Hella Nation - Evan Wright [137]
There is evidence of a possible war crime in the trailer: a Marine clutches the head of a dead Iraqi and raises it in front of the camera like a jack-o’-lantern. (This footage was given to Dollard by troops, and he claims not to know the provenance of the decapitated man, or why a Marine was playing with his severed head.) In Dollard’s presentation, the act of desecration, accompanied by the faces of grinning Marines, is treated as a macabre joke. By intercutting this with actual Jackass footage, the trailer seems to suggest that, for the young, wild and patriotic American, war in Iraq is sort of like the ultimate Jackass.
When I mention to Dollard that his severed-head scene might turn more Americans against the war, or even against the troops, he laughs. “The true savagery in this war is being committed by the American left on the minds of the young men and women serving over there by repeatedly telling them that their cause is lost.” He adds, “My goal is to desensitize young people to violence. I want kids to watch my film and understand that brutality is the fucking appropriate response to a brutal enemy.”
Dollard’s target audience is the same as any rock band’s: kids—the more disaffected the better. He aims to alter the course of pop culture. “What we’ve celebrated since at least the 1950s is the antihero,” Dollard says. “Today, even though our country has been attacked, nothing has changed. If you are a young man in America right now, the coolest fucking thing you can aspire to be is like a gangsta rapper, or a pseudo bad guy. The message of my movie is simple: If you’re a young person in America, the coolest, fucking most badass and most noble thing you can be today is a combat Marine. Period.”
Breitbart believes Dollard is onto something important. “There needs to be a confrontation at the pop-culture level of the kids who are over there fighting versus the kids at home who are totally disconnected, immersed in this mindless Abercrombie & Fitch/MTV culture.” Breitbart adds, “There needs to be a revolution, and Dollard is the man who can kick it off. I don’t care if older conservatives are offended by Pat Dollard. I was not looking for someone pristine. He brings to our cause this whole spirit of, like, the Merry Pranksters Two.”
Perhaps it’s no surprise that Ann Coulter adores his work. Like Breitbart, she recognizes his ability to reach young people in ways that other conservatives don’t. She says of his Web postings, “What’s great about them is that they have the panache of a professional MTV video with a very un-MTV message.” In an e-mail she sent to Dollard after an initial viewing of his trailer, she simply gushed, “wow! wow! that certainly is attention-grabbing! I like it—especially the ‘fuck you’ melange with michael moore and [former Democratic Party chairman] terry mccaulliffe [sic]. I like it!”
The reaction to Dollard from soldiers and their family members has been even more enthusiastic. One Marine officer he encountered in Ramadi expressed his admiration in a terse note: “Thank God and Chesty Puller for people like you, Pat Dollard, who truly get us. Semper Fi.”
As for those Americans who believe in the conspiracy of a liberal-controlled media, Dollard tells them that their worst fears are true, that the entertainment industry is run by a form of reverse McCarthyism. “If you’re conservative in Hollywood today, you’re not necessarily getting blacklisted, but you essentially are blacklisted. You are reviled and treated like shit.” That a former Hollywood big shot would descend from the heights and admit to the people that he was once part of the