Collateral Murder

[poliphilo]

They're saying the footage that's up at Wikileaks under the title Collateral Murder comes across like a bunch of guys playing a video game, but that's not the only cultural resonance. As we watch the dying journalist try to crawl away from the killing zone we hear one of the soldiers in the circling gunship urge him to, "reach for a weapon." Sound familiar? Yes, of course; it's an echo of Dirty Harry's, "Go on, punk, make my day". So I guess art does have a corrupting influence after all.

Comments

[chiller.livejournal.com]

I can't bear to watch it. How awful.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I sympathise. I don't suppose I'm going to be able to wipe my brain of those images any time soon.

[mud-faerie.livejournal.com]

Utterly sickening. I accidentally caught the first part & immediately wanted to cry. Somehow though, I don't find it at all surprising. Shocking, but not surprising. I jut thought "of course".
Awful.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

No, not surprising at all. I'm sure many similar incidents have gone unreported.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

I feel slightly ill and I'm not even going to go anywhere near that link right now because I know I'm not in an emotional state to be able to handle it (which begs the question of whether any of us are ever in an emotional state to handle it). I can't imagine how you must feel, having watched it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I only watched the first half. I'll take part II on trust.
They're not images I'm going to forget.

[jenny_evergreen]

I suspect people were saying that sort of thing long before Dirty Harry. Dehumanizing is all part of how we can do these things. Which, of course, ought to be a clue that these things are NOT GOOD, but I'm in the minority there. :\

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

What makes Dirty Harry (which is a brilliant movie) so questionable is the way it endorses brutality. It seems to be saying that you can behave like brute without becoming a brute- and this, I think, is a lie.

[algabal.livejournal.com]

You'll hear barely a peep from mainstream "liberals." They don't want to talk about it. They want to talk about how the Tea Parties are racist. Or how gay marriage is good.

Obviously, state-worship and personal insecurity (the two qualities they possess in spades) endear a great love of mass murder and the military.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yesterday, on the green space outside the Houses of Parliament, politicians were being interviewed about taxes and the economy and all that. In the background someone was holding a blue placard giving the number of Iraqis who have been killed, wounded or rendered homeless by the war. This person was resourceful and managed to manouevre themselves into every shot. It made the stuff the politicians were arguing about seem trivial.