Will Hollywood Ever Change Its Stereotypical Views Of Veterans ?
I don’t see Hollywood changing their stereotype of military veterans any time soon even with this film festival:
My stepbrother is in the military, and he always wishes that the movies would be a better advocate for the American soldier,” actor Ethan Hawke said during an interview to promote “Good Kill,” a new drama about drone warfare. “Hollywood has a bad habit of either being so nationalistic and flag-waving that it kind of dehumanizes everybody and makes it a recruitment tool, or being so left-wing with conspiracy theories that project all of this negativity. Of course, the truth is somewhere in the middle.”
The GI Film Festival opens in Washington this week in its ninth year as a corrective to the one-dimensional portrayals that many observers fear have influenced how the public sees the military. The festival runs May 18 through May 24 and features 60 movies, including shorts, documentaries, comedies and dramas. All are either made by veterans or feature military characters.
At a time when only 0.5 percent of the population is on active duty, many in the military community argue that even the cinema offerings that attempt to give a sympathetic portrayal of soldiers and veterans — such as the acclaimed “American Sniper” — end up breeding harmful stereotypes.
Recent films have also portrayed vets as murderers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (“In the Valley of Elah,” “Redacted”); as deserters suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (“Stop-Loss”); and as mavericks so addicted to combat that they can’t reintegrate into American society (“The Hurt Locker”).
“People believe what they see in the movies,” said Laura Law-Millett, a veteran who founded the GI Film Festival with her civilian husband, Brandon Millett. “If someone had seen some of these films who had never met anyone in the military, prior to about 2007, they would say, ‘Oh, so everyone who joins the Army becomes a drug dealer or a rapist or a murderer?'” [Washington Post]
You can read more at the link, but with Bush out of office the amount of movies and documentaries depicting troops as murderers and rapists seems to have decreased. It seems now they focus more on veterans being heroic or broken from PTSD.
Don’t forget media stereotypes.
One of my favorite quotes so far in this Waco biker debacle is, “There’s also a tendency for clubs to recruit veterans for their skills and sometimes their access to weapons.”
Veterans and “access to weapons” comes up a lot…
…as veterans can just show their official veteran card down at the armory and check out a bazooka with couple extra clips.
Best I can tell, pretty much anybody who is not a felon can just go down to Walmart and have “access to weapons”. Felons can have “access to weapons” even more cheaply… and, perhaps, better weapons if they don’t give a fukk… especially considering the dirty little (big?) secret about how much of this militarized police equipment gets “misplaced” each month.
In case nobody noticed, there are at least two parallel worlds going on… the one created by (the broad category of) “media” and the real one.
Consider everything you are truly knowledgeable or experienced on… and consider what percentage of what you see in “media” (movies, news, political theater, et.al.) reflects the reality you have actually experienced.
The amazing thing is that these two worlds are so different but managen to coexist So well… though the manufactured world certainly seems to have better marketing.
I wonder if they’ll ever reboot Magnum, P.I?
As corny as it was, it was also one of the first post-Vietnam series to not treat vets like PTSD burnouts, or guys who couldn’t reintergrate into society.
While ex-Special Forces and pilots are around, who will play the fussy British butler? The Falklands was more of a dust up than a war, and a WWII vet would be rather elderly at this point. Still, the SAS are a respected force, maybe the character doesn’t need to be someone who worked on the Bridge over the River Kwai…
Not that I disagree CH, I agree 100 percent.
But to play devil’s advocate, just as “crime didn’t happen” seldom makes headline news the average guy who is a good soldier, goes to work and does his job and then gets out and becomes a functioning member of the population isn’t really the stuff for smash hits or headline news either. The main problem is, people are stupid.
Notice I have a bad lid. I’m hoping it will grow out.
Suicide and Homelessness abound among veterans, when is Hollywood going to tell the stereotypical veteran movie about those factual stories?
“It seems now they focus more on veterans being heroic or broken from PTSD.”
No, Hollywood needs to focus on veteran suicides and homelessness, it could be titled: ‘BIGGEST QUITTERS & LOSERS in AMERICA’
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/homeless-veteran-commits-suicide-outside-phoenix-va-7324999
“Thomas Michael Murphy, a Phoenix resident and U.S. Army veteran, took his own life in the parking lot outside the VA Phoenix Regional Benefit Office.
In the letter, he explained that his arthritis was getting worse, and he “thanked” the VA for not helping him. Suicide and homelessness “are well documented among veterans,” Schaefer says.”
One of Murphy’s brothers, Scott, who lives in Missouri, tells New Times that family members had lost touch with him.
“The last contact I had with him was about three years ago,” Scott says. “He basically told me that he didn’t want to have anything to do with me anymore.”
The family suspects that he suffered from mental illness and members plan to contact the VA about Murphy’s medical records.
Murphy, from Nebraska, served as a television production specialist for the U.S. Army at Fort Knox and at the Belgium Bureau. He moved to Phoenix in 1986 and worked as a freelance videographer.
In his note, he writes that “with the arthritis in my left hip, sleeping is often difficult, and I now cannot do most of the work I used to do. I cannot stand on my feet for more than an hour without massive doses of painkillers, and now I cannot put a camera on my shoulder and operate it successfully for any amount of time. In TV, it’s often 14 hours on your feet. Also, VA wants to take my painkillers away from me, because of what some hillbillies do with it illicitly. Thanks for that, too, VA. Not that I can afford them, anyway.”
Poor fella, what a hard life he must have led “fighting” for Americans?
Street Vets
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Axoi93hZpZ8
“While ex-Special Forces and pilots are around, who will play the fussy British butler? ”
There are plenty of British vets from the GWOT, Iraq and Afghanistan specifically.
Oh, I saw plenty of Brits in Kuwait, Leon. I was just thinking that Higgins was about 20-25 years older than Magnum, Rick and T.C.
The time gap between Vietnam and the GWOT is a lot longer than the gap between WWII and Vietnam and the post-Vietnam period Magnum P.I. was set in. Still, a British Sergeant Major is a British Sergeant Major. I’m sure a casting director can find someone to play a short, fussy man who gets taken advantage of by an American jock and ex-SEAL.
But either way, my point stands. Magnum didn’t portray the main characters as burnouts or otherwise separate from the rest of society. Just a group of friends living in Hawaii, just getting on with their lives after having served their country.
There’s always Cypress and Northern Ireland. 😉
And Kosovo, Bosnia..
My stepbrother is in the military, and he always wishes that the movies would be a better advocate for the American soldier,” actor Ethan Hawke said during an interview to promote “Good Kill,” a new drama about drone warfare. “Hollywood has a bad habit of either being so nationalistic and flag-waving that it kind of dehumanizes everybody and makes it a recruitment tool, or being so left-wing with conspiracy theories that project all of this negativity. Of course, the truth is somewhere in the middle.”
——- end quote ——
Film veteran Ethan Hawke is being a bit disingenuous here. He knows that Hollywood is in the business of entertainment. Movies depicting the real “somewhere in the middle” truth are called documentaries. The mainstream fiction films that go into wide release — even if they’re based on real people and/or events — don’t do well at the box office if there isn’t some type of heightened dramatic tension, action, sexual counterbalance, or romance, and accomplishing that usually involves creating characters, situations and conflicts that might not exist in real life. Some of the finest people I’ve ever known were my fellow members of the Army, but portraying them (or me) accurately in a movie would put the audience to sleep and bomb at the box office.
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
― Michael Crichton
MTB, great point about Magnum PI. Some of the shows did have him having nightmares from Vietnam but the vast majority of the series did not dwell on PTSD and broken servicemembers. I had read before that Tom Selleck had wanted to do a Magnum PI reboot but for various reasons it just did not happen.
Riiiiiight.
A middle aged single guy with a pr0n mustache, no car, and no steady job living with a fussy old flamer who provides for him.
Nothing broken there.
12. hehe, I didn’t want to be the one to go there. thx.
11. “I had read before that Tom Selleck had wanted to do a Magnum PI reboot but for various reasons it just did not happen.”
Probably because it would have had Tom Selleck in it.
What about the A Team?
They were an ecclectic bunch. And no poufs. 🙂
As far as the original topic question here is concerned, Jon Stewart had been quietly investing in giving military people direct training and opportunities in the film industry, and few knew.
Ah the A Team…
Every episode of the A-Team is littered with references to illegal and deviant behavior. For example, B.A.’s usual comment when Hannibal did something crazy was to say “He’s on The Jazz, man!” – which of course is a blatant reference to Cannabis (Jazz Cigarettes), Cocaine (Jazz Salt) and pornography (Jazz mags).
Col. Hannibal “John” Smith: Cigar smoking master of disguise and leader of the team. Often dressed up as a woman to confuse his enemies, even when no enemies were present.
he British remake, set in West Yorkshire and named the “Aye-Up-Team” was not successful, due to the script writers misunderstanding the term ‘crack commando unit’ and writing the show to include the fact that all central characters were addicted to crack cocaine and hiding in burrows and holes in the earth (“Down t’pits”), as opposed to operating in the intended criminal underground.
Despite having the same cast playing similar characters, the show is not linked in any way to the earlier show The Gay Team. Nor is it linked to the newer show The AAA-Team. Or The AA-Team. Or The AAAA-Team. No, really.
Lol Leon. 😀
I’d like to stage a protest against these emoticons.
I’m going to print them out, put them on a noose and burn them in effigy.
But I guess I’m about the only person who uses emoticons here anyway.
Gentle Liz is somewhat publicly contemplating premeditated emoticonicide.
🙂
:(|)
@:(|)
I put a little Jheri curl on my emoticon.
Hee hee hee. 😀
@:(|)
Oh… my… god…
My emoticon…
…is…
… A L i i i i i V E !
http://www.examiner.com/images/blog/wysiwyg/image/michelle-obama-teenager1.JPG
…and this one…
(:(E)