War, Inc: Owning Makes It Okay

Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the lifestyle of the sick and famished.

The promise of technology was to relieve us of onerous labors, leaving us more time for delight and relaxation. Instead, technology has provided new onerous labors to replace the old, placed greater production demands on the laborer, or left unemployed and poor those it has rendered unnecessary to production.

What the hell, Technology? Why did you break your promise?

Come to think of it, where did you get off making such a ludicrous promise in the first place? How exactly was free time going to be redistributed in a world of every-man-for-himself capitalism?

What da hell wuz you thinkin'?

Now, capitalism didn't make us any promises, but it certainly did good by technology. You create some great new technology, capitalism might just be your best friend. Unless your technology cuts into a market dominated by an older, entrenched technology. Then, you better watch your back. If that's even possible. If you've invented a machine that allows you to watch your back then you might stay one step ahead.

Is that it, technology? Did you make us those utopian promises only to help your pimp, capitalism, succeed? Was it a conflict of interest? Or was it just the way things went?

The dream of a future in which humankind would be relieved of the necessity of labor went like this: society needs stuff. Right now (they said back then), in order to make that stuff and sell it at a profit, a factory has to employ one hundred children and pay them the equivalent of a bowl of lightly salted gravel per day. But the time will come (the dreamers dreamed, egged on by the promise of technology) when a single machine will be able to produce in an hour as much as all those children can in a week. After deducting the cost of building and maintaining the machine, the increase in productivity, hence profitability, ought still be enough to allow those children to retire with a severance package of, jeez, maybe two bowls of well-seasoned pond sludge daily. All that by the age of twelve.

But exactly what is the incentive for the company to share the increase in productivity with the erstwhile-employed children? There was none then and there is none now. Not unless people outside the ownership of the company demand that part of the increase in profit be paid back to the society that supplied the workers before the technology replaced them.

Unfortunately, the principle of ownership dictates that those outside the company have no say about what those inside the company do with the company's operating capital, workers, products or profits.

Did technology really think we would all be socialists by now? Silly goose. Is that why it made those promises it couldn't keep?

Just think: back in days of yore, when folk whether simple or sophisticated imagined a world where technology would free humanity of poverty and disagreeable tasks, underlying their beliefs was an unspoken faith that some benign form of socialism was in humanity's future. Nowadays, when folk whether simple or sophisticated imagine the future, they imagine that, regardless of how technologically advanced we become, the ability of the rich to keep the poor in poverty will advance at the same rate.

"The poor you will always have with you," Jesus said. It might have been the only thing he said that a Talmudic rabbi or a Greek philosopher hadn't said already, and it seems to have been the only accurate prophecy he every made. He also admonished us to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's." Since he knew enough about economics to predict the eternal persistence of the poor, he must also have known that everything belongs to Caesar eventually.

Pierre Boulle, famous for writing the novels Bridge on the River Kwai and Planet of the Apes - I know, isn't the world a weird and wonderful place? - anyhow, Pierre wrote a short story in 1966 called "L'arm Diabolique," or "The Diabolical Weapon." In it, the governments of the world ban nuclear weapons because they make war so devastating it would be impossible to actually fight one without destroying the Earth. And since war is a necessary process of international relations, it would be unthinkable to never fight one again. The diabolical weapon was outlawed so wars could continue to be fought.

When George Orwell etched the phrase "War is Peace" on the facade of the Ministry of Truth, he didn't know that years later Stanley Kubrick would make a film in which the motto, "Peace is Our Profession," would appear on a billboard during a battle scene. And Kubrick couldn't know that forty years later the US Military's mission would be jobbed out to corporations whose motto might as well be, "War is Our Business."

I think Dick Cheney has a tattoo that says "War is Our Business" on his lower back. He got it long ago, in 2003, in those wild days when he thought he'd have that shapely body forever.

The remarkable, intertwined history of technology, business and war come together in the new film, War, Inc. I just saw it Friday night and it is excellent, funny, and disgustingly on target. Even Dick Cheney's lower back figures into it. Mark Leyner (whom I mention in my novelette Memoirs of the Unrealistic) is the main writer of the screenplay co-written by John Cusack and Jeremy Pikser. I met Leyner briefly so, so many years ago, when he was the latest thing, and his book of short humorous pieces, My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist, had just been published. At a reading I asked him if he considered himself a satirist or "just a humorist." He said he didn't mind at all being known as a humorist.

But War, Inc. is satire, and good, painful, angry satire. I'd been wondering where Mark Leyner had gone to, and here he comes out with this thing, this important, smart and funny thing. John Cusack and Marissa Tomei lead the excellent cast of a movie that's like Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine turned into an Alan Moore comic.

I have no idea why this movie has been panned. It's better than Wag the Dog, which was pretty damn good. I don't see how you make a more scathing indictment of the privatization of the US Military, or rather the privatization of war, unless it were to do a remake Carney where Dick Cheney runs the shooting gallery booth and makes teenagers give him one of their body parts for the chance to fire at Iraqi children to try to win cheesy papier-mache body armor made in China. And I just don't see how you sustain that gag for the duration of a feature length movie. So really, you know, War, Inc., for practical purposes, is a way better idea.

Yes, it's stylistically over-the-top, I suppose. Not like Natural Born Killers, which makes you want to punch Oliver Stone in the face every thirty seconds. Maybe I've been watching too many Stephen Chow movies, but the lunatic quality of the storytelling in War, Inc. did not detract at all from the accuracy with which the satire stabbed its targets. How do you make a more realistic movie about what's been going on in US foreign policy since 2001? What's the more dignified response that answers the insults and injuries the George W. Bush administration has administered? I mean, I know the answer to that, but I would be surprised if even those involved with the picture could gather that much chicken guano together and arrange to have it flown above the proper targets and released at exactly the most embarrassing moment. I don't think even Oliver Stone could do it, though Natural Born Killers sure smells like he did.

I really don't want to recount the plot. That's for critics who get paid by the word. I'm just here to tell you the film is good. It expresses what so many of us want to scream out every day that the war in Iraq continues, that simple rage brought on by such a complex situation, such a complex and idiotic confluence of greed and violence and ideology and gullibility and misplaced patriotism.

As a matter of full disclosure, I do know people involved in the making of this film. But I have absolutely nothing to gain or lose from its reception other than the satisfaction of seeing my righteous anger given life in audiovisual form every time those twenty-four frames-per-second go scrolling through the gate. I didn't even know the film existed until last week, which is an indication of how close I am to the production. So enough of that.

Listen, long before Naomi Klein wrote her book about entrepreneurs taking advantage of natural and man-made disasters, I was wondering what Clinton's Secretary of Commerce, Ron Brown, was doing flying around in a helicopter in Croatia when the peoples of the former Yugoslavia were at war with each other. Back in 1996 I was struggling to piece together what the commercial potential was in a country in the throes of genocidal conflict. Of course, now such a question seems a little silly. What puzzles me now is why Walmart isn't selling cheap bags of rich topsoil from Rwanda. Don't tell me if I'm mistaken about that, by the way, and they are selling Rwandan dirt. I just can't go into a Walmart right now, because if they are selling it, I just might drop out of the back of my skull.

Maybe poverty is a constant quantity in civilization, regardless of how magical our technology becomes. But that just means the smarter we get the stupider we look. It's embarrassing. The other species on the planet would probably be laughing at us right now, if we weren't busy doing such sad, ugly things to them.

So when our catastrophic foolishness is presented eloquently in under two hours, and our major newspapers don't see any redeeming value in that achievement -- I mean, sure, a lot of great art goes unnoticed. But this is a movie. With stars in it. Action. Comedy. Romance. Explosions. You have to wonder if the subject matter is what's keeping it out of the "free market." Or ... I don't know. Maybe we're just doomed to be the punchline of a bunch of jokes told by mutant cockroaches after the next world war.

This has been the Moment of Truth. Good day!

Comments

[fiberoptimist]

HuffPost's Pick

Kudos to Cusack!

War, Inc. is a brilliantly artistic, courageously captivating, dark comedy that is frighteningly close to reality. Brutally honest political satire at its thorniest. Cusack anchors as the most lovable hit-man ever. Hilary Duff is seemlessly perfect as burka-busting diva Yasmine Babyyeah. You gotta love Marisa Tomei, especially in the hostage video scene. Dan Akroyd nails the Cheney-shadow role, and Joan Cusack is simply hilarious. The characters often feel like those in a vaudville puppet-show, which takes some of the edge off of the considerable violence. The complex plot is woven together in very creative ways and it is full of surprises.

Cusack is a genius at this very high art form. It's the kind of timeless movie you want to watch over and over again to capture every nuance. An instant cult classic. He's taken his master puppeteering skills (from Being John Malkovich's Craig Schwartz) to a whole new level!

[kusalarhetoric]

This is one of the best movies I have seen for some time; not as good as, "I'm not there" but very, very interesting. Your review touches better on what is attractive to the movie (wonderful realization of a dystopia), several reviews I saw initially reduced the film to some kind of contemporary Dr. Strangelove, and there is quite a bit more going on here. One problem is that John Cusack is far too cute to be the hired gun he'd like to portray, and his martial arts sequences are too surreal; one wishes for Lee Lin Jia (Jet Li) in this role! Which points to another shortcoming of the movie: It would like to be hip, but is culturally myopic. Aside from send ups (appreciated) of western characters, we only get AliG stereotypes and no Chinese perspective whatsoever. Any of the CIS countries would be awash with Chinese subterfuge (as is Iran), and that should deserve some mention in a send-up that attempts to be somewhat comprehensive and documentary in scope. That is, if you pretend that the only powerful forces at play are hollywood and big corporations, then this is a pretty funny let's pretend fantasy. But in this age of global awareness it is at least a bit clumsy to be this narcissistic.

[Overd0g]

The goal of technology isn't to feed the poor. The goal of technology is to make doing stuff easier (or possible at all). Think of all the hand diggers that were left unemployed when the shovel was invented: the horror! Capitalism is just a framework for free men to trade. What those men decide to do with their profit is up to them. Perhaps time would be better spent trying to persuade free men to feed the poor, rather than enslave them so your ideal of mercy is enacted.

[jagoneely]

Sure, your rationale is good to a point. But when rich companies use their money and influence to meddle with our government and "convince" people (elected officials of the highest office perhaps) to make unfair and corrupt choices that get people killed....but then again....I soppose you'd just say that "what those men decide to do with their profits is up to them".

[yosephus]

Think of all the hand diggers that were left unemployed when the shovel was invented: the horror!

Damn right, the horror. They probably starved. But who cares, right? Because those people deserved to starve. It's survival of the fittest. Never mind civilization, it's the law of the jungle.

Fortunately, society in practice disagrees with you.

What's your point? That securing the legal right to profit from something ought to make you the only party who gets to influence decisions about how that thing is used?

Did you know that every advanced capitalist country including the United States has state-funded unemployment insurance? Have you heard of Social Security? Public education? That's what the real world thinks of your "common sense" or whatever you call your non-theory.

What you express is a libertarian extremist view that has never been true under capitalism as its been practiced to the present day. In the real world. Sorry, but you have to realize you live in a society that accepts the right of the public to demand input into how profit is both accumulated and distributed, and the sooner you figure that out, and understand why, the more coherent and human your thinking and actions will become.

You're living in a nightmarish world in your own head, my friend.

[protagonia]

I am on board to see this film.

Been waiting since I heard it was on the way.

[lgillooly]

Unless a product is sanctioned by the Ministry of Oil or The Ministry of Finance(Wall St.) or the Ministry of Communication (Corporate media) or The Ministry of defense (Military Industrial Complex), it is not allowed into the Free Market. They should have checked with The Decider before they wasted their time.

[davidrusso]

Is anyone allowed to *not* like this movie?

I couldn't tell from the post(s) and comments.

Thought the movie was poorly done, overly simplistic and hammy. The diametric opposite to "Thank you for Smoking".

It's box office failure is not a result of any conspiracy, but simply because other options exist to hear a progressive message delivered in a smarter, more entertaining manner.

[yosephus]

You need permission from a review to not like a movie? Think for yourself. Since when is it the reviewer's job to give permission for others to have opinions?

There is no box office failure, by the way. It's done well. It's received unfair criticism, imho. So you prefer "realism" to "agit-prop." Sounds like a stylistic issue. Your taste is simply very conventional. It's an unusual movie.

You didn't like it. Don't fault the people who did. The shortcoming is in you. But you're certainly ALLOWED to have shortcomings.

[twannng]

thankyouth­ankythanky­ou...i've seen it twice and it is all you say...who knows, maybe even more... very interesting that's it's all but invisible to the public at large...coincidence probably...

[joebaggadonuts]

I don't think they liked Catch 22 when it came out either. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065528/

The truth is hard to take, and the critics don't like the truth. Neither do the folks who have no respect for the law. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hGvQtumNAY Who is it who can't handle the truth?

[thismachinekillsfascists]

Downloading it now. Thank you *free* market!

[jaber]

Well written & expressed. Thanks

[Ankhst]

Damn! By the title, I was hoping there was a secret link to buy the DVD already?! More things would be OK if I owned this movie. It's hard for me to get to the cineplex these days, but I would happily send someone else to watch it for me (contributing both to box office and viewing statistics) if I still get to see it myself at some point...

Yes, I am way too spoiled by DVD... just imagine if/when I ever jump on the broadband download bandwagon.

Got some vacation coming next week though, so I will endeavor to see this one out in public -- and resist the urge to face-punch the next person I see who looks a little too much like Cheney

[bacq]

I'm DYING to see this flick. However, given that I live in DeeCee (no voting rights! yippee!!), I somehow doubt it'll be popping into our quaint little southern town anytime soon.

[True]

Also looking forward to War, Inc.

There was a wonderful ad campaign done by an agency in Chicago about 10 years ago for a non-profit i forgot the name of. The headline is: "Is technology really our friend, or does it just want to date our sister?"

[funwithwarcrimes]

Awesome...thanks for the heads up. Will see it this week.