It's been an interesting week of reversals. Since my last rather scathing condemnation of the Philadelphia Eagles, and North American sports in general as being dour, perfunctory executors of pedestrian, lowest common-denominator actions required to win, things changed somewhat. Last weekend, the Eagles abruptly stopped doing the absolute minimum required in a game, and took chances. Gambled. Risked. Dared. Challenged. And in so doing, triumphed over the odds and the expectations in breathtaking fashion.
The Eagles that triumphed last Saturday stood tall and proud over their opponents because they triumphed over fear. They stopped begging for crumbs and started pushing their luck. That was when spectators no longer watched the percentage probabilities tally up in a stultifying ledger of accounting tabulations, but watched a Nietzschean triumph of willpower, stewed in a rich, heady broth of confidence and exuberance.
But enough about sports. What about films?
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Not many people have seen William Hurt's film "Varian's War." Nor should they, really. It's not terribly good. The only reason I bring it up is that it's a mediocre film set during the Second World War, and released in 2001. IMDB says that there have been 142 commercial films released since the turn of the millennium that are specifically centred around that conflict. In the 1990s? 29 films.Cut to the chase. Particularly since the World Trade Centre attack, American troops of occupation have been deployed throughout the Middle East to no good end. How does a government convince a voting general public to condone or even advocate an expensive war that costs thousands of lives without benefit? Propaganda certainly doesn't hurt.
It seems that eighteen years of being told that war is OK is starting to wear thin. Shooting evil Nazis is good, but after 65 years of shooting Hitler, Himmler, Göring, Heydrich, Goebbels, their underlings, their chauffeurs, their relatives, people who met them, and people with similar initials, the fun may be wearing thin. The past 20 years has been an enormous glorification of international conflict during "the good old days" when the enemy wore uniforms and invoked the Geneva Convention, instead of being six-year-old kids with pipe bombs hidden in baskets.
It's been almost 20 years of Americans being blown up by IEDs in Afghanistan, and the veterans who inconveniently survived their tours of duty and also not committed suicide have started to let it be known that defending democracy is not all it is cracked up to be. Pat Tillman was about to be a very prominently visible and vocal critic of American imperialism before he was brutally shot to pieces by friendly fire. Regardless of his silence, people are starting to realize that stationing occupying troops in the Middle East is less fun than sending troops to Vietnam ever was.
So if you're an able-bodied American who believes in patriotism, the star-spangled banner, the American way of life, freedom, democracy, and that sort of thing, you must feel that there is an inexorable social force that pushes you to support the military, love the troops, and believe in the truth and justice of the causes for which they fight. Cinema has played a large part in creating that social pressure. Fighting the Nazis was good enough for people 60 years ago, so you should morally equate that to splinter-bombing Yemeni orphans with drones today. And every day.
And now that newer generations are starting to lose the immediacy of the relevance of the Nazi threat, Hollywood has hit us with "12 Strong" and other films that lionize troops in Afghanistan. Why not? They won the war, didn't they? Or stopped terrorism? Or stabilized the region? Or... anything?
The film debacle the bugs me the most was the release of "Thank You For Your Service" in 2017. A typical buddies-go-to-war thing reminiscent of an amateurish and sophomoric attempt at "The Deer Hunter" that has already been forgotten, it was obviously released to smother any SEO data related to "Thank You For Your Service" (2016) - a venomous assault on the U.S. Government and its failure to support its own troops in terms of mental health.
In conclusion, cinema is a medium like all others in that it has been manipulated to convey a political message. That being said, Hollywood mainstream films have demonstrated a tremendous preponderance toward militarist government propaganda.
I will attack my next category of films soon, wherein I shall examine biopics. But now, a quick list of musical tunes, and then I shall retire for the evening.
Shower Songlist
- The Battle of Evermore, by Page and Plant
- Waterfall, by E.L.O.
- Ain't That A Shame, performed by Cheap Trick
- Runnin' Against The Wind, by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band
- Free As A Bird, by The Beatles
- Night Flight to Venus, by Boney M
Gosh, I'm drawing a blank on any sort of thematic continuity between these tracks. Perahps it will make more sense in retrospect.
Until next time, good night England and the Colonies.
Cheers,
—mARKUS
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