MovieChat Forums > Black Rock (2013) Discussion > It's not that it is leftist, it's that i...

It's not that it is leftist, it's that it is so utterly cliche


The bad guys are ex-military, and their service has apparently hardened them, made them cruel and without compassion.

Come on.

The same plot that has been used since the 70's. It's so cliche and predictable. No surprises, just the same tired old world view from Hollywood. Yawn.

"I've seen things that would make you want to write a book on how to puke."

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Why is it that any time there is any trope in a film, or any subject really, someone comes out to say it's "leftist" or "liberal."

War veterans are more likely to commit violent crime. This is a documented fact. There's an estimated 223,000 veterans in US prison, most of them Vietnam era. Documented sexual crime within the military has doubled, putting women in the military at a 50% chance of being a victim of sexual assault, while less than 3% of those assaults are ever punished. The current generation of veterans are more likely that the previous to develop PTSD. There was a study by the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology in 2012 that showed 23% of veterans with PTSD are imprisoned for violent crime. So PTSD raises the risk of incarceration for a violent crime, and the current generation of veterans are more likely to have PTSD than the previous.

What you call tired Hollywood many call reality.

Similar studies have been done on factory farm workers and showed that workers at slaughterhouses and factory farms are more likely to commit acts of abuse on their families. Turns out any exposure to institutionalized and categorical violence desensitizes the human mind to violence, making them more likely to commit it.



Reality has a well-known liberal bias.

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I happen to be retired as both a psychologist and a US Army reserve components officer (in Combat Arms, not as a psychologist or other Medical Services). I had to take courses in Statistics in Psychology at both the undergraduate and graduate level. The very first block of instruction in the graduate course was on "How to Lie With Statistics". You barely did a half-a$$ed job at that.

It wasn't hard using Google to find the two articles on the Huffington Post that are the apparent sources of your so-called statistics.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/09/veterans-ptsd-crime-report_n_ 1951338.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/02/veterans-coming-home_n_193236 6.html

There's relatively little wrong with the articles. But it's obvious how you cherry-picked your supposed facts from them.

War veterans are more likely to commit violent crime. This is a documented fact.


More likely than whom? Come on! I dare the OP and any other reader to click on the links and read the actual articles! All the articles say is that veterans who are diagnosed with PTSD are more likely to commit violent crimes than veterans with similar combat experiences not diagnosed with PTSD. And there are further caveats such as:

that other factors not related to military service, including growing up in a violent home and a prior history of substance abuse, also raised the risk that veterans will commit crimes.

"You often hear people say that whenever bad things happen with veterans, it has to be PTSD, but this research shows it's a lot more complicated than that," [forensic psychologist Eric B.] Elbogen told The Huffington Post. The experience of combat doesn't necessarily mean a veteran will commit crimes. But combat trauma in the form of PTSD, combined with the high irritability that PTSD can cause, does "significantly" raise the risk of criminal arrest, he said.


And here are another couple of links:

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/press/vsfp04pr.cfm

http://www.statemaster.com/graph/peo_per_of_civ_pop_who_are_vet-percen t-civilian-population-who-veterans

The first article, by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, states that the last survey done in 2004 shows just under ten percent of the nationwide prison population are veterans, whereas the second article shows that the percentage of the general civilian population who are veterans is 12.1 percent, and only 6 states and the District of Columbia have a percentage of their populations under ten percent. If the percentage of prison inmates who are veterans is over 2 points lower than the percentage of the general national population over 18 years of age, how does that prove that "war veterans are more likely to commit violent crimes"?

There's an estimated 223,000 veterans in US prison, most of them Vietnam era.


I don't know what the relevance is. Vietnam was the longest war this country had while there was a draft in effect so there are more Vietnam veterans in the general population than there were in the more recent wars. I'm sure that before Vietnam, at one point the majority of the veterans in prison were World War II veterans, and before that World War I, and before that the Civil War. (The Spanish-American War and Korean War may not have had as many veterans compared to the wars preceding them.)

Documented sexual crime within the military has doubled, putting women in the military at a 50% chance of being a victim of sexual assault


That's more due to the reporting of those crimes than to an increase in their occurrence. And whatever increase there actually is is just as easily attributable to the integration of more women into more military units. I went through a co-ed boot camp in ROTC. I could've told you back when I was a 19 year old cadet that if you throw males and females in their late teens and early twenties with raging hormones into close living quarters, they're gonna get frisky. I also could've told you that the problem could be solved by sexual segregation with only female NCOs and officers commanding all-female units. But that's another issue.

There was a study by the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology in 2012 that showed 23% of veterans with PTSD are imprisoned for violent crime. So PTSD raises the risk of incarceration for a violent crime, and the current generation of veterans are more likely to have PTSD than the previous.


Again, that's in comparison to other veterans with similar experiences. You throw that statement around as if all combat veterans have PTSD, and then use that as a rationalization for the inexcusable disrespect and stereotyping this movie (call it a trope) gives to all veterans.

Lying with statistics has a well-known liberal bias.

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"One of these men may save your life one day!" --Sergeant First Class Joe Hulka (Warren Oates)

"Then again, maybe one of us won't!" --Private John Winger (Bill Murray)

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Wow. I just have to wonder how many constructive things you could have done with the time it took to type that novel.

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Actually, the one guy, Alex, was adamant that he thought they should back off and figure something else out. He only went along with his friends because he probably didn't know what else to do, and who knows, maybe is a follower more than a leader. Sure, the other guy was nuts, but he kinda looked like a white trash moron who joined the military because he had nothing better to do anyway.

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To be fair, they were dishonorably discharged. And while they claim they did what they had to in combat we never really know if that is the case or they were lying and they had committed war crimes.....

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