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Jarhead's Macho Misfire
Marines are sexist. We get it. But tell us about war.
It's not clear whether director Sam Mendes intended, with his new movie Jarhead, to fashion a tragic-comic remake of Full Metal Jacket. Whatever the intentions, though, the road to hell, or at least purgatory, may well involve a viewing of this unfortunate film.
Stanley Kubrick's 1987 classic has come to represent the ultimate cinematic expression of the sentiment that boot-camp-is-hell-and-war-is-worse. Jarhead shares the form - boot camp followed by war - but little of the substantive content. Instead, a film with an impressive cast, starring the promising (at least on paper) duo of Jamie Foxx and Jake Gyllenhaal, can only deliver a pale imitation: Boot camp is somewhat traumatic, potentially deadly, but generally a festival of male-bonding and misogyny, while war is hell because you might not even get to kill anyone.
Timing was right
Perhaps Jarhead's timing generated too high of expectations. Released as George W. Bush's approval ratings reached all-time lows and a simmering Iraq war-related scandal picked off Dick Cheney's top advisor, the film is jarringly off-point to anyone thinking about the implications of a war fought for oil and empire. Based on an account of the same title written by Anthony Swofford tracing his years in the Marines, the film relegates to a few irrelevant lines the serious critique of U.S. motivations in the Middle East that are reportedly included in the book.
At the forefront, instead, is the hyper male chauvinism of the Marine Corps. Before elaborating on this, a brief sketch of the film's "plot" is in order. Jarhead never really does get going; instead, after introducing us to our main characters in boot camp, the film heads to the Saudi desert. There, the marines train, sweat, hydrate and wait; frustration mounting with every week that goes by without seeing any action. Finally, in early 1991, the war begins and yet even then the ground forces barely get any 'action'. The marines wander through the desert and past a smattering of largely uncontextualized images of the war. The tragedy of war is alluded to - as, for instance, when the soldiers stumble upon the charred remains of Iraqis slaughtered on the 'highway of death' - but, by and large, the marines are portrayed as the victims because they don't get to kill a "raghead" themselves. The absurd victory celebration scene includes the worst ever use of Public Enemy's "Fight the Power".
No women admitted
As glaring as the lack of an engaging plot is, the lack of women in the film: A grand total of three females make appearances. First, there is Swofford's girlfriend, whom our protagonist dutifully misses while he suspects, and later has confirmed, that she is cheating on him with some sweater-wearing co-worker, who - as she writes to our hero -- "is a good listener". Later, the troops, ever bored defending the Saudi oil fields and waiting for the war to begin, assemble to watch The Deer Hunter, the second renowned Vietnam war film to be egregiously included in this movie (the other being Apocalypse Now, which the marines watch while un-ironically hooting and hollering at the scene of the bombing of a civilian village). A few seconds into the tape of Deer Hunter, however, the tape cuts to a couple having sex, at which point one of the troops - an insignificant character - gets up and starts screaming "that's my wife, that's my wife with my neighbour!" One truly wonders why this scene needed to be included, given the aggrieved character's irrelevance to the story, other than to reinforce the notion of women as scheming and duplicitous.
Finally, there is one Arab woman in the film. She's riding in the back of a Mercedes that passes by the marines' truck, at which point, one of the U.S. boys makes a series of lewd gestures.
Systematically sexist
All of this may well be an accurate depiction of life in the marines. It should lead, at the very least, to some reflection on the absurd premise that U.S. endeavours in the Middle East have anything to do with liberating women, given that the instrument of supposed liberation is one of the most systemically sexist organizations imaginable. Even the veteran commander played by Chris Cooper - he of the subtle and brilliant lampooning of George Bush in Silver City -- can only express excitement in a speech to rally the troops by yelling "I'm getting a hard on!"
Jarhead, it should at least be said, is not quite a recruitment video. The marines apparently refused any official cooperation because they objected to the film's depictions of aspects of life in the corps. But, especially given that the most recent U.S. war in Iraq is perhaps the central political issue in the world today; it's difficult to get excited about a film that makes such a shallow exploration of war. Unfortunately it seems that, as it was for the Vietnam Era, many of the best anti-war films may not be made until long after the worst devastation is done, and/or the invading armies are finally forced to pullout.
Derrick O'Keefe is a founding editor of Seven Oaks, an online political magazine. Dorothy Woodend will be back next Friday reviewing films for The Tyee. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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jamez
6 years ago
Comments on "Jarhead's Macho Misfire"
Well, I haven't seen the movie - and won't. Seems, judging by this review, it's just a bad as I expected.
nightbloom
6 years ago
The movie was too subtle to meet the expectations of those expecting a dramatic counterpoint to Michael Moors’ pabulum.
It was an anti-recruitment move.
Its target audience was college-aged American males with brains (represented by the Swoff & Fergus characters). It was meant to depict their issues. The stereotypical “bad soldier†(the Fowler character – name intended as homonym for foul-er) was meant to contrast with them, and was always portrayed as either a buffoon or a degenerate. Note the restraint of his companions when he makes that display for the Arab women in the limousine.
Civilians need to learn a tolerance for the more benign idiosyncrasies of military culture. Full disclosure: I served in the CF in the nineties, and found it to be far more accepting than is general portrayed. It was a very positive experience for me.
I didn’t think this was a great or fantastic movie, but I connected with what it was trying to say.
I recommend "Imperial Grunts" by Robert Kaplan.
Patrick
6 years ago
I have yet to see the film, but I would hazard a guess that the lack of global perspective on the war that O'Keefe criticizes, is in fact central to the film. It's about the guys in the trenches not about those sending them there.
I highly recommend an article, Valkyries Over Iraq: The trouble with war movies by Lawrence Weschler in the latest issue of Harpers magazine.
It discusses, among other issues, the use of Apocalpyse Now footage. The editor for both AN and Jarhead was one and the same.
But I'll go see the film now...
nightbloom
6 years ago
...I was also fascinated by the clash of military cultures it depicted, instigated by technology-driven RMA (Revolution in Military Affairs).
These Marines were snipers - the most individualist specialization in the combat Arm. Yet that indoctrinated ethos of individualism was foiled by the blind & blunt randomness of precision aerial bombardment (remember Fitch's breakdown when they took away his "kill"). There were other poignant statements in the movie which deliberately undercut the notion of "personal achievement" as a factor in modern war.
By doing so, they were subtly undermining a young man's principal impetus for signing up. Young men seek ways to measure themselves in a society that no longer offers them opportunities to be initiated into manhood (a crucial process in masculine development & self-acceptance that will manifest itself in brutal ways if not assuaged in society's formal structures of recognition & response).
Remember when Fowler "fouled" his nest with the charred corpse he intended to bring home as a trophy. Sgt. Sykes' (Jamie Foxx) response was quiet and powerful: marines don't go there - i.e. this initiated in-group doesn't go that low. This is an important lesson about not just how to create visceral restraints in wartime but also for society at large, as we try to re-create social restraints torn down by post-modernism (i.e. "Real Men don't Rape"; "Real Men don't Gaybash", etc.). This is a very successful appeal to personal (masculine) pride that civilizes male behaviour, but which is unpalatable to Women's Studies departments and their pony-tailed confrères in the Social Sciences.
For more on that, I'd recommend "The Warrior's Honour: Ethnic War & the Modern Conscience" by Michael Ignatieff
Lionel Tiger's enduring "Men In Groups" is also extremely worthwhile, although it was bullied off the curriculum long ago for delivering some equally polically incorrect truths.
nightbloom
6 years ago
...Sorry guys :-\ i guess i shouldn't be spoiling those precious "movie moments". I just think there was a bit more to the movie than the reviewer conceded, although it was hardly a masterpiece.
It's a 'renter'...I'm banking on Harry Potter this weekend.
BZA
6 years ago
Was wondering if this was going to be a good anti-war movie or not. Seems like it isn't. We still have 'Three Kings' though.
Guess, we'll have to wait a few more years for the good iraq war movies perhaps.
Bromac
6 years ago
Why should anyone think that war movies should always be action oriented, contain an anti-war message or some combination of both? In Jarhead, we are being presented with a view of the war that is not of any familiar formula. It is basically about the absurdity - as seen from the perspective of one participant's experience - of being heavily trained and even indoctrinated to kill on behalf of the US, and then only being an observer. I thought the interesting sub-plot to this was the conflict between conventional as opposed to technocratic warfare. In this movie, it appaers the technocrats got the upper hand while the soldiers on the ground were subjected to mind-numbing boredom. Sure, from a movie-goers perspective, the movie having strayed from a formulaic style, was something of an exercise in tedium. Nonetheless, there was still something of the subject matter and the various personal and political subplots that adequately redeemed it.
MickFinn2001
6 years ago
Derrick: Nigthbloom nailed this movie, you missed the humvee. Please, turn over the keyboard to nightbloom; you can go back to the night desk, handling the obits - that chore might be simple enough for you to figure out.
ab_thistle
6 years ago
The only semblance to a formula that I detected hit me a few days later. Jarhead is Waiting for Godot - with a gun in your hand, and I thought it was near brilliant in its complete lack of a message about US politics and the current war in Iraq, and I usually love a movie with a message.
Yaldabaoth
6 years ago
Maybe Derrick O'Keefe should read the book before whining about how the movie wasn't like the book. He should read the book and have someone beat him with a 2x4 to knock him off his high horse for a while.
I had read the book when it came out and thought that the movie managed to get most of the points of the book through on the screen. It faulted in not painting a more bleak post-war picture for Swofford.
After this review, I look forward to the return of Dorothy Woodend's ongoing quest to review movies she hates.