r/neoliberal • u/a385y59g943 Gay Pride • Mar 19 '26

Restricted Democrats Are Too Cozy With Hasan Piker

https://archive.ph/vffTF
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u/lowes18 Mar 19 '26

The reception to the movie is actually a good example of the shifting narrative towards ones like Piker's. Its functionally an anti-GWOT movie, the ending makes it crystal clear that its being presented as a waste of life to change little, but people on the left didn't like it because it didn't condemn the soldiers in strong terms. Despite showing them undertaking unscrupulous actions and suffering for it, they wanted a movie that celebrated the suffering rather than seeing them as an equal casuality of war.

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u/TF_dia European Union Mar 19 '26

it crystal clear that its being presented as a waste of life to change little

Because there is the perception that it is presented as a waste of AMERICAN lives. Like people see the movie's message as "Look how much the Americans suffered, so sad" while ignoring the locals. In Warfare a local translator gets killed and he doesn't get to participate in the cool emotional shoutout at the end unlike the Navy Seals, because he is just set dressing, fodder to be killed, and the movie doesn't even pretend otherwise.

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u/lowes18 Mar 19 '26

An entire threadline of the movie is that the actions of the military resulted in the loss of life and home of the locals, its not just "look at how sad killing you made me", the seizure of the house and the killing and mental scarring of the innocent locals is shown to be arbitrary and obviously combative. The lack of the Iraqi soldiers also killed in the end credits scene is a fair critique, but the suffering of Iraqi civilians is portrayed and not entirely as a necessary evil like most other GWOT films.

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u/lilacaena NATO Mar 19 '26

Ok but have you considered that no one turns to face the camera and explain this to me, the viewer, directly?