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Cole posted:How? Because if you go the other way with the story and show Iraq for the colossal fuckup it was, you will have a completely different group of people saying it is anti-war and anti-troop propaganda. Only if you think "the truth" is propaganda. People would still hate it, sure, and they'd probably cry about it being anti-troop, but there would be no cogent argument behind it. It's like how Oklahoma is trying to ban AP History "because it teaches about the bad things that America did."
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Feb 22, 2015 02:36
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Grizzled Patriarch posted:Only if you think "the truth" is propaganda. People would still hate it, sure, and they'd probably cry about it being anti-troop, but there would be no cogent argument behind it. It's like how Oklahoma is trying to ban AP History "because it teaches about the bad things that America did." Is there a way to depict your viewpoint and have it be propaganda? If so, how does it differ from what you define as the truth?
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Feb 22, 2015 02:39
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Grizzled Patriarch posted:edit: The film doesn't need to be literally saying "war is good" to be propaganda, hth. Seriously bro paint your victims as savages and pretend like they're oppressing you - that's Goebbels' shtick. Pity party for a trillion dollar military superpower under siege by some $5 bandits in Fallujah, Texas
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Feb 22, 2015 02:44
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computer parts posted:Is there a way to depict your viewpoint and have it be propaganda? If so, how does it differ from what you define as the truth? Not really sure what you are asking here. Is there a way to make blatantly anti-war propaganda? Sure. (Though I'd still argue better that than pro-war propaganda, but whatever.) I don't think depicting the Iraq War in a way that is sympathetic to Iraqis instead of sweeping them under the rug qualifies as propaganda, though. The idea that any alternative approach to this film's subject matter would also inherently be propaganda is a bad faith argument. You can humanize and sympathize for the people involved in a conflict, even if you disagree with the conflict itself. How many films about American involvement in the Middle East actually do that, though?
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Feb 22, 2015 02:46
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But Chris Kyle wasn't really involved with anything that would humanize anything. His job was to be perched on a rooftop and to shoot people, not to interact with the Iraqis who were getting the poo poo end of the stick. You're asking for a completely different movie at this point. And yes, going straight from 9/11 footage to Iraq was a bad mistake, but keep in mind a LOT of Americans thought we were in Iraq because of 9/11. If this movie was made ten years ago people would care a lot less about that plot device. People don't really pay attention. Cole fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Feb 22, 2015 |
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Feb 22, 2015 02:47
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Cole posted:And yes, going straight from 9/11 footage to Iraq was a bad mistake, but keep in mind a LOT of Americans thought we were in Iraq because of 9/11. If this movie was made ten years ago people would care a lot less about that plot device. People don't really pay attention. But this isn't "ten years ago". We're in 2015 and anyone who knows anything about anything knows better. It's those that don't have much knowledge of the circumstances that can get the wrong idea by such a juxtaposition. And THAT is a problem.
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Feb 22, 2015 02:56
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BigglesSWE posted:But this isn't "ten years ago". We're in 2015 and anyone who knows anything about anything knows better. It's those that don't have much knowledge of the circumstances that can get the wrong idea by such a juxtaposition. And THAT is a problem. Its those that don't have much knowledge of it that you shouldn't really listen to anyway.
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Feb 22, 2015 02:57
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Cole posted:And yes, going straight from 9/11 footage to Iraq was a bad mistake, but keep in mind a LOT of Americans thought we were in Iraq because of 9/11. If this movie was made ten years ago people would care a lot less about that plot device. People don't really pay attention. Who does it benefit to keep repeating this myth?
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Feb 22, 2015 02:57
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Cole posted:Its those that don't have much knowledge of it that you shouldn't really listen to anyway. They get to vote like anyone else. At least in my country, and also yours, most likely.
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Feb 22, 2015 02:59
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Cole posted:But Chris Kyle wasn't really involved with anything that would humanize anything. His job was to be perched on a rooftop and to shoot people, not to interact with the Iraqis who were getting the poo poo end of the stick. You're asking for a completely different movie at this point. That's kind of my point? American Sniper is war movie that doesn't take the audience out of their comfort zone. For that reason alone, it's not an anti-war film. I don't think it's a pro-war film, necessarily, I just think the aim of its agenda is deflection. It's a nice, palatable, pre-packaged view of the subject matter that never makes the audience ask any real questions. The movie is a borderline action film that tries to pretend it's a drama, but there's no room for a drama here. It's all cardboard cutouts and caricatures with a vague, trite message. It could have been an interesting character study of Kyle, at least, but they didn't bother humanizing him either. He's just the All-American Hero they need him to be with an audience-friendly "flaw". Meanwhile Jarhead was a movie about a sniper that managed to tell a compelling story with fully-realized characters, and not a single person even got shot.
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Feb 22, 2015 02:59
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Who does it benefit to keep repeating this myth? Its Hollywood dude. 99% of the stuff in Hollywood has no benefit. Its not a documentary. Stop watching movies like they are news casts.
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Feb 22, 2015 03:00
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Or maybe, when you are watching films, you should ask yourself why the filmmakers might be making these deliberate choices to push a deliberate false narrative. Believe it or not, media has a pretty big influence on people's perceptions of history and politics. It's not like they made a mistake when they included those scenes. We are living in a country where four percent of the population will read at least 10 news articles in the next 3 months. Constantly exposing people to a specific narrative through any form of media over time is going to have an impact. edit: And before the whole "yeah but those people are dumb" argument crops up, remember that these are the people that vote to elect the people that send others off to war. Almost 50% of the voting population still thinks Iraq was connected to 9/11, and a large part of that is because the media they consume is selling them that load of horseshit. American Sniper doesn't exist in a vacuum. Grizzled Patriarch fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Feb 22, 2015 |
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Feb 22, 2015 03:06
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Cole posted:Its Hollywood dude. 99% of the stuff in Hollywood has no benefit. Its not a documentary. Stop watching movies like they are news casts. So, knowing this, answer the question.
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Feb 22, 2015 03:09
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Grizzled Patriarch posted:Or maybe, when you are watching films, you should ask yourself why the filmmakers might be making these deliberate choices to push a deliberate false narrative. Believe it or not, media has a pretty big influence on people's perceptions of history and politics. It's not like they made a mistake when they included those scenes. Yeah but if you are going to blame Hollywood movies (not the news) for people being misinformed why is that the movie's fault? When did movies suddenly get thrusted into a situation where they have to be 100% factual? I'm not disagreeing that it was a poor choice to make the movie that way, but I am disagreeing that movies need to change how they are made because people are dumb enough to see it and think it's real. If this movie was a documentary and not an "inspired by" piece then yeah, I could see your point.
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Feb 22, 2015 03:12
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The Iraq war is easily amongst the most cruel and hosed up travesties of the last 20 years or so and I basically view anyone defending it as equivalent to a Breivek apologist.
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Feb 22, 2015 03:18
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The point is that it is absurd beyond belief to make a film about the decade-long Iraq War and then loudly proclaim it isn't political.
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Feb 22, 2015 03:20
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Cole posted:Yeah but if you are going to blame Hollywood movies (not the news) for people being misinformed why is that the movie's fault? When did movies suddenly get thrusted into a situation where they have to be 100% factual? Do you not think there's a difference between "not being 100% accurate" and "being deliberately misleading"? Taking artistic license with plot elements and dialogue, spicing up the action, etc. is understandable, but that's a whole different ballgame than trying to reframe the entire historical and political context of a war that most Americans are already largely uninformed about. Whitewashing the Iraq war and lionizing Kyle under the guise of "Based on a True Story" is a bit different from what, say, the Amityville Horror is doing.
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Feb 22, 2015 03:25
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Hotel Rwanda re-imagining Hutu soldier with most machete kills wife wants him to spend more time at home but is relentlessly drawn to slaughterer more Tutsi hero of Rwanda tragic end moral its a shame the way we genocidal maniacs aren't looked after right
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Feb 22, 2015 03:45
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swampland posted:Hotel Rwanda re-imagining Hutu soldier with most machete kills wife wants him to spend more time at home but is relentlessly drawn to slaughterer more Tutsi hero of Rwanda tragic end moral its a shame the way we genocidal maniacs aren't looked after right Based on media coverage, I'm shocked this hasn't already happened.
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Feb 22, 2015 03:54
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Grizzled Patriarch posted:Do you not think there's a difference between "not being 100% accurate" and "being deliberately misleading"? Taking artistic license with plot elements and dialogue, spicing up the action, etc. is understandable, but that's a whole different ballgame than trying to reframe the entire historical and political context of a war that most Americans are already largely uninformed about. Whitewashing the Iraq war and lionizing Kyle under the guise of "Based on a True Story" is a bit different from what, say, the Amityville Horror is doing. Its a movie. If you're so seriously misled by a movie that it becomes an issue, that isn't the movie's fault, that's you being gullible to an unhealthy degree. If you seriously draw all of your conclusions about the Iraq war from a movie starring Bradley Cooper, I'm sorry.
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Feb 22, 2015 03:57
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The historical inaccuracy and revisionism may have been intentional. It may have been part of an attempt to frame the movie through a narrow American lens. Through that lens, 9/11 was the seminal event and all Muslims are bad. The American public was mislead into supporting an invasion of Iraq because of the emotional fallout from 9/11. It wasn't Saddam Hussein and WMDs and terrorism in general that the Bush Administration used to push through the invasion, not to mention Homeland Security, Halliburton and Blackwater; it was 9/11 that made everything possible. The movie might be an indictment of American ignorance. By removing some of the more disturbing aspects of Kyle's character, perhaps Eastwood was trying to deglorify both Kyle and the war itself. We see Kyle grimly doing his job, and coming back a broken man- hardly the stuff that recruiting videos are made of. I think it's fair to assume that Eastwood knows that Americans in general don't care very much about the suffering of those on the other side of these wars, so showing the humanity of Iraqis and the pain they endured won't really have any effect. So instead he makes it about one person, one American, and he strips away the gung-ho aspect of Kyle's character to make him more like other soldiers, not an outlier, because he represents the pain and suffering of many- maybe even those on the other side. I think an interesting question to ask is this: What was Eastwood's intention?
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Feb 22, 2015 03:58
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socketwrencher posted:
Nobody here knows, but they will tell you anyway.
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Feb 22, 2015 04:00
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Eastwood's intentions are like an old box of cables, twisted and bad but who cares they don't do anything anymore
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Feb 22, 2015 04:07
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Cole posted:Its a movie. If you're so seriously misled by a movie that it becomes an issue, that isn't the movie's fault, that's you being gullible to an unhealthy degree. If you seriously draw all of your conclusions about the Iraq war from a movie starring Bradley Cooper, I'm sorry. Like I said above, the problem is that literally 96% of Americans don't read more than 10 news articles (online or in an actual paper) in a 3 month period. What exactly do you think influences the opinions of those 96% of people? I agree that it's irresponsible to draw your conclusions of historical / social events from media, but that doesn't mean a shitload of people don't do that, and that those people don't vote, and that it's not equally irresponsible for filmmakers to push a lovely agenda on those people. edit: I don't think Eastwood's intentions are particularly important. I also don't think this film is self-aware enough to be some ironic postmodern meta-commentary. I wish that wasn't the go-to explanation for any art with a problematic message. Grizzled Patriarch fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Feb 22, 2015 |
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Feb 22, 2015 04:12
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Grizzled Patriarch posted:Like I said above, the problem is that literally 96% of Americans don't read more than 10 news articles (online or in an actual paper) in a 3 month period. What exactly do you think influences the opinions of those 96% of people? That isn't the movie's fault. That is people's fault for being lazy and gullible. Filmmakers who aren't making documentaries have no responsibility to anything but the MPAA and the studio that funds the movie.
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Feb 22, 2015 04:14
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Cole posted:Nobody here knows, but they will tell you anyway. I think it's interesting to kick thoughts around even if we're just speculating and even if we disagree.
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Feb 22, 2015 04:15
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swampland posted:Eastwood's intentions are like an old box of cables, twisted and bad but who cares they don't do anything anymore Have you seen Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers?
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Feb 22, 2015 04:16
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socketwrencher posted:Have you seen Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers? Yeah, that's why they're old cables. Unforgiven is legit one of my favourite movies too
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Feb 22, 2015 04:17
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swampland posted:Yeah, that's why they're old cables. Unforgiven is legit one of my favourite movies too Got it (I think).
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Feb 22, 2015 04:23
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The Outlaw Josey Wales is a good Clint Eastwood picture.
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Feb 22, 2015 04:28
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An Oscars Voter posted:American Sniper? Bradley Cooper did just a ridiculously phenomenal job, the way that the movie was made brought me back to the way movies used to be made and I completely got who this guy was and his struggle. I don't condone killing in any way, shape or form, but what resonated with me was his motivation for making a change in his life: 9-1-1 [a reference to Sept. 11, 2001]. He wasn't arbitrarily killing people; he was protecting his men and that was his job. People can call him whatever they want; I took the movie just the way it was intended by Clint Eastwood. I mean, I love that movie.
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Feb 22, 2015 14:21
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Cooper did a fine job. I'm not hating him, I'm hating the movie.
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Feb 22, 2015 14:34
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Alfred P. Pseudonym posted:The Outlaw Josey Wales is a good Clint Eastwood picture. Written, funny enough, by a die-hard white supremacist.
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Feb 22, 2015 14:47
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Cole posted:That isn't the movie's fault. That is people's fault for being lazy and gullible. Filmmakers who aren't making documentaries have no responsibility to anything but the MPAA and the studio that funds the movie. Explicitly deceitful thing deceives people, its makers have no responsibility for their actions. Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will had no real-world consequences and their makers bear no responsibility for making the world a shittier place because, whelp, people be dumb! Do you generally look at things in terms of how the victim "had it coming"? Do you think being a huge fraud is cool and good if you can get away with it using a semantic dodge? Do you really find nothing contemptible about the filmmakers marketing something as being true-to-life as hard as they possibly can without literally calling it DOCUMENTARY: THE DOCUMENTARY STORY, then not using it being a literal documentary as a responsibility dodge when they get called on being lying fucks? That's the hill you want to die on? 
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Feb 22, 2015 15:16
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Written, funny enough, by a die-hard white supremacist. It is, but, aside from Josey being a Confederate, it doesn't feel like it.
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Feb 22, 2015 15:29
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That's the craziest thing about it. How do you go from being George Wallace's speechwriter to writing Outlaw Josey Wales?
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Feb 22, 2015 15:36
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sean10mm posted:Explicitly deceitful thing deceives people, its makers have no responsibility for their actions. Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will had no real-world consequences and their makers bear no responsibility for making the world a shittier place because, whelp, people be dumb! Based on actual events isn't actual events hth
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Feb 22, 2015 15:47
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Yes but you put that line there and you use the name of the book and the name of the guy for a reason. And that reason is to wrap your film in a perceived sincerity.
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Feb 22, 2015 17:14
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Fangz posted:Yes but you put that line there and you use the name of the book and the name of the guy for a reason. And that reason is to wrap your film in a perceived sincerity. No it isn't. Stop being so gullible when you watch movies. Now that you are aware of what "inspired by" means, you are better equipped to not think everything you see on the screen is fact.
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Feb 22, 2015 17:16
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Cole posted:No it isn't. Stop being so gullible when you watch movies. Now that you are aware of what "inspired by" means, you are better equipped to not think everything you see on the screen is fact. Are you seriously arguing that creators do not put things in marketing materials and in films to have effects on the likely audience? Why did Fargo have 'based on a true story' at the start?
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Feb 22, 2015 17:21
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