Sunday, Feb 22, 2015 12:00 AM +0900
America loves its war porn: “American Sniper” and the Hollywood propaganda machine
"Fury." "The Hurt Locker." "Black Hawk Down." All of these movies hit the same beats -- and that's a problem
Peter Van Buren, TomDispatch.com
In the age of the all-volunteer military and an endless stream of war zone losses and ties, it can be hard to keep Homeland enthusiasm up for perpetual war.
Here’s some of what I learned: our enemy is engaged in a crusade against the West; wants to establish a world government and make all of us bow down before it; fights fanatically, beheads prisoners, and is willing to sacrifice the lives of its followers in inhuman suicide attacks. Though its weapons are modern, its thinking and beliefs are 2,000 years out of date and inscrutable to us.
Of course, you knew there was a trick coming, right? This little U.S. government-produced film wasn’t about the militants of the Islamic State. Made by the U.S. Navy in 1943, its subject was “Our Enemy the Japanese.” Substitute “radical Islam” for “emperor worship,” though, and it still makes a certain propagandistic sense.
*American soldiers are good, the enemy bad. Nearly every war movie is going to have a scene in which Americans label the enemy as “savages,” “barbarians,” or “bloodthirsty fanatics,” typically following a “sneak attack” or a suicide bombing. Our country’s goal is to liberate; the enemy’s, to conquer. Such a framework prepares us to accept things that wouldn’t otherwise pass muster. Racism naturally gets a bye; as they once were “Japs” (not Japanese), they are now “hajjis” and “ragheads” (not Muslims or Iraqis)
*American soldiers believe in God and Country, in “something bigger than themselves,” in something “worth dying for,” but without ever becoming blindly attached to it. The enemy, on the other hand, is blindly devoted to a religion, political faith, or dictator, and it goes without saying (though it’s said) that his God — whether an emperor, Communism, or Allah — is evil. As one critic put it back in 2007 with just a tad of hyperbole, “In every movie Hollywood makes, every time an Arab utters the word Allah… something blows up.”
*War films spend no significant time on why those savages might be so intent on going after us. The purpose of American killing, however, is nearly always clearly defined. It’s to “save American lives,”
*Our soldiers are human beings with emotionally engaging backstories, sweet gals waiting at home, and promising lives ahead of them that might be cut tragically short by an enemy from the gates of hell. The bad guys lack such backstories. They are anonymous fanatics with neither a past worth mentioning nor a future worth imagining.
War is not a two-hour-and-12-minute hard-on. War is what happens when the rules break down and, as fear displaces reason, nothing too terrible is a surprise.
”やつらは西洋国家に対して、聖戦をしかけており、われわれをひざまづかせようとして、狂ったように戦い、捕虜の首を切り、配下を自爆攻撃で犠牲にすることも辞さない。武器は現代的だが、発想は大昔のもので、理解不能”ーーーISについてではなく、１９４３年の日本についての映画で語られた言葉である。
アメリカ人は善人で神と国家を信仰しているが、多少懐疑的になることもあるーー敵は、天皇なり、共産主義なり、アラーなり悪の親玉をひたすら信奉する悪人ーー そのアメリカ人兵士が味方のアメリカ人を救うために、野蛮な敵と戦い、敵が”征服”した領土、領民をアメリカが”解放”するという、プロットは現代のアメリカ戦争映画でも同じである。
アメリカ人登場人物についてはその背景が語られるが、敵については、名無し、その過去についても、将来についても語る価値のないものとして描かれ、しかも、敵がなぜ、自分たちと戦おうとしているのかについてはめったに語られることはない。
理性が恐怖に支配され、どんなにひどいことが起きても驚かない無法状態が戦争なのであるが、それを洗浄・美化して、アメリカ人が興奮していい気持ちになれるような映画を戦前から年がら年中配給することで、本土がテロに襲われていなくても、アメリカは、好戦的なムードを維持しているのである、と。
アメリカの戦争映画というのは原則こんなものだが、ただ例外もある、として例示しているのが、先ほど、投稿した、
Battle for Hadithaである。
