“The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side. But he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them … Whether such deeds were reprehensible, or even whether they happened, was always decided according to political predilection.” - George Orwell
I've been mulling over American Sniper for a long time. I like Clint Eastwood, and respect him a lot as a filmmaker, so I wanted to be in support of the movie. And after seeing it two weeks ago I've been essentially ambivalent, but I've gotten to the point where I don't think I am a fan.
Sometimes 'human' stories are great. Especially when they preserve nuance, shades of grey, good and bad in a person, because both exist in all of us. And I really thought that American Sniper would be faithful to that, but I was wrong. It couldn't be more unfairly black and white, and while there are times that I think it's okay to make art for art's sake regardless of what people do with it, this is an instance where more harm than good comes from what's been created, because of how easily it was crafted as ammunition for the types of people who think a criticism of killing or of the system that puts soldiers where they are is the same thing as a criticism of freedom; the types of people who think being in the military and being good at what you do is carte blanche justification for ANYTHING in the name of being an American hero; the types of people who refuse to see real human faces outside of God, America, and family.
Moreover, the film glosses over (in fact, it ignores entirely) the real irreprehensible realties of war by focusing on a singular character, and leaving no room for discussion or even cognitive thought towards the Bush's, Rumsfelds and Cheneys who make the decisions to put a sniper on a roof and condition him to kill women and children at worst, and any brown-skinned male at best.
Even worse, it's tragically inaccurate. Chris Kyle, the movie character, is sympathetic, morally anxious, and all around good guy. Chris Kyle, the actual person, was a lot of things, including a good soldier, probably a nice guy, but by his own first-person perspective, was not the same as the movie character and was a sociopath.
He was a guy that wrote about how killing 100's of people was fun, and his only regret was not killing more. Who brags about killing savages. Who had competitions with fellow snipers, human lives being counted as points in a game. Who dreamt up outrageous and falsifiable lies and fantasies about killing other people. Who lived his life completely in black and white, maybe because he was raised that way, or maybe because he was trained that way as a soldier, because war doesn't have room for shades of grey.
Per his own words, “I don’t see too much grey. If I had to order my priorities, they would be god, country, family.”
Those are the exact same priorities of the 150+ people he killed.
