The Absurdity of War in Occupation: Dreamland
The Absurdity of War in
Occupation: Dreamland
by Henry Edward Hardy
The film Occupation: Dreamland (Greenhouse Pictures, 2005) tells the story of a squad of American soldiers from the US 82nd Airborne Division stationed at Fallujah, Iraq. Directors Ian Olds and the late Garrett Scott were “embedded” journalists with the 82nd Airborne in 2004. They have created a laconic, dark and incisive film giving their ground’s-eye view of Fallujah under the American occupation.”Dreamland” is the ironic name given by the soldiers to their rather dilapidated base at a former Ba’ath Party resort.
Occupation: Dreamland grips one with the terror and absurdity of the Iraq occupation. Who is the enemy? Who is a friend? Boredom and barracks humor frame instants of chaotic, harsh violence and everyday life. Two young Iraqis speak chillingly to the camera, saying, “The men of Fallujah are brave. Do not go to Fallujah. No Fallujah.” An Iraqi man in the street raises his arms to heaven and shouts that he is sick of guns. Frightened US soldiers in the middle of the night break down doors and force terrified families to kneel in front of them and warn menacingly (in English) that if anyone is up on the roof they will be shot.
This war in Iraq is not epic, as in the movie Gunner Palace. Olds and Scott present an occupation that is banal and good-natured and yet as menacing and disorienting as a J. G. Ballard novel. Some of the young soldiers observe that “something” had to be done after 9/11. Another soldier says, “Sometimes I’m thinking, ‘Man, if those were Iraqi soldiers coming and stomping on my door, I’d be running up there with a couple guns myself, you know.'” Another acidly observes, “I guess people could say that we’re stopping the stem of global terrorism, but the last time I checked, all the hijackers and a good number of people like Osama [bin Laden] were from Saudi Arabia.” (In fact 15 of the alleged 9/11 hijackers were Saudi, and four Egyptian).
The directors have a perspective that, by the selection of the material, one infers is critical of the occupation. But they have the wisdom to stand back and let the US soldiers and people of Iraq tell their own stories through their documented words and actions.
Occupation: Dreamland is available on DVD from http://www.occupationdreamland.com/dvd.html.
Occupation: Dreamland (IMDB)
Occupation: Dreamland (Rotten Tomatoes)
82nd Airborne
82nd Airborne Division (globalsecurity.org)
82nd Airborne Division (United States) (wikipedia)
A version of this article appeared previously in Current Magazine and on Electric Current.
Copyright © 2006, 2007 Henry Edward Hardy
The Perfect Beauty in Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
The Perfect Beauty in
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
by Henry Edward Hardy
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (Inosensu: Kokaku Kidotai, 2004) works both as a cyberpunk no-holds-barred shoot-’em-up and as a philosophical exploration of the nature of consciousness, memory, identity and what it means to be human in an artificial world. In a series of baffling crimes, an obscure series of android sex-dolls has developed a malfunction: they have started to kill their masters. When the military cyborg Batô responds to a crime in progress, he finds two murdered cops. A painfully beautiful geisha-doll android cradles the cop’s decapitated head in her arms like a baby. With perfect beauty and efficiency she tries to murder Batô as well. When he fells her with one punch of his android knuckles, she folds like a broken toy and begs him, “Help me”, then malfunctions and explodes in a most alarming fashion.
The film is visually stunning.The washed-out, grey, flat cell-animated anime characters contrast with the brilliant, super-real, anamorphically skewed candy-like cathedral light of the world portrayed through their cybernetically-enabled senses. The story is told through action and inaction, silence and violence. Much of the very laconic, cool dialogue is an obvious reference to film noir, as are the 1950s-era automobiles.
The geisha dolls are based on a series of pre-World War II dolls made by German surrealist Hans Bellmer, who made them partly as a protest against the Nazi ideals of physical culture, and partly out of an innate sense of sensuality and idealized beauty. As with Bellmer’s works, this ambiguity, that anything perfect cannot be anything human, is central to the film.
The protagonist, Major Motoko Kusanagi, is known at first in this movie only as a memory, a cipher. She disappeared years ago on a mission detailed in the Ghost in the Shell manga by Masamune Shirô and movie of the same name by Mamoru Oshii. Only her partner, Batô, continues to believe she is alive on the Net. We learn that what makes Major Kusanagi and Batô human, is that they love. Their sense of companionship, loyalty and identity with all life is what endows the shell of the body, whatever it may be, with a “ghost” or soul.
Google Image results for Ghost in the Shell: Innocence
Ghost in the Shell: Innocence (IMDB)
Ghost in the Shell: Innocence (Rotten Tomatoes)
Ghost in the Shell: Innocence (wikipedia)
Hans Bellmer (wikipedia)
A version of this article appeared previously in Current Magazine and on Electric Current
Copyright © 2005, 2006, 2007 Henry Edward Hardy
An Intimate Look at a Stumbling White House: State of Denial by Bob Woodward
An Intimate Look at a Stumbling White House
State of Denial: Bush at War part III
by Bob Woodward
Simon and Schuster, 2006
http://www.simonsays.com
by Henry Edward Hardy
State of Denial is Washington Post Assistant Editor Bob Woodward’s third book on the presidential administration of George W. Bush. Like Bush at War (2002) and Plan of Attack (2004), the book purports to be an inside look into the intimate details of executive policy making at the White House. State of Denial uses the same omniscient viewpoint as in the previous books, though Woodward does insert himself into the story this time in order to make a few parenthetical derogatory comments pertaining to the recently retired secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld.
Woodward graduated from Yale in 1965, a few years before Bush. Until 1970 he served on the staff of Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, and sometimes acted as a courier to the White House.Woodward first achieved national prominence in the early 1970’s for his coverage of the Watergate break-in. That scandal led to the resignation of Richard M. Nixon. Woodward and fellow Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein played a significant role in uncovering and reporting on the Watergate conspiracy.
Although it includes some unlikely-sounding quotes and aphorisms, even haiku, State of Denial is clearly written, well-paced and full of pithy and memorable quotes. The book includes this quote from a US Intelligence Colonel early in the Iraq occupation regarding the lack of sufficient occupation troops:
Rumsfeld is a dick
Won’t flow the forces we need
We will be too light
Woodward writes that during a Cabinet meeting on August 27, 2001, the Saudi ambassador (and Bush family friend) Prince Bandar confronted Bush and cabinet members about growing tension in the Middle East. Woodward writes that Colin Powell, then the Secretary of State, confronted Bandar after and demanded, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? You’re putting the fear of God into everybody here. You scared the shit out of everybody.”Bandar replied, “I don’t give a damn what you feel. We are scared ourselves.”
Woodward’s tale of the tirade by Bandar and the alarmed response by Powell, two weeks before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, makes the Saudi origins of 14 of the 19 alleged 9/11 hijackers all the more interesting.
This is only one of many blockbusters Woodward apparently withheld from publication by the Washington Post. Woodward never seems to let the interests of the Post or the United States get in the way of his own journalistic coups. He has been criticized for allowing New York Times reporter Judy Miller go to jail for contempt of court and Vice President Dick Cheney’s aide “Scooter” Libby to be charged with leaking the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. All along Woodward knew that the information had been previously revealed to him by Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage.
In a 1996 article in the New York Review of Books, Joan Didion accused Woodward of “curious passivity” in his uncritical retelling of the stories of each of his protagonists. In a wide-ranging attack on his work, methods, and credibility, she accused him of creating “political pornography”. But whereas the previous two books show Bush as a confident and decisive commander, the current work depicts him as vacillating, detached and ill-informed from the outset of his presidency. One would like to see some explanation from Woodward for his extraordinary change of perspective. One almost feels sorry for the thoroughly unlikable Rumsfeld as he is savaged by Woodward’s portrayal of him as a manipulative, vain, overbearing tyrant. Although he evidently granted Woodward several in-depth interviews, Rumsfeld does not come in for the kid-gloves treatment proffered to most of his other apparent sources. So now Bob Woodward has the scalp of Rumsfeld to add to that of Nixon.
This is a fun book, a weighty book, and a political tour-de-force. But it isn’t journalism. Instead it lies somewhere between an historical novel such as Burr by Gore Vidal, and books such as Rise of the Vulcans by James Mann or Imperial Hubris by Michael Scheuer. State of Denial has had great influence among the chattering classes in Washington and I believe influenced the recent congressional elections and led to the downfall of Rumsfeld. This book is highly recommended.
State of Denial (Metacritic)
State of Denial (wikipedia)
The Deferential Spirit (Joan Didion in the New York Review of Books )
A version of this article appeared previously in Current Magazine and on Electric Current
Copyright © 2006, 2007 Henry Edward Hardy
About Scanlyze
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Scanlyze is an online magazine of essays, commentary, satire, and analysis. Were we half as clever, for inspiration we would take Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Swift, Montaigne, or Seneca.
“The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.”
John F. Kennedy, October 26, 1963
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