Jarhead: From Sparta to Iraq
Saul Landau
Progreso Weekly, 24 November 2005
"Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough."
-Franklin D. Roosevelt
"Jarhead," derived from Anthony Swofford’s 2003 book, portrays an important slice of contemporary U.S. culture, one that has evolved from ancient Sparta and continues to maintain high cultural status. Indeed, the U.S. Marine Corps has helped recreate that legendary homo-erotic military relationship. Who would have thought of marines as engaged in barracks marriage?
A Jarhead, a marine’s close cut hair and exposed skull, symbolizes that empty space that allows the Corps to transform a human being into a beast by filling his head with a primitive urge to kill. The ritual known as basic training turns youthful testosterone flow into savage and gleeful slaughter of enemy creatures. Conversely, a marine will sacrifice his own safety to save his close marine buddy – semper fi.
"People fight better when they know each other," Major General James Mattis explained to a UPI reporter in Iraq. (Pamela Hess UPI, August 1, 2004)
U.S. military re-conditioning of normal people begins later than the model the Spartans developed. Elder Spartan warriors and the older boys would initiate the younger ones to endure pain and hardship on the path to becoming a Spartan soldier and citizen.
In Gulf War I, as marines waited for moths to invade Iraq, officers forced recruits to jog for miles at high noon at a fast pace with their M-16 rifles on their backs. The temperature: 115 plus degrees. But the officers decided the men needed "exercise."
These eighteen year old marines, however, had it better than their Spartan counterparts who were dragged out of the home and into the soldiers’ barracks at age seven. Older, already conditioned boys picked fights to toughen the neophytes.
The Spartan boy did not scream when whipped. He received minimal food, which encouraged him to steal more of it. If caught, the elders would beat him. Proud and fierce Spartans dressed in uniforms. They shouted at their superior officers when he spoke to them. "Sir, yes sir." They also chanted when they marched – perhaps an equivalent of "Jodie was there when you left."
"You’re right," the Spartan youth might have retorted.
Like pre pubescent summer campers, the marines engage in thinly disguised sexual banter and physical play – to build up that esprit d’corps. The making of a modern marine still requires an elder drill instructor, to strip away layers of human sensibility from younger men. The boys shape their own macho-feminine culture in the jism-filled barracks. Like pre pubescent summer campers, the marines engage in thinly disguised sexual banter and physical play – to build up that esprit d’corps. The male-female role playing – in the form of a practical joke – becomes part and parcel of the molding process by which young adult men regress emotionally to the level of inadequate children, who cannot easily escape their conditioning – especially after having signed enlistment papers.
"Sir, yes sir." We’ve heard it before in Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam epic, "Full Metal Jacket." The drill sergeant forces the vulnerable recruit to scream answers to stupid questions. This act of obedience to ridiculous orders or acquiescence to absurd statements becomes part of the shit-eating ritual because "that’s the way the marines do it." The officers teach the youngsters to love this limited view of existence.
Those who cannot bear the loss of their sensibilities desert their unit, or commit suicide. In Iraq in 2004, the First Marine Division proudly announced that only two in the entire expeditionary force of marines had killed themselves.
"We just do not understand what happened. He was doing good." General Mattis then explained. "There are hunters and there are victims. By your discipline, cunning, obedience and alertness, you will decide if you are a hunter or a victim. ... It's really a hell of a lot of fun. You're gonna have a blast out here. I feel sorry for every son of a bitch that doesn't get to serve with you." (Hess UPI August 1, 2004)
The rehearsal for Mattis’ fun fest began in the fall of 1990, during Gulf War I. Jake Gyllenhaal, playing Swofford, arrives with shaven, glistening head to the Saudi Arabian sun. His unit of similarly hairless snipers begins the waiting ritual as coalition forces slowly accumulate. Indeed, they waited for half a year to strike.
To make cinema out of waiting time, director Sam Mendes, (American Beauty) interlaces desert shots and marines pissing, drinking and jerking off, so as to simulate boredom without boring the audience. The snipers bond as they play their boys’ games and then we see Jake using his girl friend’s photo to simulate love in the privacy of a desert latrine.
The tans, browns and golds of the Gulf nation (actually filmed in Mexico) seep onto the screen and finally, as comradeship replaces male-female relationships, the orders arrive. North to Iraq.
By this time, the audience realizes that the men in the unit cannot trust the women they left behind. One marine’s wife sends him a cassette of "Deer Hunter," but instead of Robert DeNiro in Vietnam, the men see a porn scene – a woman bent over as a man enters her.
"That’s my wife," screams a marine. The others whoop and holler. The woman says sadistically into camera: "Now who’s cheating asshole!"
The corps proves far more trustworthy as family than those fickle women. Swofford masturbates to his girl friend’s photo, but her letters indicate that she has already dropped him for someone here and now. He remains in denial, but his desire, his jealousy grows ugly. He becomes comfortable in his new killer role, inside of a social ambience of murder and brotherly love.
A sublimating Spartan warrior emerges, repressing emotions related to love into unquenchable desires to kill the "other." But Gulf War I meant endless waiting as President Bush allowed coalitin forces to build to a large size to insure overwhelming and rapid victory – in a war that would end at the Kuwait-Iraq border.
Finally, the troops deploy. U.S. fighters zoom above them. A missile sizzles and the marines witness "friendly fire" killing some of their own. During their trek, the sniper unit discovers Hell, first in the form of a car and truck graveyard, with charred bodies and pieces of them. The desert road to perdition includes scenes after Saddam’s forces set fire to the Kuwaiti oil wells. Orange flames lick the night sky. Black drops rain down on the men’s faces and uniforms. Then, a white horse emerges from the darkness, dripping oil and sweat, the symbol of inhuman destruction.
War or a Francis Bacon painting?
Swofford’s sexual frustration, his anger and jealousy, his new conditioning have now combined to produce a burning desire for battle. His rifle has become the instrument of self-realization.
For Americans who feel confused, not sure about college, unhappy at the job, looking for some identification, the Marines emerge as an acceptable fraternity, from which people don’t ever quite reintegrate into society.
The marines trained Swofford to enjoy shooting people. Finally, he gets his chance, aims his sniper rifle at an Iraqi officer – only to have his first kill frustrated by the "fly boys" who demolished the entire building complex to kill one man.
The war ended before he could murder – thanks to a decision to use high tech aircraft. Will the urge to kill push Swofford one day to climb a tower and start shooting people as veteran Charles Whitman did in Austin Texas in 1966.
Troy (Peter Sarsgaard, "Kinsey"), an ex-con, scout and Swofford’s partner, felt even more frustrated by the interruption of the lethal act for which they had received so much training. He leaves the Corps and dies. Since he lied about a previous criminal conviction, the Marines would not let him re-enlist. Once conditioned to become a marine, the Corps become the logical social unit – war or no war.
Staff Sergeant Sykes Jamie Foxx ("Ray"), exemplifies the his love of the Corps when he tells Swofford that he could have worked for his brother in law and made a nice six figure income. Instead, he is in this inferno 10 thousand miles from home and family. "But I thank God for every day He`s given me in the Corps." Indeed, he cannot envision life outside this narrow framework. Marines have become desensitized to all but their Corps life.
A decade later, U.S. forces occupy Iraq. Should we act surprised when the UN, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International report that U.S. troops routinely kill and torture civilians?
The Marines symbolize a destructive force in U.S. culture. Kill others without questioning, act tough when sensitivity is called for, exhibit stoicism when pain should make you scream; empty honor, the old and stupid military values evolved to the high tech world. They will remain as a model of manhood – at least until the empire disintegrates.
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