A 'Toxic Genre'

Martin Barker

Description

Over the last five years, a cycle of films has emerged addressing the ongoing Iraq conflict. Some became well-known and one of them, The Hurt Locker, won a string of Oscars. But many others disappeared into obscurity. What is it about these films that led Variety to dub them a 'toxic genre'?



Martin Barker analyses the production and reception of these recent Iraq war films. Among the issues he examines are the borrowing of soldiers' YouTube styles of self-representation to generate an 'authentic' Iraq experience, and how they take refuge in 'apolitical' post-traumatic stress disorder. Barker also looks afresh at some classic issues in film theory: the problems of accounting for film 'failures', the shaping role of production systems, the significance of genre-naming and the impact of that 'toxic' label.



A 'Toxic Genre' is fascinating reading for film studies students and anyone interested in cinema's portrayal of modern warfare.
Acknowledgements

1. The disappearing Iraq war films

2. No True Glory: the film that never was

3. Constructing an ‘Iraq war experience’

4. From Doughboys to Grunts: the ‘American soldier’

5. Understanding film ‘failures’

6. Bringing the war home

7. Explaining the Iraq war

8. Producing a ‘toxic genre’

9. Free-riders and outliers

10. Latino grunts: the new victim-heroes

11. The Hurt Locker and beyond

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Iraq
• Iraq War
• Modern warfare
• Military
• History of film
• Irak

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 03 juin 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783714483
• Langue: English

Extrait

A ‘Toxic Genre’
A ‘TOXIC GENRE’
The Iraq War Films
Martin Barker
First published 2011 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © Martin Barker 2011
The right of Martin Barker to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Contents
List of figures and tables Acknowledgements    1.    The disappearing Iraq War Films    2.    No True Glory : the film that never was    3.    Constructing an ‘Iraq War experience’    4.    From Doughboys to Grunts: the ‘American soldier’    5.    Understanding film ‘failures’    6.    Bringing the war home    7.    Explaining the Iraq War    8.    Producing a ‘toxic genre’    9.    Free-riders and outliers 10.    Latino Grunts: the new victim-heroes 11.    The Hurt Locker and beyond Notes References Index
List of Figures and Tables

FIGURES 3.1 Still from In the Valley of Elah 3.2 Still from Battle for Haditha 4.1 ‘Hey, Hollywood’ 4.2 References to ‘John Wayne’ (US Press, 1998–2008) 4.3 References to ‘Rambo’ (US Press, 1998–2008) 5.1 Still from American Soldiers: A Day in Iraq 8.1 ‘Fight Factory’ (Sony) logo 10.1 – 10.4 Latino victim-heroes 145–6 10.5 Closing sequence in GI Jesús 11.1 Still from The Hurt Locker

TABLES 1 Details of films in the Iraq War film cycle 2 Film presentations of America’s ‘Iraq Experience’ 3 ‘Reality guarantees’ within the films
Acknowledgements

The research I have done for this book owes a great deal to many individuals, who have helped me both by pointing me to materials and by being willing to discuss my emergent ideas with me. I hope and believe that I have thanked all of you already. But in all the more than 30 years that I have researched and published, I have never directly acknowledged the value and enjoyment that my wife Judith has brought into my life. I do this now, knowing that this book, along with all the others I have produced, may have benefited from particular conversations and shared experiences, but they were made possible at all in far more ways by a long-shared life. For exactly the same reason, I want to name and thank the rest of my family who have put up with a father/grandfather who becomes easily distracted, has weird interests and just cannot see what is really important. So, love and apologies to Garrick, Siân and Rosie, and love and hope to Alice, Oscar and Owen – to whom the future belongs.
1
The disappearing Iraq war films

On 3 March 2010, the British Broadcasting Coorporation’s (BBC’s) evening news carried a lengthy item about the impending release of the film The Green Zone , Paul Greengrass’s dramatisation of the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction following the 2004 invasion of Iraq. Presenter Huw Edwards prefaced the filmed report with the comment that this was a new development in Hollywood. Up until this point, he declared, few films bar The Hurt Locker had yet tackled the Iraq conflict. How wrong he was. Between 2005 and 2008, at least 23 such fiction films emerged from in and around Hollywood, and most of them claimed a base in the real events and circumstances of the war. But the BBC could be forgiven for not knowing about this lengthy list of films. All of them, until the very last one in the cycle, bombed at the box office, if they made it there at all – and just about all of them vanished without trace. Indeed, for a time, the most important topic of debate about the films was precisely their failure. 1 Known collectively simply as the ‘Iraq war movies’, they were, to quote one report, ‘box office poison’ (Everhart 2009). This book is a study of these films.
These films were actually being awaited. Quite a few commentators were asking how long it would take Hollywood, this time, to get round to saying something about the war. Hollywood’s ‘cowardice’ over Vietnam was well-remembered, but there was a feeling that this time, perhaps, the studios might live up to their (partly-deserved) reputation for liberalism, and opposition to George W. Bush and his cronies. The expectations were, of course, different according to your politics. In 2004, the Washington Post ran an article about Jim Deutsch, a historian interested in the scars that wars leave on returning veterans, and the ways these are hidden from view:

The popular portrayals run contrary to the image of postwar boom and optimism that many people think of today. According to Deutsch, 1946 had the highest divorce rate until the 1970s. The disaffected vet from the Vietnam War is familiar, but World War II? Deutsch says it’s a recurring element of American culture after all wars. Bleak post-Iraq war movies and literature are next. ‘Some of these people literally went through hell,’ Deutsch says. ‘A common theme is the civilians back home don’t understand what they went through.’ (Montgomery 2004)

It was mostly assumed that the films, when they came, would be unlike the boosterist films of previous periods. But there were exceptions. The Democratic Underground, a forum on the left of the Democratic Party, feared that the studios were capable of delivering only military-friendly dross:

Now that the War against those Dastardly Saddam-backed 911 terrorists and the Enshrinement of Glorious Democratic Values in the Backwards Middle East and the Freeing of the latent American who resides inside every Iraqi has gone on longer than WWII where are the war films? Where is the Iraq equivalent of the Sands of Iwo Jima ? Perhaps we could call it the Streets of Hadithah ? … The DoD learned its lessons from Vietnam very well, they will not allow the unvarnished truth to make its way from Iraq. Service members are being censored in theater and at home. (Democratic Underground 2007)

Others on the Right saw ‘Hollywood’ quite differently – as a nest of radical vipers.
The cycle began with a little-noticed film from director Sidney Furie, whose credentials were good – he had directed The Boys in Company C (1978), one of the critical films about the Vietnam War. But American Soldiers: A Day in Iraq , where noticed at all, was judged by most early reviewers (professional or otherwise) to be a total disappointment. As others began to emerge, a pattern quickly emerged. Films would be reviewed in groups. Or if the focus was on one, it was examined for whether it looked any different from the flops that preceded or surrounded it.
In researching this book, there came a point where I had to make some hard decisions about which films to include in my list of ‘Iraq war movies’. I tried to include only those that were included in those comparative lists, for reasons which will become clear (see Chapter 5 ). Others could have been added. Some commentators have argued, with reason, that the cycle of ‘torture porn’ movies owes much to the revelations about Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. As an example, consider this web report:

It’s hard to imagine that for every 15-year-old reading this article right now, the war has really been with them since they have probably been conscious of current events. This war has now run longer than World War II. Like the Vietnam War, which definitely influenced horror films of the early 1970s, the Iraq War had a real impact on the horror films of the past half decade. Filmmakers are all influenced by the current events they are operating in, so it’s no surprise that horror films have been affected too. So here are the Top 10 best Iraq War-influenced horror films. Hostel (2005): Eli Roth’s mega-hit horror film was undeniably influenced by the goings on at Abu Ghraib – whether Roth is conscious of it or not. Iraqi soldiers dehumanized, forced into naked human pyramids – vs. Americans dehumanized and cut up by twisted businessmen. Truth is often stranger than fiction … 28 Weeks Later (2007): With smiling faces, American troops take over a war ravaged nation – then attempt to exterminate that nation’s citizens when they lose control. This is what happens in Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s superior sequel to 28 Days Later . The horror of 28 Weeks Later is actually quite real for a nation run by friendly, smiling occupiers – and it’s happening now. (Anon 2009)

The writer goes on to add Land of the Dead (dir. George A. Romero, 2005), The Hills Have Eyes (dir. Alexandre Aja, 2006), Planet Terror (dir. Robert Rodriguez, 2007), The Signal (dir. David Bruckner & Dan Bush, 2008), Diary of the Dead (dir. George A. Romero, 2007) and The Mist (dir. Frank Darabont, 2007) as further examples of Iraq-influenced horror. But this is Iraq-as-metaphor. Horror, fantasy and the like mark a distance from their topics. The films discussed here frequently made claims of direct relevance and – every bit as importantly – were seen by many commentators as contributions to the debate over the war. The 23 films in Table 1 , then, constitute my primary focus.
The figures show the evident financial straits