I Was There, I Did This, It’s Like A Trophy
Long week this has been… Last night I tried to step back from the day to day actualities of modern life to find out what has been happening in the world of Men (As Gandlalf would say).
What should immediately pop up from the black and white, was this hellish story about the young American soldier, Pfc. Chase McCollough, who brought home from Iraq a Particularly gruesome memento from his time spent in Iraq; home video footage of twisted decapitated bodies, battle-strewn suburban landscapes and smiling GI’s. All accompanied by an MTV-Friendly Rock soundtrack.
This is what his family saw: a handful of American soldiers filmed through the green haze of night-vision goggles. Radio communication between two soldiers crackles in the background before it's drowned out by a heavy-metal soundtrack.
"Don't need your forgiveness," the song by the band Dope begins as images unfurl: armed soldiers posing in front of Bradley fighting vehicles, two women covered in black abayas walking along a dusty road, a blue-domed mosque, a poster of radical cleric Muqtada Sadr. Then, to the fast, hard beat of the music — "Die, don't need your resistance. Die, don't need your prayers" — charred, decapitated and bloody corpses fill the screen.
I know this is nothing new, I guess troops have collected souvenirs from their battles since man first learned to obey orders to kill.
But what is terrifying about this story is that Thomas Doherty, chairman of the film studies program at Brandeis University and author of "Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture and World War II," called the videos an authentic diary of the war.
After watching the video, Doherty said, "Of course you're struck by the gruesomeness of the carnage, but it's a wide range of images."
He went on to praise "the contra-punctual editing — the beat of the tune and the flash of the images," calling it "a very slick piece of work."
"The MTV generation goes to war," he said. "They should enter it at Sundance."
I’m not really surprised this gruesome video would be suggested to be geared towards the MTV generation/audiences. A lot of folks in my generation have been spoon-fed violent TV, computer games and music since youth.
It’s almost as if the youth have been exposed to these horrors in advance to de-mystify the impact of these types of events. So in light of the Grand Theft Auto induced acceptance of cartoon violence, this movie could be in for a shout at the Sundance Movie Festival……………..
God we are so screwed.
What should immediately pop up from the black and white, was this hellish story about the young American soldier, Pfc. Chase McCollough, who brought home from Iraq a Particularly gruesome memento from his time spent in Iraq; home video footage of twisted decapitated bodies, battle-strewn suburban landscapes and smiling GI’s. All accompanied by an MTV-Friendly Rock soundtrack.
This is what his family saw: a handful of American soldiers filmed through the green haze of night-vision goggles. Radio communication between two soldiers crackles in the background before it's drowned out by a heavy-metal soundtrack.
"Don't need your forgiveness," the song by the band Dope begins as images unfurl: armed soldiers posing in front of Bradley fighting vehicles, two women covered in black abayas walking along a dusty road, a blue-domed mosque, a poster of radical cleric Muqtada Sadr. Then, to the fast, hard beat of the music — "Die, don't need your resistance. Die, don't need your prayers" — charred, decapitated and bloody corpses fill the screen.
I know this is nothing new, I guess troops have collected souvenirs from their battles since man first learned to obey orders to kill.
But what is terrifying about this story is that Thomas Doherty, chairman of the film studies program at Brandeis University and author of "Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture and World War II," called the videos an authentic diary of the war.
After watching the video, Doherty said, "Of course you're struck by the gruesomeness of the carnage, but it's a wide range of images."
He went on to praise "the contra-punctual editing — the beat of the tune and the flash of the images," calling it "a very slick piece of work."
"The MTV generation goes to war," he said. "They should enter it at Sundance."
I’m not really surprised this gruesome video would be suggested to be geared towards the MTV generation/audiences. A lot of folks in my generation have been spoon-fed violent TV, computer games and music since youth.
It’s almost as if the youth have been exposed to these horrors in advance to de-mystify the impact of these types of events. So in light of the Grand Theft Auto induced acceptance of cartoon violence, this movie could be in for a shout at the Sundance Movie Festival……………..
God we are so screwed.
posted by Celtic99 at Friday, March 18, 2005
1 Comments:
Hey what a great site keep up the work its excellent.
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