Hollywood Heroism in the Age of Empire: From "Citizenfour" and "Selma" to "American Sniper"

[sinkingfeeling]

http://truth-out.org/news/item/29175-hollywood-heroism-in-the-age-of-empire-from-citizenfour-and-selma-to-american-sniper

By Henry A. Giroux, Truthout

The United States' addiction to violence is partly evident in the heroes it chooses to glorify. Within the last few months, three films appeared that offer role models, however flawed, to young people while legitimating particular notions of civic courage, patriotism and a broader understanding of injustice. I am less concerned in this inquiry with the historical accuracy or artistic merits of the films than with the identifications they mobilize and the narratives they unfold about valor - still a solely masculine trait in Hollywood.

Moral and political courage is in short supply these days and rarely represented in any form in the Hollywood celluloid universe.

Selma and Citizenfour invoke the courage of men and some women who oppose the violence of the state in the interest of two distinct but intersecting forms of lawlessness, one marked by a brutalizing racism and the other marked by a suffocating practice of surveillance.

Under a regime of neoliberalism, a persistent racism and politics of disposability are matched by a theater of cruelty in which more and more individuals and groups are considered throwaways.

The stories a society tells about itself are a measure of how it values itself, its children, the ideals of democracy and its future.
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This is a long article, but well worth the read. He compares the 'truths' and moral story of 'Selma', 'Citizenfour' and 'American Sniper'.

[swilton]

1. Violence

validates one's manhood - is a critical feature of US culture and society......

Nothing can be done about gun control until we take this damaging thorn out of our eye.

[Blue_Tires]

2. I'm uneasy seeing Snowden's story compared with "Selma"

when they are nothing alike...