When Boys Will be Jarheads

By Lakshmi Chaudhry, In These Times. Posted November 18, 2005.

There are two great Hollywood narratives about war. The "good" war version -- think World War II epics -- goes something like this: Boy meets war, discovers courage under fire; boy wins war and comes home/dies a hero. Vietnam and its attendant sorrows brought us a variation on the theme: Boy meets "bad" war, discovers the dark side; boy loses war and comes home a disillusioned but wiser man. Antiwar flicks like Platoon and Apocalypse Now hewed close to the traditional plotline but inverted its value system, redefining true masculinity as an enlightened opposition to the horrors of war.

But all Hollywood movies construct war as a rite of masculinity, a crucible of violence from which the soldier emerges either a stronger, better man or forever destroyed. So, director Sam Mendes was already in trouble the moment he decided to make a movie based on Anthony Swofford's memoir Jarhead. Here's how this true-life tale of a Gulf War Marine grunt (Jarhead) unfolds: Jarhead meets pointless war, wallows in fear, confusion, and ennui; Jarhead watches the Air Force win the war and comes home, well, a Jarhead.

The young men in Swofford's book are not innocent boys hardened by war into fighting men, but unhappy, insecure kids who desperately seek and fail to find answers to their masculine angst in battle. Or to be more accurate, in the absence of battle that characterizes our age of pyrotechnic warfare, conducted at great distances behind the battle lines and above the ground. The book violates the Hollywood mythology of the warrior in its unflinching portrayal of the bloodlust of twenty-year olds. Where grim-faced men on the big screen kill the enemy out of duty on the sands of Iwo Jima, or in desperation and madness in the jungles of Vietnam, the lads of the Surveillance and Target Acquisition/Scout-Sniper platoon are dreaming of "getting some" long before they get called up for duty on the frontline:

I've spent many hours of my life imagining what my bullets will do to the enemy. The medulla oblongata is the most coveted shot. Entry through the mouth or the eyeball is also acceptable. The Marine does not shoot to injure but only to kill. Sometimes my imagined enemy has been a Russian, sometimes a Chinese, sometimes an Arab, depending on world events and what version of those events I'm receiving or currently involved in.

The book exposes the single greatest lie about war: Heroism among soldiers lies not in facing death but inflicting it upon the enemy. As Swofford puts it, "To be a true marine, you must kill." We don't want to think of our sweet-faced hometown boys as bloodthirsty killers, which is why Hollywood would rather serve us up heroes like a kind and gentle Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan who refuses to kill a German POW with the words: "Every man I kill the farther away from home I feel." We want to believe that even the act of taking life is a personal sacrifice that "our boys" make on our behalf. They kill -- with regret and at great cost to their soul -- so that we don't have to.

To his credit, Sam Mendes does not shrink from showing the soldiers' unseemly enthusiasm for blood. As the Marine squad pumps itself for battle by screening Apocalypse Now, Mendes pans across the faces of the soldiers as they watch helicopters lay waste to an entire village -- including children -- in the "Ride of the Valkyries" attack sequence. There is no mistaking the near-orgasmic expressions of joy on their faces. Then there is the moment when Swofford's friend Troy suffers an emotional meltdown because he is denied the opportunity to take out an Iraqi officer.

Yet the jarheads in his movie remain carefully confined by Hollywood norms. As A. O. Scott observed in the New York Times:

Swoff's comrades are basically stock platoon-movie figures retrofitted for postmodern warfare. There is an irresponsible prankster (Evan Jones), a trash-talking Texan (Lucas Black), a shy, nerdy guy (Brian Geraghty) and a Latino family man (Jacob Vargas) who shows off pictures of his pregnant wife. Sergeant Sykes is the in-your-face, tough-talking leader who shows his tenderness and wisdom at just the right moment as the flames of burning oil wells illuminate his features.

Even Jake Gyllenhaal's Swoff is just one among a long line of brooding, sensitive anti-war heroes -- except with a propensity for luridly sexual language.

More unforgivably, Mendes succumbs to Hollywood's need to airbrush reality. The more unpleasant aspects of jarhead behavior -- in keeping with war movie tradition -- become the preserve of one "bad apple," who is entrusted with the job of offending Arab women, shooting camels and desecrating dead bodies -- over the loud protests of his platoon mates.

Swofford's memory is less kind. Here's how First Sergeant Martinez responds to his men's propensity to vent their frustrated need to kill on dead men in the book:

Because we are U.S. Marines, and honorable, we do not shoot dead men, we do not carve their skulls open with our E-tools, we do not throw grenades into a pit of corpses, and after we don't do these things, we don't take pictures of the resultant damage. If we do take pictures, and the pictures are discovered, we will be punished under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. And if we steal weapons or articles of identification or other battlefield trophies from the corpses, we will also be punished under the UCMJ. Carry on.

Lakshmi Chaudhry is a senior editor at In These Times and writes the L-Files for AlterNet.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »