Chris Hedges: 'American Sniper' Caters to a Deep Sickness Rippling Through Society

[Hissyspit]

http://www.alternet.org/culture/chris-hedges-american-sniper-caters-deep-sickness-rippling-through-society

Chris Hedges: 'American Sniper' Caters to a Deep Sickness Rippling Through Society

$200 million in box office receipts is a measure of how messed up this country is.

“American Sniper” lionizes the most despicable aspects of U.S. society—the gun culture, the blind adoration of the military, the belief that we have an innate right as a “Christian” nation to exterminate the “lesser breeds” of the earth, a grotesque hypermasculinity that banishes compassion and pity, a denial of inconvenient facts and historical truth, and a belittling of critical thinking and artistic expression. Many Americans, especially white Americans trapped in a stagnant economy and a dysfunctional political system, yearn for the supposed moral renewal and rigid, militarized control the movie venerates. These passions, if realized, will extinguish what is left of our now-anemic open society.

- snip -

“The movie never asks the seminal question as to why the people of Iraq are fighting back against us in the very first place,” said Mikey Weinstein, whom I reached by phone in New Mexico. Weinstein, who worked in the Reagan White House and is a former Air Force officer, is the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which challenges the growing Christian fundamentalism within the U.S. military. “It made me physically ill with its twisted, totally one-sided distortions of wartime combat ethics and justice woven into the fabric of Chris Kyle’s personal and primal justification mantra of ‘God-Country-Family.’ It is nothing less than an odious homage, indeed a literal horrific hagiography to wholesale slaughter.”

- snip -

The book is even more disturbing than the film. In the film Kyle is a reluctant warrior, one forced to do his duty. In the book he relishes killing and war. He is consumed by hatred of all Iraqis. He is intoxicated by violence. He is credited with 160 confirmed kills, but he notes that to be confirmed a kill had to be witnessed, “so if I shot someone in the stomach and he managed to crawl around where we couldn’t see him before he bled out he didn’t count.”

Kyle insisted that every person he shot deserved to die. His inability to be self-reflective allowed him to deny the fact that during the U.S. occupation many, many innocent Iraqis were killed, including some shot by snipers. Snipers are used primarily to sow terror and fear among enemy combatants. And in his denial of reality, something former slaveholders and former Nazis perfected to an art after overseeing their own atrocities, Kyle was able to cling to childish myth rather than examine the darkness of his own soul and his contribution to the war crimes we carried out in Iraq. He justified his killing with a cloying sentimentality about his family, his Christian faith, his fellow SEALs and his nation. But sentimentality is not love. It is not empathy. It is, at its core, about self-pity and self-adulation. That the film, like the book, swings between cruelty and sentimentality is not accidental.

MORE

[Go Vols]

1. Fury with Brad Pitt is better

if you like war movies.
I could make the shots that "sniper" depicts,not a great movie.

[yeoman6987]

2. It's actually 204 million and counting

If a movie is going to cause the destruction of society, we were never strong to begin with. I think we are just fine and will continue to be. It is a movie! Lol.

[Hissyspit]

3. He didn't say IT would destroy us, did he?

Yeah, it's a movie.

Some movies are shit and some aren't.

We will be fine and continue to be? What the fuck does that mean?

My student who signed up and got the fuck blown up out of himself isn't just "fine."

[tenderfoot]

5. Now now. He was just doing his job... much like this guy...

[Spitfire of ATJ]

6. Clint's movie is like his convention speech...

It's playing to empty chairs.

[whatchamacallit]

7. The face of the new du

[yeoman6987]

24. Damn right. Get used to it.

I imagine you are against DUers with differing opinions of yours. Too bad!!!!!

[LanternWaste]

29. A variety of opinions are quite wonderful. Absurd and foolish opinions are, well... absurd and fooli

A variety of opinions are quite wonderful. Absurd and foolish opinions are, well... absurd and foolish, regardless of how one rationalizes them...

[yeoman6987]

31. I was just joshing with you.

You proved your point. I got it.

[rhett o rick]

8. I think you missed the point. Mr. Hedges isn't claiming the movie is the cause of anything.

"“American Sniper” lionizes the most despicable aspects of U.S. society—the gun culture, the blind adoration of the military, the belief that we have an innate right as a “Christian” nation to exterminate the “lesser breeds” of the earth, a grotesque hypermasculinity that banishes compassion and pity, a denial of inconvenient facts and historical truth, and a belittling of critical thinking and artistic expression. "

The movie reflects a terrible bully culture that we live in, where we applaud the bully. We applaud Dirty Harry because he is a bully for goodness and we get to define the goodness.

[stillwaiting]

18. You underestimate the impact that Hollywood can have on the masses.

Our intelligence agencies do not.

I was horrified to see how many people I knew (who are friends and family) that seemed to become open proponents and advocates for torture a la Jack Bauer after "24" became a massive hit. These are people who are intelligent and who I had always viewed as being good, compassionate people. They LITERALLY used Jack Bauer in their arguments for torture and the "ticking time bomb" scenario.

Again, our intelligence agencies know exactly how powerful film and TV can be in molding public opinion.

[yeoman6987]

25. I forgot about 24....your right those were some scary times. I couldn't believe the popularity of

that show.

[Initech]

4. What really bugs me about this movie: It glorifies Bush's never ending war for profit

To me it's not about whether or not Chris Kyle is an asshole and lied about his accomplishments, it's about the fact that it glorifies the Iraq War, which should have never happened in the first place. Seth Rogen is right - it's a real life Stolz Der Nation from Inglorious Basterds. In the movie, the film was a tool that was used to justify an unjust war and the nations' involvement in it, in real life, this movie is a tool that is being used to justify an unjust war and the nation's involvement in it. The biggest differnece is Frederick Zoller is a fictional character, Chris Kyle is not.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

9. This observation about sentimentality is important.

Especially since American culture is soaked in military, heroism (male heroism. Sentimentality regarding women is limited to the cloying Motherhood role), and aggression sentimentality (aggression sentimentality--case in point: the national NFL obsession.)

He justified his killing with a cloying sentimentality about his family, his Christian faith, his fellow SEALs and his nation. But sentimentality is not love. It is not empathy. It is, at its core, about self-pity and self-adulation. That the film, like the book, swings between cruelty and sentimentality is not accidental.

Sentimentality is not love, not empathy. At its core it is about self-pity and self-adulation. That is an awareness worth remembering. Strikingly accurate.

[Nay]

27. Yeah, that jumped out at me, too. It's the perfect word for the

last remaining emotion these crazy people seem to be able to express. It's cloying, superficial, and self-serving without having any deep emotion (female and WEAK!) or rational thought involved.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

30. yes, exactly!

Hrrmmmmm.......

Pondering......

[oberliner]

10. Shark jumping time for Chris Hedges

Although that ship may have sailed a long time ago.

[Arugula Latte]

11. Really? I think he's spot on on this.

[RoccoR5955]

19. I do not think so

I think that the US has jumped the shark though.
What with this never-ending war we are in, it's like something out of Orwell's 1984.

[AZ Progressive]

12. Dumbass idiot Kyle sought revenge for 9/11 in Iraq

What a fool, if he wanted revenge he would've had to go to the country that's just south of Iraq.

[AZ Progressive]

13. BTW, poor fool sheep who think that they are sheepdogs

Thats the brilliance of the manipulation by the system.

[Nay]

28. Yep. Convince the sheep they are sheepdogs or wolves and you can get

them to commit any atrocity at all without a thought. It's classic, and one of the reasons Hedges says these people watch TV football and never read a book is to clarify that there is no thinking, no rationality, going on in the homes these people grow up in. It's all jingoistic lock-step 'manliness,' which is always getting societies into real trouble.

[gopiscrap]

14. I fully agree!

[Stephen Retired]

15. Asshole film about psycho soldier, fighting unnecassary war, started by another asshole

Stephen's Complete Review.

[RoccoR5955]

20. Excellent review! n/t

[ReRe]

16. K&R

This is the best summation of the movie and book that I've seen. It depicts exactly what is wrong in this sick demoralized society. A propagandized people did this once in the 20th century. We know the horrid results. One can only shudder at what end this will culminate in the 21st century on this side of the pond.

[Generic Other]

26. He captured our decline with brutal honesty

The quotes from James Baldwin especially.

[redgreenandblue]

17. The name of the sickness is "national socialism".

[RoccoR5955]

21. I think you meant "Social Nationalism."

But hey, what do I know.

[dilby]

22. The guy said he would answer to his creator for every shot he took.

And I believe him, he answered to the Creator on a beautiful sunny day at the gun range and I think his Creator said you fucked up son.

[Amishman]

23. AS's success just confirms something we have long ignored

The general public is not overwhelmingly progressive. There is a big segment of society that does not at all subscribe to the values held dear on DU. We tend to get caught up that conservatives only get elected due to fraud, gerrymandering, or voter suppression. many conservatives get elected because there are wide swaths of this country in which the majority actively agree with what those people represent. (not to say they do not get some extra seats due to creative districting and other ways). It might not make sense, but that does not make it any less real.

We are a divided America, and the success of this movie is just one more way in which it shows.