Racism and violence comprise the majority of “American Sniper,” Clint Eastwood’s box-office hit. And that is exactly what we as college students, Americans, and even human beings, need to see.
Chris Kyle (portrayed by Bradley Cooper), the famed subject of “American Sniper,” spent considerable time on-screen speaking of and justifying his many kills. His comrades often went even further, mocking the “savages” as if they were fighting an infestation of rats or insects. In each case, American soldiers were portrayed as engaging in racist, dehumanizing speech, attempting to belittle the enemies they were ordered to kill.
Racism, dehumanization, or the violence of war are not good things, but their depiction in art like this film is necessary and good, because it allows us to understand what drives these horrors. We could assume that the actual soldiers or the actors on the screen, are merely racist, cold-blooded killers who have no regard for human life. Or we could realize that, confronted with the necessity of taking another human life, we would inevitably do the same.
“Thou shalt not kill” is implicit in the moment when a man stands face-to-face with another. We do not need a philosopher or anyone else to tell us that this is true. So when a man must kill another man, he must subdue this most basic restraint, override this fundamental impulse. And he can only do this by recognizing the face across from his as something other than that, something less than human. He must silence the call to do what he must.
I am not attempting to justify murder, war, or even the violence inevitable in human conflict. My point is simple: A man cannot murder another man. By seeing the enemy as less-than-man, as a savage or an intruder or even an obstacle, a man can take the life of another. This is not merely a trick, but a reduction of that other’s very being. It is how a man who kills might keep hold of his sanity. Unfortunately, if taken too far and wide, it is also how a man might lose it.
This reduction of being is what we see in “American Sniper.” In each of Kyle’s kills, we recognize a calculation: Am I shooting a man, or am I preventing a threat? Am I taking a life, or am I saving others’ lives? In several scenes, we see Kyle deliberate over shooting a woman or a child, and are thus privy to an even more complex calculation. Whereas the men, fully grown and fully capable, have made a decision to fight, the woman or the child likely has not. It becomes much harder to pull the trigger then, as the line between terrorist and “son” or “wife” becomes so much thinner.
Some have claimed that the movie perpetuates racist, dehumanizing tendencies with its black-and-white, one-dimensional depiction of the Iraqis. But this is less the outcome of intention than the consequence of focus. It is unnecessary for a movie to depict explicitly each and every one of its players. We need not see into the intimate details of an unnamed Iraqi soldier to know that he was once a human being. We recognize his humanity in the guilt, the struggle to remain sane, which is demonstrated in the man who killed him.
It is a beautiful and terrible effect. At once, we recognize in Kyle and his comrades the ethical responsibility to their fellow man. Yet that responsibility must be forsaken, for whatever reason, and subdued through the dehumanization of an enemy.
I do not intend to add to or subtract from the deeds of American servicemen, nor war and its consequences. After all, we can criticize a movie such as this only because of war, its consequences, and the deeds of American servicemen.
Rather, we should find in “American Sniper” a profound sadness. We should lament that man must clash with man. We should wish that we will never have to do the same.
Yet we must also have hope. We must have hope that man will continue to see into the face of that other. We must have hope that all will struggle to remain sane in the face of death.
And until such a day when this struggle is not needed, we must hope that those called to it will have the strength to persevere, and the strength to make it back.