Wednesday, December 17, 2003

Targets.

Today I was watching an old war movie (Men of the Fighting Lady) that used lots of actual combat footage. The movie was about Navy pilots during the Korean War. One shot of real combat footage struck me as so perverse I couldn't imagine it being used in a movie, ever. The shot showed the view a pilot would see as he fired his machine guns at his target, except the target that was shot to hell was a horse-drawn wagon. It was only on screen for a few seconds, but I clearly saw the horse go down. Now I know combatants use horses, donkeys, elephants, and god knows what else to transport weapons, etc., but if such footage existed today of U.S. pilots in Afghanistan or Iraq, would anyone put it in a movie where the pilots were the good guys? I doubt it. And it strikes me as bizarre that they would do it in the mid 50's when the movie I saw today came out. But I'm probably just being naive.

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