“What is Life?” During the War on Terror

American disenchantment with the government after the end of the Vietnam War in the late 1960s through 1970s has since grown to be also disenchanted with the American dream. The September 11th terrorist attacks in 2001 is the primary marker for the radical change in American sentiment and the defining moment of the so-called “millennial generation,” the generation of people who were in primary school through college during the attacks. As Americans struggle to make sense of the War on Terror, their sentiment toward the government was often conflicted, confused, and frequently changed. Though the war began with a patriotic fervor inspired by the Bush administration, a sentiment of indifference emerged a few years into the war with the exception of a few major bloody events. Dissention characterized the later years until President Obama declared in 2013 that the United States to no longer be pursuing the War on Terror. Between the indifference and dissention stages, the American dream changed and even became irrelevant.

In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, more superhero films were being produced than in any other period in American history. Historians can use the numerous superhero films just as Americans used them when they were release since these films provide explanations of the War on Terror for Americans to make sense of it and reflect how Americans perceived the war at the time.[1] The “good guys” in popular culture realms tended to be either superheroes acting outside of the federal government, as is the case in the numerous Marvel films produced since 2001, or common Americans who sometimes take extralegal actions, disregarding the government though they work for it. In the latter case, examples from Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker (2008) and the current television show Homeland depict American soldiers and intelligence agents disregarding official orders to stop pursuing a case so they can essentially be the heroes and save the world without government help. In Homeland’s first season, CIA agent Carrie Mathison carries out an investigation against executive orders, which ultimately turned out to be the right thing for her to do to protect important government officials.

In Homeland season 1, Carrie has a wall of classified documents (stolen from Langley) in her house for her unsanctioned investigation

Similarly in The Hurt Locker, Sergeant James refuses to follow orders, but his disobedience ultimately saves the lives of hundreds of people. In these films, the federal government is often portrayed as a hindrance, something likely to cause more harm than good, particularly in Homeland. Eventually, vigilante soldiers and superheroes became the ideal American hero for much of American society during the War on Terror.

While Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker provides intense scenes of battle and the everyday lives of soldiers in Iraq during the War on Terror to actively show the affects of war on soldiers, no war or intense action is seen in Ben Fountain’s novel Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. Instead of filling the novel with the heroic actions of the story’s soldier hero, Fountain focuses on how Billy interprets his life and American life through a stream of consciousness narrative. Billy’s thoughts throughout the book, like The Hurt Locker, show how being on the battlefield affects young people, but his interactions with non-military characters in the book show how the War on Terror has affected Americans at home. The War on Terror simultaneously made sense and made no sense at all for many Americans in the early twenty-first century. The fact that films attacking the idea of the War on Terror were hardly successful early in the war suggests that Americans initially wanted to support the war effort. It seems that nearly every American knew someone, friend or family, who served in the war and believed he or she had to support the war effort to support their friend or family member, regardless of their moral leaning toward the war. Being conflicted over supporting the troops or opposing a war they most often did not understand created indifference and dispiritedness among Americans.

The fact that the Fountain’s story does not have an end goal to lead up to really pushes the point of the novel through Billy’s eyes, that there is no clear purpose to life. The morality of the war is not in question in Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk or in The Hurt Locker, but rather their individual purpose in life and the purpose of the United States. Billy points out the United States’ complicity in the war and that Americans are instead “stuck on teenage drama, on extravagant theatrics of ravaged innocence and soothing mud wallows of self-justifying pity.” His experience during his two week “victory tour” in the United States shows him the American life for which he is fighting. Billy is not impressed by the “draft-dodging, platitude-mouthing millionaires and their trophy wives…[or] a scantily clad Beyoncé entertaining football fans with a ridiculous military-themed halftime show.” For Billy Lynn in Fountain’s novel and Sergeant James in Bigelow’s film, being separated from the trivial aspects of American life, they realize that the war has made them foreigners in their home country and decide their life’s purpose is war. War had become a way of life in the early twenty-first century.

War being a way of life is not the point of the novel or the film. Both use the “war as a way of life” mentality to capitalize on the excessiveness of American culture. When James has returned to the States from Iraq at the end of the film, he is very clearly overwhelmed by the excessive number of food choices when his wife asks him to buy cereal. Similarly, Lynn finds the expensive leather and crystal Cowboys’ merchandise at the Texas Stadium absurd and jokes with Mango about it.[2] The American dream of being economically comfortable, married to a beautiful woman, and having a house filled with happy children is lost on both these soldiers and American society in general. Billy sees distorted images of the old American dream among the wealthiest crowd at the Cowboys’ game. James actually has achieved the old American dream, but returning to it from war makes his life seem empty and purposeless.

Billy’s interpretation of civilian life during the War on Terror thoroughly describes Americans conflicted emotions toward the war. His encounters show people who seem to have forgotten or simply do not care enough about the war until in the soldiers’ presence as well as people openly opposed to the solders’ line of duty.[3] Sergeant James’ story embodies the heroic vigilante soldier Americans favored at the time, a reflection of American sentiment toward their government. Both Billy and James reflect indifference to the traditional American dream and the adoption of a war way of life without regard to their moral judgment concerning the war.

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[1] Drew McKevitt, “Watching War Made Us Immune: The Popular Culture of the Wars,” in Understand the U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, eds. Beth Bailey and Richard H. Immerman (New York: NYU Press, 2015), 4.

[2] Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2012), 29.

[3] Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, 301-307.

Informing the Right-Wing’s Public Opinion of FDR

The Great Depression as told by Internet memes –

Public opinion of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the twenty-first century is extremely varied and often uninformed. Right-wing republicans and conservatives have accused FDR as a socialist, communist, and fascist. Famous right-wingers, such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and their followers have also consistently blamed the former president for unnecessarily expanding the federal government and installing social programs they believe cause modern economic problems in the United States. In his book A Concise History of the New Deal, Jason Scott Smith addresses and corrects common right-wing criticism of FDR by providing a detailed historical account of the events that cause most controversy and sufficient information that explain why “voices of opposition are discredited.”

Smith adds to the common belief that the 1929 stock market collapse began the Great Depression by faulting excessive capitalism for the collapse. By explaining the economic crash as the collapse of capitalism, he solidifies the idea that the New Deal was FDR’s solution to fix capitalism while simultaneously discrediting modern right-wing belief that FDR’s New Deal diminished capitalism (Smith 2)

Right-wing critics of FDR have forgotten the ineptitude of Republican President Hoover, who only worsened the economic crisis

Right-wing critics of FDR have clearly forgotten the ineptitude of Republican President Hoover, whose lack of action to avoid expanding the federal government only worsened the economic crisis at the beginning of the Depression. Through the use of FDR’s public speeches and Eleanor Roosevelt’s private comments, Smith essentially claims government expansion was necessary for a democratic, capitalist United States to survive. He explains that FDR equated the economic crisis to a wartime crisis, during which times it was necessary to expand the reach and power of the federal government (Smith 32). By viewing uncontrolled capitalism as the enemy in the economic battle that was the Great Depression, Smith simultaneously makes FDR’s logical reasoning for expanding the government easy to understand and shows why Hoover’s ideas to combat the Depression failed. Making these assertions is needed to convince small-government favoring right-wingers that government expansion produced by the New Deal was necessary and helpful. The assertions that expanding the government was necessary and effectual also are needed for Smith to tackle accusations of FDR being communist and fascist.

Accusations of FDR being both fascist and communist simultaneously are enough evidence to prove right-wingers are either misinformed or uniformed. Communism and fascism have some similarities, but, depending on the type of political spectrum used, the two ideologies are opposite. This “Political Spectra” chart provides two spectrums displaying how communism and fascism are similar and opposite. This chart, when analyzed with Smith’s account of FDR, should inform right-wingers that FDR was not communist or fascist. According to Smith, FDR’s reforms are both radical, according to his opposition at the time, and reactionary as his reforms were in direct response to the Great Depression. On the radical-reactionary scale, Smith places FDR in the middle as liberal. On the authoritarian-libertarian scale, Smith still places the former president as liberal by examining FDR’s belief that “necessitous men are not free men” and the government should ensure and protect the things that provide the needs of individuals as found in the Second Bill of Rights.

FDR’s script on his Second Bill of Rights

Rush Limbaugh, a favorite television/radio host among right-wingers, believes FDR’s proposed Second Bill of Rights is socialist legislature. As a favorite show host, Limbaugh is a type of spokesperson for the right-wing making his opinion and judgment of FDR’s Second Bill of Rights representative of the general right-wing public opinion. Limbaugh believes that only the economic market can determine peoples’ rights to earn sufficient wages enough to provide adequate food, clothing, and recreation, meaning “what [people] earn is nothing more than our value.” With this translation, Limbaugh is himself determining who in society is important based on worth and devalues those who currently lack the ability to earn sufficient wages. According to such a translation, Limbaugh’s approach to politics and economics is, ironically, more fascist than FDR’s ideology. Smith’s arguments clearly pose FDR’s New Deal as an equalizer for the American people ensuring value of every person by protecting individual human rights (Smith 172).

Rush Limbaugh’s approach to politics and economics is more fascist than FDR’s ideology

Another television and radio host right-wing representative, Glenn Beck, blames FDR for taking away Japanese-American’s rights by putting them in internment “prison” camps during World War II. To counter this, Smith explains that FDR’s advisors spearheaded many of the now most controversial programs and encouraged the president to agree to things whether or not he was decidedly comfortable with a particular program (Smith 50). Smith also explains that leaders of the public works organizations built the internment camps thinking they were helping in the war effort. While FDR ultimately signed off on the construction of internment camps and the relocation of Japanese-Americans, Smith argues FDR was not the mastermind behind the internment camps and the project was approved only because of the changes made to New Deal policy to prepare for war.

Right-wing criticism of FDR has become a popular topic of debate particularly for comparing President Obama to FDR. Smith’s pro-New Deal stance throughout his book makes FDR’s approach to the 1930s depression eerily reminiscent of President Obama’s approach to the 2008 economic recession. Being informed by Smith’s account of FDR and New Deal history would encourage twenty-first century right-wing Americans to embrace Obama’s social reforms.

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For further reading:

“Republican’s Latest Talking Point: The New Deal Failed” – New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/opinion/12mon4.html?_r=0

“FDR’s Failed Moral Leadership” – American Conservative    http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/fdrs-failed-moral-leadership/

“A New FDR Emerges: Historians, Teachers, Authors Take a Fresh, Sometimes Critical, Look at Roosevelt” – Prologue Magazine at the National Archives   http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2006/winter/fdr-emerges.html

(This one has numerous charts and versions of the political spectrum showing the relationships between communism and fascism among other things)                    “Redefining the Political Spectrum: The Rational Spectrum” http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/redefining_the_political_spectru.htm

Postmodern Eighties: Blurred Lines of Good and Evil

Crime is the common denominator between the 1987 film Wall Street and the 1986 comic book The Dark Knight Returns, both of which could be considered postmodern morality plays. Traditional and modern morality plays, such a Shakespeare’s Macbeth and C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia respectively, are very simplistic in portraying the battle between good and evil. The postmodern morality play is clouded by the “dissolution of distinctions” that characterizes postmodernism. Postmodernism begins flourishing in the 1980s leading to distinctions between good and evil, right and wrong being blurred during the decade. Questions of right and wrong or, more simply, morality led to an increase in crime and debates on ways to handle these changes in society. To combat the blurring lines between good and evil that challenged morality, a new type of common-man hero emerged also suffering from the hazy distinctions between good and evil. Superhero comics were also remade in the 1980s to address the good and evil blurred lines with the hero often modeled after President Reagan, whose conservative approach to these social issues often made him appear to be a sort of renegade or vigilante.

a new type of common-man hero emerged also suffering from the hazy distinctions between good and evil

Wall Street director Oliver Stone’s directly stated his belief that the “the lines between right and wrong [are] indistinct and tenuous,” which was becoming a common realization among media writers and producers in the 1980s.[1] The blurred lines between right and wrong, good and evil are clearly seen in Bud Fox’s character development as well as in the nature of the many other Wall Street men. In the original script, Stone had Hal Holbrook, a supposed good guy character, “trading on an inside tip he received from Bud” to depict the haziness of morality in the 1980s.[2] Even though Bud is the film’s protagonist, his choices to follow in Gekko’s financial deviance exemplify the blurred line between good and bad. Bud does not initially see Gekko’s illegal financial practices as evil in part due to Gekko’s defense of his practices. Bud is blinded by Gekko’s logic from seeing the fine line between good and evil making him unaware of his morals decaying as he becomes successful in the stock market. Bud becomes aware of his moral degradation when his job and Gekko threaten to destroy his father’s company. Bud becomes a type of hero only when he is made aware that he has become more evil than good. His choice to abandon his successful life to save his father is a choice to become a vigilante of sorts fighting the immoral financial practices of Gordon Gekko.

In Wall Street, Gekko does not initially appear to be villainous, primarily because we experience the film through Bud, who idolizes of the Wall Street tycoon. Stone suggests powerful and manipulative people like Gekko have an ability to redefine the lines between right and wrong into extinction.[3] Gekko’s famous “greed is good” speech truly depicts just how easily blurred the lines between good and evil were in the 1980s. Gekko even says, “Greed is right” and persuades his audience that this is true by claiming, “Greed works… Greed for life, money, love, knowledge…will save the USA.” Yet this distorted view of greed and greed itself are the very things that ultimately destroy Gekko with much thanks to Bud’s heroic sacrifice of his career and love for his family. 

While confused morality and the resulting crime is a main feature in these 1980s texts, fear is a major characteristic of the overall societal spirit in the 1980s. The threats of nuclear war and devastation due to the Cold War and the threats of rising crime rates and muddled morality corrupting the American dream resurrected superheroes and the comic industry. The comic book industry, dwindling due to an aging customer base, decided to use these new realities of the 1980s as the new backdrop for their existing superheroes to make comics more appealing to an adult audience. By “adding more nihilism, violence, and moral ambiguity to their house styles,” the aging customer base of comics were able to remain “attach[ed] to children’s fiction characters from the ’60s” with its new relevance to life in the 1980s. For example, modern and reinvented superheroes were born in response to the Cold War as a way to address and combat the fears of nuclear war and catastrophe characterizing the 1980s. Fear of a nuclear attack is seen clearly in The Dark Knight Returns before and after the nuclear event the sends Gotham into mayhem. Batman’s success in quelling the crime and chaos demonstrates the ability of a non-police vigilante to fix and take care of his city or country, a nod toward the major political figure of the 1980s being Ronald Reagan.

Comic writer and artist Frank Miller reinvented the Batman in the mid-late 1980s to be loosely modeled after then-president Ronald Reagan, making Reaganism into vigilantism. President Reagan was perceived by liberals and conservatives alike to be a type of renegade or vigilante against fear and crime. While most liberals would have defined Reagan as an “uncivilized vigilante,” conservatives, like Miller, viewed Reagan as the hero America needed. Miller and other pop culture producers essentially revealed “how Reaganism emphasized a system of law and order based on politics as opposed to a system of justice based on morality” by employing these methods in their writing.[4] Throughout The Dark Knight Returns the media, government, and society fight to determine whether Batman’s vigilante acts are criminal, because his actions are technically criminal despite his targets also being criminals, or just, because he is basically a rogue police officer getting rid of Gotham’s criminals.

Reaganism and the conservatism of the 1980s are just as inescapable in Stone’s Wall Street as they are in Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. The conservative approach to the crime and moral ambiguity of the 1980s also has an emphasis on family values. The emphasis on family values is seen in Wall Street when Bud realizes that a family “represented by a strong father figure [is] the rock that one can always rely on” in the morally blurred postmodern society.[5]

Being mislead by Gekko’s own sense of morality, or lack thereof, Bud Fox’s character is the perfect propaganda for conservatives who wish to spread the belief that ambiguous morality leads to criminal activity. Bud becomes the common-man hero who commits a simple act of vigilantism to save his father’s job and, in turn, his own morality. Everyday vigilantism rescuing the morals of a single man as in Bud’s case and police vigilantism rescuing a city from rampant crime caused by lacking distinction between right and wrong as in Batman’s case, vigilantism and morality are important factors in understanding the relationship between heroism and postmodernism in the 1980s. Batman, like Reagan being a sort of moral police, was the hero America needed to manage postmodernist growth more than the hero Gotham deserved.

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[1] John Stone, “Evil in the Early Cinema of Oliver Stone: Platoon and Wall Street as Modern Morality Plays,” Journal of Popular Film & Television 28 no. 2 (2000): 83.

[2] Ibid., 82

[3] Ibid., 84.

[4] Mike Dubose, “Holding Out for a Hero: Reaganism, Comic Book Vigilantes, and Captain America,” Journal of Popular Culture 40 no. 6 (2007), 918.

[5] Elena Oliete, “Images of Love and Money in Hollywood Cinema: Changing Patterns in the Last Decade,” International Journal of the Image 2 no. 2 (2012), 114.

On Rape, Consent, and Women’s Sexual Liberation

Last week I attended a panel on sexual assault sponsored by Louisiana Tech’s chapter of AAUW. In light of recent discussions on feminism and women’s liberation in my History 467 class, I found myself wondering what rape statistics might look like before and after the sexual revolution or each wave of feminism.

I expected to find an increase in sexual assault during/after women’s liberation and the sexual revolution. I am struggling to find these statistics. I should have expected this. So few rapes are reported now we can only get a vague idea of estimates. I found no records from the early 20th century. The charts and statistics I found only dated as far back as the mid-1960s, which was not very helpful since I needed information before and after the 60s in particular. (If you happen to find any such information, please let me know!)

So I considered another problem. Consent was an issue discussed. The people speaking on the panel were imperative about being extremely clear in agreeing or refusing to have sex with someone.  “Yes means yes” should not be an unfamiliar phrase on college campuses. The “Yes Means Yes” campaign has been promoting awareness of sexual assault and consent issues and advocating for legislature to be written to define sexual consent. The campaign has been growing and last year California was the first state to enact a “yes means yes” law.

But what are we really being taught about consent? Media of all types seem to be counteracting the message of “Yes Means Yes.” The one most obvious cases to me is in the first trailer to the film Pitch Perfect 2. In this trailer our favorite comic character, Fat Amy, verbally refuses to have sex with Bumper but winks at him after saying “no.” Her wink confuses Bumper and he is not sure if she really means no since her wink would seem to imply “yes.” This scene is at the 2:10 mark.