I like "Hurt Locker." Sure thing, I was a chickenshit coward in the military. Never, a rush of adrenalin. Never in a combat unit except for them protecting us. Never assigned to danger except 130-odd contact days, mortar fire, and a mine meets truck problem.
Michael Jernigan in NY Times today:
Later in the deployment my Humvee was hit by a large I.E.D. I had my forehead crushed in, lost both eyes, had to have my right hand fully reconstructed and took severe damage to my left knee. One buddy lost a foot; one of the others took shrapnel to the forehead but lived; one took superficial shrapnel wounds to the arm and one of my best friends died.
On a later deployment to Iraq that I did not go on, I lost three more friends to I.E.D.’s. One of them was the Navy Corpsman (Marine medic) who saved my life on the battlefield back in Mahmudiya. I have a tattoo over my left breast (where my heart is) that says "Semper Fidelis," the Marine Corps motto. It is Latin for "Always Faithful" and refers to always accomplishing the mission. Around the "Semper Fidelis" are four names. "Thompson," "Belchik," Cockerham" and "Hodshire." All great guys that I would let date my sister.
Jernigan nails it, what happens when people watch Hurt Locker :::
DemFromCT has this in the pundits frontpage story. Bottom item.
The War Movie You Dont Want to See
Here's the pay-off relating to movies:
"The Hurt Locker" and all the other movies I mentioned, whether they are good or bad as entertainment, are still war movies and war movies glorify the acts of violence that I described above. How do you feel about that? Would you bring your children out to the battlefield to witness it live and in person? There is no happy ending. Kelly does not get the gold, Stryker does not make it to the top of Mount Suribachi and 8-Ball gets cut down by a sniper. Please remember that when you watch a war movie you are watching stories about young Americans who went far from home and risked their lives; some of them died there with only their brothers in arms to witness. Hollywood is now taking our money by walking on their graves.
Maybe that’s extreme. Of course I understand why people watch war movies. I watch them, too. But I have seen my friends die and most of the movies just bring up very painful memories.
The big connection between war movies and war is that war movies are porn versions of war.
Inescapable. Despite any and all good intentions.
Vultures.
Jernigan doesn't say it, but the porn problem makes the audience members perverts, voyeurs, skags, brain-whores.
We are vultures on the lives of the dead.
Just effin vultures. Me too. The ones who smelled bodies and remember the dead ? We're in the theaters happily feasting with the other vultures. Sorry about that.
BTW: this is a good piece of writing. One of the better short pieces in English that touches war. As true in its way as Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori from Wilfred Owen.
If you are a young man or still a teen, it could change what you do with your life.