BOOKS; A Toxic Genre, by Martin Barker

A 'Toxic Genre' – the Iraq War Films, by Martin Barker (Pluto, £17 )

The term in quotes in the title of Martin Barker's valuable study of Hollywood's reaction – or, actually, its failure to react – to America's misadventures in the Middle East, comes from a 2008 article in the film industry "bible", Variety. Ironically, the writer was pessimistic about the box office chances for Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, a movie which went on to take $12.5 million – the only one of 23 war movies to earn more than it cost to make – and take six awards at the 2010 Oscars.

Barker draws an interesting parallel – or contrast – between Bigelow's film and the 3D blockbuster by her ex-husband, James Cameron, Avatar. He was not the first to do so. He quotes an Iraqi journalist who described Avatar as "the most accurate Iraq war movie so far" and so did the neo-Marxist pop philosopher, Slavoj Zizek, who claimed, wrongly, that The Hurt Locker was basically a fantasy since it never showed GIs killing people.

This raises the whole question of what, after all, is a war movie, what is "real", and -- in similar vein to Aaron Kerner's recent study of films and the Holocaust – the very nature of documentary itself.

Does the fact that what appeared to be genuine video footage in Redacted, hand-held wobbling, out-of-focus blurring etc, was actually created in the studio mean the message of the movie was invalid?

(If the footage of Apollo 11 leaving the moon could not have been genuine, does that mean that the landing never took place? Much of the footage of Night Mail, the archetypal documentary, was actually shot in a specially constructed mock-up, and the actuality dialogue was spoken by the posties from a pre-defined script; Barker does not mention this, though it would have strengthened his argument about the blurring of the borders between illusion and reality. All art is, after all, a lie that tells the truth.)

Rightly, Barker is dismissive of vulgar "leftists" whose judgement of good or bad of any film in this genre is based on whether they agree or disagree with its "message". A work which massages the preconceptions and prejudices of its audience rather than following Bob Dylan's dictum, "I can't think for you, you'll have to decide", can have the opposite effect to that intended.

The example of John Wayne's The Green Berets, which became a pejorative byword for sabre-rattling agitprop, has lessons for the left as well as the right. As we found with the protest songs chart success, which effectively steered the ant-war movement into safer, less confrontational directions, the left can suffer from a similar backlash.

He publishes detailed synopses of many of the films in the war movies genre, which will be valuable tools for any film students who want to delve into the issues he raises.

The book might have profited from a wider focus. For instance, his basic thesis might have been strengthened by reference to non-Iraq movies like Paths of Glory and All Quiet on the Western Front, and also Clint Eastwood's re-examining of the battle for Iwo Jima.

In the end, of course, the remarkable thing is not Hollywood's failure to grapple with the war, but the fact that what is actually a billion dollar industry, part of the same military-industrial complex which uses war as part of its survival strategy, should allow movies like Redacted to be made. 

A shorter version of this review was published in the Morning Star.