'The Hurt Locker'

[MisterCat]

Here's a little something I wrote earlier tonight:

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[mijj]

where was this locker? .. and who hurt it? .. and why?

.. so many questions!

Good bit, btw.

It always puzzles me how an organisation can have an opinion? .. They're not like you or i or Corporations - they aren't persons. .. unlike human or Corporate persons, they don't have minds or feelings.

[MisterCat]

Thanks, mijj, for your much-welcomed positive appraisal of that little writeup. I also sent it to The New York Times by way of a comment to a film review of The Hurt Locker. The Times' review itself was positive, but all the follow-on comments were from the same bunch of reactionary dolts who emerge from the woodwork on command whenever anyone dares put forward a circumspect work of art pertaining to warfare. So I jumped into the fray. We shall see how long it takes "them" to begin clobbering me with the usual right-wing ad hominum "arguments."



Anyway, about that unfortunate locker: I've no idea which locker it might be nor where it could be located, but I'll take a guess and say "somewhere in Iraq." Neither do I have any information on exactly what might have been done to it, but obviously pain was involved. Like you, I'm aghast at the thought anyone would deliberately hurt a dutiful locker - which only wanted to hold some human's clothing and toilet articles and be left alone otherwise. When I was in military service, I never encountered a hurt locker. We did move lockers around from time to time, but we were always careful. Young people these days...!



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[vidkid]

Great piece Mr C. As you say, the film is sympathetic to those serving in the armed forces & Bigelow dedicated her Oscar to them, so what do these people have against the film? Just the fact that it's a Hollywood interpretation of the situation? I haven't seen it yet, but it is on Sky Box Office, so I shall have to check it out.

[MisterCat]

Basically, vidkid, yes: anything, real or imagined, having to do with "Hollywood" is automatically placed on the reactionaries' shit list. In the U.S. military, there's even the term "Hollywood shower" - a shower during which water is continuously running. Real men, according to the prevailing I'm-a-tough-guy rationale, simply get wet then turn off the water. They do the washing-with-soap part, then briefly turn on the water to rinse off. Only sissies run water the whole time!



That's just an example, but the anti-art/anti-intellectual ambiance to which I allude is firmly established and maintained in U.S. armed forces - by senior non-commissioned officers, for the most part. As Albert Camus pointed out in his novel La Peste (Paris: Librairie Gallimard, 1947), stupidity has a knack of getting its way.



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