The Mythic Shape of American Sniper (2015)

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Shelton Lawrence ◽  
Robert Jewett
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Cumulative Effect ◽  
American Film ◽  
American Soldier ◽  
Box Office ◽  
National Imaginary ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
War Film

If one has any doubts about film's ability to function as a both a barometer and a catalyst of national discourse one only needs to turn to Clint Eastwood's American Sniper, here discussed by John Shelton Lawrence and Robert Jewett in the opening chapter of the volume. Lawrence and Jewett return to the terrain of their ground-breaking and influential works on the relationship between American film and culture, The American Monomyth (1988) and The Myth of the American Superhero (2002), in "The Mythic Shape of American Sniper (2015)" in which they explore how far Eastwood's film can be regarded as reaffirming the tropes of heroic narratives about American wars, or whether it offers a challenge to them. Their lucid and multi-layered engagement with the figure of Chris Kyle, both the person and the film's vivid incarnation of him, examines the reasons why the film has resonated so profoundly with vast sections of the American public to the extent that it was not only able to earn more money at the domestic box office than every single war film set in Iraq and Afghanistan before it combined, but as of writing is now the most financially successful American war film ever made. More complicated than many gave it credit for American Sniper marks a shift in how the 'War on Terror' has come to be remembered and creates a very different vision of the conflict compared to films like Battle for Haditha (2007) and Redacted (2007). It is arguably part of a conscious effort to reframe the events of the Iraq War and reclaim the conflict in the national imaginary in a very similar way to the process in which Hollywood engaged with the Vietnam War in films like The Deer Hunter (1978), Platoon (1986) and more recently We Were Soldiers (2002). The cumulative effect of these portrayals, both of the Vietnam War and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, is the depiction of the American soldier as the primary victim of their respective conflicts, not, as one might expect, the Vietnamese, Iraqis and Afghanistanis who died and were wounded in their hundreds and thousands, if not millions.

‘Because it's easier to kill that way’: Dehumanizing epithets, militarized subjectivity, and American necropolitics

2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 583-603
Author(s):  
Janet McIntosh
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Service Members ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
American Military ◽  
Folk Wisdom ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Global War

AbstractThis article examines the blunt conceptual instrument of dehumanizing American military terms for the enemy in the context of the Vietnam War and the Global War on Terror. I examine language that dehumanizes American service members themselves, who are semiotically framed as expendable. Next, I explore the essentialist, semi-propositional qualities of derogatory epithets for the enemy and the affectively charged, deadly stances they encourage. I examine how generic references to the enemy during training make totalizing claims that risk encompassing civilians in their typifications. And I show that, in the context of war, the instability of derogatory epithets can manifest itself when the servicemember is confronted with the behavioral idiosyncrasies and personal vulnerabilities of actual ‘enemies’ on the ground. The putative folk wisdom found in generic references to the enemy can thus fall apart when confronted with countervailing experience; in such cases, service members may shift stance by renouncing military epithets. (Military language, epithets, slurs, generics, othering, dehumanization, necropolitics)*

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 91-95
Author(s):  
Terence McSweeney
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
American Films ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Complicated Nature ◽  
War Film

This chapter provides a brief comparison between the categories Paul Storey identified as the defining characteristics of the Vietnam War film and The Hurt Locker. It examines how far the films made about Vietnam influenced those made about Iraq and Afghanistan. It also investigates how American films about the wars in which it participates tend to embody and perpetuate very similar ideas as the Vietnam War regardless of the enemy it is fighting or the complicated nature of the geo-political conflicts. The chapter talks about the immersion of The Hurt Locker in the ideological parameters of the culture which made it. It explores the ambiguity at the heart of The Hurt Locker and challenges some of the assertions of its film-makers.

Paul Wolfowitz and the promise of American power, 1969–2001

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Milne
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Intellectual Biography ◽  
American Power ◽  
Bush Doctrine ◽  
Political Evolution ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
The Moment

The study of foreign policy and international relations often takes ideas as rigid and fully formed, being assigned to individuals and categories of school without much attention to the processes by which they change calibre and gain or lose traction. David Milne’s politico-intellectual biography of Paul Wolfowitz from 1969 until he took up service in the administration of George W. Bush focuses precisely on the vagaries as well as the consistencies in the evolution of his thought. Many of the shifts and deepening convictions derived, of course, form the experience of observing and implementing US policy in the latter stages of the Vietnam War and thereafter. Milne takes us through the phases of Wolfowitz’s political evolution up to the moment of 9/11, showing that the “War on Terror” cannot simply be attributed to the trauma of that event; there were many existing tributaries that played into the Bush doctrine, and these have not always been given the recognition they deserve.

scholarly journals The Western and the War Film: Clint Eastwood’s „American Sniper” as Genre Hybrid

2017 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 105-119
Author(s):  
Martin Holtz
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
World War ◽  
War Films ◽  
Westward Expansion ◽  
Moral Ambiguity ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
War Film

The article explores the similarities of Westerns and war films and the ways in which the two genres have cross-fertilized each other since World War II. Central to their similarities are their efforts to render violence as a “regenerative” Slotkin means to establish or defend American civilization. Since the Vietnam War, however, the Western has taken a revisionist turn, and its subsequent evocations in war films expose the frontier ideology of justified violence in the name of the advancement of American civilization as a failed ideological project and highlight the imperialist aggression that connects America’s westward expansion with its military efforts. Using the example of Clint Eastwood’s film American Sniper 2014, the article argues that the use of Western elements in contemporary films about the Iraq War adds a sense of moral ambiguity to the portrayal of the hero, who exhibits a pathological obsession with a Western image of the righteous protector of civilization that is ultimately destructive to himself and the society he wants to protect.WESTERN A FILM WOJENNY — SNAJPER CLINTA EASTWOODA JAKO GATUNKOWA HYBRYDAArtykuł jest eksploracją podobieństw między westernem a filmem wojennym i sposobów, w jakie obydwa gatunki wzajemnie się przenikały od czasu II wojny światowej. Głównym ich podobieństwem jest próba prezentowania przemocy jako „odradzającego się” Slotkin środka służącego ustanowieniu bądź obronie amerykańskiej cywilizacji. Jednakże od wojny wietnamskiej western przeszedł rewizjo­nistyczny zwrot, a jego kolejne ewokacje w filmach wojennych eksponują ideologię Pogranicza bę­dącą usprawiedliwieniem przemocy w imię zaawansowania amerykańskiej cywilizacji jako projektu ideologicznego upadłego i ukazują imperialistyczną agresję, która łączy amerykańską ekspansję na zachód z jej militarnymi wysiłkami. Na przykładzie Snajpera Clinta Eastwooda 2014 niniejszy esej przekonuje, że zastosowanie westernowych elementów we współczesnych filmach o irackiej wojnie przydaje moralnej dwuznaczności portretowi bohatera, przejawiającego patologiczną obsesję wester­nowym image’em prawego obrońcy cywilizacji, skrajnie destrukcyjnego wobec siebie oraz społeczeń­stwa, które chce osłaniać.                                                                                              Przeł. Kordian Bobowski

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