The last major war movie of the millennium and possibly first prophetic statement for the next century, "Three Kings" is a disquieting yet provoking trip to the war where journalism died.
Since the mid-19th century, when civilian reporters began systematically covering wars for the home front, war journalists have struggled to get the story and survive the conflict while waging their own fight to get access to the battleground. In the Gulf War, however, this traditional media-military battle was so lopsided that journalists were silenced, even manipulated, rendering their work little more than crude, if unintentional, propaganda. While military planners forecast a time when soldiers will be unnecessary to fight wars, they already believe an independent media is unnecessary, and are convinced they proved this in the Gulf War. Despite an unprecedented armada of technology, an army of correspondents, and an honorable history of war coverage, journalism failed like never before. Journalists were dethroned.
There are three movies and three wars in this movie. A comedy, a caper, and a consciousness raising critique. We all know the first war, between the United States and Iraq. The other two wars, between the Iraqi government and Iraqi people, and between U.S. military and the world media, have received far less attention. The film compacts all of them nicely, and in none is there a riveting evil target nor consistent hero, everyone simply wears a gray hat and emerges ambiguously. The "bad" Iraqi soldiers are portrayed as more in fear of their dictator than as vicious combatants, as victims rather than brainwashed warriors for some Great Satan.
In contrast, the heroic Iraqi opposition is often pictured as crybabies, blaming the United States for failing to overthrow their despised dictator.
As for the altruistic Americans, the small cohort of three kings—George Clooney, Mark Walberg, and rapper Ice Cube—are motivated by greed for personal wealth and to hell with all the wars. In the end, however, they rise to the situation, championing the Iraqis who oppose their dictatorship. In the middle of all the plots and subplots is our subtext, media capitulating to the military and forsaking any sense of professional dignity.
The journalists in "Three Kings" are obsessive, competitive, and meticulous lightweights. Backbiting, foul mouthed cynics, they are either horny sexpots or emotional iceboxes. Treated contemptuously by their military minders, who forever keep them in tight check, they have utterly nothing in common with Hollywood's mythical journalist: the strapping male bloodhound uncovering truth and filing gutsy stories under splashy headlines.
This movie is not set, however, in Vietnam or El Salvador but in the Persian Gulf, and the journalists are not male but female. Equating weak women with weak journalists, the film degrades both. Women reporters on the battlefield were once considered a significant step towards gender equality, yet, judging by this movie, the popular estimation of journalists has plummeted so far that journalism may now be a step backward for women.
The movie opens immediately after the Gulf War, with bored troops anxious to return home. Since the war was fought primarily with technology, smart bombs and carrier based missiles, and not with ground troops, the soldiers were essentially bystanders, with the vast majority not even close enough to the action be called spectators. While disrobing an obstinate Iraqi POW, American soldiers discover a hidden map stuffed up his butt, a rather scatological twist. Soon three American soldiers set out to steal a fortune in gold bars that Saddam Hussein's troops have stolen from Kuwait, and are now hiding in an Iraqi bunker. Almost effortlessly, they lose the journalist who begged to tag along.
While the media are being successfully managed by the military, driven around and around in desert circles and screwed in editing rooms, media products are everywhere. Cassette decks in U.S. humvees blast the Beach Boys while dashing across the desert, scenes of Rodney King being brutally clubbed on television are in an Iraqi war bunker stuffed with stolen appliances. Everyone's watching CNN, yet no one seems to know what is going on. Because what is really going on is not on CNN.
Meanwhile, our frustrated female correspondents flash onto the screen moaning and pleading for real stories, then jump at the bait to interview troops who say "Hi Mom" and little else. It is clearly all entertainment, a reality this movie brings home in dramatic form. The war we viewed on television never captured this reality because the media were everywhere except where they should be, which is independently reporting real news.
The media's ubiquitousness functions well as window dressing for its marginalization. The three wars in "Three Kings" become confusion, paradox, and ambiguity while war journalism is stripped of all meaning. The connection between war as surrealism and war journalists excluded from covering war is never made, ignored like the female journalists, yet its presence is overwhelming. The only avenue open to meaning, then, is unmediated experience. The absence of meaningful media always reduces truth acquisition to direct experience.
The story unfolds with our three rocking and rolling "kings" brazenly grabbing the gold, but in the process rubbing up against the horror of real war. Thanks to the movie's powerful direction and photography, you feel and smell war without any filters, in all of its insane ugliness. The effect erodes the three Americans' fierce determinism to live solely by the law of self-interest, and eventually entangles them in the lives of some very desperate Iraqis. Needless to say, the journalists are nowhere around. Expertly "minded" by a lowly soldier, one journalist listlessly draws small circles in the sand.
In the end, the media do score a story. As the military police begin to arrest the soldiers for their AWOL excursion and unauthorized help of Iraqi civilians, the news-famished media are maneuvered into reporting their heroic effort to save lives. One story, then, gets out, while another gets buried. The power of the media is craftily harnessed to transform small-time crooks into national heroes. It's manipulation within manipulation within manipulation. The thread of Vietnam—never trust the media, manipulate it! —runs throughout this movie.
"Three Kings" is a warning, a warning not to believe journalists who allow themselves to be shackled then kept uninformed. "Three Kings" is also a suggestion, a suggestion to fight for what you believe is true. The bottom line: power without knowledge leaves one vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation. Just as the media were manipulated in "Three Kings", Americans were deceived in that same war. Since the Gulf War, however, media mergers including the media-military merger have increasingly clogged and narrowed channels for substantive communication, intensifying our vulnerability to deception and manipulation.
Interestingly, in the end, it is Hollywood, not TV, which is issuing this warning—from "Wag the Dog", to "Bulworth", to "The Insider"—it's the big screen that is putting journalism on trial.
- Tom Nusbaumer, a Vietnam veteran and seasoned journalist will be writing on war and journalism for the Media Channel.
