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July 14, 2008
Generation Kill
Last night I sat down to the first installment of HBO's new mini-series Generation Kill. I enjoyed it, despite the fact that I have never really bought into what would seem to be the opening thesis of the book of the same name on which it is based (and, to an extent, of the series itself): that the soldiers who went into the Iraq War were, by dint of thorough immersion in the shallow, de-sensitizing and predatory youth sub-culture of the late-20th and early-21st century, somehow qualitatively distinct from earlier generations of American fighting men. But this sort of cultural conceit is a common pitfall of exercises like this. For instance,Band of Brothers (another HBO exercise in heavily-armed nostalgia) power-washed away the sanitized version of WWII cultivated by official propaganda, but not our own idealized, essentially wholesome vision of the men who fought it, which emerges from within us, a propaganda machine far harder to confront.
Generation Kill is essentially a bare-bones effort from a structural standpoint (for instance, it has no soundtrack and instead relies on scratchy radio traffic to set the mood) and can be a bit of a confusing experience: there are so many Marines to track and, frankly, they all look alike (you need to maintain "grooming standards" after all, as their commander, the Godfather, might say). And some of the Marines do not appear to be worth tracking. Nonetheless, even from the first episode a few (eg the long, lean and laconic Sgt. Colbert, played by Stellan Skarsgard's son Alexander) are already possibly emerging as compelling characters. I can't say much about the depictions of war, since little in the way of involved fighting has occurred as of the end of episode 1.
One rather curious feature of the series website is the "Gear Up" section, which details the equipment the Marines carried. For all of the undertone of cynicism of the "Full Metal Jacket"-variety already evident in the first episode, the descriptions of the equipment read like advertisements from their manufacturers. The confidence-inspiring technical description of the M9 Beretta, for instance, misses the key point: they are wildly unpopular in the armed services, for a variety of reason that have been beaten to death on various online forums on the relative merits of 1911s, M9s, H&K USPs, etc. This is particularly curious since the series itself has not shied from mention of the deficiencies of the gear these guys carried.
We'll see how Generation Kill evolves, but, on balance, this is a good start.
Posted by dag at July 14, 2008 7:42 PM