An illogical ‘Hurt Locker’ review
Big Hollywood is a fairly new entertainment blog whose stated purpose is to offer a right-wing perspective on what is generally considered a liberal industry. I hadn’t paid any attention to it until recently, when I stumbled across Alexander Marlow’s review of “The Hurt Locker” and was gobsmacked — not because it’s negative, but because it’s negative for illogical reasons.
After explaining what an epigraph is so he can use the word “epigraph” without confusing anyone, Marlow writes this:
If you are to the right of Bill Clinton, all you need to know about “The Hurt Locker” is its epigraph: “War is a drug.”
Incredibly, the mainstream media is trying to position “The Hurt Locker” as politically neutral. The mainstream media are dense. “War is a drug.” Drugs are bad. Thus, war is bad. This is a left-wing film. End of story. Witness the first five seconds of the movie and read the epigraph; if you still have the audacity to trumpet its neutrality, you should be committed to an insane asylum or the newsroom at MSNBC.
Do you see the logical flaw there? The complete quote that serves as the film’s epigraph is this: “The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug.” The point is that war, like drugs, can be addictive. The quote does NOT say that drugs are bad, nor has the film at this point said that war is bad. That’s all Marlow. Most people would agree with him about drugs, sure — but it’s not what the epigraph says. By his own reasoning, Marlow could just as easily have written:
“War is a drug.” Drugs are illegal. Thus, war is illegal.
Or:
“War is a drug.” Drugs are expensive. Thus, war is expensive.
Both of which are also true, at least in some cases, and both of which ALSO aren’t what the author of the quote was talking about.
It may seem like I’m splitting hairs, but Marlow is the one who stakes his whole case on this. After all, the film starting with the statement “war is a drug” is “all you need to know” about it. So we should probably interpret the statement “war is a drug” accurately, shouldn’t we?
More important, however, is this:
“War is a drug.” Drugs are bad. Thus, war is bad. This is a left-wing film. End of story.
(Note: He does not actually end his story there.)
“War is bad” is a left-wing position? That’s absurd. “War is bad” is a rational-human-being position. No sane person thinks war is good. Occasionally necessary? Yes. Occasionally leading to good things, like the establishment of the United States? Absolutely. But “good”? Of course not. Dwight D. Eisenhower — no shrinking violet, he — once said, “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”
Despite what Marlow says in the postscript to his review, “war is bad” and “war is sometimes necessary” are not contradictory positions. In fact, I suspect the vast, overwhelming majority of people on Earth hold both opinions. (It only becomes political when you have to define what constitutes “necessary.”) Even the commie liberal pacifist pansies that Marlow derides for having bumper stickers that say “War is not the answer” would agree that war, while terrible, would be the only recourse if, for example, America were invaded or attacked. (They would add that you’d need to retaliate against the country that actually did the invading or attacking, but they’d agree in principle.) “War is not the answer” is a statement against preemptive wars, against choosing war as your first option instead of your last.
This opening statement of Marlow’s doesn’t address whether “The Hurt Locker” is for or against the Iraq war specifically. According to him, the movie says war in general is bad, and this alone makes it a left-wing film. So now I’m wondering: What would the movie have to be like for it to be a right-wing film? Would it need to de-emphasize the fact that a lot of soldiers get killed, and focus more on the nifty weapons and the thrill of victory? Would all the deaths have to be strictly noble and heroic, never the result of accident or misjudgment, never senseless or random? Would the movie, in other words, have to show only the positive aspects of war?
A lot of older war films are exactly like that — and sure enough, they’re generally considered the “conservative” ones. There isn’t much nuance there, though. The viewpoint starts to sound less like “war is awful but sometimes necessary” and more like “war is good, or at least kind of awesome.” Does reminding viewers of the hellish nature of war dilute the “… but sometimes it’s necessary, so let’s kick some butt” part of the message?
Later in his review, Marlow says the film’s biggest flaw is that it fails to answer these questions: Why are these men in Iraq, and who are the Iraqis? For the first question he writes that “none of the characters were motivated by anything upbeat or inspirational. Nothing about fighting for something bigger than oneself, quashing evil around the world, or saving innocent, oppressed people from tyranny.” In other words, these particular characters didn’t join the Army for the reasons Marlow thinks they ought to have joined, and therefore the movie has failed. Does he think the reasons he cites are the only ones that people have for enlisting? Or merely that people who sign up for different reasons shouldn’t be depicted in movies?
As for the second question — “Who are the Iraqis?” — Marlow says the filmmakers “don’t seem to care.” Again, because the movie doesn’t focus on the issues he thinks it should, the movie is wrong. The main characters are bomb technicians. The Iraqis they deal with the most are insurgents and terrorists, not the decent, average Iraqi citizens. Even if the soldiers joined the Army in order to bring freedom to the Iraqis and make their lives better, it’s not what they’re dealing with now, here, in this story. The movie is about these soldiers battling enemies, and most war films don’t go out of their way to give the opponents faces and names. I suspect the ones that do would be dismissed by Marlow as too left-wing, for daring to humanize the enemy.
Marlow also writes:
There are other moments in the film that are blatantly anti-war. David Morse makes a bizarre cameo as a Colonel who makes a decision to let a just-wounded Iraqi civilian/suspect die for no apparent reason — implying, of course, that the field commander is a hate-filled bigot air-raiding villages and killing civilians.
This made me laugh. It’s a bit of stretch to say that this one scene implies the officer is a “hate-filled bigot air-riding villages and killing civilians.” It may imply that the officer is callous and unwise, maybe even that he’s a bad leader. But the rest is a straw-man argument, with Marlow projecting what he WANTS the film to say so that he can hate it for saying it.
Finally, Marlow twice refers to this as a Hollywood film. He says it portrays Iraqis “just like in every other Hollywood Iraq War blockbuster,” and later says, “If this is Big Hollywood’s idea of an apolitical, well-made war film, I am in the right job.”
But this is wrong. This isn’t “Big Hollywood’s” idea of anything. “The Hurt Locker” was financed and produced independently, outside of the usual Hollywood channels. After it was finished and got rave reviews at the Venice and Toronto film festivals, it was picked up for distribution by Summit Entertainment, one of the minor, upstart distributors. Either Marlow doesn’t know this — a pretty basic fact about the movie he’s reviewing — or he doesn’t care because when he says “Hollywood,” he just means “movies,” in which case his understanding of the movie business is facile. In any case, it’s a crucial error coming from someone who’s supposed to be covering the film industry, and another logical flaw in a review riddled with them.
(Here is my review of “The Hurt Locker.”)
July 15th, 2009 at 11:19 am
I miss my party. I’ve gone into Independency until my party comes back.
July 15th, 2009 at 11:53 am
I enjoyed this. That is all.
July 15th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Too bad we are not discussing an epigraph that is actually Marlow’s epitaph.
July 15th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Interesting. This post got me thinking about the incredible line “war is a drug”. I’m not pro-war. I am constitution party. I think war and drugs happen too frequently when people won’t do the daily hard work (peacemaking for first or eating right and exercising for the second). Understanding a different culture and working things out are much harder than sending in the troops (at least much harder for the head fred, I think the troops feel differently).
Perhaps the reviewer needs to consider that looking for offense is one of those daily things that shouldn’t happen if peace making is the goal.
July 15th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Though I like to remain politically-neutral, I have to say that it’s a matter of Conservative practice to attempt to shutter something liberal under a label – any label – so long as it helps keep them from thinking about the actual ideas of a film, or an individual, or a book or news story.
Liberals can do this too, but even common avenues of liberal hatred – Christians or capitalists among others – are not shared among the liberal majority, which are often perfectly pleased to be liberal or capitalistic. I hate movie reviews that serve as nothing more than a springboard for the author’s paranoia or demons.
July 15th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
“War is a drug.” Drugs are often taken by homeless people. Thus, we should send all homeless people to war.
Also: mommy, did you really mean to say that drug abuse is the result of not “eating right and exercising”? I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt here, but care to elaborate?
July 15th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
ericdsnider.com is a drug!
July 15th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
It was a good film, and I’m about as far from a big government, tax everything in sight Obama brownshirt as they come.
Maybe seeing it from the brave women & men who perform EOD duties perspectives would shed better light on if the film was factual or blown out of proportion (as per usual with movies anyway..real life is boring)
http://www.army.mil/-news/2009/07/07/23959-eod-soldiers-view-the-hurt-locker/
July 15th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
I think reviewing movies from a conservative perspective is basically just insisting that every movie you don’t like is liberal. Honestly, I always thought (well, I still think) that conservatism and liberalism were more complex than simply insisting that things you don’t like are communist. Granted, it gets harder and harder for me to believe this when I watch cable news or read reviews like that, but you’d be surprised how many rational people actually exist but for some reason don’t always write!
Anyway, great review of a review, and keep up the good work!
July 15th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Savvy…I was thinking of drugs in my mommy way. Blood pressure medicine that my friend is on though her doctor says she just needs to lose 20 pounds then she won’t need to take it. Watching my mom eat right and exercise to keep her blood pressure down.
I was thinking drugs as in medicine. Health.
I was thinking of the daily things we need to do to have health and comparing it with the daily things we need to do to have peace…if we don’t do those things we can jsut short cut with drugs and war.
somehow in my mind it makes sense and given the ultra crazy day I’ve had I’ll take it.
Wouldn’t that be nice though…an apple a day keeps the meth away. It’s really catchy. too bad it’s not that easy.
July 15th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
mommy:
Ah. That’s perfectly understandable and reasonable, but it for some reason did not occur to me on the first read-through. Carry on
.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
What an industrial size tool. Marlow’s line – “Nothing about fighting for something bigger than oneself, quashing evil around the world, or saving innocent, oppressed people from tyranny” – could only have been written by someone who’s never been in the military, and certainly never served in a war. (He admits he’s never done either.) Ask any veteran what they were “fighting for,” and their first answer will almost always be “to stay alive until I get to go home.”
Also: War is a drug. Drugs make me drowsy. When I’m drowsy, I sleep. When I sleep, I snore. When I snore, my wife yells at me to stop. When my wife yells at me to stop, I wake up. When I wake up, I go to the bathroom. When I go to the bathroom, I stub my toe. Therefore, war is bad.
July 16th, 2009 at 12:48 am
Dangit, I was hoping this site was going to be a goldmine like Conservapedia. Instead it’s just a filled with dull reviews with occasional broad ideological barbs. Of course, the writers have conveniently co-opted every desirable “good ol-fashioned” American ideal as “conservative”, obviously in stark contrast to the godless, hedonistic, ne’er-do-well Hollywood liberals with their dastardly schemes. It’s just an exercise in the broadest kind of strawmen arguments possible, but presented in an earnest way that annoys rather than entertains.
July 16th, 2009 at 6:23 am
“’War is not the answer’ is a statement against preemptive wars, against choosing war as your first option instead of your last.”
Alexander Marlow tells us that the epigraph really means that war is bad. And Eric D Snider tells us that the bumper sticker really means that war should not be the first resort. Is one less guilty than the other of jumping to conclusions about what other people really meant to say?
July 16th, 2009 at 10:32 am
Alexander Marlow tells us that the epigraph really means that war is bad. And Eric D Snider tells us that the bumper sticker really means that war should not be the first resort. Is one less guilty than the other of jumping to conclusions about what other people really meant to say?
In order to get that “war is a drug” really means “war is bad,” he has to ignore the rest of the quote, about how war is addictive. The author provided him with a conclusion, but Marlow jumps to a different one anyway. The bumper sticker, on the other hand, doesn’t have any additional context, so one has to use logic to deduce its fuller meaning. It’s silly to use something as shallow as a bumper sticker to determine someone’s philosophy anyway, but that’s what Marlow does.
But I guess it’s possible that some people with “war is not the answer” bumper stickers believe that war is NEVER the answer, under any circumstances, no matter what, even if we’re attacked and need to defend ourselves. That belief isn’t rational, but I guess some people might have it.
July 16th, 2009 at 11:58 am
I see your point about the difference between ignoring context (like Marlow does) and filling in details without any context to go on. So you filled in details based on your own beliefs (not logic, sorry). There’s nothing wrong with that, but you stated it as though it is a fact that that’s how everyone else feels, too. To you, “War is not the answer” means war should be a last resort and should not be preemptive. But you stated it as though that is the official, generally accepted meaning of the slogan. I maintain that there is no official, generally accepted meaning of this particular slogan, and your statement should have therefore been presented as personal opinion or belief rather than fact. It is true that some statements are obviously statements of opinion and don’t need to be called out as such (e.g., “that’s a great book”), but I don’t think that this is one of those statements.
And for evidence that at least some people hold the irrational belief that war is NEVER the answer, see the lyrics to Edwin Starr’s “War.” He states over and over that war is good for “Absolutely nothing.”
July 16th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
I need a bumper sticker that says “War is rarely the answer.”
Ha! Ha!. Some people’s kids.
July 16th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
I think Steve just wants someone on the Internet to tell him that he’s right.
But I’m not going to because [unnecessary ad hominem insult deleted].
If Edwin were alive today, I’m pretty sure he’d say he was okay with the Civil War. I’m just sayin’.
July 16th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
How about a sticker that says, “War is not the answer to question #25. The answer is (B).”
July 16th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
I don’t think I know anyone personally who joined any military branch because they “were motivated by something upbeat or inspirational.” Most of them join because they need money or a way to attend college. Anyway, what exactly is upbeat about war? I can’t imagine anyone going into battle with a smile on their face and without death on their mind.
July 17th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
“Nothing about fighting for something bigger than oneself, quashing evil around the world, or saving innocent, oppressed people from tyranny.”
To be fair, Marlow never claims that the above accurately describes the true motives of soldiers in the military or their commanding officers. Rather, he implies that a good war movie should be grounded in these ideals, whether accurate or not. The conservative right doesn’t see anything wrong with propaganda so long as it’s pro-American.
July 17th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
The FAIL baby with its head in the stroller always gets me. It’s MY drug.