Sunday, March 23, 2008

Hollywood's Paranoid Style On the Iraq War II


Ross Douthat critiques Hollywood's application of the Vietnam war movie onto Iraq War II. Click on the title for the article itself.
Posted by at

5 comments:

Tecumseh said...

I watched the clip -- quite good. I haven't seen any of these Hollywood movies, but my default assumption is that they all are made by Pepe, yes? Interesting parallels with the Cold War movies drawn in there. The remake of the "Manchurian Candidate" sounds hilarious -- Pepe on a bad hair day.

3/23/2008 9:08 AM
My Frontier Thesis said...

Yeah, I thought Ross did a great analysis too. I think he's currently the editor of The Atlantic.

What Hollywood needs are some contrarian screenwriters. As Ross mentioned toward the beginning of this little piece, the movie "Traffic" was good in that it portrayed reality pretty close to reality: altruistic DEA/FBI agents; showing the horrific being of drug barons in Mexico and Central America. In this particular movie, the themes were balanced.

But as Ross aptly points out in the end of his critique, Hollywood has little if not then nothing new to say when making a war movie other than: either American troops are innocent victims of an overpowering American bureaucracy; or American troops are committing savage atrocities where ever they go. In any case, it's the standard, "Bring the troops home!" kind of movie that, well, is frankly pretty worn out.

Hollywood has a real difficult time preparing thoughtful movies, and then figuring out a way to market them to the American public.

3/23/2008 1:25 PM
Tecumseh said...

Aahhh, the smell of napalm in the morning! I still think this is one of the great lines of all times in American movies. Anything comes close to that in the present pallid crop?

3/23/2008 3:12 PM
Tecumseh said...

What are the chances a guy like this one will be the villain in a Hollywood movie? I say, 0.001%.

3/23/2008 3:15 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...

A theory noted in some issue of Harper's was that it's impossible for Hollywood to convey the moral anti-War message in any movie they produce on the subject of war. This was demonstrated with the showing of Apocalypse Now, and the much hooting and cheering our patriot G.I.s demonstrated throughout the movie. Then Hollywood can use this, and elaborate on Ross's second point: Hollywood showing American G.I. as a savage, amoral monster, human ear necklaces and all.

3/23/2008 7:14 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)