I took my kids to see a movie yesterday, using movie passes my brother's girlfriend had given me almost a year ago as a thanks for helping her move into my brother's apartment. Given Hollywood's crappy output this past year, it took us that long to find a movie we could all finally agree on seeing. Our choice was The Men Who Stare At Goats, based on the book of the same name, mainly because Wilbur really wanted to see it, which meant of course his little brother wanted to as well.
The film centers on a journalist who stumbles on to the story of a lifetime as he investigates a psychic unit within the US Army. The unit is first run by Lt. Col. Bill Django as a new age alternative to standard military operational procedure, and uses psychic means.One scene, which takes place after Django has been kicked out of the military and Larry Hooper has taken over, concerns Hooper's experiments with mind control using LSD. After dosing a recruit and exposing him to flashing lights and loud noises, the recruit walks stark naked into the middle of the base and begins shooting aimlessly as other soldiers march and drill. The point of this scene is to illustrate not only the evilness of Larry Hooper, but of how use of techniques can have unintended consequences when used not for good, but for evil. No soldier is shot, but they do scramble for safety when the soldier begins shooting.
Well, now some people feel the scene should be edited from the film following the tragedy at Ft. Hood. Considering early reports indicating multiple shooters, this isn't very close to real life at all.
It's funny how sensitive Americans are when it comes to tragedies close to home, but when a tragedy occurs somewhere else, the insensitivity comes shining through.
I would say this is a recent development, that somehow, Americans became stupider or wimpier, but even The Manchurian Candidate was pulled from distribution because of it's eerily similarity to the Kennedy Assassination (You know, brainwashed patsy, part of conspiracy to assassinate a president)as well as scenes of the Twin Towers being excised from the first Spiderman movie.
But IMHO, this is being brought up to reinforce the single shooter theory, and negate any stories of second gunmen. Better the people thinkl it was due to the suspect having to misdiagnose cases of PTSD than think there was any sort of conspiracy.
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2 comments:
Sounds like an interesting movie. I never knew if it was just an urban legend or for real, but supposedly during the '70s and early '80s the CIA was worried about the "occult gap" between America and the Soviet Union. Soviet psychics could use telepathy to spy on us, or use telekinesis to disable our missiles. So the CIA had to catch up with them so American psychics could do the same thing.
Tom,
It was discussed in the movie, which claimed more of the story was true than you can imagine. All in all, a good movie. If you don't see it in the theater, watch it on DVD.
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