The War Tapes: Cinema Guerrité
To Listen: Get Adobe Flash Player, or download an mp3 at the bottom of the post.
A Soldier’s eye view [Scranton/Lacy Films]
War has long been a subject of legendary filmmaking. Films such as Glory, Battleship Potemkin, Catch- 22, and Platoon capture both the physical and psychological despair of combat–even the Cold War has its films: The Macnchurian Candidate and Dr. Strangelove. But these films are the products of seasoned directors, not of the combatants. For the first time, soldiers have made a film about war while waging war. In March 2004, as insurgent movement strenghtened, several members of one National Guard unit arrived in Iraq, with cameras.
In February 2004, Director Deborah Scranton got an offer from the New Hampshire National Guard to be an embeded filmmaker. She called the public affairs office and asked if she could give cameras to the soldiers instead. The War Tapes, is the story of Operation Iraqi Freedom through the eyes of of Sergeant Zack Bazzi, Sergeant Steve Pink and Specialist Mike Moriarity.
What I was interested in was their interperative framework, to get as close to the experience of war as possible, to climb inside and feel it all around. By giving soldiers the power to press record on those cameras in Iraq, we were able to move one degree closer to the essence of what it is like.
Director, Deborah Scranton
The War Tapes, is gritty, candid, and authentic.
Every once in awhile I have a recurring epiphany–this is happening and will have a lasting impact on me for the rest of my life. A debate we had earlier in the day over the consistency and texture of a severed limb was not some far off grotesque assumption. It was a genuine argument between the guy who swears it resembles hamburger, ground up but uncooked and the guy who believes it looks more like a raw pork roast.
Sergeant Steve Pink, The War Tapes
During this hour we hope to explore what it means to live in a technological age where we can make films about a war that we are still living through. Is this the kind of fillmaking we need –in a world of reality television and embedded journalism–to be reminded that war is ugly, brutal and immediate? What are the long term effects on a society whose wars continue to be fought far away from our civilized, everyday lives? Is the disconnect between civilian life and military life widening or is the war in first person, told through films and blogs, breaching the gap?
Deborah Scranton
- Director, The War Tapes, and the television documentary about WWII veterans, Stories From Silence, Witness to War
Sergeant Zack Bazzi
- Co-filmmaker of The War Tapes. Bazzi is studying International Affiars and Psychology at the University of New Hampshire. Bazzi has been deployed overseas twice before in Bosnia and Kosovo with the 101st Airborne
Morten Ender
-
Professor of Sociology at the United States Military Academy, West Point
He teaches Cinematic Images of War and the Military
David Slocum
-
Associate Dean, Graduate School of Arts and Science at New York University
Author of forthcoming book, Hollywood and War: The Film Reader
If you want to see The War Tapes check out the upcoming
screenings. We also owe a belated thanks to Winston Dodson for brining this film to our attention.
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June 3rd, 2006 at 11:50 pm
It appears that the job of the military is to kill (or be killed), and the job of the voyeur civilian is to stand and watch — like the crowd underneath an office building waiting to see if a potential suicide jumps or does not. Is this healthy? Perhaps the soldiers want to be watched, acheiving a moment of fame… and perhaps the civilians are so disconnected from their fellows that real war just seems like an especially ‘cool’ video game… Is this where we want to be? It seems we shall find out…
June 4th, 2006 at 8:58 am
Guns or cameras, it is still the occupiers who have authority or authorship, who choose which subjects to shoot and who determine the plot, whether burial or narrative.
If directors want to provide the US audience with the “essence of what it is like” then they should give video cameras to the Iraqi people and let them provide the uncensored, unembedded War Tapes that tell the stories of people with names and families whose lives are being torn apart.
But maybe this would be too much realism.
June 4th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
sidewalker: Good point.
Iraq in Fragments is a documentary made by an American filmaker, James Longly, his style focuses on seeing the world through his subject’s eyes and in their words.
James Longly would be an interesting guest for this show
http://www.iraqinfragments.com/
I myself doubt if technology will ever replace the decisionmaking of skilled artists and wonder who is going to edit the raw footage generated by soldier camermen? So much POV in film is created by the editing and use of sound.
June 4th, 2006 at 8:05 pm
For Americans to know the true horrors of our weapons, let those, whose lives we’ve destroyed, reciprocate in kind.
June 6th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
Given what we’re learning about Haditha and “soccer games”, I’m not sure the POV of American soldiers is going bring us any truth. These men are trained by the US miitary and have an ingrained mission: protect the image of the US military. Even if they aren’t clever enough to do that well, they certainly aren’t going to tell what is really going on over there.
I agree that cameras in the hands of Iraqu’s would be good. I also think that a documentary about the IVAW – Iraqi Veterans Against War http://www.ivaw.net/ – would start to balance the picture a bit. You need a aggregrate of perspectives.
June 6th, 2006 at 5:13 pm
Embedded filmmaker. In a time when photographs of flag draped caskets are forbidden from being distributed through media what kind of careful excisions were made by Army Public Affairs in a film seeking national distribution essentially speaking on behalf of the soldiers and the institution?
I’m genuinely curious, and will see this when it makes the rounds. Is it another development in an already sophisticated recruitment toolbox or something more candid?
Also I can recommend watching Voices of Iraq (http://www.voicesofiraq.com/), it is interesting and provocative, whatever context or bias it is viewed with.
June 6th, 2006 at 6:00 pm
Allison wrote: “they certainly aren’t going to tell what is really going on over there.”
This brings to mind some more of my research on milblogging that I’ve yet to publish on Civilities (sorry…). I’ve a good bunch of milblogs, and read the books of Colby Buzzell (Army blogger/enlistee) and of Nathaniel Fick (Marine officer/scholar), and have recently been reading The First Casualty by Phillip Knightly, a history of war correspondents.
It’s a tricky subject to tackle. Nobody really has the best “full” picture. But the major concern about news correspondence is what’s happening *now* vs. the long view. When something is packaged as a movie, it’s not packaged as current events. So viewers are more apt to recognize the artifact as someone’s POV.
I do remember that many of the milbloggers were counting on The War Tapes to “counter” the media.
June 6th, 2006 at 6:09 pm
That said, I am looking forward very much to seeing the movie. Part of my rationale for doing the research on the milblogs was in considering the same question that Chelsea brought above:
“Is the disconnect between civilian life and military life widening or is the war in first person, told through films and blogs, breaching the gap?”
In theory, the blogs *should* help bridge (not breach) the gap. But again, there’s a misconception about the blogs. There are some well-written blogs, and there are some blogs which connect to individuals personally or through chains of trust. But I had far better luck investing my time in books (most of the better writing warbloggers have retired).
June 6th, 2006 at 6:20 pm
tbrucia wrote: “Perhaps the soldiers want to be watched, acheiving a moment of fame…”
In my research that’s what I’ve found as well. Soldiers, like anybody else performing hero acts– want attention.
My question: did the soldiers act differently with the cameras present? Army Lt. Col Robert Bateman was on On the Media last Friday, and he had repeated his statement frm before the war that more embedding would prevent future My Lai massacres.
June 6th, 2006 at 6:23 pm
This needs to be clarified above: Bateman is an Army historian, and gave his comments as such, and not as an Army spokesman. Brooke Gladstone did ask him whether he felt the same even after Abu Ghraib and Haditha– and he said yes, he felt that embedding prevented more abuses. A complicated subject as well– I recomment listening to that show.
June 6th, 2006 at 11:48 pm
This documentary, not presented as an imaginative reconstruction of war, but as “getting inside the heads of the soldiers,” set me to pondering, yet again, the phenomenon of war.
War, even war with rules of the game (like sports: see Carol Gilligan’s “In A Different Voice” which gets into the gamelike nature of male group activity), is a human activity that permits murder in the name of a societal value or values. Isn’t that amazing? There always has to be a leader or a group or a powerful class or a government who startthe game, doesn’t there? Even rebellions require leaders. The question is: is it the rationale that gets people into this game, or is it something about war, about killing others, that’s so powerful that just about any rationale will do? E.G. nazi germany
Do women enjoy war as men do? Do they long to return to a war zone to save a buddy? Do they get the thrill from war that men do? Well, some women apparently do–I’ve heard them on NPR. But most don’t. It’s not because they’re going to be mothers. Or are avoiding pain. Giving birth is equal to most extreme forms of pain. So what’s the difference in this respect between women and men? Is there a difference? And if so, isn’t that something really important to understand? Because it seems that a lot of men in any society at any time seem to enjoy war. Even descriptions of warring gangs on villages in Africa, Asia, etc. often point to the drunken appearance of the soldiers, their eyes glazed.
So, listening to the program tonight, I asked myself: why should I want to get into the heads of these American soldiers? Is it to see war from a camera angle that adds a frisson because the camera becomes the eyes of the soldiers? Why would I want to see this? What do I learn? Their feelings, their skills at what they do, their frustrations, their triumphs, their mistakes? Am I asked to be a voyeur of what is one of the most most appalling recurrences in the history of human society? If not a voyeur, then what’s the point?
Moreover: this documentary offers yet another new technique for plunging into experiences that further desensitize us. No, I don’t believe that I will have a grand new perception of what war is about by haivng an upclose and personal experience of it. Instead, I think how much further this technique may now be taken– and who doesn’t run to exploit a new technique, a new technology, damn the consequences? Think of it, we can attach cameras, perhaps, to the torturers? to the tortured? Get into their heads?
I was struck by Zack, who loves being a soldier. This citizen soldier does his job, doesn’t think about why he’s doing the job. It’s an occupation. What about the guys who did think about what and why they were soldiering? What about the Israeli refusenicks, in a society where the citizen soldier has the highest respect, who thinks about his role in the occupation and dares the societal denegration he’ll experience when he says, after thinking about it, “No!”
So what do soldiers love about soldiering? Zack told us what we already know from Christopher Hedges, who said it in his book, “War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning:”War experience is like a drug.” Yes, as Zack said, it gives the rush of adrenalin that people will risk their lives for in the air, on mountains, on the sea, etc. When Hedges realized he’d become an addict to violence, he got out. But soldiering may, indeed, become an addiction. I believe that Zack said something almost to that effect in the interview tonight.
So governments and other powerful agents can count on soldiers to keep on, to go back to Iraq again and again, leaving families behind, because they know that saving your buddy, the buddy in war who is as close as your own beating heart, becomes the most important thing in a soldier’s life.
After the Six Day War, a remarkable book was published of interviews with soldiers about their experience. What really struck me was the answer one soldier gave to the question: “How did it feel to finally see Jerusalem (forbidden to Jews since 1948) and the Wall?” The soldier replied: ” Well, I suppose I should have felt this was really important, maybe even one of the most important things in my life, but the truth is, the most important thing for me was that I saw my buddy, Uri, and when i saw he was alive, I never felt such happiness.”
Those who send young men to war can always depend on this sense of bonding–which often seems to me to replace or fulfill the need for a genuinely mystical or religious experience–to keep soldiers fighting. Indeeed, Zack did mention the meta-experience he has in Iraq, of doing something bigger than anything you’d do for yourself. He wasn’t talking about reconstructing schools; it was about “doing the job” in a combat situation.
Years ago, i was struck by the depiction, on Greek amphoras, of soldiers in battle, lunging with their spears while having erections. I began to suspect that men–some men–may love war because it keeps them in a state of continuous erotic arousal. I don’t know if that’s the case, and I certainly hope not, for if it’s so, then the dream of this species’ learning to resolve conflict without war is a pipe dream. Then again, who says wars are fought to resolve conflicts? There are other reasons, not so mysterious, that are far more petty and ignominious. Look at Iraq.
So I want to get back to my question: why should we run to see this documentary? If I were a filmmaker or documentarian or student of film or journalist or historian of war or psychologist, etc., I might have a reason. I suppose. What is the basis of this passion to experience the thing in itself, if at all possible, even if it’s about terrible suffering? That’s the question that troubles me.
And finally, what does the ceaseless saturation of media space with the technology, politics, experiences, opinions, consequences, fears, and analyses of war do to all of us? Are we not, by now, a militarized society feeding on war and the adrenalin rush it gives just as do the soldiers on the front? Can you imagine, almost five years after the eleventh of September, 2001, living for a week, just a week, with no mention of terrorism, catastrophe, spying, military technological developments, death death death? Is this documentary so neutral in its agenda? Since when are there pure facts as such about experience? Is the documentary neutral like a well-carved figure, like a plough, like a bird’s nest?
As I said, I’m pondering these questions, filled with feeling, saddened that a generation of children is growing up in an environment so degraded by the world-wide eruptions of war and violence, learning from the adult world that war is inevitable and natural, like the seasons.
June 7th, 2006 at 1:03 am
I was in the Marine Corps during the Gulf War ’91 and I had my video camera with me the whole time. I have just started publishing some of the videos on YouTube.com.
They are very interesting though in light of this program they may seem rather lacking. I was a Flight Mechanic on a KC-130 so I got around the Gulf region quite a bit. Take a look if your interested.
Jeff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Geknjm2Rt4
June 7th, 2006 at 7:05 am
As a cynical lieutenant colonel told me back during the Vietnam ‘experience’, ‘Our job is to be hitmen. We are hired to kill people and to follow orders. If you don’t like that, you should make the decision that you don’t want to before you enlist — not after the U.S. government has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars training you.’ (We were discussing some refusnik USAF fighter pilots who discovered their opposition to war after getting orders to Southeast Asia.). Perhaps America’s fascination with the military has something in common with its fascination with ‘The Sopranos’… a fascination with violence ordered by others and executed by the willing. A job. A paid occupation. A remunerative way of life involving killing folks.
June 16th, 2006 at 7:49 am
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