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August 26, 2005
Bochco's Weasel Words
In the Houston Chronicle today there appeared a pretty fair assessment of Over There, Steven Bochco's "reality" TV series on the Iraq war. David Carr of the New York Times gives close to equal time to Iraqi vets' outrage over the inaccuracies of the show, and he (wonder of wonders) highlights a couple of milblogs: Boots on the Ground and Mudville Gazette. But he still fails to illuminate the fundamental nature of the vets' complaints: although Carr accurately notes that a soldier's very existence depends upon precision, quick reaction, and attention to details, he still lets Bochco off the hook with soft passages like:
Much of what Bochco is taking hits over has to do with the generic requirements of television. To create story lines, he uses characters who scan to some people as clichés — the gung-ho all-American white kid who is maimed, the bitter dope-smoking black guy. And necessarily, action must be compressed, which does not reflect the grinding reality of real-time soldiering, a mix of weeks of boredom interrupted by occasional moments of terror.
I can't buy that. The "generic requirements of television" aren't forcing Bochco to construct scenes where ten soldiers are pinned down by insurgents for three days. The "generic requirements of television" didn't make Bochco conveniently flag the IEDs in his show, or cause the soldiers in the squad to forget they were equipped with mortars or .50 caliber heavy machine guns. From the Chronicle:
Bochco, who was lauded for the authenticity of his cop shows — Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue — is a bit mystified by the response. "Anecdotally, we have been getting a good response from soldiers, but some of them tend to get hung up on the specifics of what you are doing, whether that piece of equipment or that particular weapon is wrong," Bochco said. "But by and large, I think they are impressed with the show's reality, our attempt to convey the truthfulness of the experience and portray their emotional lives as well."
"Anectdotally"?..."I think they are impressed"? In other words, Bochco's hearing what he wants to hear. What contemptable bloody arrogance.
Yes, Steven, you willfully missed these details--details on a par with the type of suture your heart surgeon might use in binding up your just-unclogged arteries; or the wind shear alarm that goes off in the cabin of your flight back into LA in seemingly clear weather, that you never notice as you read your copy of the LA Times.
If you want to read about what a soldier is really experiencing in Iraq (both good and bad) read the blogs mentioned above, or the superlative Michael Yon.
On the other hand, if you want to further enable Steven Bochco's disaffected masturbatory paean to the LA limousine leftist version of our military, by all means continue to tune in:
Bochco said that within the limits of television and his budget, he is proud of what he and his team have accomplished.
"Let me put it this way," he said. "If I had even a small amount of the money that the country is spending to fight this war," Bochco said, "every detail would be there, and it would look amazing."
I think this adequately exposes his agenda.
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