willow
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02:10:43 pm on May 19, 2008 | # | |
I love superhero movies, but watching them in today’s political climate is like waiting to get kicked in the gut. Iron Man was no exception. It’s one of the best superhero movies to date, but gets bogged down in the same old tropes when it comes to Islam, the military and the blessed role of a messianic America. Yaman has a very good analysis.
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aziz 3:38 pm on May 19, 2008 | #
I think I see his point, but I have to disagree, when he says,
I don’t see it that way. The argument seems instead to be that killing innocents is wrong, even as “collateral damage”, and the contrast between the military as depicted in the film, and the military we see in reality, is quite striking. What America needs are smarter weapons, not just better ones.
Overall, the fact that the movie takes place in Afghanistan etc clouds the analysis. If it were instead a story about Tony Stark taking the fight to poor Columbian villagers oppressed by drug lords, I think we would be able to discern the moral argument better. Instead, we see a film about powerful American military weapons, American heroes who fight sterptypical Islamic bad guys, and poor muslim innocents as pawns, and it pushes all our buttons.
If this movie achieves the goal of further delegitimizing the concept of collateral damage as an acceptable tactic, then its done a lot indeed. We have come quite a long way from Hiroshima already. The American military is actually very particular already about trying to minimize damage, but not to the point where a strike against a target will be called off because of human shields. Thats probably the best we can expect until we do get to superweapon capability like Iron Man. Contrast this with the much more aggressive posture adopted by Israel with regard to innocents and I think we need to be a bit pragmatic in our critique.
razib 5:33 pm on May 19, 2008 | #
people can see what they want to see. i saw a review on the discourse-analyzing-lefty site pandogon which saw it is too militaristic, but discerning some anti-oppression message. i don’t read comic books, but it was pretty obviously a comic book.
as for the villains being quasi-muslim; i kind of found that annoying, they should have just made them muslim. at which point, the muslims would get totally pissed. the best thing to do is make villains slavs; they’re white enough that they can’t be mistaken for muslim and they don’t seem to have much of a voice (you obviously can’t do people of color, and aliens can often be analogized to some oppressed people, i had a friend who could perceive anti-semitic caricatures in any plot-line).
razib 5:36 pm on May 19, 2008 | #
the muslims would get totally pissed
check that: some representatives for some muslims.
aziz 6:22 pm on May 19, 2008 | #
i think if you just say The Muslims (capitals) we know what you need, no qualifiers needed.
yaman 10:27 pm on May 19, 2008 | #
Thanks for the link, Willow.
Aziz: More “precise” weapons is exactly what I meant by “better” weapons. My point, though, is that even if the absurd precision of his suit could be replicated in real life, all it does is romanticize the violence even further so that all that is in the way between America being the perfect police force for the world is the precision of its weapons. You see him destroy the bad guy, without killing any good guys, and you start getting a little too excited about violence. The fact, is, first, that there is no such precision anywhere in the world, and second, that the US certainly does and always will accept “collateral damage”–so does every other warring entity. As for the glorious violence in the film, everything is left up to the guns to solve the issues. I am by no means a pacifist, but I think it’s a little ridiculous that all we see is Good Killing Evil in this film, and it’s terrifying that it is directly connected to a narrative regarding US troops, the occupation of Afghanistan, and the military-industrial complex.
razib 10:57 pm on May 19, 2008 | #
yaman dude, you watched GI joe? i guess you’re making an argument for japanese kids action adventures, which are more morally ambiguous (and have to sometimes be reedited for american audiences)….
btw, i watched this is film twice. and it wasn’t for the plot and characterization. the CGI needs two looks.
aziz 6:59 am on May 20, 2008 | #
welcome, yaman!
You see him destroy the bad guy, without killing any good guys, and you start getting a little too excited about violence. The fact, is, first, that there is no such precision anywhere in the world, and second, that the US certainly does and always will accept “collateral damage”–so does every other warring entity.
I readily admit up front to believing that violence is no more, or less, morally desirable than any of the other tools in the foreign policy toolbox - it’s HOW violence is carried out that subjects it to moral critique, but the fact of violence itself is not an evil. To that end, the perfect violence of Iron Man is in my view the kind of (impossible to achieve) violence that is truly a moral good. If we had such (impossible) technology, then consider that other tools such as soft power, diplomacy, economic sanction, etc might well become obsolete.
Obviously, thats impossible, but its still a relevant extreme case because it highlights that what is objectionable about violence is precisely that it sometimes (always, in practice) harms the innocent.
It is true to say that the US always has and always will accept collateral damage, but it is not true to say that the US’s level of acceptable collateral damage has been constant. There is a striking difference between Hiroshima and Afghanistan, so much so that we as a nation were genuinely horrified at the wedding bombing, whereas in an earlier time we might well have cheered.
There is no reason to suppose that our increased intolerance of collateral damage is plateauing. In fact we are only entering the age of smart weapons, so there surely is still some ground to traverse towards that asymptotic ideal.
Ultimately I would love to see our military hold itself to the standard of zero collateral damage - a standard that, from your description, the movie’s depiction of the US military adhered to (”human shields! our hands are tied! etc.”). That’s actually not far from where we are today, to be honest, though “zero” will always be better than “minimal”. What I like here is that amidst the bravado of an Iron Man singlehandedly championing for rocket-powered justice, the idea that killing an innocent is wrong, no matter who does it or for what larger end, gets equal time onscreen.