(The recent cringe inducing Deniro series comes to mind)
Of course any film about war (or perhaps any topic) could be controversial to someone. The WW2 epics starring John Wayne or Sergei Eisenstein's Alexandr Nevsky are both examples where the directors twisted every detail and used every opportunity to present a political message that the viewer may or may not agree with. My view on this is that the director of Civil War, Alex Garland, makes statements with the film that I disagree with. He seems to not see the humanity in people, at least, in my opinion. The movie never doubles down on anything, there is no deeper examination of the characters in the film, they just are until they aren't anymore. This is similar to his 2018 film Annihilation, which is essentially a retelling of J.G. Ballard's The Crystal World, and all of those characters in some way lack a humanity (although I think this works much better in this film as you discover that each character goes into the zone to find something about themselves that is missing and what defines them as human to themselves). And similar to The Beach, the novel he wrote that was turned into the movie The Beach, starring Leonardo Dicaprio about vapid westerners partying in thailand, or 28 days later, the zombie movie he wrote directed by Danny Boyle. Garland seems to see life as cheap and meaningless across the books and movies he has created. He cares more about the visual trappings of the setting he creates than the humans who live there. In the case of Civil War, I find it offensive as it uses the visual style of documentary films about ongoing wars as a costume and set dressing for his movie. And this movie comes from a culture (American) that started a war in Iraq and has done basically no introspection as to how those decisions completely changed their society into what it is today. This also influences the Civil War film. The president is blamed exclusively for all bad things across america. The entire movie is about how everything is the president's fault but lets interview him to see why.
In a sense, you do have a point. I do happen to agree that it is rather hard to match the sheer.. what is a good word here.. brute reality of war. It is genuinely hard to do even with the best efforts, because, and this is kinda the point that I am slowly leading towards: that the reality has to meet the expectations of the audience.
And this is where I think you seem to fail at something you chastise the director/producer/maker(whole crew?), who made that movie. You seem to think that all wars all the same at all times; that the esperanto of violence would immediately cause a rather quick, normative default 'war' state that anyone could recognize. But you would be wrong... I don't want to bore you with the details, but just to give an idea consider the thought that it was not that long ago that soldiers wore rather colorful uniforms ( for a reason ) and it is only more recent wars that made them try to blend into environment. And this is but one, small, but visible difference, which will define how a war "looks" like.
<< It trivialized those experiences using them as a costume so american audiences could giggle in delight at the cinema without having to worry about the trappings of an actual war
Does it? I watched the movie, because I heard so many differing opinions that it got me curious. I try to abstain from most movies lately. Frankly, were it not for my wife, we wouldn't stream, but it is what it is.
But more to the point, which scene seemed trivial to you? Maybe my experience is different, because I watched it home?
On the other hand, I think, again, you misunderstand something. Just by default, most of us do make odd sounds, when were are nervous or uncomfortable ( yes, even laugh ). I do not want to assume too much, but I think even if you saw someone laugh, you might be misinterpreting something. My point is that, even if what you observed ( assuming it was observed ) is true, it is.. not the movie's fault. People's come in all shapes and sizes. I know I laughed hard that one time I thought I was close to dying.
<< And it did so all to tell a narrative that was somewhat against war-time journalism, painting their efforts as self absorbed and self serving.
I mean.. I did not get that impression, but I think that one could be safely left to interpretation.
<< I simply found the film disgusting and if people disagree with me that is fine.
I am not sure what to disagree with. That war is bad? That the movie does not capture its true horrors? That people suffer? You might be losing your point a little.
<< Of course any film about war (or perhaps any topic) could be controversial to someone.
I didn't see it as controversial. It was mildly interesting, but that was it. I personally think too many read too much into it, while Bill Hicks probably would have called it for what it is.
<< The WW2 epics starring John Wayne or Sergei Eisenstein's Alexandr Nevsky are both examples where the directors twisted every detail and used every opportunity to present a political message that the viewer may or may not agree with.
Ok. Now I know you are older than me. And to that I can only say: welcome to the cinema. It is not just WW2 movies. Everything now has a message. Sometimes, it is ridiculously overt, sometimes not.
<< My view on this is that the director of Civil War, Alex Garland, makes statements with the film that I disagree with.
Hwell, you probably should not have watched the movie or listened to him or both.
<< The movie never doubles down on anything, there is no deeper examination of the characters in the film, they just are until they aren't anymore.
Well that.. is an interesting criticism. I was going to respond reflexively, but I am going to ask you a real question that ties back to your original complaint how movies don't show the true horrors of war.
Would you agree, especially based on the lack of deeper examination phrase you used, that, the fact that all those deaths don't matter is in a sense a lot more terrifying than whatever deeper meaning you would want to add to those deaths. Meaningful death could mean immortality, but just not being there anymore is just that..
<< The president is blamed exclusively for all bad things across america. The entire movie is about how everything is the president's fault but lets interview him to see why.
Again, I think you misunderstand the audience of that movie, because that part is a very clear reflection of the real life in US.
I was going to continue, but I think it is clear that we disagree to a fair degree. Please let me know what you think. It may end up being an interesting conversation.
For the record, I was fortunate enough to not have experienced actual war, but some of family members did so I got to hear some of the stories. I am not even talking about a trained soldier doing a tour in a foreign land ( though that experience clearly gives you a close insight into what is happening in that time ). I am talking about the civilians just trying to survive.
I would like to see someone take up the idea of Canamerimex Union in a movie for kicks -- that is, the idea of Canada, California and Mexico forming a union on the west coast (and maybe continuing down the east coast, with Canada bridging both coasts)
I actually liked that little detail and don't think it's too farfetched. In real life those two states are currently on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but (iirc) we don't actually know why the civil war started in the movie and it seemed careful to avoid any kind of left vs right ideology. California and Texas both have a rich history of calls for secession from the union, and both have heavyweight economies that could allow them to stand as their own countries. I think if a civil war did break out where both states disagreed with the Federal government, they'd be more likely than you think to form an alliance.
But like I said, what was interesting to me about the movie was the fact that the two states were allies against the Federal government, without any mention of the modern day left vs right culture war. It's interesting to think about how such an alliance could come to be when we remove the things we suppose might spark a civil war today.
They're both ridiculously disenfranchised in the Senate.
They've both got significant antivax elements.
They've both got a very large Hispanic population and a portion of the Mexico border.
They're both large states with large economies and large governments; Whereas the Connecticut governor leading the Connecticut national guard is numerically incompetent at protesting the actions of the federal government, or has to overcome a bunch of coordination problems with other governors, they aren't and don't. Whereas Trump was free to seize the COVID pandemic supplies that Maryland bought and paid for, and redistribute them as political favors to red states, it would have been more difficult to do to a state with six times the population and a power center far from Washington. Any effort to oppressively regulate interstate trade is diminished somewhere you're dealing with large amounts of intrastate trade; Conversely, any impediments on trade with and travel to Mexico are going to be substantial issues in both Texas and California.
Oh, and the cast were invited to have a panel at a conference for the fucking Heritage Foundation!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P52G4Kyq5M A look at the 24 world and it's insane violence by Jon Bois
Edit: and don’t forget this show was on fox.
There is a significant difference though which even Veep didn't predict - the people in Veep were still riding in the well-oiled deep-state car, while those clowns today is actively destroying that car.
Wrt. clowns - note that the most important Hegseth's staffer is his wife who was his producer back at Fox and basically does the same for him at the Pentagon.
I suspect this is somewhat common in history (this is not meant to excuse it), but we can’t tell because those people still wrote the narrative.
Can threaten authors with treason for negative books like he did in an EO recently. Change school curriculums. Then Maga can start revising history..
Was the 2025 recession from tarrifs? Nah it was Biden's inflation, or Ukraine aid. Actually.. didn't China impose tarrifs on US and US just reciprocated?
The reality will be altered and murky
I see this claim form time to time, but the unsavory side of WW2 is thought in classes, although not without controversy [1]:
Despite the efforts of the nationalist textbook reformers, by the late 1990s the most common Japanese schoolbooks contained references to, for instance, the Nanjing Massacre, Unit 731, and the comfort women of World War II, all historical issues which have faced challenges from ultranationalists in the past. The most recent of the controversial textbooks, the New History Textbook, published in 2000, which significantly downplays Japanese aggression, was shunned by nearly all of Japan's school districts.
On the other hand, after the occupation, GHQ had imposed a press code [2], i.e. censorship of mass media, that undoubtedly had an impact on postwar Japan, so you could say that the point still stands.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_history_textbook_cont...
The reality is already altered and murky. There has been a full-blown total information war over reality for several years now.
But Trump and MAGA, even if they win, won't win forever. There will someday be an end to this particular attempt to impose unreality. Then history (or at least the history of this) can be told honestly. (Or at least without MAGA spin. It may have a new spin, but it will at least be a different one.)
We don’t learn much in school about George Washington burning down Iroquois villages because we focus on other things. It’s entirely possible that Trump becomes so bad that the people who remember his misdeeds get erased like so many Iroquois or Vietnamese people or gays with HIV under these other presidents.
Here’s a clip [2] of Noam Chomsky describing the war crimes of every post WW2 president. Many people still regard those people as good presidents because they ignore their misdeeds.
Should be a disqualifier for US security clearance.
Is easily manipulable - either give them booze to pry secrets or encourage "booze mind" in 1-1 conversations to pry secrets. Plus the huge slip-up of using Signal #signalgate.
One skirts the official tools like this to prevent accountability from a written record. Completely sensible if you're planning to be judged for your actions.
People will talk about "politicians being incompetent", or act like actually anyone who has ever been in the office was like this. It's a pretty close and comforting way to deal with the reality of supporting a fraud without having to admit that you were duped.
What is the faulty reasoning here? Apart from "My side good, your side bad."
The faulty reasoning is saying that "this is just like previous administrations". It's not.
As opposed to the current guy, who hasn’t completed a sentence or a thought in twenty years and regularly goes off on tangents about black people eating pets. Great take. Love when you folks make it clear you’re just here to shitpost dishonestly.
Perhaps one of the more depressingly funny thing to learn is that in the first Trump term people would just steal papers and etc from Trump because by the end of the day he'd forget about something if there wasn't a sheet in front of him. And this would keep him from doing something crazy.
Obama's and Hillary's blackberries were government procured devices altered by the NSA for security purposes.
The current US defense secretary isn't doing that.
Did they discuss details of upcoming military operations on it, though? Because that's a whole other level of wilful negligence.
Trump's admin won't get a fraction of that scrutiny.
For a High-Tech President, a Hard-Fought E-Victory
For more than two months, Mr. Obama has been waging a vigorous battle with his handlers to keep his BlackBerry, which like millions of other Americans he has relied upon for years to stay connected with friends and advisers. (And, of course, to get Chicago White Sox scores.)
He won the fight, aides disclosed Thursday, but the privilege of becoming the nation’s first e-mailing president comes with a specific set of rules.
“The president has a BlackBerry through a compromise that allows him to stay in touch with senior staff and a small group of personal friends,” said Robert Gibbs, his spokesman, “in a way that use will be limited and that the security is enhanced to ensure his ability to communicate.”
[...]
The presidency, for all the power afforded by the office, has been deprived of the tools of modern communication. George W. Bush famously sent a farewell e-mail address to his friends when he took office eight years ago.
While lawyers and the Secret Service balked at Mr. Obama’s initial requests to allow him to keep his BlackBerry, they acquiesced as long as the president - and those corresponding with him - agreed to strict rules. And he had to agree to use a specially made device, which must be approved by national security officials.
Because there was a difference in conduct. Obama consulted "lawyers and the Secret Service," "agreed to strict rules" and "use[d] a specially made device...approved by national security officials." Hegseth yelled YOLO before effectively tweeting target co-ordinates for our warbirds.
Yeah, but that bit about "handlers" of the President of the United States could also be a data point here. That term is usually used in conjunction with 'asset'.
Nixon once said "If the President does it, it's not illegal", despite that being just nowhere to be found in the Constitution in any form, yet that statement caused a bunch of right wing think tanks and policy institutions and voters to agree so wholeheartedly that they spent 70 years ensuring it would become reality.
Significant portions of the Republican party have been trying to make the US a monarchy again for decades.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/02/hillary-clin...
even bush fooled everyone he was literate (save from the two times he held books upsidedown) while in office.
"Some of the classified emails found on former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s home server were even more sensitive than top secret, according to an inspector general for the intelligence community."
"Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott has apologised after a photo emerged of her sipping a can of M&S mojito on a London Overground train."
Meanwhile in Australia, the opposition leader visited a pub during his campaign and the crowd yelled at him to drink a beer out of his shoe.
I'm emphasising "in theory" because it took a lot of concerted pressure for Johnson to leave after actual pictures of him celebrating with alcohol during the pandemic, so of course it was more an excuse than an actual cause of the vitriol against Diane Abbott: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partygate