The Hurt Locker

Having grown up in the cultural context in which I did, I have an instinctive jingoistic tendency which I try to resist as much as possible. I seem to have been born under a nationalistic moon. My default response is to blindly trust and support our armed forces, and I still get a little jazzed up whenever I hear the national anthem.

Still, I aspire to be a person who reacts to the world rationally. I have an intellectual suspicion of purely emotional responses. So when I read left-leaning articles about the American military, I try to keep an open mind to the core of the argument, no matter how distasteful I might find the rhetoric.

Every now and then, though, I read an article which I cannot stomach. The following is one such article.

alternet.org/module/feed/mobile/?storyID=145984&type=story

This article offended me on two levels. The first was the derision of and outright scorn for the troops who fought in Iraq. The second was the lack of understanding of narrative storytelling. He believes that the film is somehow racist because it depicts American soldiers in detail but doesn't deeply explore the Iraqi characters. In making this accusation, he is criticizing the genre of the film rather than its content. The film is a "character piece", so by definition is has a very narrow focus and concentrates on the personal experiences of a small group of central characters. The artist has no obligation whatsoever to introduce a sympathetic Iraqi character. That is completely outside the scope of the piece. She might choose to do so if she feels it would somehow further the plot or deepen the exploration of her central characters, but to insist that she do so in the name of political correctness is to infringe upon her artistic prerogatives in a blind and unintelligent way.
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