Hurt Locker, straight up racist movie

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3 Body No Problem

Well-known member
Hurt Locker has no political perspective other than banalities like war is a drug and soldiers often repress their homosexual sides. In the film, all Arabs are sweating, dirty, creepy, whiney, unhealthy, badly dressed, randomly killing people, devoid of individuality. All Americans are strong, charismatic individuals with great upper bodies who take great care not to hurt others. Americans suffer great emotional anguish if they 'have to' kill an Arab. Americans form friendships and make jokes. Hell, the Arabs don't even have clean teeth. I mean, if someone doesn't care for dental hygiene, you just have to invade their country.
 
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R

routes

we can delay.ay.ay...
i've not seen it but my friend, a UK Arab, had exactly the same response to the film as you and she was incredulous that more people hadn't picked up on it.
 
G

gumdrops

Well-known member
lol

when i saw it, yeah, the first thing i thought (and ive still not read any reviews of this yet) was that its actually a really solider-supportive film isnt it? the whole film was basically set up to show how hard it is for the troops out there in iraq - all iraqis are hostile to them being there, they hate the soldiers, theyre all suicide bombers etc etc. the tone of HL makes you think it might be more questioning but basically, this is basically a 'support our soldiers' type of movie. i thought it might not be.

much as i liked HL - it did have some affecting moments, but as a whole, i found it a little... flat? i know its about the soldiers so maybe expecting any sort of iraqi viewpoint is maybe not in line with the rest of the film but that a bit of that would have been nice. i thought when he ends up in the professors house, that might be an opp for some dialogue but it was just another scene where iraqis seemed to either be suspicious or nuts.
 
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3

3 Body No Problem

Well-known member
gumdrops said:
when i saw it, yeah, the first thing i thought (and ive still not read any reviews of this yet) was that its actually a really solider-supportive film isnt it?
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After the film finished, I was buzzing. I wanted to join Blackwater.

the whole film was basically set up to show how hard it is for the troops out there in iraq - all iraqis are hostile to them being there, they hate the soldiers, theyre all suicide bombers etc etc. the tone of HL makes you think it might be more questioning
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Yeah, but it's fun! Especially since 'we' can always outsmart the 'stupid arab'. Hell, we don't even have to wear our protective suits, we just pinch some cables, it's easy. 'They' are too stupid even to build a decent bomb!

What's fascinating about the movie is that I -- presumably like most educated westerners outside the US -- entered it with the expectation that it would be critical of the invasion. And it took me a long time, basically until the end, to realise that this wasn't the case. The movie cleverly supports and maintains the expectations (themselves created by scores of conventional movie scripts) that there would be some kind of Eskhaton, some reckoning at the end where the actions of the soldiers are put into a political context, but it wasn't there.

i thought when he ends up in the professors house, that might be an opp for some dialogue but it was just another scene where iraqis seemed to either be suspicious or nuts.
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That scene made no sense and was totally pointless. I guess they cut something there at short notice.
 
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3

3 Body No Problem

Well-known member
routes said:
i've not seen it but my friend, a UK Arab, had exactly the same response to the film as you and she was incredulous that more people hadn't picked up on it.
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This is something I also noticed. For example if you read the comments on IMDB. It's quite astonishing. I guess the explanation is that most (all) mainstream war movies have a clear good/bad binary, and most viewers are so brainwashed into accepting it, that it does not register anymore, because it's so in line with expectations.
 
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gumdrops

Well-known member
the reason critics like this film so much is cos its appears non judgemental about the reasons for the war and doesnt say the soldiers are dupes etc. but its not really that impartial. it has its own agenda, its just not the usual war movie one.
 
D

droid

Guest
3 Body No Problem said:
Hurt Locker has no political perspective other than banalities like war is a drug and soldiers often repress their homosexual sides. In the film, all Arabs are sweating, dirty, creepy, whiney, unhealthy, badly dressed, randomly killing people, devoid of individuality. All Americans are strong, charismatic individuals with great upper bodies who take great care not to hurt others. Americans suffer great emotional anguish if they 'have to' kill an Arab. Americans form friendships and make jokes. Hell, the Arabs don't even have clean teeth.
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You mean like pretty much every American film ever made which depicts Americans at war?

 
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routes

we can delay.ay.ay...
craner said:
Absurd. Here we go again...

Has anyone seen Full Metal Jacket?
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"I wanted to see exotic Vietnam... the crown jewel of Southeast Asia. I wanted to meet interesting and stimulating people of an ancient culture... and kill them."
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
3 Body No Problem said:
Hurt Locker has no political perspective other than banalities like war is a drug and soldiers often repress their homosexual sides. In the film, all Arabs are sweating, dirty, creepy, whiney, unhealthy, badly dressed, randomly killing people, devoid of individuality. All Americans are strong, charismatic individuals with great upper bodies who take great care not to hurt others. Americans suffer great emotional anguish if they 'have to' kill an Arab. Americans form friendships and make jokes. Hell, the Arabs don't even have clean teeth. I mean, if someone doesn't care for dental hygiene, you just have to invade their country.
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why is it required to have a political perspective? especially one that fits your own? you make it out as if you got tricked into watching it, only to found that - horror of horrors - the filmmakers weren't seekers of truth like yourself...

I thought, if anything, it took pains not to portray the Americans - aside from the main character (& even w/him there were nuances) - as overly heroic. the colonel played by David Morse, for example, is clearly meant to be distasteful both to the bomb squad guys & to us (you'll probably say something about this is rationalization or the full fleshing out of American characters or something, I guess whatever as long as it fits your POV). I dunno, I thought the whole point of the movie - or one of the points - was that the war & occupation were also dehumanizing for the soldiers, if in different ways.

it's a film about American soldiers. it doesn't claim to be anything else. correspondlingly, the perspectives are those of American soldiers, though the comparisons to junk like Missing In Action are - w/all due respect Droid - totally ridiculous. there are many stories that could be told about Iraqis, their feelings & their experiences; this isn't one of them. which isn't surprising, seeing as it's an American film made at least primarily for an American audience.

tellingly, the "racism" didn't become an -issue- until it won a bunch of Oscars.
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
oh & I want to make sure that everyone's aware Full Metal Jacket is a satire, based on a great, venomous novel (better than the movie, definitely) written by a Vietnam Vet who was solidly against that war. normally I would just assume that people understand it's satire but I just dunno here...
 
D

droid

Guest
padraig (u.s.) said:
it's a film about American soldiers. it doesn't claim to be anything else. correspondlingly, the perspectives are those of American soldiers, though the comparisons to junk like Missing In Action are - w/all due respect Droid - totally ridiculous. there are many stories that could be told about Iraqis, their feelings & their experiences; this isn't one of them. which isn't surprising, seeing as it's an American film made at least primarily for an American audience.
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I didn't intend to compare them. Just linking to an egregious example of the same phenomenon.

I thought the hurt locker was OK actually.
 
3

3 Body No Problem

Well-known member
padraig (u.s.) said:
I thought, if anything, it took pains not to portray the Americans - aside from the main character (& even w/him there were nuances) - as overly heroic. the colonel played by David Morse, for example, is clearly meant to be distasteful both to the bomb squad guys & to us
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I'm not sure which guy you are referring to. Presumably the crazy, reckless bomb disposal guy. This is the interesting thing about the script: that guy is introduced as distasteful, but in the course of the movie becomes the hero: he solves every problem, he disposes of every bomb, he's invincible, he drinks, he has fun, he doesn't give a shit about authority and bureaucracy, and he h as a hot, adoring girlfriend.

it's a film about American soldiers. it doesn't claim to be anything else.
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My review is about racism in mainstream movies. it doesn't claim to be anything else.

there are many stories that could be told about Iraqis, their feelings & their experiences
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As you know very well, none of these "many stories that could be told about Iraqis, their feelings & their experiences" will be made for an American audience, the audience that wanted, financed and carried out the war that created these 'experiences' in the first place.
 
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swears

swears

preppy-kei
routes said:
"I wanted to see exotic Vietnam... the crown jewel of Southeast Asia. I wanted to meet interesting and stimulating people of an ancient culture... and kill them."
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Has this bit of dialogue ever been sampled on a tune? It's perfect darkside, isn't it?
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
3 Body No Problem said:
I'm not sure which guy you are referring to. Presumably the crazy, reckless bomb disposal guy.
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no, that's not who I was referring to. but since you bring it up the point of the movie, again, is that however many bombs he defuses, scrapes he pulls out of, etc. dude is hollow inside. he's not having fun; it's compulsion & dude is clearly damaged goods. very obviously he's completely unable to connect with his son & "hot, adoring girlfriend". again, if you wanna go on about how Americans are the only full characters, alright, but don't pretend he's set up as a square-jawed, flawless hero.

as far as antiheroes who buck the system, welcome to cinema. presumably if his name was Tariq and he was a cagy insurgent setting up IEDs instead of dismantling them then you'd be fine with the antihero cliches.

3 Body No Problem said:
As you know very well, none of these "many stories that could be told about Iraqis, their feelings & their experiences" will be made for an American audience
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yep. I'm not sure why you or anyone else would find that surprising, though. or, they might get made, but only for the very small American audience likely to search them out at film festivals or art house theaters or whatever. which, ironically (or perhaps not), was/is the same exact audience for the Hurt Locker, the antithesis of a blockbuster.

3 Body No Problem said:
the audience that wanted, financed and carried out the war that created these 'experiences' in the first place.
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& that's just bullshit. even aside from the fact that the Hurt Locker's most likely audience, aside from veterans, was people likely to have been against the war (& not that there's not some overlap between them & vets).

I thought even stodgy Marxists these days were past lumping all Americans into a vat of hyperexaggerated cliches, but maybe not.
 
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