Monday, August 20, 2007

War porn

Why oh why does every attempt to romanticize war and our "boys in uniform" end up sounding like gay porn?

Christie Blatchford's Globe tug job on the death of a VanDoos soldier:
In this beautiful place perched atop the green Arghandab River plain, before the sun was even up Sunday over ochre-coloured stony hills, the young men of Charlie Company, 3rd Battalion, the Royal 22nd Regiment, gathered in anguished knots, clamping one another in brief, fierce embraces, consoling the most stricken with a clap on the back or a tender rub of a bent head.
I feel awful for Private Longtin's family – even worse that his death gets treated on the front page of one of our national papers as if it were a scene from a Bruce LaBruce film.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was appalled by that lede too: by the florid writing and the mawkish sentimentality. It's even more distressing to see Blatchford co-opt the death of one of our soldiers for her own self-aggrandizement.

dfb said...

Come on that doesn’t sound like a Bruce la Bruce film it sound more like a “very special episode of Blossom”.

The reason why the “news media” writes it up that way is because they have to sell war as a romantic tragedy otherwise people will wonder what the fuck why are we over there anyways.

nathan said...

dfb - You're right: too few Nazis and too much greenery for LaBruce. On the other hand, that would have to be a very special episode of Blossom to feature the men of Charlie Co in a clutch.

As for your second point: that's it exactly.

    A very subtle and funny writer - one I've become obsessed with over the past year - in a decidedly Muriel Spark mood. Imagine The Pr...