Hacker Cinema
Generation Kill
2008 · TV series · 1 season
Created by David Simon
The first 40 days of the war in Iraq as seen through the eyes of an elite group of U.S. Marines who spearheaded the invasion along with an embedded Rolling Stone reporter. A vivid account of the soldiers and of the forces that guided them in an often-improvised initiative.
10 positive2 negative7 neutralfrom 19 commenters
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21 comments on Hacker News
Funny you mention the cricket
In the HBO miniseries Generation Kill the marines are tuned into the beeb long wave to get news updates, and there's a cricket score read out in the first episode
https://www.reddit.com/r/generationkill/comments/6o2w2s/episode_1_bbc_radio_accuracy/
There's this 'criterion of embarrassment' / 'cui bono' sort of standard[0] that really helps judge these things. So many people perform science that seems to always confirm the positions they've held. All the "society is terrible today" people like to quote LendingClub's "70% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck" without knowing it's LendingClub content marketing. The snail darter guy happened to find a novel species that is endangered and genetically identical to a non-endangered one just in the place where he was trying to get a dam banned. The sustainability guys find that companies that focus on sustainability do better. The diversity guys find that companies that focus on diversity do better. A scientist who gets a grant from Philip Morris finds that cigarettes aren't bad for you.
It reminds me of something my dad said while watching Generation Kill - a TV show adapted from the written work of an embedded journalist in Iraq. The show, made by Americans, depicts the US armed forces as ramified through with bumbling fools seeking glory with a few competent people in there. So we finish watching the series and my dad says "Only the Americans would make a show like this" and it's somewhat[1] true. I think perhaps that being able to create a machine that tells you the truth is crucial to success and I feel that the US's peak period as unipolar hegemon (Gulf War I to the end of Obama I) this was more the case than it is today, though this is more of a feeling than anything I have verified.
It also reminds me of an old sort of censorship, one which George Orwell talks about in regards to Animal Farm[2] - a book that was criticized because it perhaps harmed the greater cause of communism. There's too much to quote in his essay because I find the whole thing worthy of reading, but here's one bit:
> Both publicly and privately you were warned that it was ʻnot doneʼ. What you said might possibly be true, but it was ʻinopportuneʼ and played into the hands of this or that reactionary interest.
...
> Is every opinion, however unpopular – however foolish, even – entitled to a hearing? Put it in that form and nearly any English intellectual will feel that he ought to say ʻYesʼ. But give it a concrete shape, and ask, ʻHow about an attack on Stalin? Is that entitled to a hearing?ʼ, and the answer more often than not will be ʻNoʼ. In that case the current orthodoxy happens to be challenged, and so the principle of free speech lapses.
There is even today an orthodoxy of sorts and if you were to contradict it, it is considered sinful to say so. I'm Indian so perhaps it is safe for me to use this as a race of choice but what if it were found that Indians actually are less smart than, say, White people. Could such a thing be published if it were true? People often say "what are you going to do with that information?" and somehow I don't share that view that all science must necessarily immediately deliver applied benefit. Knowing is good for its own sake. Truth is good for its own sake. Or at least that's what I believe.
I suppose I'll only know through the period of my own life whether this belief is adaptive. Who knows, a present or future power might be one formed entirely through inaccurate data and information[3], and we might be as Orks and painting things red might make them faster because we believe it so in sufficient numbers.
0: Obviously there are limits. Eli Lilly benefits from GLP-1RA drugs working well but they do in fact work well.
1: Others obviously also make fun of themselves, but something like In The Loop parodies specific people more than the whole machine and its participants. Generation Kill feels much more real a depiction of large organizations and their incentive mechanisms - especially how they grind forward and get the outcomes they want despite everything else. Perhaps my least favourite parts were the emotional-breakdown bits at the end, which I've since found out that the participants themselves said were invented for TV.
2: https://www.marxists.org/archive/orwell/1945/preface.htm
3: Open societies like ours have the problem that external misdirection leaks into internal data but perhaps with sufficient computerization we can keep separate truth and propaganda within the structure of government
Not sure if you read Generation Kill or watched the miniseries, but that is one of the main points. In there, there were two platoon commanders, Lieutenant Fick and Captain America(The book never reveals its name, and I think the series does, but I don't recall at this moment). While Lieutenant Fick was a competent officer that tried to kept the welfare of his troops, he often butted heads with its direct superiors since the order given to him could endanger the lives of his subordinates while not accomplishing nothing of value. In contrast Captain America, was an incompetent officer who gave reckless orders, was ignored by his troops and could have been possibly be charged with war crimes. At the end of the series, when the journalist is interviewing the battalion commander about why Captain America was never disciplined for his actions, the battalion commander answers that the same leeway that he gave to Lieutenant Fick was given to Captain America. In other words if he were to punish Captain America, he should also be punishing Lieutenant Fick. In retrospective is understandable, but when you read or watch it, you wonder why no action is being taken to discipline Captain America and why no one listens to Lieutenant Fick
“Generation kill”, the book and the miniseries, is about marines invading Iraq in 2003 in unarmored humvees. Didn’t make sense then either.
I don't watch stuff unless it has ended and is reccomended by someone who watches shows I generally enjoy. Here's my pitch for the golden age of TV, though most of these are from a few years back. Most on HBO.
The Wire
The Sopranos
Generation Kill
The Deuce
Treme
Show me a Hero
Luck
The Expanse
Sillicon Valley (not actually that funny but like a documentary of our field)
Mad Men
Generation Kill is a great movie in a similar vein about the second invasion.
> "Generation Kill" by Evan Wright which was turned into a mini-series on HBO)
I haven't read the book but I've seen the miniseries many times, it is one of my favorites. It has a TON of great lessons about how large groups of people organize themselves and how the individuals within those groups behave and why that are very pertinent to tech and management in general.
Here's a reply[0] to a question that asked about directory structure.
Ignore the programming/technology part.
Military books (such as "One Bullet Away" by Nathaniel Fick or "Generation Kill" by Evan Wright which was turned into a mini-series on HBO). Field manuals can be interesting and you can learn a lot from them.
Knot books.
"Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War" by Robert Gates is interesting.
"The Art of Intelligence", by Henry Crumpton.
"Diplomacy" by Henry Kissinger is an interesting read. It starts with the balance of power in Europe, raison d'état, Richelieu, "U.S. exceptionalism". It is well written.
- [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17593922
American Sniper,:
"Kyle meets Taya Studebaker at a bar, and the two soon marry. He is sent to Iraq after the September 11 attacks. His first kills are a woman and boy who attacked U.S. Marines with a Russian made RKG-3 anti-tank grenade. Kyle is visibly upset by the experience but later earns the nickname "Legend" for his many kills. Assigned to hunt for the al-Qaeda leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Kyle interrogates a family whose father offers to lead the SEALs to "The Butcher", al-Zarqawi's second-in-command. The plan goes awry when The Butcher captures the father and his son, killing them while Kyle is pinned down by a sniper. This sniper goes by the name Mustafa and is an Olympic Games medalist from Syria. Meanwhile, the insurgents issue a bounty on Kyle."
How this disproves that "Hollwood is unable to record a movie depicting modern US millitary in any critical or non-heroic manner"?
If you have mentioned Generation Kill I would have given you props but it is not an accident that many people in US have not heard about that series (and the book).
I would like to second the tv series Generation Kill. Brilliant show. Really highlights a lot of the ridiculousness of war. Not as serious nor on the same scale as Band of Brothers, but still good nonetheless.
It's not directly related to General Mattis, but I would recommend reading Evan Wright's book "Generation Kill". Which recounts his time being embedded with the 1st Recon Battalion, which was under the command of Mattis (Callsign Chaos) during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The book even goes briefly into a famous moment in the invasion of Iraq were General Mattis fires one of his commanders during a siege of a city.
https://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/that-time-mattis-fired-a-commander-in-the-middle-of-combat
HBO did a miniseries on the book too which is great.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Kill
You describe my experience almost exactly.
One difference here in the UK is that I'm unable to even pay for HBO.
I wanted to watch Generation Kill the other day, it seemed like it was available on amazon prime but in fact isn't available in my region. My only option is to buy it for £2.50 per episode, which seems like a bad deal to me.
Generation Kill is unwatchable, in the sense that you'd rather see the characters die at the hands of Freddy Kruger or Jason Voorhees, than bother to care about, oh, i dunno, a plot line or whether it's based on real journalism?
Same goes for The Hurt Locker, among others. So many, are simple emotional pandering, set against a dubious backdrop, without dealing with the premise of the backdrop. American Sniper simply feels like an effort to influence, even with Clint Eastwood's involvement (or perhaps even more so, with it).
Live from Baghdad is a shade too early, and the wrong Iraq war, but captures the joke-like atmosphere of the post-hoc rationale for even going to war in the region.
Similar era war movie, but different conflict, is Restrepo, which is a documentary. And, unfortunately, maybe it's accurate enough to be completely unflattering. No one appearing on screen is particularly charismatic or inspiring, and so too the story it tells is uneventful, no surprises.
But these jingoistic movies suck because very nearly all movies in general mostly suck. Everything seems like long-form, substance-lacking music videos, or student exercises in cinematography and digital effects editing. Oh well. Keep waiting for any good movie, but don't hold your breath. They are few and far between, since the advent of digital production techniques.
It's just how things are now. Now that all footage makes it make it past the film-developer-chemical bath, it's easy to undo, and selectively retry. It's too easy to make a movie, so it's very easy to make meaningless movies.
Not a movie, but "Generation Kill" comes pretty close?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0995832/
As for movies, there's "In The Valley of Elah" comes to mind:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478134/
And more generally, about modern warfare, I suppose "Eye in the Sky" warrants a mention:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2057392/
Probably not going to happen. In the "not documentary" category it's probably generation kill or occupation that's even remotely close.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0995832/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00l9sw3
Generation kill is a miniseries, Daredevil and GoT are just series :)
Your link does not seems to work for me, but after a small Wikipedia research : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio
On another note, the ratio for Arabic countries in the peninsula are quite fucked up. If you see the TV show "Generation Kill" from HBO, the character played by James Ranson has a theory, which is quite interesting watching the numbers : there would not be a single war if there was enough women in the Arabic Peninsula.
> Yep. TV's are not great at conveying radio plays. But, that's all people could think of to do with them initially. Turns out they are better for content like Game of Thrones.
I get what you're saying, but I think that's a rather terrible way to contrast radioplays and content made for TV. The experience of watching "Game of Thrones" isn't that different from listening to the BBC radioplay of "Lord of the Rings"[r]. I think "The Wire" or "Generation Kill" might be better examples of things that I think work better on TV, than I can imagine them doing on the radio. Or maybe "The Expanse" or even "Firefly".
Doesn't mean I don't like "Game of Thrones", I love the adaptation - but with its many characters and demanding storyline (even for those of us that have read the books) - I don't know. Somehow, while it is a beautiful production, I think it could've worked with a similar script for radio.
[l] Apparently the original series, in its 13 episode format isn't available to download/buy - if I understand it correctly the following Amazon link is to the remaster: https://www.amazon.com/Lord-Rings-Fellowship-Ring-Dramatised/dp/B000VTQAVS/ See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_%281981_radio_series%29#Re-release_in_2002
A search did turn up this: https://soundcloud.com/inkmore/sets/lord-of-the-rings-radio
Which I assume should probably be taken down due to copyright infringement.
In the HBO miniseries "Generation Kill" a sergeant would constantly be on the Marines to be clean shaven. Shaving was beside the point and an activity that the Marines could control unlike the battlefield. At the end he made clear that constantly being on everyone's ass about shaving was to keep the Marines moving forward through the battlefield.
KPIs and all are great, but matter little if a company is not making money for shareholders it first and foremost goal.
Between Generation Kill[1], See No Evil[2] and The Afghan Nightmare[3] (and other sources, other wars, other regions), it's hard to see how intelligence is working at all.
In particular [3], which deals with a NATO commander in Afghanistan is telling: Considering the British have been involved in the area for hundreds of years, the US has been involved for decades -- one wonders how one could possibly construct mission parameters that are clearly pure fantasy.
I'm still not sure if it is the result of gross incompetence, or stems from ulterior motives (or a more likely; a combination) -- either way the idea that the intelligence services help prevent wars (at least the parts concerned with sigint) -- is hard to take at face value.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Kill
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/See_No_Evil_(book)
[3] http://www.riff.it/scheda-film/?id=7515
Full Metal Jacket.
• Three Kings.
• In The Valley of Elah.
Good Morning Vietnam.
A Few Good Men.
Platoon.
• Jarhead.
Casualties Of War.
• The Men Who Stare At Goats.
The Deer Hunter.
The Thin Red Line.
• Syriana.
• The Green Zone.
• Stop Loss.
Also, • HBO's "Generation Kill".
(•'d relatively recent movies)
I don't think "The Hurt Locker" was particularly critical of the military and didn't count it. Also not counting documentaries like "Restrepo".
I hereby dispute the idea that the DOD has made it impossible for big-budget Hollywood movies to criticize the US military, and suggest instead that the bias Hollywood in favor of the military is responding to customer preferences and not leading it. Given what I presume to be America's default position of "supporting our troops", I'm struck by how many films Hollywood produce that challenge that default.
Remember also that Hollywood confronts at least two vectors of consumer preference in marketing films: first, Americans (in the large) have a (typical) diffuse nationalistic home-team support for our overseas adventures, and, more importantly, there's a less-political less-issue-oriented reverence expected for the sacrifices made by the young people we send into combat which is especially intense during times when large numbers of people are serving in combat zones. In other words, it's especially tricky to criticize the military during active conflicts.
Also, Three Kings is a fantastic movie.