{"id":1694,"date":"2015-01-28T17:00:33","date_gmt":"2015-01-28T17:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/?p=1694"},"modified":"2015-01-28T17:00:33","modified_gmt":"2015-01-28T17:00:33","slug":"on-american-sniper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/film\/on-american-sniper\/","title":{"rendered":"On American Sniper: Some Preliminary Notes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"In<\/a>

In case you don’t get the joke, see http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/culture\/film\/oscars\/11354570\/American\u2010sniper\u2010plastic\u2010babies.html<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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As everyone knows, Clint Eastwood\u2019s American Sniper\u00a0(2015) is, as of this writing (January 24, 2015: just over three years since the Iraq War officially ended, about two years since the shooting death of Chris Kyle, and less than two weeks after the Charlie Hebdo massacre), a surprise smash hit in the United States. Various postulates as to its success have been formulated: its belated offering of Iraq War cartharsis or even justification; its tight filtering of historical events through a single, largely sympathetic protagonist (memorably played by Bradley Cooper); or the highly effective publicity campaign surrounding it. My own suspicion is that part of the film\u2019s appeal lies in the fact that it is fundamentally about war\u2010themed video games \u2013 or rather, is a successful attempt to capitalize<\/a> on those games\u2019 colossal popularity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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That the film\u2019s iconography, sensibility and rhythm are at one with such games is too obvious to require comment: even I\u2019ve played enough to know that. (Filling out this brief comment would require serious formal comparison of the film with games. See here<\/a> for an archive of potential sources.)<\/p>\n

But I think that part of what the film does is convince its audience that playing those games is actually a form of civic participation, requiring concentration, commitment and self\u2010sacrifice. (Though not only about video games by any means, given the penetration of the\u00a0military into every layer of life in so many parts of the country \u2013 even if games and\u00a0our experience of them may also be qualified in important ways by the military\u00a0leviathan; see here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Clint lets the cat out of the bag near the end of the film, when Chris Kyle\u2019s kids are playing some game or other (\u201cLevel 4, daddy!\u201d), but I think it\u2019s best to read the atavistic scenes of \u201chunting\u201d in the film as figures for the perceptual (and\u00a0political) pedagogy offered by war\u2010video games. In other words, what the film does is construct one of those good old four\u2010level allegories familiar from medieval times, enabling the private wargames\u2010player (the \u201cmoral\u201d level) to insert him\/herself into the \u201clegend\u201d of Chris Kyle (the \u201ctypological\u201d level), and thereby connect to the larger destiny of the imperial nation as such (the \u201canagogical\u201d level). The \u201cliteral\u201d level, the history of the Iraq conflict, serves as nothing more than material for these figurations, to be arranged and rearranged like the body parts in the torture chamber.*<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The point of doing this, of course, is to siphon off some of the enormous libidinal\/capital investment in such games \u2010 the film is doing huge business! \u2010 by providing a gratifying political emplotment of that investment (as a form of civic commitment). Refusing to be weaned off the war\/game becomes a profoundly patriotic gesture, accompanied by all the pathos of self\u2010doubt, introspection and \u201ctrauma,\u201d but redeemed as heroism when we see just how savage the \u201csavages\u201d are (and Clint, employing tried\u2010and\u2010true racist iconography of \u201cthe bad guys,\u201d makes sure that we do). After all, you can even jeopardize your precious family life if you spend too much time trying to defeat the (computerized or real [i.e., \u201csavage\u201d]) enemy: yet despite these existential risks, the vindication will come, draped in the flag, somewhere down the road….<\/p>\n

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*Where I\u2019m getting this from: Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981), 30; and Erich Auerbach, \u201cFigura,\u201d available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  As everyone knows, Clint Eastwood\u2019s American Sniper\u00a0(2015) is, as of this writing (January 24, 2015: just over three years since the Iraq War officially ended, about two years since the shooting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":1697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1694"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1696,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1694\/revisions\/1696"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}