h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm still not sure that Kubrick was being supportive of that de-humanization process.
But that's probably just me being a pinko whinging leftie.

I'm not sure Kubrick was doing anything more than holding up a mirror and expecting us to be able to tell what was happening. I have issues with Kubrick because I've not seen enough of his films that I actually *liked* enough to comment on (for this reason, I've actually avoided The Shining, just in case I loathe it...).

I think really what he despised was the military machinery that put people in those positions.
Compare and Contrats with 'Paths of Glory' for further proof of Kubrick's problems with the military establishment.
The Shining is probably my least favourite Kubrick movie, strangely enough.

The military doesn't put people in those positions. Conflict is part of human nature. War is conflict writ large. The military is our adaptation to deal with it.

And a function of basic training *is* to dehumanize a recruit so that he doesn't come to pieces when he kills somebody for the first time in combat.

I forget the source, but I recall hearing that in the Second World War soldiers only hit with 40 percent of their shots from their rifles/small arms. But by VietNam with our improvements in training, it was much, much higher.

I think it might have been Lt. Col Dave Grossman during a talk entitled 'Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill'. Pretty interesting stuff - he compares the indoctrination of boot camp with today's video game violence and draws conclusions that with soldiers there is a control system but with kids it's just a matter of going for a high score and that's one of the reasons for the teen massacres we have had recently in the US.



Overall, I felt this was a pretty interesting entry. You might want to point out that the films closely followed the prevailing political winds at the time. The more pro-soldier movies of the 1980s were during the Regan years while the more anti-war films were just after the end of the war.

One of my journalism profs in college told me over drinks about a funny piece of video he saw featuring out-takes of John Wayne shooting the Green Berets. Allegedly, the VC took some shots at them while filming and the Duke is supposed to have said 'Sheeeat. They're using real bullets' and ran and hid in a bunker and refused to come out for days...

I don't know *how* you could confirm this, but it's a pretty funny mental image.



- Jimi X

Aha, it all becomes obvious now.
Lt Calley had played one to many games of 'House of the Dead Two.'
Facetious, I know, but I think the point is worth considering.

2Bit, conflict may be inevitable inon your bit of the planet, but I've manged to avoid any form of conflict for the last twenty odd years. My government gets involved in a lot of them, none of which I agree with.

That's a good point there, Jimi, and one I'll come back to next week (bit busy this weekend finishing off writing a 70,000 word book). An excellent point, in fact. My mind's racing just thinking about it. Thanks for that...

Jims

Yeah, Jim, I was on the verge of recommending this when I saw Jimi's comment and your response. Still working on the book?

Hi Lentilla!

Finished the book last weekend (hurrah!), and then got straight on with collaborating with Bright Blue Shorts on 'Field of Dreams' (which I promised I'd do about a month ago) and finishing off my entry on the abduction of Princess Anne (busy week - and there was some *actual* work and meetings and stuff too!). I'm going to look at Jimi's points and address them in the entry this morning, so it should be ready to pick by this afternoon.

...and THANKYOU to everyone. This has been a really interesting discussion on a potentially touchy subject.



Jims

Thanks to Jimi X, I think I've got a much stronger conclusion now. It actually builds to more of a point.

As Chandler Bing once said: 'Stick a fork in me - I'm done'.

Jims

"Wayne sheds no light on the political issues of US involvement in the war"

Not strictly true, the film The Green Berets *does* explain some of the reasons the US is in the war but from and entirely biased and one-sided way. It's not really true to say the film sheds "no light". More "very selective light".

Fair point, Zagreb. I've amended that section slightly. I still want to get across how, in the bigger picture, that film was quite dangerous and naive, but you're right, it does say *something* about the situation, althought it's a very biased view of the war itself.



Jims

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