The Real "American Sniper" Was a Hate Filled Killer

[Jmpty]

 http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/06/real-american-sniper-hate-filled-killer-why-patriots-calling-hero-chris-kyle

"I have to confess: I was suckered by the trailer for American Sniper. It’s a masterpiece of short-form tension â€" a confluence of sound and image so viscerally evocative it feels almost domineering. You cannot resist. You will be stressed out. You will feel. Or, as I believe I put it in a blog about the trailer, “Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper trailer will ruin your pants.”

But however effective it is as a piece of cinema, even a cursory look into the film’s backstory â€" and particularly the public reaction to its release â€" raises disturbing questions about which stories we choose to codify into truth, and whose, and why, and the messy social costs of transmogrifying real life into entertainment.

Chris Kyle, a US navy Seal from Texas, was deployed to Iraq in 2003 and claimed to have killed more than 255 people during his six-year military career. In his memoir, Kyle reportedly described killing as “fun”, something he “loved”; he was unwavering in his belief that everyone he shot was a “bad guy”. “I hate the damn savages,” he wrote. “I couldn’t give a flying fuck about the Iraqis.” He bragged about murdering looters during Hurricane Katrina, though that was never substantiated.

He was murdered in 2013 at a Texas gun range by a 25-year-old veteran reportedly suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

However we diverge politically, I have enough faith in Eastwood’s artistry and intellect to trust that he is not a black-and-white ideologue â€" or, at least, that he knows that the limitations of such a worldview would make for an extremely dull movie. But the same can’t be said for Eastwood’s subject, or, as response to the film has demonstrated, many of his fans.

As Laura Miller wrote in Salon: “In Kyle’s version of the Iraq war, the parties consisted of Americans, who are good by virtue of being American, and fanatic Muslims whose ‘savage, despicable evil’ led them to want to kill Americans simply because they are Christians.”

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Adds Scott Foundas at Variety: “Chris Kyle saw the world in clearly demarcated terms of good and evil, and American Sniper suggests that such dichromatism may have been key to both his success and survival; on the battlefield, doubt is akin to death.”

Eastwood, on the other hand, Foundas says, “sees only shades of gray”, and American Sniper is a morally ambiguous, emotionally complex film. But there are a lot of Chris Kyles in the world, and the chasm between Eastwood’s intent and his audience’s reception touches on the old Chappelle’s Show conundrum: a lot of white people laughed at Dave Chappelle’s rapier racial satire for the wrong reasons, in ways that may have actually exacerbated stereotypes about black people in the minds of intellectual underachievers. Is that Chappelle’s fault? Should he care?

Likewise, much of the US right wing appears to have seized upon American Sniper with similarly shallow comprehension â€" treating it with the same unconsidered, rah-rah reverence that they would the national anthem or the flag itself. Only a few weeks into its release, the film has been flattened into a symbol to serve the interests of an ideology that, arguably, runs counter to the ethos of the film itself. How much, if at all, should Eastwood concern himself with fans who misunderstand and misuse his work? If he, intentionally or not, makes a hero out of Kyle â€" who, bare minimum, was a racist who took pleasure in dehumanising and killing brown people â€" is he responsible for validating racism, murder, and dehumanisation? Is he a propagandist if people use his work as propaganda?

That question came to the fore last week on Twitter when several liberal journalists drew attention to Kyle’s less Oscar-worthy statements. “Chris Kyle boasted of looting the apartments of Iraqi families in Fallujah,” wrote author and former Daily Beast writer Max Blumenthal. “Kill every male you see,” Rania Khalek quoted, calling Kyle an “American psycho”.

Retaliation from the rightwing twittersphere was swift and violent, as Khalek documented in an exhaustive (and exhausting) post at Alternet. “Move your America hating ass to Iraq, let ISIS rape you then cut your cunt head off, fucking media whore muslim,” wrote a rather unassuming-looking mom named Donna. “Rania, maybe we to take you ass overthere and give it to ISIS … Dumb bitch,” offered a bearded man named Ronald, who enjoys either bass fishing or playing the bass (we may never know). “Waterboarding is far from torture,” explained an army pilot named Benjamin, all helpfulness. “I wouldn’t mind giving you two a demonstration.”

The patriots go on, and on and on. They cannot believe what they are reading. They are rushing to the defence of not just Kyle, but their country, what their country means. They call for the rape or death of anyone ungrateful enough to criticise American hero Chris Kyle. Because Chris Kyle is good, and brown people are bad, and America is in danger, and Chris Kyle saved us. The attitude echoes what Miller articulated about Kyle in her Salon piece: “his steadfast imperviousness to any nuance, subtlety or ambiguity, and his lack of imagination and curiosity, seem particularly notable”.

There is no room for the idea that Kyle might have been a good soldier but a bad guy; or a mediocre guy doing a difficult job badly; or a complex guy in a bad war who convinced himself he loved killing to cope with an impossible situation; or a straight-up serial killer exploiting an oppressive system that, yes, also employs lots of well-meaning, often impoverished, non-serial-killer people to do oppressive things over which they have no control. Or that Iraqis might be fully realised human beings with complex inner lives who find joy in food and sunshine and family, and anguish in the murders of their children. Or that you can support your country while thinking critically about its actions and its citizenry. Or that many truths can be true at once.

Always meet your heroes."

Alex Horton: American Sniper feeds America’s hero complex, and it isn’t the truth about war

[Munch]

Doesn't surprise me really. As much as people are deluded by everything to do with religion, they are also just as deluded into there false hero worship of said people, and just as they don't want to hear the truth that their god is really a mass murderer who killed millions in their bedtime story, the bible, they also don't want to accept their precious soldiers, that the media has hyped up as a hero, is in truth a brutal killer who thinks all brown people should be killed.

Just like I said the other day, people follow the flock like mindless sheep, and the truth is to scary to accept, so they try to block it out. 

[the_antithesis]

[Solitary]

I never saw the movie, but I do know this is how many people see us here, and abroad, from what I read. I think Kyle watched too many John Wayne movies as a kid. He was from Texas? Not surprised.

[Poison Tree]

Can you imagine the right wing's reaction if some sniper said that Obama sent him to an American city where he killed 30 American citizens, without trial, for walking around with guns or petty crimes? Yet that is, essentially, what Chris Kyle claims he did except under Bush (and against black people) and that has done nothing to stop the right from anointing him Jesus of war

[Shiranu]

Is he a propagandist if people use his work as propaganda?

No, and I think that is a rather stupid question... any art is open to be used as propaganda, even if it runs completely counter to what the artist intended it to be used for.

Otherwise great article.

[PickelledEggs]

In related news, here is some of the effect this movie had on the (highly influential) American public.




I fucking hate hate.

[Shiranu]

Having not seen the movie, I cant say... but Clint Eastwood is a brilliant director and I highly doubt he portrayed the Muslims the way they are saying, no more than he portrayed the Japanese as evil in "Iwo Jima". However he does present the enemy from the eyes of the main character, so maybe he did portray them that way (for artistic accuracy).

[aitm]

Meh, they made a movie where Abraham Lincoln was a vampire hunter and nobody blinked an eye.....

I know, irrelevant but it still pisses me off.

[SGOS]

Here's Michael Moore's take on the movie.  I don't think there is anything insightful in his comments.  I just added this link as a kind of "everybody is talking about the movie" comment.  I guess I will have to see it. 

http://news.yahoo.com/michael-moore-taught-snipers-were-cowards-023351716.html

I'm a sucker for movies that get hyped.  It's not that I like them or find any particular redeeming value in them, I just end up going to them out of curiosity and usually end up NOT being impressed.  Also, I'm not a fan of Clint Eastwood.  It's not that I hate him, but I've never found anything in his films to be impressed about.  I know people love the guy almost as much as people idolized John Wayne (who never impressed me either).  I just don't see why people adore him as an actor.  He might be a better director, although he hasn't directed anything that took my breath away either.

[PickelledEggs]

Meh, they made a movie where Abraham Lincoln was a vampire hunter and nobody blinked an eye.....

I know, irrelevant but it still pisses me off.

LOL I saw that. It was so bad that it almost was enjoyable. 

.... almost

[Desdinova]

I saw the movie and thought it was very good.  But not for the reasons the conservatives do.  I didn't walk out of the theatre feeling proud to be an American, I felt depressed and ashamed.  Depending on your mindset going in, you're either going to see it as a patriotic tour de force or an indictment of America's obsession with war, guns, and violence.  There are little things throughout the movie that remind us of the horror and futility of war.  Like when a gung-ho Kyle arrives in Iraq for yet another tour and meets his shell-shocked brother who just says "Fuck this place."  Or when women and children are indiscriminately killed for causes on both sides.  Or the chilling look at veterans hospital patients and their injuries.  Sure, Kyle's character shows nothing that would make you hate the guy.  But, when you have a wife and two kids and you keep choosing to go back, what does that say about his priorities?  Then there's the ending where we see actual footage of the miles long funeral procession passing streets lined with people waving American flags and Cowboys Stadium used for the funeral service.  I can see where many people would say that's just patriotic propaganda, but I saw it as a terrible snapshot of the nationalistic fervor that can grip a nation and rival religion as the greatest threat to mankind's existence.

[Munch]

LOL I saw that. It was so bad that it almost was enjoyable. 

.... almost

maybe that was the point, if one can't produce a good idea, then at least they can make it enjoyably bad.

[MarineWarrior]

I might have a different take on the movie than most as I spent the better part of two years in that shit hole.  Many of us veterans had that view that is portrayed in the movie.  Watching your friends die is not good for you and it just fills you with more hate.  Most Iraqis that I dealt with were fine and I got along with them great but I never fully trusted them.  Say what you want about the war and if it was justified or not (I lean more to not upon further review).  If you never stepped foot over there then you shouldn't say much about how veterans act and treat the people we fought against.  Many WWII, Korean and Vietnam vets can't stand Asians because of what they went through.  I try my best not to be that way with people I see that are from the Middle East but it is very hard.  I had a flashback/panic attack not more than a month ago because someone was speaking Arabic behind me. 

I did see the movie and I enjoyed it because I think it accurately portrayed the struggle many veterans have in adjusting to life away from the combat zone.  There things that can never be unseen and war changes you. 

[Jmpty]

Te next big war film will be,"William Calley, American Hero."