Authors Note: Explicit Language
Example #5,784,236 of Hollywood’s contempt for America, its interests and its soldiers: the Sundance film called “Camp X-Ray” and its not-so-bright star Kristen Stewart. Opening on Friday, October 17, the anti-military, pro-terrorist indy drama casts Stewart as a soldier assigned to the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
In the film Stewart portrays a “simple” girl who enlisted in the Army after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In an interview with “The Daily Beast” Stewart described her character as, “simple, not very smart, and really socially inadequate – but a good person.” (Stewart sounds like just like Hollywood lefty and horror author Stephen King, who described the military as “the ‘not bright’ route for youth who can’t read or get a real job.”) Stewart’s view of military service: “So, if you can sign up, put a uniform on, and erase yourself, you don’t have to consider yourself anymore.” Basically, saying if you can’t think for yourself or have no other (smarter) options, join the military and just be some other simpleton who just has to follow orders; no longer worried about thinking for oneself.
Stationed at Guantanamo Bay, Stewart’s character Amy Cole was charged with patrolling the corridors, “peering into the cell windows of alleged terrorists who have been locked up for eight years” and formed an unlikely friendship with one of them. In doing so she of course found that that things weren’t as black and white as she first thought. The “detainees” were the victims, being maltreated by their American captors.
Stewart claimed she didn’t do the movie to make a political statement. Maybe not, but she passionately argued for the humanity of the detainees down at “Gitmo,” and rebuked those who keep them “nameless and faceless” and label them “evil.” The real evil, according to Stewart, is to judge terrorists.
“That is essentially so fucking evil, it’s crazy,” Stewart said. “It’s a ridiculous idea for you to think that you know anything for sure in life – other than to take care of your fellow people.” You know the actual guys in Gitmo – the ones whose mission is to take as many American lives as possible through gross atrocities like 9/11 – would love to hear Stewart’s theories disproving objective reality and pooh-poohing good versus evil.
In a Huffington Post article, Stewart said the film for her was about “overcoming prejudices” and “Forc[ing] people to acknowledge that there are two sides to every coin.” She said of her character that initially “All she wants to think is ‘They did 9/11, they’re bad, fuck that, I’m going to do my job and I’m going to do it well.’ But then she gets down there and just can’t accept it; she can’t conform to that.” She proposed that the journey her character made and the realization she came to is one we ought to accept as well.
Stewart is not alone in her views. First time writer/director Peter Sattler said his goal was to attempt to keep the movie a-political; his goal wasn’t to answer questions about Guantanamo but to ask them and remind the audience that President Obama failed in his promise to shut down the place in 2009, “despite the absence of charges and trials for the alleged terrorists imprisoned in this Cuban facility.”
In an NPR interview Sattler never gave a reason why the detainee that Stewart’s character befriends is at “Gitmo.” He said, “If in the movie we said that he’s guilty, he did this, well, then you’d be like, oh yeah, he should be down there. But if I said he’s innocent, then the movie would be making this statement like, oh, it's a tragedy that he’s down here, this is so wrong.”
But, lest Sattler alienate NPR listeners (a pretty valuable demo to a man flogging an anti-military, anti-war on terror flick), he agreed with Stewart about humanizing the terrorists and casting the military in a negative light when he said, “I wanted to say, look, both sides are wrong. Both sides are good guys and bad guys. You know, the U.S. is right and wrong. A lot of these detainees are right and wrong.” And moral equivalence is easy.
As for Kristen Stewart, a subpar actress at best, she left the young adult world of sparkling vampires and trading up to more “mature” (aka sleazy) roles featuring promiscuity including threesomes, and drug use. Apparently, she’s updated her vocabulary and her world view accordingly.
