Irony Man
Commentary: The film Iron Man catches the spirit of the successor "complex," which has leapt not only into the cinematic world of superheroes, but also into the civilian sphere of our world in a huge way.
May 20, 2008
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[Introduction by Tom Engelhardt]
Back in the mid-1990s, in my book, The End of Victory Culture, I wrote the following about the adventure films of my childhood (and those of earlier decades):
"For the nonwhite, annihilation was built not just into the on-screen Hollywood spectacle but into its casting structures. Available to the Other were only four roles: the invisible, the evil, the dependent, and the expendable…. When the inhabitants of these borderlands emerged from their oases, ravines, huts, or tepees, they found that there was but one role in which a nonwhite (usually played by a white actor) was likely to come out on top, and that was the villain with his fanatical speeches and propensity for odd tortures. Only as a repository for evil could the nonwhite momentarily triumph. Whether an Indian chief, a Mexican bandit leader, or an Oriental despot, his pre-World War II essence was the same. Set against his shiny pate or silken voice, his hard eyes or false laugh, no white could look anything but good."
Having spent a recent evening in my local multiplex watching the latest superhero blockbuster, Iron Man, all I can say is: such traditions obviously die hard (even in the age of Barack Obama). The Afghans and assorted terrorists of the film, when not falling into that "invisible" category—as backdrops for the heroics or evil acts of the real actors—are out of central casting from a playbook of the 1930s filled with images of Fu Manchu or Ming the Merciless: Right down to that shiny bald pate, the silken voice, the hard eyes, and that propensity for "odd tortures."
It's lucky, then, that, in the real world, the Bush administration has made the decision to expand our no-charges, no-recourse, no-courts, no-lawyers prison network in Afghanistan to hold such monsters. Give Eric Schmitt and Tim Golden of the New York Times credit for their recent front-page scoop: "The Pentagon is moving forward with plans to build a new, 40-acre detention complex on the main American military base in Afghanistan, officials said, in a stark acknowledgment that the United States is likely to continue to hold prisoners overseas for years to come… [the new prison will be] a more modern and humane detention center that would usually accommodate about 600 detainees—or as many as 1,100 in a surge—and cost more than $60 million." The real money quote in the piece, however, lay buried inside the fold. The reporters quote an anonymous Pentagon official speaking of the infamous older American prison at Bagram Air Base where some of those "odd tortures" have taken place: "It's just not suitable. At some point, you have to say, 'That's it. This place was not made to keep people there indefinitely.'"
So, the new prison, then, is apparently for holding people "indefinitely." Lurking in that word, of course, is the logical thought that we'll just have to stay in Afghanistan indefinitely, too. Otherwise, who's going to do the necessary imprisoning? Perhaps it's worth noting as well that, at this moment, the Pentagon is also expanding its major prison in Iraq, Camp Bucca, already stuffed with up to 20,000 prisoners, to hold another 10,000, assumedly in case a future prisoner "surge" comes along, and assumedly once again "indefinitely." In fact, when it comes to prisons, the Pentagon and its contractors are the busiest of beavers. After all, they've been expanding Guantanamo in Cuba, too, while Bush administration officials talk idly about shutting that prison down. Even kids aren't immune. A recent report claims that the U.S. now holds at least 500 "juveniles," mainly in Iraq, but also in Afghanistan, and perhaps elsewhere as "imperative threats to security." (Guantanamo evidently now has no juveniles only because two prisoners have been held there long enough to grow into adulthood.)
These are expansive American facts on the ground in two occupied countries where, you might say (though you wouldn't know it from Iron Man), imprisonment is our middle name and "odd tortures" what we've built our rep on. Of course, at a time when the U.S. is hemorrhaging real jobs, Americans have made quite a living from building and expanding prisons and prison populations at home, too.
Once upon a time, there was an all-American superhero who fought for "truth, justice, and the American way." But that's passé today. As a nation, we're not much into justice anymore; what we're into is incarceration, punishment, and those "odd tortures." It's increasingly our métier, our truth, the American way. So maybe Iron Man, an arms dealer by day, is, as Nick Turse, author of the superb exposé of the new Pentagon, The Complex, indicates, exactly the right superhero to illuminate our American moment. Tom Engelhardt
Irony Man
The film Iron Man catches the spirit of the successor "complex," which has leapt not only into the cinematic world of superheroes, but also into the civilian sphere in a huge way.
By Nick Turse
"Liberal Hollywood" is a favorite whipping-boy of right-wingers who suppose the town and its signature industry are ever-at-work undermining the U.S. military. In reality, the military has been deeply involved with the film industry since the Silent Era. Today, however, the ad hoc arrangements of the past have been replaced by a full-scale one-stop shop, occupying a floor of a Los Angeles office building. There, the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, and the Department of Defense itself have established entertainment liaison offices to help ensure that Hollywood makes movies the military way.
What they have to trade, especially when it comes to blockbuster films, is access to high-tech, tax-payer funded, otherwise unavailable gear. What they get in return is usually the right to alter or shape scripts to suit their needs. If you want to see the fruits of this relationship in action, all you need to do is head down to your local multiplex. Chances are that Iron Man—the latest military-entertainment masterpiece—is playing on a couple of screens.
For the past three weeks, Iron Man --a film produced by its comic-book parent Marvel and distributed by Paramount Pictures—has cleaned up at the box office, taking in a staggering $222.5 million in the U.S. and $428.5 million worldwide. The movie, which opened with "the tenth biggest weekend box office performance of all time" and the second biggest for a non-sequel, has the added distinction of being the "best-reviewed movie of 2008 so far." For instance, in the New York Times, movie reviewer A.O. Scott called Iron Man "an unusually good superhero picture," while Roger Ebert wrote: "The world needs another comic book movie like it needs another Bush administration… [but] if we must have one more… ‘Iron Man' is a swell one to have." There has even been nascent Oscar buzz.
Robert Downey Jr. has been nearly universally praised for a winning performance as playboy-billionaire-merchant-of-death-genius-inventor Tony Stark, head of Stark Industries, a fictional version of Lockheed or Boeing. In the film, Stark travels to Afghanistan to showcase a new weapon of massive destruction to American military commanders occupying that country. On a Humvee journey through the Afghan backlands, his military convoy is caught up in a deadly ambush by al-Qaeda stand-ins, who capture him and promptly subject him to what Vice President Dick Cheney once dubbed "a dunk in the water," but used to be known as "the Water Torture." The object is to force him to build his Jericho weapons system, one of his "masterpieces of death," in their Tora Bora-like mountain cave complex.
