Hurt Locker = war propaganda film or fair & balanced?

[rocketpig]

Wiintendo said:

The Hurt Locker: Six Oscars for a propaganda war movie

http://madamearcati.blogspot.com/2010/03/hurt-locker-six-oscars-for-propaganda.html?zx=411762e5e54ce8e0

 

In fact the movie is a deft piece of war propaganda. Its unsung assumption is that its US soldiers are in Iraq for some good purpose - no need to spell it out - and that lives are put at risk for some good reason, you fill in the blanks. 

Hollywood And Media Scramble to Prepare Pro-War (But Box Office Loser)  'Hurt Locker' Win at Academy Awards  in at Academy Awards

http://ofgoatsandmen.blogspot.com/2010/02/hollywood-and-media-scramble-to-prepare.html

One Reviewer attempts to say that a 'Hurt Locker' victory would be a "defiant celebration of artistry over commerce."  It might also represent the very interests of commerce at work behind the scenes to make sure a pro-war propaganda film gets pushed into the limelight. 

The Hurt Locker as Propaganda
For a supposedly anti-war film, Kathryn Bigelow's Hurt Locker serves as a remarkably effective military recruiting tool.
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_hurt_locker_as_propaganda In general, though, you feel empathy for the soldiers when they shoot. And in this way, the full impact of the Iraq war -- at least as it was fought in 2004 -- becomes clear: American soldiers shot at Iraqi civilians even when, for example, they just happened to be holding a cell phone and standing near an IED, as Colin H. Kahl, a military analyst and Obama administration official, wrote in International Security. Even more chillingly, as Kahl explained, a U.S. commander once ordered that all middle-aged Iraqi men in a certain area could be shot.

The Hurt Locker, Cultural Politics and Uncritical Critics

Screening the Politics Out of the Iraq War

http://www.counterpunch.org/sterritt07242009.html

What groups and individuals are planting those explosives all over Baghdad and beyond? Don’t they put life and limb at risk as audaciously as the bomb-squad soldiers do?

A Soft Focus on War

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5864/a_soft_focus_on_war/

For all its mystifications,Avatar clearly sides with those who oppose the global Military-Industrial Complex, portraying the superpower army as a force of brutal destruction serving big corporate interests. The Hurt Locker, on the other hand, presents the U.S. Army in a way that is much more finely attuned to its own public image in our time of humanitarian interventions and militaristic pacifism.

In its very invisibility, ideology is here, more than ever: We are there, with our boys, identifying with their fears and anguishes instead of questioning what they are doing at war in the first place.

So a bunch of bloggers believe it to be propaganda. Therefore, it must be the case.

Three cheers for thinking for yourself and trying to discern what a film meant to you, internet blogger opinion be damned. People are going to walk away from a film like The Hurt Locker with differing opinions but unless you can back up your reasoning with your own beliefs, your posts come off as shrill and vapid.