Oliver Stone had it made. Great looking actors cast in yellows and oranges with acid induced flashback-type scenes of super-promiscuous archetypes on a killing spree across America. Or saving private Ryan (I don’t know who directed it. Who cares?), where handsome, wholesome, heterosexual, men risk their lives to save the life of an American icon: the last male child. Christ, there is Armageddon where America saves the world. And who is selling it to us? Hollywood. What are they selling?
Therein, to quote the bard, lies the rub.
Who stands to gain from this hyper-patriotic rhetoric vomited relentlessly from the great studios on the sunshine strip?
There is a famous (not that famous, of course, or you would have heard about it before) and controversial study commissioned by the U.S ministry of defense and undertaken by a General S.L.A Marshall. The General interviewed thousands of infantrymen who had been in battle. The results (contested, yes): only 15-20% of the soldiers actually shot to kill their enemy in battle. The other 80% either shot to miss (they aimed high for the most part) or did whatever they could to avoid shooting at the enemy. It seemed, according to this study, that we, as human beings, have an active aversion to killing.
This would not do.
The Department of defense changed its training methods. To start, it used human shaped targets instead of the traditional circles. In Korea kill rates were up to 55%. And by Vietnam (according to interviews) 95% of soldiers were shooting to kill. Or maybe they had just become better liars.
Think about the movies we watch. The Americans are the heroes. They villains are inhuman (in some way). The good guy always shoots to kill – that’s often how the movie ends. Good guys kill. Killing is important. Killing is good. Isn’t that what Hollywood is telling us?
Who are they telling that to? Soldiers. Not today’s soldiers, but tomorrow’s soldiers. Every summer Hollywood sells us a new line on killing. And then there are the video games where kids learn to kill over and over again.
Get them while they’re young, right, and in the next war we can get the kill rate up to 100%. Now that’s efficiency, and great marketing.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Passing the Torch
It’s Olympic time. Think gold medals, flags, and Old Spice ads. Think China and dead monks. Think boycotts, but not; because a boycott of the Olympics will only hurt the athletes. And we care about the athletes. Right?
There was a time when South Africa deluded itself with the idea of separate but equal. You know: We are all the same, just different. We called it Apartheid and no-one was fooled, not even us. We had the gold and the diamonds, the platinum and the uranium. Shit, we had Table Mountain, which was fantastic on postcards. So we were forgiven, until the rest of the world, read people, not governments, by the way, caught on and started to call for sports boycotts. And we heard the same thing then. No. Don’t boycott sport. It will only hurt the athletes. They aren’t doing anything wrong. But eventually there was a sports boycott, and the rest of us non-sports people suddenly had nothing to do on a Saturday afternoon, so we started to take notice.
A sports boycott does hurt the athletes. It hurts everybody. It’s supposed to hurt, dammit. That’s the point. It’s supposed to cause discomfort.
China is a superpower. It holds enough foreign currency to bankrupt the US, if it so desires, though I won’t pretend I know enough about economics to understand how. But the Chinese government is repressive. It cannot, by any standards, be considered democratic. It’s actions against political dissidents, be they Tibetan monks or Falun Gong practitioners, is brutal.
European governments, excluding the British who have in recent times developed a reputation for servility, have mentioned, in passing, that they might, if pushed, consider boycotting the Olympics. There has been little support from the US. Ms Condoleezza Rice (remember the WMDs?) rejected an Olympic boycott to avoid "insulting the Chinese people'. Screw the Tibetans (who are, by her definition, Chinese people). We should be boycotting these Olympics. We should be boycotting Chinese products – probably more difficult. We should be. We aren’t.
After years of social, political, and economic isolation South Africa crawled out of the dark ages into a golden age of peace and love (just like a John Lennon song) and became the darling of the international community. It wasn’t only because of the sports boycott, but it helped, and it can only help in China.
There was a time when South Africa deluded itself with the idea of separate but equal. You know: We are all the same, just different. We called it Apartheid and no-one was fooled, not even us. We had the gold and the diamonds, the platinum and the uranium. Shit, we had Table Mountain, which was fantastic on postcards. So we were forgiven, until the rest of the world, read people, not governments, by the way, caught on and started to call for sports boycotts. And we heard the same thing then. No. Don’t boycott sport. It will only hurt the athletes. They aren’t doing anything wrong. But eventually there was a sports boycott, and the rest of us non-sports people suddenly had nothing to do on a Saturday afternoon, so we started to take notice.
A sports boycott does hurt the athletes. It hurts everybody. It’s supposed to hurt, dammit. That’s the point. It’s supposed to cause discomfort.
China is a superpower. It holds enough foreign currency to bankrupt the US, if it so desires, though I won’t pretend I know enough about economics to understand how. But the Chinese government is repressive. It cannot, by any standards, be considered democratic. It’s actions against political dissidents, be they Tibetan monks or Falun Gong practitioners, is brutal.
European governments, excluding the British who have in recent times developed a reputation for servility, have mentioned, in passing, that they might, if pushed, consider boycotting the Olympics. There has been little support from the US. Ms Condoleezza Rice (remember the WMDs?) rejected an Olympic boycott to avoid "insulting the Chinese people'. Screw the Tibetans (who are, by her definition, Chinese people). We should be boycotting these Olympics. We should be boycotting Chinese products – probably more difficult. We should be. We aren’t.
After years of social, political, and economic isolation South Africa crawled out of the dark ages into a golden age of peace and love (just like a John Lennon song) and became the darling of the international community. It wasn’t only because of the sports boycott, but it helped, and it can only help in China.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
On Presidents and Kings
Zimbabweans today elect their new, or old, president. And who cares? They do, right? They want somebody who will make their world a better place. Americans, too, are choosing their new president. And who cares? We do. Why?
We pick our leaders. Or they pick us. And for better or for worse we get to live with them. Shit, England has the queen. They had Margaret Thatcher, too, but she had an expiry date. The queen will just get old and die.
Who runs the country? Who cares? And what is the idea of a country? God forbid it has anything to do with prince Charles. And what is it with hats and feathers in England. God save the queen, but don’t spare the pheasants.
So we live in a world cut up into little squares that we pretend mean something, and then we pick men and women to organize them for us. And sometimes those men or women disagree, on ideological grounds, of course, so we gather up our sticks and stones (or knives and guns) and rush off to do some killing. All because our little patches of earth are important to us.
Remember playing with your friends in kindergarten? How we fought over the toys? Over the space on the jungle gym? Things haven’t changed much, just the toys are bigger and we’re in 24/7 recess. And now we don’t hit little Johnny over the head with a Tonker-Toy. We smart bomb his ass with an F16. But the idea is the same. Oh, how we have grown.
And we delude ourselves. We pretend it’s important.
Why do we genuflect so obsequiously when the man, or woman, we hired to run our country is in our presence? And what is with bowing to a gormless wonder with big ears just because of his family? We are still just kids in kindergarten. That’s all. I think it’s time we grew up. I think it’s time we stopped trying to buddy up to the playground bully because he has the biggest toys. I think it’s time we stopped picking on the new kid just because he wears funny pants.
Christ, and what is the problem with crossing the Colorado River in Arizona, or the Limpopo River in Mapumalanga, because you want to buy a loaf of bread. One day I think we’ll grow up, but until then we could at least let the other kids play with us on the jungle gym.
With love,
Remastigate
We pick our leaders. Or they pick us. And for better or for worse we get to live with them. Shit, England has the queen. They had Margaret Thatcher, too, but she had an expiry date. The queen will just get old and die.
Who runs the country? Who cares? And what is the idea of a country? God forbid it has anything to do with prince Charles. And what is it with hats and feathers in England. God save the queen, but don’t spare the pheasants.
So we live in a world cut up into little squares that we pretend mean something, and then we pick men and women to organize them for us. And sometimes those men or women disagree, on ideological grounds, of course, so we gather up our sticks and stones (or knives and guns) and rush off to do some killing. All because our little patches of earth are important to us.
Remember playing with your friends in kindergarten? How we fought over the toys? Over the space on the jungle gym? Things haven’t changed much, just the toys are bigger and we’re in 24/7 recess. And now we don’t hit little Johnny over the head with a Tonker-Toy. We smart bomb his ass with an F16. But the idea is the same. Oh, how we have grown.
And we delude ourselves. We pretend it’s important.
Why do we genuflect so obsequiously when the man, or woman, we hired to run our country is in our presence? And what is with bowing to a gormless wonder with big ears just because of his family? We are still just kids in kindergarten. That’s all. I think it’s time we grew up. I think it’s time we stopped trying to buddy up to the playground bully because he has the biggest toys. I think it’s time we stopped picking on the new kid just because he wears funny pants.
Christ, and what is the problem with crossing the Colorado River in Arizona, or the Limpopo River in Mapumalanga, because you want to buy a loaf of bread. One day I think we’ll grow up, but until then we could at least let the other kids play with us on the jungle gym.
With love,
Remastigate
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