Wednesday, January 21, 2015

American Sniper makes America Fifty States of Grey

An Iraq war biopic based on the bestseller autobio selling more than 1.5 million copies of the same title for late United States Navy Sea, Air, and Land Teams marksman Chris Kyle, American Sniper may have made its target, hitting the Hollywood movie industry bullseye with a record setting rubout of the competition by $105.3 million over this weekend, but it may have also triggered a sociocultural avalanche involving the old Red versus Blue state debate being last fought just recently this last fall midterm. Being marked by its production and distribution company as being a phenomenon both culturally and societally, the bandwagon effect so evident in the acceptance of the film should also remind its political opponents exactly how and why the war which is its raison de etre was supported so strongly by happy hearted hawks from sea to sea, even if by ways and means that allude the average dove. This bandwagon of soft powered citizens across America is not some ragtag clandestine fifth column using internal subversion and sedition towards treason externally, no on the contrary philosophically, this is a convoyline of hard powered citizens across America who may not know all their rights, liberties, and freedoms but nevertheless wish to defend them to the death wherever and whenever by all means and ways necessary!

And yet even as we speak, this film and those ideals which surround it, prove that spirit of America continues to burn on strong in whatever capacity, shape, or form it takes at the current.

America is divided on whether soldiers like Kyle should be seen by America as a Red State military hero, who by honour did his duty making 160 kills during his four tours, or as a Blue State cold blooded killer who dishonoured and deserted the peaceful American principles of live and let live and allowance of the pursuit of happiness, a divide that still has not healed itself and has allowed America the Great to fall far from its previously politically united stance. Both ideological sides will be sure to hype this film, like the book before it, to as much of a tactical advantage that each can hold on and further itself and their agenda to in order to sway the general public closer to its way of thinking as per usual which is a given. The not so given and unusual aspect of this situation is this, instead of seeing both political colours eventually meld back into a united purple nation, as it has been for most of its political history, especially during its most recent post World War period, could we eventually see a divided America that becomes so biased and colourblind that it might take on a third colour, leaving us with a future America being fifty states of grey?