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Crain posted:That defense barely covers for the fact that he saw his killing of Iraqis as a God given mission to remove evil from the world. After doing some google searching I honestly couldn't find anything other than one website which claimed he didn't donate any proceeds from his book. Just to recap, your argument is that he failed to live up to his word that he would donate the proceeds from his book to veterans, that he lied about shooting looters in katrina, that he lied about punching Jesse Ventura, and that he lied about shooting 2 car jackers. In the realm of terrible things to do, I wouldn't say this rates very high.
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Jan 24, 2015 21:07
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Grizzled Patriarch posted:I guess I'm kind of confused as to your argument. That the movie isn't all that bad? I don't see how it's possible to claim that the depiction of Iraqi characters in this film isn't problematic. Like I said, can you think of a single Iraqi character that had a name, aside from the evil caricatures? They don't get names because they aren't people. The film treats them like props. Not a single one of them gets the same level of depth as secondary and sometimes even tertiary white characters. Whether Chris Kyle and combat forces as a whole are trained to dehumanize the enemy is one thing, but that doesn't justify the film doing it. It's also troubling that the dehumanization extends to women and children, even outside of the opening scene. But I now understand how you find it offensive. vintagepurple posted:The only iraqis present in this film, that aren't evil enemy combatants, are being used by the film to demonstrate how evil the enemy combatants are. That's explicitly racist, it's practically a racist trope: they're so evil that they don't have sympathy for their children and families. They'll sacrifice them to kill us! They're inhumanly evil! You come away thinking that it's a mistake to trust the scheming arab, they'll all turn on you. It's the same thing that's used to smear palestinians in Israel, the japanese in WW2, the soviets during the Cold War, black americans today, in some circles- they'll sacrifice their families to attack us. They don't love their children. ^Pretty much what I told him.
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Jan 24, 2015 21:15
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The whole iraq war has been such an absurd failure on the part of you Americans and invading Iraq in the first place was a war crime to begin with since you based the invasion on nothing but lies. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died as a result of this war and the entire region is deteriorating even to this day to the point where warlords are seizing ground for themselves like it's some completley lawless post apocalyptic hellhole (which it is, now). People are still dying in droves down there That's why I personally think it's pretty tasteless to make a movie which celebrates an American with a high iraqi kill count. I mean 
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Jan 24, 2015 21:18
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Those lies betray a bunch of racist, unduly violent views towards other people. They are not heroic. Thinking that murdering someone is something to brag about, in and of itself, is not a healthy thing. It's a horrible mentality, that in his case was used to say some types of people (Iraqis, Koran-carriers, "looters") are less human than Americans. Kyle is also pushing a false reading of a war that was done for bad reasons and caused horrible trouble. Do you see a problem with falsely glorifying a terrible, destructive policy?
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Jan 24, 2015 21:19
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Did you even read anything I've said?
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Jan 24, 2015 21:23
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SirDrinksAlot posted:I am talking about the movie, and from what I could see I didn't see anything offensive while watching it. SirDrinksAlot posted:I don't view these movies as anything other than entertainment. SirDrinksAlot posted:I'm not trying to shut down criticism I'm just trying to show you my perspective. SirDrinksAlot posted:Did you even read anything I've said? Dude we get your perspective already there's just not really a lot to your perspective to respond to at this point.
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Jan 24, 2015 22:18
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SirDrinksAlot posted:
For the average private person who no one knows about those things are lovely but, yeah, they wouldn't rate very high. But this is a very public figure whose life has just been thrust fully into the public consciousness under false pretenses that make major revisions to his own history and the history of this country from the last 14-15 years. It's a significant issue. But you've made it quite clear you're just going to sit in "I'm just not that invested" box. So again, thanks for not really making any points beyond telling us you don't really care. Combed Thunderclap posted:Dude we get your perspective already there's just not really a lot to your perspective to respond to at this point. This. I'm not trying to just disregard you because you're not agreeing. Please understand that. It's just that you're not making any points of your own, asking us to reexplain things we've already posted earlier in the thread, then saying that you don't really care. Crain fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Jan 24, 2015 |
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Jan 24, 2015 22:33
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Arab Americans and American Muslims are reporting a surge in death threats: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jan/24/american-sniper-anti-muslim-threats-skyrocketquote:American Sniper continues to draw record-breaking audiences as it barrels into its second weekend in wide release, but a group representing Arab-Americans says the rate of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim threats resulting from the Oscar-nominated war film has already tripled. While you can say the people expressing such hateful opinions likely held them previously it seems clear American Sniper is emboldening them. Recently I had the misfortune to see Gone With the Wind and I've been brooding on the mythology of the "Lost Cause" ever since. It occurs to me that Iraq under Saddam and the ensuing insurgency fighting against the US fits very neatly into the framework of the "Lost Cause", a militarily weaker, less technologically advanced nation fighting a hopeless battle to retain self-determination. The only major difference is that unlike the Civil War the more powerful side was actually the initial aggressor, so Saddam's Iraq actually fits the "Lost Cause" narrative better than the Confederacy. Given how well American Sniper is doing in the South it is likely a good portion of its fans will believe in the "Lost Cause" narrative to some degree. Indeed perhaps the most striking difference is the lack of acknowledgement of an equivalent to the milder apologia for the Confederacy that was voiced by Shelby Foote in Ken Burns' Civil War: Confederate troops fought so hard to defend slavery in spite of the fact they didn't own slaves or particularly benefit from it because they were defending their homes. The Union were invading their homeland and imposing its will upon them and so they reacted against that violently. It is of course not surprising that xenophobic and racist people do not view foreigners with different skin colour in the same manner they view ancestors but it is striking how on the one hand Confederates can be lauded for standing up and defending their homes against a superior enemy from a more developed part of the world who wanted to impose its views, regardless of how worthy they were, upon Southerners by force yet on the other Iraqis doing pretty much the same thing are savages who need to be exterminated because might makes right.
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Jan 24, 2015 23:03
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Please don't compare Gone With The Wind with this piece of poo poo.
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Jan 24, 2015 23:18
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ReV VAdAUL posted:Arab Americans and American Muslims are reporting a surge in death threats: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jan/24/american-sniper-anti-muslim-threats-skyrocket Remember: The Mujahideen were very popular, back when they were fighting off the Russians. They were freedom fighters. They were very popular in the south as well where this parallel was made. But then we figured we'd be free to just move on in since we helped them and we didn't realize that they don't want anyone around and were setting up a totally different system of rule from what we had in mind. So the necessary adjustments were made and they were rebranded as evil. Also don't forget that before 9/11 Middle Easterners were one of the "good one" groups of minorities where the GOP was concerned because they were very conservative. The last 15 years has completely flipped social perception of Middle Easterners and Muslims in the first world.
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Jan 24, 2015 23:26
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SirDrinksAlot posted:After doing some google searching I honestly couldn't find anything other than one website which claimed he didn't donate any proceeds from his book. Then you suck at google: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/384176/justice-jesse-ventura-was-right-his-lawsuit-j-delgado There are also articles from the Washington Post and several other news orgs reporting the same thing. Multiple reporters have tried and failed to validate those claims (Nola sniping, defensive shoot, WMD retrieval, etc). Part of the reason Ventura won the lawsuit is that his council proved the book was for profit despite the claim that 100% of the profits would be donated. Ventura had pretty airtight evidence (he's on a huge blood thinner regiment and any hit that knocked him to the ground would have been readily evident). Winning defamation in the USA is exceptionally rare as you have to prove malice. There are worse things to do than lie, but to portray this dude as a reluctant hero rather than a murderous braggart is upsetting. If you saw a movie on how Timothy McVeigh was really a conflicted individual fighting against a savage world, you would rightly be very upset by painting him as a sympathetic character in order to revise popular history. That's how propaganda works. If you think watching a movie about something does not change the way you see it, then you seem woefully unaware of how propaganda and marketing work. mugrim fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Jan 25, 2015 |
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Jan 25, 2015 00:29
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Maybe John Wayne Gacy was just a tragic patron of the arts who lost his fight against schizophrenia and psychopathy. A truly tragic tale.
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Jan 25, 2015 00:40
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Please don't compare Gone With The Wind with this piece of poo poo. Gone With The Wind is a piece of poo poo
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Jan 25, 2015 01:23
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Crain posted:Maybe John Wayne Gacy was just a tragic patron of the arts who lost his fight against schizophrenia and psychopathy. A truly tragic tale. Hell, he got a lot of desperate young men off the streets, and for that he should be commended. He wasn't even gay, either! A true Ally.
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Jan 25, 2015 01:29
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ReV VAdAUL posted:Indeed perhaps the most striking difference is the lack of acknowledgement of an equivalent to the milder apologia for the Confederacy that was voiced by Shelby Foote in Ken Burns' Civil War: Confederate troops fought so hard to defend slavery in spite of the fact they didn't own slaves or particularly benefit from it because they were defending their homes. The Union were invading their homeland and imposing its will upon them and so they reacted against that violently. I had this very thought when reflecting on this film, and the discussion here, earlier today. Thanks for voicing it so eloquently.
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Jan 25, 2015 02:48
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henkman posted:Gone With The Wind is a piece of poo poo Why
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Jan 25, 2015 02:57
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Well for one: my aunt named her cat Rhett Butler. Counter point: that cat is chill as gently caress.
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Jan 25, 2015 02:59
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For a lot of the same reasons everyone has said American Sniper is bad, and also being 3 and a half hours long
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Jan 25, 2015 03:08
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henkman posted:For a lot of the same reasons everyone has said American Sniper is bad, and also being 3 and a half hours long American Sniper is bad (read: dull, flat, by the numbers) movie, racism and politics aside. Gone With the Wind is a superbly crafted film. The two are nothing alike, as far as I'm concerned.
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Jan 25, 2015 03:19
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I love how people of certain political leaning loves to bash all the movies with "liberal agendas about slavery" etc. etc. (not that oscar baiting films don't raise my eyebrows) and now they can't handle people being up in arms about American Sniper lol. Gathering from Interviews, i mean Chris Kyle is probably a nice enough sort of guy, but such a simpleton in his world views.
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Jan 25, 2015 03:27
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astupiddvdcase posted:I love how people of certain political leaning loves to bash all the movies with "liberal agendas about slavery" etc. etc. (not that oscar baiting films don't raise my eyebrows) and now they can't handle people being up in arms about American Sniper lol. He, really, really wasn't a nice guy.
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Jan 25, 2015 03:33
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mugrim posted:Then you suck at google: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/384176/justice-jesse-ventura-was-right-his-lawsuit-j-delgado I wouldn't sperg on this, but that's also how propaganda and marketing works.
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Jan 25, 2015 04:10
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henkman posted:For a lot of the same reasons everyone has said American Sniper is bad, and also being 3 and a half hours long It's gorgeously filmed and is a gripping story, repugnant though I find it's romanticization of genteel bullshit. American Sniper has none of those things going for it.
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Jan 25, 2015 04:12
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This movie is pretty much Nation's Pride but a full length movie and unironic. It would've been a much more interesting movie if it was about the real Kyle.
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Jan 25, 2015 04:17
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Yeah, a movie can have lovely politics and still be a well-made film. Hell, I've enjoyed movies that I completely disagreed with on an intellectual / ethical level. American Sniper is just artistically bankrupt.
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Jan 25, 2015 04:18
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When I heard they were going to adapt that book I was kinda excited. Cut out the verifiable bullshit, ask and examine some interesting questions regarding the conflict (seriously, you can approach this poo poo in so many interesting ways), take a good look at this man, hell, even paint him as another victim of war yet held up as a symbol even though he's pretty goddamn broken. In my mind the final shooting range scene would be highly emotional and harrowing, the blind leading the blind into tragedy. So... none of that, huh.
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Jan 25, 2015 06:34
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I just finished this movie. Woof! Clint Eastwood should have just walked away from this one. No mention of why we were in Iraq, no sense of irony about Kyle's role as an invader, and definitely no mention of how loving stupid and pointless the war in Iraq is/was. Jesus, why the gently caress did this get made? I watched it with my mom and she was tearing up at the end which is fine. She is pretty conservative, but boy she said something that made me put this whole tale in perspective, "This is a story about a man who has grandiose ideas of himself and how he is the only one capable of protecting anyone. The guy needed help." Also, I was kind of surprised that the VA was actually doing anything for its vets. I was hoping Clint would have made some comment about it but he wasted the opportunity.
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Jan 25, 2015 06:39
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Dissapointed Owl posted:When I heard they were going to adapt that book I was kinda excited. Cut out the verifiable bullshit, ask and examine some interesting questions regarding the conflict (seriously, you can approach this poo poo in so many interesting ways), take a good look at this man, hell, even paint him as another victim of war yet held up as a symbol even though he's pretty goddamn broken. His death is a title card at the very end of the movie that somehow manages to be mildly condescending toward the PTSD-suffering veteran that he decided to take to a range. Grizzled Patriarch fucked around with this message at 06:48 on Jan 25, 2015 |
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Jan 25, 2015 06:44
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KingsPawn posted:Jesus, why the gently caress did this get made? Because Clint Eastwood and a good chunk of the American population are a few steps removed from fascists? It's not really hard to figure out meristem posted:Oh, so it's the same story as Wall Street, Wolf of Wall Street, Fight Club and however many other things? Part of the audience sees the irony, part takes the film/comic completely in serious, the author earns twice? The difference is that some of those movies are intended to be read as satirical, but American Sniper isn't at all astupiddvdcase posted:I love how people of certain political leaning loves to bash all the movies with "liberal agendas about slavery" etc. etc. (not that oscar baiting films don't raise my eyebrows) and now they can't handle people being up in arms about American Sniper lol. He was a bigoted thug and not a particularly smart one at that icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Jan 25, 2015 |
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Jan 25, 2015 06:45
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At first I was wondering how the same person who made Letters from Iwo Jima created this film, but now I wonder how the person that made this film managed to make Letters from Iwo Jima.
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Jan 25, 2015 06:48
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meristem posted:side note: They don't really need to suck at google, though. Google may just suck for them. Personalised results may mean that if you are stuck in a conservative/liberal/whatevs bubble, you really, really need to make an effort (for example, reset your search history) to get out of it. Excellent point. I default to incognito mode for this reason since I do a bunch of SEO stuff, but obviously that's not everyone's experience. astupiddvdcase posted:I love how people of certain political leaning loves to bash all the movies with "liberal agendas about slavery" etc. etc. (not that oscar baiting films don't raise my eyebrows) and now they can't handle people being up in arms about American Sniper lol. Nice people don't tend to kill literal tons of people and then lie without regret publicly and often. Nice people don't think that a good way to make people think you're 'cool' is to lie about beating up an older man or shooting people during a natural disaster. Nice people don't tend to talk about how they love killing people and how it's the most fun they have ever had. I invite everyone to read the book. Aspiring to be a real life Frank Castle is atrocious.
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Jan 25, 2015 07:31
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To be perfectly honest the United States needs the experience of a gruesome war / occupation with massive civilian casualties if it's ever going to get the idea of "war is bad" hammered into its skull. The great antiwar works from WW2 are all Russian, German, and Japanese, like suddenly those countries realize "oh, that's what those liberal cranks were getting at, I understand now!!!!"
icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 07:49 on Jan 25, 2015 |
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Jan 25, 2015 07:47
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Grizzled Patriarch posted:Yeah, a movie can have lovely politics and still be a well-made film. Hell, I've enjoyed movies that I completely disagreed with on an intellectual / ethical level. American Sniper is just artistically bankrupt. Taken is every bit as xenophobic as this movie but it's also about a thousand times more entertaining. (And, weirdly, honest.)
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Jan 25, 2015 09:16
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KingsPawn posted:I just finished this movie. Woof! Clint Eastwood should have just walked away from this one. No mention of why we were in Iraq, no sense of irony about Kyle's role as an invader, and definitely no mention of how loving stupid and pointless the war in Iraq is/was. Jesus, why the gently caress did this get made? Why would any of those things be in this film? I'm guessing Eastwood is pretty happy with the way it turned out considering the box office and plaudits.
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Jan 25, 2015 10:06
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Grizzled Patriarch posted:The movie sure does take the time to namedrop Al-Qaeda, though, despite the fact that they never existed in Iraq. Al-qaeda was not in Iraq before the war, however it moved in during the power vacuum and AQI is the group that ISIS emerged from. icantfindaname posted:To be perfectly honest the United States needs the experience of a gruesome war / occupation with massive civilian casualties if it's ever going to get the idea of "war is bad" hammered into its skull. The great antiwar works from WW2 are all Russian, German, and Japanese, like suddenly those countries realize "oh, that's what those liberal cranks were getting at, I understand now!!!!" The US lost over 750,000 in the Civil War, out of a population of 31.4 million. The South in particular was so wrecked that it took eighty years to economically recover. It didn't change anyone's mind on the value of war since both sides thought they were fighting the good fight. I doubt it will change if China were to go Red Dawn on America tomorrow. 
Charlz Guybon fucked around with this message at 13:07 on Jan 25, 2015 |
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Jan 25, 2015 12:44
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Grizzled Patriarch posted:His death is a title card at the very end of the movie that somehow manages to be mildly condescending toward the PTSD-suffering veteran that he decided to take to a range. Well. Guess that's one way to handle it.
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Jan 25, 2015 13:30
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its hard to imagine a world where iraq was not invaded or maybe even if 9/11 but more the former. honestly if iraq wasn't invaded probably over a million people would still be alive today. I mean Yeah american sniper captures a dimension to veterans and what they faced in the middle east where the enemy is elusive and faceless and a fanatical enemy that is probably gone further than the japanese in WWII, but Chris Kyle is not the man to do it and this is certainly not a movie that is needed atm with the rise of hero worship of the military and troops even though im an armchair general and love military hardware etc. Americans are just too stupid and brainwashed (especially in the south) to not buy into this kinda stuff, especially all the call of duties, and crappy movies like Act of Valor (with real active service seals) and ll the 'tell all seal' seal books. This is also a thing i feel that is happening in Australia but to a lesser degree with Anzac day and "they died for our freedom" BS when reffering to Gallipoli, Vietnam or some other conflicts where our freedoms were not directly threatened and needless to say our freedom was probably more born outta events like the Eureka Stockade or directly inherited from the British than outta a military or revolutionary struggle in which some people so want our history to be. Oh and lettuce not forget about this which kinda relates to kris kyle's death. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLq-73tP8hE BRB lets give PTSD veterans firearms, which is obviously Chris's solution lol. astupiddvdcase fucked around with this message at 14:16 on Jan 25, 2015 |
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Jan 25, 2015 14:13
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At this point, I think it's accurate to summarise that the scandal of this movie is civics/political, not artistic - i.e. the broad acceptance of the movie's message, not the message itself. The jingoist reception really shows what a continuing danger to future global stability America is (nb. not that I don't think other countries wouldn't be, in the same position).
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Jan 25, 2015 14:38
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Reminder that the trial/sentencing of the guy who shot Kyle begins around the end of January. Talk about bad timing.
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Jan 25, 2015 15:15
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Charlz Guybon posted:Al-qaeda was not in Iraq before the war, however it moved in during the power vacuum and AQI is the group that ISIS emerged from. Eh, yes and no. "Al-Qaeda in Iraq" got used as a blanket term for several different groups of Sunni insurgents, Salafi Islamists, and Mujaheddin. Calling it AQI implies that they were part of some highly-organized, globe-spanning group with a centralized power structure, and that just wasn't the case. The closest it got was after the formation of the Mujaheddin Shura Council as an attempt to unify the different Sunni insurgent groups, but that wasn't until after the events portrayed in American Sniper. It's also kind of disingenuous since it's an obvious attempt to make people subconsciously link them all to 9/11, when the majority of AQ affiliates have explicitly expressed no interest in attacking the West. Since the 80s, AQ's primary goal has always been pushing foreign occupational forces out of Islamic borders, so using Al-Qaeda as a catchall term has some very specific connotations that don't necessarily apply to every group that gets lumped in with AQ. Along the same lines, Jabhat al-Nusra got called "Al-Qaeda in Syria" until they merged into ISIS, despite the fact that their interests lay exclusively in overthrowing Assad. In the context of the film, they push this even farther. Real-life Kyle joined up after the 1998 embassy bombings, but the film goes out of its way to show him joining up as a direct response to 9/11. It also skips over his initial deployment entirely (the one where he claims to have found WMDs) and fast-forwards to looking for Al-Zarqawi. It's interesting, because the possibility of Al-Zarqawi being in Iraq got used as one of the justifications for invasion in the first place, despite internal Pentagon statements acknowledging that Hussein had no ties whatsoever to Al-Qaeda. The film very clearly wants to hammer in 9/11 as the backdrop / justification for everything that happens on screen.
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Jan 25, 2015 17:23
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