So yeah, homes, we pimpin'.
So, recently, mcg50908 has been on a pimping spree, re: me. First, after many months of reminders about how much I needed to check out her "TV boyfriend" Alexander Skarsgard, I finally rented the first season True Blood. Then proceeded to watch the entire thing and all of season 2 in rapid succession. Then I read all of the Sookie Stackhouse novels at her suggestion. Although, really, by that point, I think a breeze could have blown in the direction of the bookstore and I'd have followed it. Then after very little additional prompting, I rented the first disc of Generation Kill from Netflix. After which I promptly went out and bought the BlueRay to watch the entire thing.
So if I've friended you in the past few days or so, it's probably because you've written a lot about one of those two shows (more than likely GK). Hello!
I'm not generally a fan of movies or shows that center around war or the military, particularly contemporary settings of a relatively realistic nature. Partly because I am so personally opposed to how much power the military-industrial complex has in our society. Also because these types of shows seem to fall into discernable tropes of either glorifying war in a proto-patriotic sense or are overly brutal and graphic representations supposed to represent the 'reality' of violence without looking at the larger context. Yet Generation Kill does neither of these things. If you haven't seen it, the mini-series is based off a Rolling Stone article turned book, written by an embedded reporter who traveled with a group of Recon Marines at the head of the invasion of the second Iraq War. I've seen a few reviews that claim the original articles, the book and the mini-series don't really take a political stance on the second Iraq War. To some extent I think this is true, but the series doesn't ignore the larger political context either. It's brutually honest about the complete lack of planing and coherent strategy the military had when they invaded Iraq. What really grabbed me about the series is that it takes this context and looks at how this larger clusterfuck of problems affected a small group of elite Marines who were supposed to be the front point of the invasion. It looks at the human cost that failure of planning had. In a direct sense by looking at the emotional toll it took on American military personel as they struggle to make sense of their place within a constantly changing set of orders, partially incompent officers, questionable rules of engagement and obvious lack of vision and strategy from their largely absent leadership. And in a more subtle way, their frustration as they see the human carnage increase around them in pointless civilian casualties, fuck-ups and an inability to help refugees.
At the same time, the show is hilarious. The Marines, as the saying goes, make do. They deal with their frustration and anger through offensive humor and abundant abuse of profanity. And through all of it, what comes across is that these men have built such a tight knit, inbred, fucked up family and it is sometimes the only thing that helps them get through it.
My step-father served in the Army during the Vietnam War and it fucked him up in ways I will never fully understand. He never really talks about the combat he saw, partly because he did some serious black-ops shit in the DMZ in Korea, but also because I think those are the things he never wants to remember. They only diagnosed his PTSD about 5 years ago, but it was just finally putting a name to something our family had known for a long time. I've never really understood why, but he has a great affinity for watching nostalgic war movies and shit like the Military channel's latest show on bomber planes or some new aircraft carrier. Graphic violence aside, I always had a gage of how realistic a war movie was based on how long he was able to watch it. If it was super moto and idealized, like a John Wayne WW2 movie, he'd sit through it and talk afterwards about stories of his dad's service in WW2 on an aircraft carrier. Richard made it through about 1 1/2 episodes of Generation Kill before he stopped watching. Which spoke to me more than any of the reviews could about the level of authenticity of the interactions of the Marines. All the scenes dealing with the divides between NCOs and COs, between enlisted men and officers, the absurdity of things like not having enough batteries for their NVGs. So much of it reminded me of stories my step-father used to tell me about his time in the Army.
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Ok, I need to get this out of the way. I LOVE RAY PERSON, SO FUCKING MUCH. *points at icon* Him. You do not even know. SO MUCH. He is, far and way, my favorite ....person....character... in Generation Kill. Yeah, I don't really know what noun to use there. Let's go with character, since I have kind of thrown myself tangentially into the fandom, I have been trying to draw some clear mental boundaries between the real people this is based on and the characters in the miniseries. but we'll get to that later. The first time I watched the series through I didn't really have a sense of each indidivdual character beyond Colbert and the Reporter, but from some of the interviews I've read that was done rather deliberately. Despite this, most of the scenes I found consistently hilarious (and realized when I rewatched it) involved Ray. The way he constantly runs his mouth, his wild hypotheses on bullshit topics and tendency to start singing ridiculous songs. The scene when he tells Rolling Stone that he was the President of his High School Debate Team was like an "ah ha!" moment for me. Of course, Ray was a debater and no wonder I liked him so much. He acts like so many debate nerds I know.
And shit, do I want to write a story about Ray's transition into the Marines and its similarity to debate culture. While the analogy isn't perfect, the nature of intensely knit communities is very similar. Debate teams take students in, train them with very specialized, specific skills and in the process create a comraderie between the teammates that is just as competitive and intense as in GK. Maybe not nearly as overtly homoerotic in the teasing. And this brings me to one of dilemmas. I know from the series and from the Rolling Stone article that Ray Person debated in High School. My natural fandom tendencies would be to do a lot of research to find out what kind of debate he did, so as to as accurate as possible in the details. Yet, in order to find out something like that, I would have to find out a lot about the real Ray Person and I have no desire to do that. The real Marine is not a celebrity, he did not ask for his life to be exposed to public scrutinty. And knowing details like that about his life would make the character portrayed by James Ransone way too real for me to ever want to write fanfic about him. Knowing the characters in the miniseries are based on real people is something I can kind of compartmentalize. Actively searching out information on their real lives is not something I think I would be able to, nor do I want to try.
I have a similar issue with Nathanial Fick's book One Bullet Away. On the one hand, his character as portrayed by Stark Sands in the miniseries is amazing. And the struggles he deals with by trying to balance the responsibility of command with the shit rolling down from above are some of the most gripping stories in the miniseries. So I am vaguely interested in reading his book. At the same time, there is a much stronger urge to stay away from the book because I know reading it will make him a very real person to me. And I can't really read porn about him and Colbert if I think of him as someone living and breathing on the other side of the country.
Real people, cramping my style and holdin up my porn. I know, woe is me. *emo tear*
So if I've friended you in the past few days or so, it's probably because you've written a lot about one of those two shows (more than likely GK). Hello!
I'm not generally a fan of movies or shows that center around war or the military, particularly contemporary settings of a relatively realistic nature. Partly because I am so personally opposed to how much power the military-industrial complex has in our society. Also because these types of shows seem to fall into discernable tropes of either glorifying war in a proto-patriotic sense or are overly brutal and graphic representations supposed to represent the 'reality' of violence without looking at the larger context. Yet Generation Kill does neither of these things. If you haven't seen it, the mini-series is based off a Rolling Stone article turned book, written by an embedded reporter who traveled with a group of Recon Marines at the head of the invasion of the second Iraq War. I've seen a few reviews that claim the original articles, the book and the mini-series don't really take a political stance on the second Iraq War. To some extent I think this is true, but the series doesn't ignore the larger political context either. It's brutually honest about the complete lack of planing and coherent strategy the military had when they invaded Iraq. What really grabbed me about the series is that it takes this context and looks at how this larger clusterfuck of problems affected a small group of elite Marines who were supposed to be the front point of the invasion. It looks at the human cost that failure of planning had. In a direct sense by looking at the emotional toll it took on American military personel as they struggle to make sense of their place within a constantly changing set of orders, partially incompent officers, questionable rules of engagement and obvious lack of vision and strategy from their largely absent leadership. And in a more subtle way, their frustration as they see the human carnage increase around them in pointless civilian casualties, fuck-ups and an inability to help refugees.
At the same time, the show is hilarious. The Marines, as the saying goes, make do. They deal with their frustration and anger through offensive humor and abundant abuse of profanity. And through all of it, what comes across is that these men have built such a tight knit, inbred, fucked up family and it is sometimes the only thing that helps them get through it.
My step-father served in the Army during the Vietnam War and it fucked him up in ways I will never fully understand. He never really talks about the combat he saw, partly because he did some serious black-ops shit in the DMZ in Korea, but also because I think those are the things he never wants to remember. They only diagnosed his PTSD about 5 years ago, but it was just finally putting a name to something our family had known for a long time. I've never really understood why, but he has a great affinity for watching nostalgic war movies and shit like the Military channel's latest show on bomber planes or some new aircraft carrier. Graphic violence aside, I always had a gage of how realistic a war movie was based on how long he was able to watch it. If it was super moto and idealized, like a John Wayne WW2 movie, he'd sit through it and talk afterwards about stories of his dad's service in WW2 on an aircraft carrier. Richard made it through about 1 1/2 episodes of Generation Kill before he stopped watching. Which spoke to me more than any of the reviews could about the level of authenticity of the interactions of the Marines. All the scenes dealing with the divides between NCOs and COs, between enlisted men and officers, the absurdity of things like not having enough batteries for their NVGs. So much of it reminded me of stories my step-father used to tell me about his time in the Army.
---------
Ok, I need to get this out of the way. I LOVE RAY PERSON, SO FUCKING MUCH. *points at icon* Him. You do not even know. SO MUCH. He is, far and way, my favorite ....person....character... in Generation Kill. Yeah, I don't really know what noun to use there. Let's go with character, since I have kind of thrown myself tangentially into the fandom, I have been trying to draw some clear mental boundaries between the real people this is based on and the characters in the miniseries. but we'll get to that later. The first time I watched the series through I didn't really have a sense of each indidivdual character beyond Colbert and the Reporter, but from some of the interviews I've read that was done rather deliberately. Despite this, most of the scenes I found consistently hilarious (and realized when I rewatched it) involved Ray. The way he constantly runs his mouth, his wild hypotheses on bullshit topics and tendency to start singing ridiculous songs. The scene when he tells Rolling Stone that he was the President of his High School Debate Team was like an "ah ha!" moment for me. Of course, Ray was a debater and no wonder I liked him so much. He acts like so many debate nerds I know.
And shit, do I want to write a story about Ray's transition into the Marines and its similarity to debate culture. While the analogy isn't perfect, the nature of intensely knit communities is very similar. Debate teams take students in, train them with very specialized, specific skills and in the process create a comraderie between the teammates that is just as competitive and intense as in GK. Maybe not nearly as overtly homoerotic in the teasing. And this brings me to one of dilemmas. I know from the series and from the Rolling Stone article that Ray Person debated in High School. My natural fandom tendencies would be to do a lot of research to find out what kind of debate he did, so as to as accurate as possible in the details. Yet, in order to find out something like that, I would have to find out a lot about the real Ray Person and I have no desire to do that. The real Marine is not a celebrity, he did not ask for his life to be exposed to public scrutinty. And knowing details like that about his life would make the character portrayed by James Ransone way too real for me to ever want to write fanfic about him. Knowing the characters in the miniseries are based on real people is something I can kind of compartmentalize. Actively searching out information on their real lives is not something I think I would be able to, nor do I want to try.
I have a similar issue with Nathanial Fick's book One Bullet Away. On the one hand, his character as portrayed by Stark Sands in the miniseries is amazing. And the struggles he deals with by trying to balance the responsibility of command with the shit rolling down from above are some of the most gripping stories in the miniseries. So I am vaguely interested in reading his book. At the same time, there is a much stronger urge to stay away from the book because I know reading it will make him a very real person to me. And I can't really read porn about him and Colbert if I think of him as someone living and breathing on the other side of the country.
Real people, cramping my style and holdin up my porn. I know, woe is me. *emo tear*