American Sniper: A dramatization that is coded for a target audience,

[RadiationTherapy]

Last edited Wed Jan 21, 2015, 10:57 AM - Edit history (1)

based on a memoir coded for a target audience, and made up of coded narratives that were decoded from symbolic and partial memory impressions of a series of events.

So there are actual events and then there are levels of abstractions: the memories, the narratives built from the memories, the memoir built from the narratives, and the film built on the memoir. There are four levels of subjective abstraction at the least. When other minds are involved in each step, the abstractions potentially grow even more distant from the initial events.

At each level of abstraction, subjectivity leaks in. There are no "non-political" war movies; "not making a statement" is still a statement.

[DustyJoe]

1. target

At $107 million on its record opening weekend, I think American Sniper is a dramatization that hit right on target to its intended audience. The studio and financial backers that bet on the movie are smiling large.

[Bjorn Against]

2. You could say the same thing about Transformers

[RadiationTherapy]

8. Yes, film funding is just another way to diversify one's portfolio.

Generic ideas, flattened in committee, and saddled with an expected return on investment.

[pinto]

3. It's a movie, from what I hear.

A movie.

[RadiationTherapy]

6. It has catalyzed a national conversation. It is more than a movie.

More than a movie to mee-hee-hee

[pinto]

11. My comment was a bit off hand. I know it's gotten a lot of discussion, understandably.

Yet my point - it's a movie. Many movies are similarly rewrites to a certain point of view. Many moving, significant in popular culture.

I think most people can get the difference.

[RadiationTherapy]

12. I agree, it is a movie. That is partly why I wanted to outline the matter of abstractions.

I also agree that people understand that movies are coded narratives, but sometimes it helps to be reminded of how fictionalized even the best attempts at depicting reality can be. It's like calling a billion "1,000 million" - most people know this, but it can still be an effective reminder of scale.

[Paladin]

4. Don't pass that by Sarah Palin,it'll give her a nose bleed.

She thinks the sniper movie is great, and anybody who disagrees with her is a wuss. No need for her to get into "symbolic and partial memory impressions".......

[RadiationTherapy]

7. Hahaha. These ideas are emerging from my master's thesis about depicting memory in film.

She has a master's degree, I think. She can handle it! hahaha

[Paladin]

10. Good luck on attaining your master's. Sounds like an interesting and worthwhile topic. (nt)

[Maedhros]

5. The American audience is hungry for war.

This is just propaganda, like Zero Dark Thirty, meant to create legitimacy for our bellicose military policy in the minds of the public.

America's State Religion is Mammonism, and this film is a celebration of it's Warrior Cult.

[RadiationTherapy]

9. I haven't seen it, so I can only speak to the fact that it is, at least, a "4th level abstraction."

[Nuclear Unicorn]

13. .

[RadiationTherapy]

14. Los Paranoias