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Robert Frank, City Editor frank@heraldnet.com

War comes to life in pop culture

By Julie Muhlstein, Herald Columnist

Every Tuesday night, all through the mid-1960s, my father watched "Combat!"

He'd sit in our living room, always with coffee and a cigarette, fixed on the ABC drama about an infantry squad fighting its way across Europe in World War II.

"Combat!" aired from 1962 to 1967, until the midpoint of the war in Vietnam. Two decades after my dad came home from fighting his way across Europe, his favorite TV show was a fictional version of his war.

Two years ago this week -- three years into the Iraq war -- filming began in my hometown of Spokane on a movie called "Home of the Brave." It starred Samuel L. Jackson and the rapper 50 Cent.

The reviews weren't so hot, but "Home of the Brave" will go into movie annals as Hollywood's first big feature film about the war in Iraq. It's a tale of soldiers haunted by war experiences, and their hard times adjusting to life back home. It's also an inferior retelling of the 1946 post-World War II masterpiece "The Best Years of Our Lives."

Five years after the Iraq war began, with the end date anyone's guess, movies keep on coming.

"Stop-Loss," from MTV Films, hits theaters March 28. The plot has an Army war hero ordered back to duty in Iraq after his tour is finished. "In the Valley of Elah," which earned Tommy Lee Jones an Oscar nomination, has a twisted plot involving the murder of a soldier who served in Iraq.

This war has come to TV, too, with the Lifetime series "Army Wives."

Makers of toys and video games are also cashing in. A stroll through the Toys R Us store near Everett Mall found G.I. Joe action figures, and Freedom Force troop carriers and helicopters dominating aisle 6C.

G.I. Joe has a formidable competitor in Real Heroes figures from America's Army -- packaging tells us the toys are the "Official U.S. Army Action Figure." The series features actual soldiers who have "rendered distinguished services in the Global War on Terrorism."

For $4.99 you get a plastic likeness of Army Sgt. 1st Class Gerald Wolford, of the 82nd Airborne Division, and a trading card. A sticker on the package urges buyers to download a free PC game, "America's Army."

At www.americasarmy.com, there are links to U.S. Army information, profiles of real soldiers, and information from the Army for parents whose children are interested in military careers.

Video games give kids a graphic, explosive look at simulated combat, with the Middle East as a background. "Frontlines: Fuel of War," for Xbox 360, takes players into a global war over oil. It's rated T for teen and has warnings of "Blood, Language, Violence." Activision's "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" promises players "sophisticated technology" and "superior firepower."

There's an immediacy to the pop-culture war that wasn't around in my childhood. Films about Vietnam didn't appear on screens until several years after the war's end in 1975. "Coming Home," with Jon Voight as a paralyzed Vietnam veteran, came out in 1978, along with "The Deerhunter," about steelworker friends sent off to Vietnam. "Apocalypse Now" appeared the following year.

The 1980s brought "Platoon," "Full Metal Jacket" and "Born on the Fourth of July."

In his book "The Afterlife of America's War in Vietnam," Gordon Arnold, a professor at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Mass., wrote about how film images of Vietnam have colored the way Americans think about that war.

He's now seeing stories of Iraq told on film before the war's outcome is known.

"There is an instant reaction now to events as they happen. That's true of war and peace, scandal, whatever," said Arnold, 53, who teaches media and politics at the liberal arts college.

"The best movies about the Vietnam War came out quite a while after," he said. "Platoon," he added, was well received by many veterans. "It told the story from a soldier's point of view, and presented a moral dilemma."

He doubts we'll see a masterpiece movie of the Iraq war anytime soon.

"There is such complexity, there's still an emotional overload," Arnold said. "It takes a lot of time to process it. We're living the events."



Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.