On The Hurt Locker

Is it not incredible how wonderfully convincing the facade of objectivity can be. Imagine this, dear reader: A director decides to comment on the tragedy of war. But her objectives are not to comment just on the tragedy of war in general, but more specifically on the insanity of guerilla warfare motivated by religious fundamentalism. However, she knows that the topic is contentious and she knows that the position she wants to occupy is politically incorrect. (The irony of this change in public sentiment is too painfully embarrassing to even comment on here, and is not part of the point I try and make, so I shall resist the temptation of further reflection on this.)

On account of her designs to extoll the virtues of Western ideals about liberty, democracy and individuation she strategises that the best way to achive this is to demonstrate the cruelty of a backward type of people towards its own citizens. This, she reasons, would make explicit the righteousness of military occupation in a country which, evidently, needs to be liberated from its own politics. But how to do this without coming across as a Eurocentric fascist?

The first part of the strategy is to create a story wherein it may seem as if the setting of the war in Irag is merely incidental to the story. One takes the politics out of the plot and makes it entirely about a personal experience. So, one scripts it around a character, a bomb deactivator with the sort of devil may care attitude which results in him being a liability to his own men. So he is not perfect. But, dear reader of this blog and viewer of the film, this is merely a red herring. The story can so easily seem as if it is a cameo of a character. However, even though he continously disobeys orders, risking many lives in doing so, he never fails at his task and no one ever dies at the hand of his personal dissidence. Thuis enabling the viewers to keep close to their hearts this beguiling and intriguiging character as a true hero (and anti-hero- she covers all her bases).

That then is the facade of the movie: A touching story of a malfunctioning individual who has become, also, addicted to war.

Why then my insinuations that this story is nothing more than a cover for American and British pro war propaganda? Well, the other bits of the story, which come at one nearly in a subliminal sort of way, so disguised are they by the cameo aspect of the story, are presented as the following scenes: The only Iraqis, in the entire movie, who die at the hands of American and British soldiers are so tiny on the screen that the movie adopts a nearly computer game sort of feeling of dissasociation. This prevents any chance of developing a relationship with the victims. This scene is also conveniently set in a desert, so that none of the Iraqi family members need be traumatised by the loss of their men folk. Of course, there are other Iraqis who do die. They, on the other hand, are introduced properly. The close ups, the dialogue and the settings being a little more domestic affords the unsuspecting viewer plenty of opportunity to develop sympathy for these characters. However, lo and behold, these characters are only ever victims of their own peoples' actions. I think of the poor man at the end begging the American bomb deactivator to remove the bombs from him that have been strapped to his body against his will. Our hero risks his life for this man but, alas, is unable to assist him. The feeling one is expected to be left with must surely be something like the renewed horror of such strange and barbaric methods of warfare. The other scene which comes to mind is the body of child which has been used to contain a bomb, the child's life having been sacrificed for this purpose, once again, by his own people. Of course, the hero discovers this bomb and is, for once, moved to some display of emotion. The pertinence of this display of emotion, which he could not even muster for his own child when back at home, drives home further the message of the righteousness of American occupation of a country which is clearly in need of help. Not only political help but, evidently, also moral help. And then, not least of all, there is the classic scene, appealing to the stored up communal sentiments we all have about boys playing with balls and soldiers being only human after all. An American soldier befriends a little Iraqi boy and it is this very Iraqi boy that the bomb deactovator hero anti-hero believes is the mutilated body containing the live bomb. The important part of this side plot is that it is the American soldier befriending the boy, and other American who risks his life trying to get a bomb from the boy's body, despite the fact that he is already dead. Yet, it was suspected for quite some time, and by way of many dramatic heroic actions, that it was the boy's old Iragi custodian who sold him into the position for having a bomb planted into his body. The suggestion was made, the damage is done. We all know how propaganda works.

There was not one aspect of the movie which could save itself from being accused of being shamefully biased and laced with all the wrong messages. If the claim is that the context was incidental and maybe even accidental, then I want to finish by saying that, in situations when the current wars need to be deeply questioned, the dominance of the Western ideology and politics needs to challenged and when, specific, promises are being made to evacuate Iraq, producers and directors of films should employ the age old literary device of appealing to a neutral context. That is if they genuinely were not intending to make a movie aimed at insiduous propaganda. And then, in that way, one would not put oneself in line for making so many mistakes.