I have to confess: I was suckered by the trailer for American Sniper .
It’s a masterpiece of short-form tension – a confluence of sound and
image so viscerally evocative it feels almost domineering. You cannot
resist. You will be stressed out. You will feel. Or, as I believe I put
it in a blog about the trailer , “Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper trailer will ruin your pants.”
But however effective it is as a piece of cinema, even a cursory look
into the film’s backstory – and particularly the public reaction to its
release – raises disturbing questions about which stories we choose to
codify into truth, and whose, and why, and the messy social costs of
transmogrifying real life into entertainment.
Chris Kyle, a US navy Seal from Texas, was deployed to Iraq in 2003
and claimed to have killed more than 255 people during his six-year
military career. In his memoir ,
Kyle reportedly described killing as “fun”, something he “loved”; he
was unwavering in his belief that everyone he shot was a “bad guy”. “I
hate the damn savages,” he wrote. “I couldn’t give a flying fuck about
the Iraqis.” He bragged about murdering looters during Hurricane
Katrina, though that was never substantiated.
He was murdered in 2013 at a Texas gun range by a 25-year-old veteran reportedly suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
READ MORE: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/01/chris-kyle-american-sniper-was-a-hate-filled-killer-why-are-simplistic-patriots-treating-him-as-a-hero/
chris kyle was not a hero- a hero is not someone who invades another country illegally and murders their civilians. chris kyle was a war criminal. he shot unarmed women and children from a distance, likely in the back. a real hero sniper, simo hayha, shot 505 russians attempting to invade HIS country in one winter- that's right, he shot real invaders and killed twice as many as chris kyle CLAIMS he did in 10 years. as to the veracity of chris kyle's claims, i note that he was proven in court to have lied his ass off about fighting jesse ventura- it never happened. and from that we can determine that much of what chris kyle claimed also likely never happened.
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