An addendum to my mention of NYU history professor...

2011-05-05T17:34:40.858-04:00

An addendum to my mention of NYU history professor Marilyn Young (a scholar I've met and respect): http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2009/0911/0911fil2.cfm

Her review of the film is scathing!

Nevertheless, the historicist stance adopted by Young and others (where a film is judged on whether it adequately represents the socio-historical background of its plot) seems to completely disregard the literary strategy of allegory. Again, although I understand this critique of the film, I find it reductive.

The Hurt Locker raises, once again, the famous que...

2010-03-01T18:00:22.914-05:00

The Hurt Locker raises, once again, the famous question "Is there such a thing as an anti-war film?" (for treatment of this question see historian Marilyn Young's "In the Combat Zone," among others). Can The Hurt Locker be grouped with All Quiet on the Western Front, Dr. Strangelove, and The Thin Red Line - films considered as close to anti-war as it gets - or is the film Saving Private Ryan propaganda fare? As Tara McKelvey argues:

"The film draws a sharp contrast between the tedium of American life, with its grocery-shopping, home repairs, and vapid consumerism, and the heart-pounding drama of the combat zone in Iraq. The fact that the war itself seems to have little point fades into the background. For all the graphic violence, bloody explosions and, literally, human butchery that is shown in the film, The Hurt Locker is one of the most effective recruiting vehicles for the U.S. Army that I have seen."
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_hurt_locker_as_propaganda

Martha P. Nochimson adds a further twist to this critique by arguing that Bigelow directs in drag, that she is the "Transvestite of Directors" who is:

"masquerading as the baddest boy on the block to win the respect of an industry still so hobbled by gender-specific tunnel vision that it has trouble admiring anything but filmmaking soaked in a reduced notion of masculinity."
http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2010/02/24/bigelow

Based on these two reviews, The Hurt Locker is not only not an anti-war film, it's a masculinist romp in the romantic killing fields of high-testosterone warfare. I think this critique is a form of "vulgar feminism." In The Hurt Locker, I see a nuanced genre film, an action war film that subtly critiques both action and war. Perhaps we should ask a different question with regards to a film that begins with the statement "war is a drug": Is there such a thing as an anti-drug film? If you think it's okay to keep sniffing blow until your heart explodes, then I assume that you will cheer James' return to battle at the end of the film. If you think that the military-industrial complex pushes its pawns to addiction, then you - like me - will find James' walk into the sunset devastating. Like a coke fiend, he's been stripped of his humanity, and for what? So that we can have the anti-choice of endless cereal choices?

I agree, this is a fine film. And I believe the de...

2010-03-01T10:22:53.724-05:00

I agree, this is a fine film. And I believe the depiction of the easy excess of the supermarket allows this reading: the bounty of late capitalism is not harmed, but abetted by what the protagonist is made to do as a soldier. This scene alone allows an "outside" to the war-world and shows not its opposite but its complement.

Comments on Bitch Flicks: Movie Review: The Hurt Locker

An addendum to my mention of NYU history professor...

The Hurt Locker raises, once again, the famous que...

I agree, this is a fine film. And I believe the de...