Posted on 11/15/2005 8:28:41 AM PST by A.A. Cunningham
Mike Neven, author of the following editorial, will be a guest with Mike Rosen. The leftist leanings of Swofford, Gyllenhall, Mendes, et al will be discussed.
Speakout: 'Jarhead' a viciously dishonest lie
By Tom Neven, Special to the News
November 11, 2005
By now you've probably read the varying reviews of Jarhead, the new movie that purports to be about the Marine Corps and the first Persian Gulf War. Based on the memoir of the same name by Anthony Swofford, both the movie and book bear only a superficial resemblance to anything real.
First, the book. Third-generation enlistee Swofford joined the Marines to escape a dysfunctional family, but unfortunately he brought a lot of that dysfunction into the Corps. In the end, he dishonored the uniform he wore.
In his book he boasts of stealing equipment from his fellow Marines and selling it on the black market, forcing them to pay for the loss of government property. He is openly contemptuous of his comrades (at one point he calls them "mouth-breathers") and puts on intellectual airs because he reads Sartre and Camus and they don't. (And lest I be accused of anti-intellectualism, I was a philosophy major in college.)
Worse, Swofford has been caught telling tall tales in what purports to be a nonfiction memoir, most notably attempting to pass off a well-worn urban legend about a malicious "Dear John" video as if he witnessed it himself. This hoary fib has been discredited by that great debunker of the spurious, snopes.com, and it's only one of many fishy anecdotes in Swofford's book.
Jarhead the book is a silly political manifesto, too, asserting that the Gulf War was fought to protect "the profits of companies, many of which have direct ties to the White House." Most egregious, though, Swofford relates an incident in which he threatened a comrade with a loaded weapon, twisting the rifle barrel into the man's ear until he broke down in tears. Swofford deserves to be court-martialed for that.
Instead, reviewers who have never worn a military uniform swooned over the supposed realism of Swofford's storytelling. Author Bing West, a Marine Vietnam vet, saw through the fawning reviews: "Far from telling the story of The Universal Soldier, the grunt's unadorned truth, as reviewers have intimated, Jarhead is the overwritten memoir of someone who did not experience serious combat. He either told tall tales or committed criminal acts under oblivious leaders whom he does not name. Either way, this is not how combat soldiers behave. Jarhead is to nonfiction what Platoon was to the movies: an insult to the American infantryman."
Add movie director Sam Mendes to the formula and you get a particularly noxious mix. As he did with American Beauty, Mendes has taken a few specific truths and extrapolated them to the whole. I served in three different infantry units over seven years in the Marine Corps, and I never encountered a unit remotely as dysfunctional or undisciplined as the platoon portrayed in this film. Sure, many Marines curse a blue streak, and some are obsessed with sex. And Mendes (with the help of unofficial Marine advisers) gets little details right, such as the way Marines talk or carry their weapons. But the overall image is a deeply dishonest lie because it relies on a misfit like Swofford for its basic story. It's unfortunate, too, that many people have gotten their impression of Marines from Swofford's book or will now do so through this movie.
Mendes is already a bit defensive about his film. He told Entertainment Weekly, "Our intention, above and beyond any specific narrative about the Gulf War, was to give human shape to these numbers you read about every day. Everyone thinks somehow that Marines are all the same. Which is, of course, nonsense."
But Mendes is trying to have it both ways, as did Oliver Stone with Platoon. Many people throughout the world will come away with the unmistakable impression that all American fighting men are foul-mouthed, sex-crazed, homicidal maniacs and that their wives and girlfriends back home are unfaithful harlots just itching to hop into the nearest bed. After all, they have the "word" of an actual former Marine.
Swofford got away with a lot with his 2003 book. Now that the story is being more widely told, I hope he's held to account for his self-indulgent, nihilistic fairy tale. In the end, the truth will find you out.
Tom Neven served seven years as a Marine Corps infantryman. He is the author of the book Do Fish Know They're Wet? and lives in Colorado Springs.
Copyright 2005, Rocky Mountain News. All Rights Reserved.
I bought 'Jarhead' the week it came out and returned it half-read the next day. The author's an obvious fraud.
This guy is disgusting. I have been in the trenches with Marines in various combat scenarios, and this is not the behavior of our Marines. Our Marines are freaking scary.
I am not worried about the movie or the book though. Anyone with half a brain can see the lies in these stories and will not take it seriously.
hopefully the homo cowboy movie will bomb too, and the guy who plays homos and soldiers will have to find new work...
Tom Neven
--confirms Col. North's review of a week or so ago---
i SAW IT
I have to admit, I saw a lot of the same bahaviour from people, onl the fewest
But, I never saw the disrespect towards SNCO's that the movie had
Not towards officers, that was total nonsense.
the things that were true, were the things you dont tell your Mom about, and it is abhorrant to see a movie made of it
Not a movie a proud Marine would make at all
-5 stars
well I'm sorry you wasted your time and money on the movie
we were going to go to one of the mutiplexs and see something else and then see "Jarhead" afterwards but after reading the lousy reviews; we took a "pasadena."
Semper Fi,
Kelly
I wanted to see it just to see what the hub-ub was about, and to talk intelligently about it
it sucked.
There is no smarter comment that needs to be made.
:)
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