coupled with sprints in the opposite direction, had me doubled over. Cheap thrills in Iraq were priceless,” Kyle wrote. He bragged about stealing from their homes against orders. He compared them to U.S. welfare recipients in their dependency and inability to handle freedom.....I understand why Eastwood might have wanted to avoid these elements of Kyle’s memoir, as well as his distaste for the military’s civilian leadership and his belief that the United States never really wanted to find any weapons of mass destruction. They make Kyle a harder sell, both to people who already see the war on terror as fundamentally racist and to those who adamantly deny that it is animated in any way by anti-Arab bias.

But “American Sniper” would have been a much bolder movie, and much more interesting, if it had been willing to explore the proposition that society has a use for people who enjoy violence and who find it relatively easy to turn the people they kill into abstractions. Alternately, Eastwood might have connected one of the central moments in “American Sniper” to more complicated stories Kyle told about himself.

Read the whole article, there is more.

Now, I take that with a grain of salt, having just been through a story connected to the book that was highly covered in Minnesota.

Kyle had written that he'd decked a man called "Scruff Face" at a bar in Coronado, Calif., after the man insulted the Navy SEALs.
In promotional interviews, Kyle said Scruff Face was Ventura, himself a former SEAL.

Ventura, the former WWF star and governor of Minnesota.
Ventura insists that didn't happen, sued Chris Kyle's estate for defamation, and won $1.8M.
Now, I'm not siding with Ventura, either. I can't say that he isn't lying himself, and did that all for more media attention himself.

This just shows that there is always more to a story than is portrayed through an article or two.