Thoughts on ‘Generation Kill’ 08/12/2008
Posted by Vaughn in Conflict, Defense, Essay, Mass Media, Politics.comments closed
THERE IS television and then there is high-art, and very rarely do the two intersect, ever. It is not the job of television or its writers to shoot for such peaks. Just as it is never the idea of educators to treat everyone of its students as gifted. All are both inherent flaws in their respective systems, I believe. HBO Original Programming series Generation Kill is high art. It achieves what is the exception and not the rule, much like a class of Harvard bound or tier one university bound students from a Garfield High School in the ’80s or a Bronx Science now. What the program is shaping up to be in a mere seven-parts is the greatest, sociological treatise on war and modern soldiers ever seen.
Generation Kill presents no varnish, the series is near-perfect technically and everything from the muddy, disgusting mess of race, class, government economics, and most importantly the bureaucratic entanglements of the military’s chain-of-command are all laid bare for viewers to see, as the series works more as an ethnography than a broadcast television show.
In the series, several threads are beginning to appear such as: young men who are mid-level officers that are far smarter and more competent than their superiors, who are treated as mere pawns and canon fodder; while the few good, willing and competent superiors are limited by government policy that is shortsighted and which does not take into account the harsh realities on the ground. There is also the stress factors of managing a team of generally subversive youth that has been trained to kill, and their itchy trigger fingers as a result, that sometimes lead to matter-of-fact tragedies, as foul-ups and civilian loss inevitably happen over and over again.
Then there are the consequences of such mistakes, and the momentary glossing over of failures in judgment that are shown as necessary at times (for unit morale), and a need to maintain a transgressing soldier’s combat effectiveness. ( It is generally acknowledged in these instances that the young Marines have but a split-second to squeeze their triggers, but the soldiers are not ever given a “pass” for their incredibly poor decisions.
The ethics of war and the psychology of (state sanctioned) killing have also begun to take hold. In episode four, one of the unit’s mid-level leaders talks of killing a “Haji” and watching his head burst, and while he does not expressly say it, he implies that he is disturbed by not feeling anything “emotionally” whatsoever about it. This is Generation Kill’s strength: relaying the horror of war through the face and not through dialogue; as war and men generally do not operate with the kind of sensitive verbal candor that a program like this would have to rely upon to tell its story. (The show is very candid, however, about war, while eschewing the far-personal verbal spilling of feelings. ) In fact the candor of the show is displayed in its working with the way true soldiers talk: filled with misogyny, racial politics, competition and the casual, acceptable homophobia that is seen in hyper-masculine societies and subcultures.
While grunts have historically been portrayed as drones and gung-ho, wanton killers, Generation Kill presents them as the humans that they are, with their characters well-defined and ever examining of their lot. The soldiers rants on social class issues and how they (themselves) ended up in Iraq or why military brass uses them as oppose to the expensive machinery designated for the operations that they ultimately end up handling (as a low-cost reconnaissance unit), provide the added understanding and dimension of wars being an ever increasing economic cost-benefit analysis. Also, observations on American multinational corporation dominance, tensions of religion in a “not-so-pseudo-religious war,” foreign policy “blowback” and the clash of the two civilizations: the fundamentalist and developing world of Islam and the economic hegemon and secularist American society, provide an earthy, underbelly, true account of the nuts and bolts life of the modern American soldier.
PingMag’s Trip to Tama Art University 08/12/2008
Posted by Vaughn in Art, Global, Mass Media.comments closed
LATELY THERE have been some references in my favored media, that hearkened back to my past life in Japan as a tween and teen: from PingMag’s recent trip to Tama Art University to Moncole’s “Fuji Kindergarten” in Tachikawa. Both Tokyo areas I am somewhat familiar with and the former I think I have passed by more than once. The Fuji Kindergarten being newer, I have not been given a chance to see the forward-looking design and unconventional thinking and curriculum the kindergarten is being lauded for.
I took a course at university on the politics and policy of Japan that attempted to look at the concrete and definable, measurable areas of Japanese living since its reconstruction post-WWII by American soldiers, from law to education and immigration. And one of the observations by the professor, a man who had spent quite a bit of time in the region and currently is listed as an expert with the Japan Policy Research Institute and is also a journalist, was that Japanese society (on the main) is extraordinarily good at the linear such as testing and academics, but where they fall short in regard to Americans is in the large level big ideas. They are great with the small and immediate, far more adept, in fact, but ground-shaking creativity is not their strong suit or calling card. Their calling card is innovation; perfecting the existing.
I argue that (innovation) says a lot about the creativity within the society or lack thereof. Now I know arguments can be put forth about anime and manga culture or the street fashion worn by kids of the various districts like Roppongi and Harajuku et. al., but I do not necessarily buy that as the kind of full-on measure of creativity. Those are just expressions of individualism that are generally derivative. Taken as a whole the fashion is an offshoot of anime or video games at times, but is usually never completely original.
And more importantly the kind of creativity we are speaking of that is large in scale like say: Google, the development of a product as revolutionary as the Iphone or something overlooked like Dean Kaman’s Segway, all originate in America. I understand that this boils the world down to competing entities and that what was just said about Japan can also be said about any of the industrialized world against the US, but the difference is that in Japan, where technology and excellence in performance is king, the home run idea still seems to slip pass their fingers for some reason.
Recently, Japanese design publication PingMag posed the question does Japanese society possibly lack imagination stating: “Have you ever had the feeling that in Japan, since things are so over excessively convenient, people tend to lack imagination…? This might be a bit of an overstatement, but it’s a serious topic that could determine the future of the Japanese creative industry!” And while the question is rhetorical, “imagination” just so happened to be the theme that the recent work produced by thirty-three, third-year, Tama Art University students in Tokyo centered on. The thirty three students were given thirteen different assignments based on the theme of “imagination” and were to choose any one of the ideas and create a piece in a span of six weeks.
PingMag was privy to the thirty-three artists work and takes a look at the class’s best offerings. My favorite piece of the lot reviewed does not answer PingMag’s “imagination” question, but it does make me want to believe that the imagination in the Japanese creative industry is not in danger and that is a start, as even Japan’s creative industry has seemed to take a backseat when compared to the rising Korean film scene or Bollywood or the streetwear scene in other nations.
The piece that affirms my faith is a fictional publication created by Shota Inui that imagines Brazil and a newspaper that is published from its slums that includes fictional news of gang wars, a front-page feature story on an old-man’s discovery of a table mountain, references and stories mentioning preparations for Carnival, and even T.V. and radio listings. To add to the authenticity of his imagined paper, Inui kept the theme of a low-budget publication in mind, that is produced in a Brazilian slum, by using low-quality paper stock, graded-down drawings and he even notch-cut the paper’s edges to give it the feel and look of an indie publication. Color me impressed, his attention to detail alone is an inspiration.
Check out Shota Inui’s Brazilian newspaper and the rest of Tama students’ designs at PingMag [Here]
