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Armyman25 posted:The creators of the patch were Nazis? Turns out the dude wearing a Death's Head insignia / SS logo shares many opinions with the Nazis? WHOA
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Mar 15, 2015 08:26
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icantfindaname posted:Well it's a good thing then that military service in the United States is entirely voluntary, and nobody is coerced or even really pressured into doing this, isn't it? Is this really the case? Here in the UK a lot of people sign up because they have few skills and are in economically deprived areas, and have a sudden realisation that it's either the army, or the dole and then most likely prison. Yeah it's not conscription but it's not like the decision's made in a vacuum, and I can't imagine things are any better in the US. Then (if they come home at all) they often return even less able to function in society. Great job, armed forces! e: This isn't a defence of Kyle or the film by the way - I just think the notion that Party Boat fucked around with this message at 09:39 on Mar 15, 2015 |
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Mar 15, 2015 09:19
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Party Boat posted:Is this really the case? Here in the UK a lot of people sign up because they have few skills and are in economically deprived areas, and have a sudden realisation that it's either the army, or the dole and then most likely prison. Yeah it's not conscription but it's not like the decision's made in a vacuum, and I can't imagine things are any better in the US. That's exactly how the military is in America too. Some people think its a traditional family and culture thing, some people go into West Point from political connections and have ambitions for later in their life like my wealthy ex's younger brother, some are shy and bored and lonely with no friends who think the military will give them the chance to live life, some are just poor as poo poo drinking all day with no hope but see the military as an alternative. I've seen Army recruiters acting all predatory in my highschool harrassing people they smell as "weak" and trying to crush their dreams and build em back up as the Army being their only hope, same thinking of gangs and ISIS and crap targeting young people. The recruiters use the coercion and poo poo that poster just denied even existing, allowed to roam public high schools and call people at home stalking them trying to make people break, its exploitative and horrible. Then the military tries to turn them all into the same thing, soldiers. Seems like a lot of people just get bored by working on jeeps, or get drunk overseas or in bars by home bases and don't really do much but get paid and make friends. But others get sent to war zones and are made to kill people, either as their orders or simply to defend themselves from people rightfully considering them "hostile invaders." The entire level of discourse I started hearing in the wake of American Sniper was horrible. I knew two people personally from highschool who joined the military in the mid 2000s and came back from a couple Iraq tours and committed suicide! One hung himself and his wife walked in on the guy hanging in the middle of the living room.. they had a kid and young family in that house. Nerds and blowhards, racists or racial minorities all join the military for their own reasons. I never would enlist, but sometimes I thought it sounded like a better option then getting drunk and feeling depressed and failing out of school myself. And I'm am anti-authority anti-war progressive civil rights guy haha. Now if there was "civil service" poo poo to volunteer for that gave you Army benefits but strictly focused on helping people overseas and at home I would do that in a heartbeat, unfortunately the military alone get the funding to do those things too. Now if our Peace Corps got 1 percent of the funding our military did, the world would be so much better off probably. Unfortunately people join our military instead of becoming community organizers or PTSD advocates or anything, and people just slacktivist rage online instead of doing anything about it. Smoothrich fucked around with this message at 09:55 on Mar 15, 2015 |
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Mar 15, 2015 09:48
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Party Boat posted:Is this really the case? Here in the UK a lot of people sign up because they have few skills and are in economically deprived areas, and have a sudden realisation that it's either the army, or the dole and then most likely prison. Yeah it's not conscription but it's not like the decision's made in a vacuum, and I can't imagine things are any better in the US. I agree with this assessment. The armed forces might do their damnedest, and often succed, at twisting people into bloodthirsty murder machines for whom killing is their raison d'etre, but not everyone joins up to go shoot brown people. Military recruitment's almost predatory in how it targets the poor, the unqualified, the deprived and the desperate. There's plenty of incentives given for military service beyond just being legally allowed to kill other people: training, prestige, a paycheck, a sense of purpose or community, the list goes on and on. It's a job like any other, that just happens to potentially include violence against your fellow human beings. Add to that the factor that not everyone who joins the military is making an informed decision, nor do they know ahead of time where they will be deployed and in what role. EDIT: ^^^^^^ drat, ninja'd.
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Mar 15, 2015 09:52
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Yeah, I've looked into the Peace Corps when I was younger, cuz I kept failing in school but wanted out of my hometown of dirtbags, many who also enlisted but would often kill themselves off or be even bigger dirtbags with paranoia and aggression and drug addiction that didn't even exist before they went off to probably fix it. Some people just want to gtfo and the military is EVERYWHERE offering you the chance. Sadly the Peace Corps and many volunteer organizations seem corrupt, inefficient, or expecting you to already be a trained professional somehow. The military provides so much to people, place to live, VA benefits, job skills, free college, unfortunately they can order you to kill poo poo in some shithole the moment greedy people, all civilians often with blatant business interests and ignorant/selfish policy positions get the excuse to write the orders. I probably would've reacted how Chelsea Manning did if I became an intelligence officer, I certainly could've been a candidate with my test scores, aptitude, some college, all that. You see what happened when the poor kid's conscious got too loud and he made a mistake? Pathetic. The lovely institutions of the military and government are to blame for that though, not enlisted Americans who can't do anything about it even when they try. And when you speak about "Chris Kyle" as a reflection of all people who sign up for a job you sound like a loving idiot. Smoothrich fucked around with this message at 10:08 on Mar 15, 2015 |
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Mar 15, 2015 10:01
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icantfindaname posted:Turns out the dude wearing a Death's Head insignia / SS logo shares many opinions with the Nazis? But Kyle didn't wear an SS logo. That would be the Marine Scout Snipers. You know who also wore swastikas? The US 45th Infantry Division.  Really makes you think.
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Mar 15, 2015 10:09
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_use_of_the_swastika_in_the_early_20th_century Prior to some big broohaha I can't seem to remember the name of, swastikas really were all over the place. EDIT: And while we're talking SS symbols, KISS's logo bears a distinct resemblance. I would infer from this that the jewish glam rock band hold some nazi sympathies. TomViolence fucked around with this message at 10:21 on Mar 15, 2015 |
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Mar 15, 2015 10:17
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snipe this thread in the head
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Mar 15, 2015 10:19
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Is that kinda like how skulls have been used as symbols since like the dawn of time? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_skull_symbolism
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Mar 15, 2015 10:23
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I see that crap like sports logos. Just ways to boast and tag yourself as a killer in a group of killers to be feared and respected, symbology representing many people from the past to embolden yourself as part of something bigger. It's not very political ideology wise.
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Mar 15, 2015 13:56
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Why are we still trying to weasel out of this when the guy explained the rationale in his own words?
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Mar 15, 2015 14:51
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Why are we still trying to weasel out of this when the guy explained the rationale in his own words? What weaseling? People keep posting that stupid video about the SS and saying that whoa, other groups of used skulls too, therefore they must also be Nazis! Also, it's really weak if you can't understand the difference between labeling yourself as bad-rear end versus a bad guy. But yeah, let's keep with the 
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Mar 15, 2015 21:06
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Armyman25 posted:Also, it's really weak if you can't understand the difference between labeling yourself as bad-rear end versus a bad guy. Which do you think the SS was doing?
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Mar 15, 2015 22:28
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Snowman_McK posted:Which do you think the SS was doing? He was talking about Chris Kyle being a dumbass blowhard tough guy with gang tags not defending Nazism. Chris Kyle doesn't seem like a Neo-Nazi either, just an rear end in a top hat. I think anyways. People are being pedantic about stupid war logos that don't mean much to anyone but looking cool anyways. Smoothrich fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Mar 16, 2015 |
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Mar 16, 2015 01:50
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Smoothrich posted:I think anyways. People are being pedantic about stupid war logos that don't mean much to anyone but looking cool anyways. Aside from the very explicit, specific meaning that Kyle himself gave for choosing that logo that has been posted repeatedly, you're right.
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Mar 16, 2015 02:29
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Smoothrich posted:He was talking about Chris Kyle being a dumbass blowhard tough guy with gang tags not defending Nazism. Chris Kyle doesn't seem like a Neo-Nazi either, just an rear end in a top hat. He's pretty explicit that he's an exterminator, referencing the importance of being a punisher. His own words: Chris Kyle posted:We called ourselves the Punishers. Smoothrich posted:I think anyways. People are being pedantic about stupid war logos that don't mean much to anyone but looking cool anyways. Symbols are important. When people tell you what their symbols mean, that is pretty important to determining what they think about them. It's not just a skull and cross, it's a cross of the knights templar, and the skull of the Punisher. Those have VERY extreme connotations, especially in relation to the use of violence as well as engaging in a war against a Muslim nation. That's why I find the sheep dog speech so valuable. It is inherently ironic with what happens on screen. Nothing is scarier than a wolf who thinks they're a sheep dog. It's an attitude prevalent in all sorts of areas, especially law enforcement and the military.
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Mar 16, 2015 03:08
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His quote just reaffirms everything I said. They thought it was cool. You are reading too much into a bunch of guys in a tough environment painting dumb poo poo on their jeeps and wearing patches of loving comic book heroes lol. He's totally honest about it too. Might as well be a Superman logo except that's corny looking. The Punisher carries a big gun and shoots people for what he believes is his duty or something probably, I don't read comics, they probably didn't either much. Sounds appropriate for recon snipers or whatever the unit was. And the spraypainting their logo like a gang tag claiming territory is actually interesting. Psych ops poo poo. They were probably trained in it. So is ISIS. It's warfare. Chris Kyle's unit wasn't there to win hearts and minds you know. It was to pacify a violent insurgency by killing most and scaring off the rest. They succeeded too, the surviving Sunni rebels mostly fled to Syria. Smoothrich fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Mar 16, 2015 |
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Mar 16, 2015 03:33
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Are you really having an argument over literal symbolism in the Movie forum? Stop.
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Mar 16, 2015 03:51
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Smoothrich posted:Chris Kyle's unit wasn't there to win hearts and minds you know. It was to pacify a violent insurgency by killing most and scaring off the rest. Good thing 100% of the innocent people left long ago and every single remaining person were vermin evildoers that were worse than rabid animals. Foreign military member that's impossible to understand because you can't understand even the most basic bits of their language, and all you see is killing and tagging your hometown with graffiti that obviously signifies human death... Yeah, nothing wrong with that, he's just punishing bad guys and being a badass! Obviously the military has the right to defend itself from actual terrorists and attacks, but US soldiers practicing terrorism (you know, using terror to achieve your goals) isn't something that can be so easily brushed aside. Even if every single location was already deserted aside from 100% evil Nazi Zombies, do you think they clean up the graffiti when they're done? When the citizens of the area return to their e: To bring it back to the movie more directly, the problem is systematic dehumanization, the fact that CK's own autobiography showed the kind of damage that can happen to our own soldiers from that viewpoint (let alone the lasting effects to others), and the fact that the movie just so utterly and probably intentionally missed the point and glossed over the issues Sentient Data fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Mar 16, 2015 |
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Mar 16, 2015 04:20
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Smoothrich posted:His quote just reaffirms everything I said. They thought it was cool. You are reading too much into a bunch of guys in a tough environment painting dumb poo poo on their jeeps and wearing patches of loving comic book heroes lol. If you think the Punisher is a hero, you should probably calibrate your moral compass. Smoothrich posted:He's totally honest about it too. Might as well be a Superman logo except that's corny looking. The Punisher carries a big gun and shoots people for what he believes is his duty or something probably, I don't read comics, they probably didn't either much. Sounds appropriate for recon snipers or whatever the unit was. If you're not familiar with the material, you should probably not comment about its symbolism. The Punisher is not a good guy by any one's standards. Even within his own universe, he's viewed as a psycho by both sides. He is not viewed as a hero or a good guy by people within his world. He is a straight up serial/mass killer and cops to it all the time. He kills those who are not an active threat including people in cuffs. He is a dude with a hitlist who just murders left and right. He is not spiderman, batman, superman, or any other comic book hero. He's literally just a dude who murders people left and right. His focus is not on saving people, but rather killing as many criminals as humanly possible. His theory is that if he kills enough people criminals will be scared. Ironically, this action in the comics is shown many times to have the same end result as Iraq. Criminals become more likely to kill witnesses and even if a mob is killed it is almost immediately replaced by someone worse who is even crazier. This is extremely important within the context of the movie (and real life). Symbols are not happenstance, especially when people spell out to you what they mean. If you claim your god wants you to kill muslims and you're wearing both the symbol of a psychotic killer and an old religious order that loved killing muslims in the literal crusades, it's safe to say what the general message you want to get across is. Especially when you explain it. Like, at this point he could be wearing the classic "One shot, two kills" and you'd feel the need to rob him of agency and act like it's just par for the course. Mustafa is closer to the sheep dog as per the movies textual evidence. Smoothrich posted:And the spraypainting their logo like a gang tag claiming territory is actually interesting. Psych ops poo poo. They were probably trained in it. So is ISIS. It's warfare. Chris Kyle's unit wasn't there to win hearts and minds you know. It was to pacify a violent insurgency by killing most and scaring off the rest. They succeeded too, the surviving Sunni rebels mostly fled to Syria. When your army begins using gang tactics and engaging in legit terrorism, it's probably worthwhile to start examining yourself. Also, whatever happened to those Sunni rebels? Surely nothing ever sour or bad came from that. But then again, any focus on that would have taken precious time from the American hero. And that's kind of the problem with the movie. It never really decided to take a real direction. It felt zero need to ground the movie to Chris Kyle the real life person, yet also refused to examine a broader context. This makes it one of the lazier works Eastwood has made. If I had not known ahead of time that this project had the director shuffled around last minute, I feel confident saying I would have guessed that it happened.
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Mar 16, 2015 05:06
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Smoothrich posted:And the spraypainting their logo like a gang tag claiming territory is actually interesting. Psych ops poo poo. They were probably trained in it. So is ISIS. Now, the second an American soldier does something worse than ISIS, I will be the first to consider possibly criticizing them.
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Mar 16, 2015 05:50
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It is what it is. We obviously shouldn't of invaded them in the first place. Cuz war is hell. I didn't feel any jingoistic attitude in the movie either. It was just a dude killing people and making excuses about it then he died at home the end, to me at least. It made me sad not proud. Many people who saw it in military type communities were silent the whole time and crying at the end according to some journalists I read, which seemed like the point.
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Mar 16, 2015 06:07
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mugrim posted:This makes it one of the lazier works Eastwood has made. If I had not known ahead of time that this project had the director shuffled around last minute, I feel confident saying I would have guessed that it happened. It's the saddest thing about the movie. Eastwood is capable of so much better. Unforgiven is both a deconstruction of the Western and an absolutely cracking Western in its own right. Million Dollar Baby starts out as a standard boxing movie, but brutally avoids expectations. Even though they didn't really succeed, his two Iwo Jima films were definitely trying for something pretty ambitious, and this could have been made by anyone. Hearing it was made by one of those 'mediocre directors for hire' like Andrej Bartowizak would have been less suprising.
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Mar 16, 2015 07:03
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Soldiers who are out there killing enemy combatants in the name of the U.S.(my country, so its in my name as well) have an extremely heavy responsibility, so I'd prefer if they aren't the type who get confused between reality and escapist fantasies that are designed to appeal to teenage boys.
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Mar 16, 2015 14:47
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Basebf555 posted:Soldiers who are out there killing enemy combatants in the name of the U.S.(my country, so its in my name as well) have an extremely heavy responsibility, so I'd prefer if they aren't the type who get confused between reality and escapist fantasies that are designed to appeal to teenage boys. a bunch of them are literally teenage boys, though? And when your reality is "I'm a Navy SEAL and I'm paid a lot of money to shoot bad guys and look cool doing it," I guess it's probably pretty easy to conflate that and any number of escapist fantasies about shooting bad guys and looking cool doing it. e: lol, this from a guy who has strong opinions about Wrestlemania Eugene V. Dubstep fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Mar 18, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 03:04
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Steve Yun posted:Hurt Locker goes into the category of films that say "look what war does to our soldiers" which is fine as far as anti-war films go, but I prefer the films that say "look what war does to everyone" I guess I imagined the parts where Jeremy Renner is going through the dead Iraqi bodies trying to find that little boy who he thought was turned into an IED, or the part where the Iraqi man is kneeling there crying as Renner tries to disarm the suicide vest padlocked onto him. Or the part where Renner holds up the Iraqi guy who works on the base who then takes him to the family who he holds up until they get the guy who speaks English and everybody is scared and they don't know what he wants. Cole posted:Hurt Locker inaccuracies: EOD teams don't roll out in three man units (which they do for the entire movie), EOD teams don't run off on sniper missions (which is a 40 minute scene), EOD teams don't go chasing after bad guys after an explosion (which is a huge plot point), their uniforms weren't correct at a lot of points (which is nit picking), a LtCol doesn't roll out just 'to see what it's like' because an e-4 says he should without a hilariously large personal security detail (which is another huge plot element), EOD units don't deploy one individual to meet up with a team (which happens a couple of times during the movie). Do you? In 2003, "special mission units", including EOD, rolled around in single vehicle units all the time. I did on more than one occasion. More than a few times, my two-man team rolled out in a cargo humvee *without a long rifle, and even without a radio* to link up with other units. My Boss, a Captain, and his Boss, a Lt Col rolled around solo in confiscated civilian trucks. In the Sunni Triangle. On a Daily Basis. Maybe the time frame was wrong, but it is a thing that happened, and your TTPs are different than my TTPs. For all of its "technical inaccuracies" like the petty poo poo you're pointing out (hint: It's all nitpicking, probably because you don't like the politics of the film), they got the personalities and the motivations of individuals pretty dead on. Cole posted:A sniper leaving his perch to help a marine unit with raids is more realistic than an EOD team becoming snipers or going off on renegade missions to find a bad guy. Are you EOD? The only time I've ever seen an actual M82 Barrett in person was when EOD was using it. Because they use the .50 cal rounds to detonate explosives at long range. Have you seen a mortar or artillery round? They're considerably smaller than a human being, but EOD shooters need to be able to hit it with the Barrett well outside of the blast radius. Sniper School doesn't teach you to shoot, it teaches how to infiltrate, how to identify overwatch positions, how to build and identify sniper nests, how to do the math involved in range finding, and other technical stuff, but it's pretty much expected that you know how to shoot before you get there. Just shooting a sniper rifle doesn't make you a sniper, but the EOD guys do have sniper rifles and do know how to use them. Which is all I saw in Hurt Locker... And finally, you're probably right, they wouldn't go on a renegade mission to find a bad guy. I know a Captain who was punished for jeopardizing his team by "going off on a renegade mission to find some bad guys", even though nobody was hurt and the bad guys he caught were doing a fly-by-night weapons market that would have been packed up and gone by the time the Brigade got its poo poo together and sent a loud armored company down into the town. He caught two guys and hundreds of rockets and other weapons that would have otherwise been used against us, but was punished for showing initiative and being successful (and embarrassing the Hoo-ah, I gotta be there and get the glory! Colonel), so Kudos to you for calling that one. My Q-Face fucked around with this message at 04:41 on Mar 24, 2015 |
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Mar 24, 2015 03:56
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University of M something cancelled a showing of this movie because of it's racist tendacies and prolification of a mass murderer. Good for them. Of course a bunch of radical USA mans are mad at the school.
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Apr 8, 2015 22:38
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I'm British and I think it's dumb. Art, even if you don't agree with it, should be confronted and debated. People used to watch movies and have a discussion about them afterwards. Actually watch the thing and talk about why it's so problematic - deconstruct it. Instead people just want to ban anything they don't agree with.
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Apr 9, 2015 08:26
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DrVenkman posted:I'm British and I think it's dumb. Art, even if you don't agree with it, should be confronted and debated. People used to watch movies and have a discussion about them afterwards. Actually watch the thing and talk about why it's so problematic - deconstruct it. Instead people just want to ban anything they don't agree with. They cancelled a screening, they didn't ban the film. That's a significant distinction.
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Apr 9, 2015 08:32
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Snowman_McK posted:They cancelled a screening, they didn't ban the film. That's a significant distinction. No I agree. Ban was a poor choice of word, but there's still a reluctance to confront it. It's all too easy now to just turn away from something and pretend it doesn't exist than it is to sit down and talk about why it's problematic, or not, as the case may be.
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Apr 9, 2015 08:47
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DrVenkman posted:No I agree. Ban was a poor choice of word, but there's still a reluctance to confront it. It's all too easy now to just turn away from something and pretend it doesn't exist than it is to sit down and talk about why it's problematic, or not, as the case may be. They're a university, they'll probably do that too.
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Apr 9, 2015 10:11
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I hate the movie but I do think for a university its a bad look to cancel a movie screening because of politics. A better solution would be to hold a screening with some sort of organized discussion afterwards. Maybe people break up into groups of 6 and discuss their thoughts on it, something like that. To pretend it doesn't exist seems counter to the whole point of a university.
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Apr 9, 2015 13:46
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When are people going to understand that outrage is a finite resource and you can't waste it on poo poo like this?
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Apr 9, 2015 21:29
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It was mostly the Muslim community and students (alongside others) who didn't want the movie to be played. Also, they've canceled the cancellation.
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Apr 9, 2015 23:09
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Haha wow. Some universities do such partisan political stunts like canceling Republican speakers and now cancelling a controversial Iraqi War film. Social justice crusading student organizations maybe are to blame? Is it really fair to trample on the freedoms the silent majority on a campus who aren't blowhard 'leftist' Obama/Hillary voting Democrats? I know if I was going to see the movie there I'd be pretty pissed, since the haters are free to simply not attend or protest outside or something. Or as mentioned, discuss and debate the controversy to actually teach critical thinking and analysis. Censorship is shameful. Edit: Muslim protest is more interesting. They should lobby instead to show that Turkey made anti American war movie that looked hilarious as a double feature. About the elite operators detained for a week by Americans or something and filled with war torture porn of American atrocities. Smoothrich fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Apr 9, 2015 |
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Apr 9, 2015 23:23
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Canceling the showing of a freely available movie released a few months ago is censorship in the loosest possible definition.
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Apr 9, 2015 23:43
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Canceling the showing of a freely available movie released a few months ago is censorship in the loosest possible definition. I agree that to call it censorship is a little extreme, but as an institution of learning its just not a good look. Sends the wrong message.
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Apr 10, 2015 14:46
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To whom does it send a wrong message?
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Apr 10, 2015 14:54
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To those who would disagree? Like fans of American Sniper or military vets in general aren't welcome on the campus cuz they are prejudged as bigots.
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Apr 10, 2015 15:03
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:To whom does it send a wrong message? To students and potential students of the future. When you go to a college the message should be "learn everything you can about every subject you possibly can".
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Apr 10, 2015 15:06
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