How?
How can a man in 2000 and whatever this is not have seen that thing that is The Wire, that thing that is not Generation Kill but that was created and written for the screen by the self-same shower of marvellous bastards? How?
How, but, boys?
The Second Bit About The Thing That It Is
Tippin’ tappin’ at the keys…
…Difficult to make friends with it may well be, but Generation Kill rewards our perseverance, for the things it says to us, when it finally gets around to saying anything we can begin to make any sense of, are things of the most compelling, thought-provoking class, the most compelling and thought-provoking of all being those things it has to say about Evan “Scribe” Wright, about War Correspondence, about contemporary media / military relations, about…
“Oh God save us all” says St. Talbot, “from arse-warts blatherin’ on about contemporary bastardin’ media / military relations. Holy Jesus Christ Almighty.”
… Specifically, it wants to ask just how sturdy that ol’ “/” right there might be, at all, post-Web 2.0, post-cameraphones and similar dirt-cheap, easy-carried video recording technologies, post-Youtube, post-24 Hour Rolling News on a thousand different stations…
(Scrawl in the notebook reads - Reporter / Soldier. Perpetually the one collapses into the other. Perpetually the face of the former bleeds from the pores of the latter, and vice versa. Parallels with the old undercover cop / criminal conundrum…)
… The reporter and the soldier have become nigh-on impossible to tell apart - perpetually the one collapses into the other. As a consequence, the War Zone takes on the contours of a television studio. So, as in Brain de Palma’s Redacted, as in Deborah Scranton’s troops-with-cameras documentary feature The War Tapes (as, indeed, in George A. Romero’s fucking hideous Iraq allegory Diary Of The Dead), the marines in Generation Kill resemble less the protagonists of, say, Band Of Brothers or Platoon, or even the more contemporary likes of David O. Russell’s Three Kings (although they do, to greater or lesser extent, share the alternating nihilism, cynicism, apathy and greed of that film’s central characters) or Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down, than they do the increasingly clued-in contestants on Big Brother.
They’re In On It. They know How The Game Works, they know what part they’re there to play, they know what rules they’re expected to follow and what ones they can choose, if they wish, to ignore. They’re going through the motions - nonchalant, flippant and callous, shaken only momentarily by intermittent, unexpected twists in the narrative: a sudden eruption of guilt, an “unscripted” confrontation with their own actions - until such times as they’ve fulfilled the contract and are free to return to that other reality, their stories collated and ready to sell to whoever will have them, stories told in the dithering, pixellated tongues of their handheld cameras…
![Generation Kill [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51qZO7-EfdL._SL120_.jpg)
Article comments
1 - El Bicho
ah, a duke by any other name...
what I found intriguing about the show is how during the fog of war everyone seems to being engaged in a war of their own. sure, there are frequent intersections, but never for too long. the actor who played Capt. America seemed to revel in his character's unadulterated jackassery.
now, go rent The Wire
2 - Aaron McMullan
Sir Bicho, i have promised to myself if no-one else that i will finally get to The Wire sometime in the next couple months. Also, I'm intrigued no end by - The Corner, is it called? The pre-Wire drug dealer number? But one thing at a time, and any Thing involving Steve Earle is always going to be the priority.
The private wars - yes, that struck me also, and what it arrived on the back of - the sense of each individual being absoloutely, totally removed from the ernormity of what they were doing - that was often fairly terrifying.
Few more chilling scenes have I spied in these past whiles, for example, than that in which the Whopper Jr. business was explained.
3 - El Bicho
The Corner is very good as well, and less of a time commitment. A year on the streets of Baltimore that will no doubt take the wind out of your sails from a devastating gob-smack as the last episode hits the final sequence before the credits.
re: the removed from the enormity bit. I think what that comes from is how can any training prepare them for what they find. They have to step back to protect themselves rather than risking becoming part of the chaos that surrounds them.
A scene that sticks with me is when they are in Baghdad and the solider tries to fire a warning shot at the oncoming car. brutal.
4 - Mary K. Williams
Well Duke - your Priest would be all over my --- if he knew that I too, have never seen The Wire. Nor Generation Kill for that matter.
Although your views on the latter are as entertaining as always - hilarious even - I have no inclination to see either project.
Now, El B - don't yell at me! : )
5 - Aaron McMullan
Sir Bicho - that sequence stuck with me also, although the one that has blazed the fiercest is the encounter with that shell-shocked soldier wandering half-mad about the roadside. An instance of What The Hell Are We Doing puncturing the fugg amidst the fog, to fairly devestatin effect.
Sir Mary - maybe we could set up a support group of some kind for such lamentable cases as we. On the Facebook - Dammit I Have Never Seen The Wire Just Yet! Who would be brave enough to join us? A rare one indeed.
6 - Aaron Fleming
Excellent, and welcome Aaron McMullan to the world of blogcritics. A young chap such as yourself, with energy such as your own, and a pen razor-sharp and inked with mighty imaginative insight, will fit in quickly and without obstacles to the ways of BC. Always good to discover fellow northern irish writerly folks, especially ones living out their lives in London, contributing to this dear site. We must get together some time to discuss our common neglect of the Wire. Are you familiar with the Salisbury on Green Lanes, perchance?
7 - Aaron McMullan
Heh, well thank you Sir Fleming, and do you know this, i HAVE encountered that tavern - many's the squad o' holligans - googleigans - i have encountered therein. i dare say we could show them a thing or two about what Sister Act was called in Mexico, them crowd.