The Departed
Recently, I watched the movie, "The Departed." It was entertaining, farcical, dark, and offered an important aspect of social critique. I will do my best to convey the presented critique, without spoiling the movie. However, you should go see the film as soon as possible.
A tag line from the movie is "Cops or criminals. When you're facing a loaded gun what's the difference?" Scenes of brutal violence follow, but the film refrains from the gratuitous or senseless violence found in many films. They serve a purpose in identifying the outcome of corrupt and entangled alliances. When covert operations designed to serve a greater good interface with similar missions from different agencies, it becomes difficult to distinguish the good from the bad ones. I found myself wanting to know who is good and who is bad throughout the entire movie. Entangling alliances weaken good intentions. No character in the movie could be identified as wholly one or the other.
The social commentary falls upon a country which is self-identified as the good side - claiming to only use force and violence to "defend" justice. Just like the movie, the entangling alliances deconstructed that image. For example, the video footage of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein is the most concrete image I can recall (look up the documentary "Why We Fight" to see this footage and to find out more about the military industrial complex). All of those involved in such fatalistic associations end up, well, "departed."
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports each year on the billions of dollars that the Department of Defense in America contributes toward research and development through higher education (http://chronicle.com/weekly/almanac/2006/nation/0103305.htm). The large amounts of money and the type of research being conducted certainly implicate university research in the entangling alliances of violence and force. Keep checking the GHERC articles page for scholarly research on this topic.
-Chris
A tag line from the movie is "Cops or criminals. When you're facing a loaded gun what's the difference?" Scenes of brutal violence follow, but the film refrains from the gratuitous or senseless violence found in many films. They serve a purpose in identifying the outcome of corrupt and entangled alliances. When covert operations designed to serve a greater good interface with similar missions from different agencies, it becomes difficult to distinguish the good from the bad ones. I found myself wanting to know who is good and who is bad throughout the entire movie. Entangling alliances weaken good intentions. No character in the movie could be identified as wholly one or the other.
The social commentary falls upon a country which is self-identified as the good side - claiming to only use force and violence to "defend" justice. Just like the movie, the entangling alliances deconstructed that image. For example, the video footage of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein is the most concrete image I can recall (look up the documentary "Why We Fight" to see this footage and to find out more about the military industrial complex). All of those involved in such fatalistic associations end up, well, "departed."
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports each year on the billions of dollars that the Department of Defense in America contributes toward research and development through higher education (http://chronicle.com/weekly/almanac/2006/nation/0103305.htm). The large amounts of money and the type of research being conducted certainly implicate university research in the entangling alliances of violence and force. Keep checking the GHERC articles page for scholarly research on this topic.
-Chris
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