Over in my last post, I gave an overview of killology and my current thoughts on both the science and the 2 seminal works on the subject. This time around, I’ll be using killology in the sense of breaking down a kill made by a theatrical or cinematic character.

For the purposes of this piece, a kill is considered what happens when one character actively takes the life of another. No leaving someone to die, no ordering someone killed (though these facets may get explored in a later piece), this is to explore someone who takes action themselves to end another’s life.

I’m going to try and avoid following any particular acting style here, regarding this less as a step-by-step process and more of a list of things worth keeping in mind. We’re also focusing on the act instead of the person to break away from both the idea that a “killer” is a certain type of person as opposed to someone who committed an action, as well as the rigid sheep/sheepdog/wolf categories of sheepdog theory.

A cinematic or theatrical kill consists of four parts: The decision, the circumstance, the action effects, and the aftermath effects.

THE DECISION

Based on decision, there are three kinds of kills: A rational kill, an instinctual kill, and anundecided kill.

In a rational kill, the killer actively and consciously considers the circumstances surrounding the kill before making the decision.  The killer might not consider all circumstances, and might or might not consider them very carefully, but the killer will make such considerations before the decision to kill is made.

A rational kill that is unlawful would be considered a premeditated murder.

Theatrical examples: Hamlet’s killing of Claudius, Clarence’s murder from Richard III

In an Instinctual kill, the decision happens as a direct result of a particular stimuli, with no conscious consideration leading up to the decision and subsequent action.  If considered unlawful, an Instinctual kill would be considered 2nd-degree murder or a “crime of passion.”

Keep in mind that a kill that happens quickly is not an Instinctual Kill by default. Say a commando enters a building with rules of engagement to kill any armed person not a member of their team, then an armed man jumps out of the closet and the commando shoots and kills him. Despite its speed, it is considered a rational kill, as there is significant conscious thought before the decision.

Theatrical examples: Romeo’s killing of Tybalt. (1)

In an Undecided kill, the decision is either not made at all or made to kill someone besides the intended victim. In other words, an accidental or negligent kill.

Theatrical examples: Hamlet’s killing of Laertes, Tybalt’s killing of Mercutio(2), any number of “taking a bullet for someone else” scenarios.

THE CIRCUMSTANCES

Circumstances will sound familiar to the dramaturgically inclined among us. It examines a lot of the same cultural, religious, and socioeconomic ground that happens in the analysis of any scripted world. But Circumstances here revolve around reactions to the kill.

Tangible rewards and punishments

These are the various consequences of a kill: the legal process including fines, jail terms, and likelihood of arrest and conviction, what government officials, religious authorities, and the character’s employer are likely to do, and the economic ramifications  (legal defense, loss of employment and the like) of all of the above are. This also includes rewards such as medals, bounties, and commendations.

Intangible rewards and punishments

Intangibles fall under unofficial, individual reactions. How would the character’s family, romantic interests, coworkers, and passersby react in response to the killing? Would the kill increase or decrease their social status? reputation? sexual attractiveness?

The character’s thoughts

The character’s own thoughts come into play with what they believe concerning the kill they consider. Bear in mind A) what the character would or would not admit to another, or even themselves, B) what they believe the result of the kill would be, regardless of what the more likely scenario actually is and C) what the character hasn’t considered in regards to their own opinion. After all, how many people sit down and seriously contemplate how they feel about killing someone?

These thoughts can and often do intertwine with other circumstances mentioned. Hamlet’s refusal to kill Claudius at prayer may be considered an intangible reward/punishment (what the predominant faith believes will become of Claudius’ soul should he die in a state of grace), but it also stems from Hamlet’s personal desire to see Claudius experience prolonged suffering as opposed to simply die at his hands.

general vs specific

When looking at all of the above, bear in mind the difference between a kill in general terms and the specific kill committed by the character. Relationship between killer and killed, social status of killer and killed, method used, and cause to take deadly action all influence the circumstances surrounding the kill.

THE ACTION EFFECTS

Action effects cover the physiological state of the character leading up to, during, and immediately after the kill. Current science does not know why certain effects happen to certain people and not to others. What is known is that the effects shown below do happen on a frequent basis.

((Side note: the Color Condition Code

I could write a whole piece just on the possible theatrical applications of the color code(and might). In a killogical sense, the code developed by Cooper and expanded on by Grossman tracks a state of readiness, with accompanying tracking of heart rate, blood pressure, and motor coordination.

Plot the character’s condition using the code through the entire sequence that features the kill. Keep in mind that the character does not have to follow a linear path from white to yellow to orange and so on. The character may or may not skip steps altogether, or enter the scene in a different condition than usual. Tracking the character’s condition through the act of the killing while exploring the action effects can give us a rough framework for the character’s physiological and psychological state during that time frame. ))

time dilation

Time dilation is when the character’s perception of time alters during a combat situation. Time may seem to speed up, slow down, or both.

Cinematically, we’re most commonly accustomed to time dilation in the form of slow motion. Diegetic time dilation is rarely shown explicitly, but it does happen (3).

Having experienced this one myself, my pet theory on time dilation is that the sensory input comes in too fast for the brain to process, resulting in the fighter’s perception of time slowing down. This is similar to a high-speed camera taking many more frames per second than normal, which becomes a slow-motion shot when played back. The fighter may well be moving extremely fast, but will experience it in slow motion until processing catches up to input.

sensory alteration

Going about in our day-to-day lives, our bodies tune out a lot of our sensory input to prevent our minds from being overloaded with the nuances of what is around us. This is aided by modern marketing’s constant fight over the attention of consumers, which attempt to drown each other out even as people actively or otherwise tune their messages out as well.

In a deadly encounter, the human body opens up the senses in an attempt to gain as much input as possible, whether from the viewpoint of a predator (what bit of information will let me catch lunch?) or prey (what bit of environmental knowledge will keep me from becoming lunch?). The trouble with this is that the little-used instincts of the body now have to decide and emphasize what it thinks is important.

The results can be selective hearing (not hearing gunfire while hearing the ratcheting sound of a gun’s action and the clinking of brass hitting the ground), selective vision (not seeing the face of an opponent, but seeing their weapon hand detailed enough to know the length of the fingernails and engravings on finger rings, visual distortions (especially tunnel vision), and imbalanced reaction to touch (ignoring serious wounds while reacting to simple cuts and bruises).

THE AFTERMATH EFFECTS

Aftermath effects follow anywhere from the first few moments to several months or more following a kill.

The important thing to keep in mind when exploring aftermath effects is looking at whether such effects are the result of the kill itself, or the result of surrounding circumstances (sustained wounds, excess adrenaline, an arrest or detainment, deaths of companions in the same scene, ect).

Memory

As a result of the altered senses described in combat effects, it isn’t unusual for someone experiencing a life-or-death fight to have gaps in their memory, especially if specific aspects are looked for. It would easily be possible for someone to not remember the face of someone who wounded them, but remember what their hands or weapon looked like. Sequence of events, number of shots fired, and any dialogue may be remembered differently or even forgotten by a character.

Interactions with others

The heightened sense of readiness and awareness of the killing character do not die with the one killed. Depending on the circumstances, the character may remain in a high color code condition (red, black, or gray) for several minutes following a kill.

Following the scene, the character’s interactions will likely be colored by the circumstances of the kill. How the character chooses to continue their life will govern their behavior to a large extent.

Keep in mind that there is a major difference between the character coming to terms with their kill and themselves, and the character coming to terms with the reactions of others to that kill. A character who is perfectly content with the kill they made within their own mind may still be reticent in discussing it among colleagues, friends, and family members. They may also face various social pressure to speak of the kill in certain ways as opposed to others.

Fatigue and sleep

Combat is a physically intense activity.  Prolonged fighting, especially in lethal scenarios, can easily lead to exhaustion.  Once a character’s body is convinced that the need to keep in a fighting state is over, heavy fatigue is extremely common, and sleep comes easily (which in some circumstances can be its own danger).

Sleep reactions in the days and months following a kill are most commonly depicted in two forms. The first is a “light sleeper” mentality, when the character maintains a certain state of readiness while sleeping, the better to react if another deadly encounter happens. The second are the adverse reactions of insomnia and nightmares.

Appetite and Libido

Evolutionary biology claims that human beings have four main drives: the need to fight, flee, feed, and fuck, respectively. While it’s not uncommon for a lack of appetite for food or sex to follow a deadly encounter (particularly ones that overwhelmingly disturb the character), it may be even more common for a character in the aftermath of a killing to crave both.

As far as food goes, the high-intensity nature of combat can easily be considered to drive up the metabolism as well as the appetite. This is especially true if the character purged themselves (from either end) before, during, or after the kill.

As far as sex is concerned, “combat as an aphrodisiac” may well join the pile of whole new articles I need to write. Some may consider it an evolutionary impulse: an instinct to breed before one dies. For other characters, it may be a need for intimacy following a traumatic event. And for others, it may be a need to burn off excess energy following their hyped-up state.

((A side note on PTSD: Once more, the subject for a whole ‘nother article. But as someone who has experienced combat but has never had PTSD, I have intentionally excluded its effects in this article. Aside from my own personal inexperience, I have been rather disturbed by the use of PTSD as a cheap source of drama in the past decade or so of cinema. After seeing comrades experience it and having been repeatedly tested for it, I can honestly say that medical science has only scratched the surface of what PTSD is and how it affects trauma survivors. With our understanding of what it exactly it is so premature, we do our survivors grave injustice by depicting it as a one-note way to raise dramatic stakes. They deserve better, and so do our audiences.))

Without going on for more pages than I care to think of, this is a rough guideline to consider when depicting a character’s kill. There are no real cut-and-dried solutions, only ideas from what has come before.

What we remember from characters is what we remember from people: the things that make them unique in how they go through the world: The way they talk, the way they walk, the way they kiss. The way one kills is as unique as the rest of their actions, and should be examined accordingly.

~Jay

Endnotes:

(1)Depending on interpretation, this can be argued, as Romeo does have time to speak, which implies time to think. But the short time frame of the scene combined with Romeo’s “either thou, or I, or both must go with him” convinces me that nothing in Romeo’s thoughts is actually considering the ramifications of killing Tybalt, making the kill itself an Instinctual one.

(2)Varies by interpretation. In this instance, I’m going to take Mercutio’s line “I was hurt under your arm” and roll with it as a killing blow intended for Romeo that catches Mercutio instead.

(3) Most notably in the recent movie Dredd, where the lead villain deals in a drug that alters the user’s perception of time.

Some of my colleagues have been asking me recently about Killology. By that I mean the relatively new branch of science formed by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman (ret) and described in the books On Killing and On Combat (the latter co-authored with Loren W. Christensen). It’s been a couple of years since I’d studied either book in depth, so I went back to go over both for the purpose of this piece.

This is actually the first part in a two-part series. Here I’m going to give an overview of killology as described in the aforesaid books, as well as my own commentary on the science in general, some benefits and flaws, and things I found interesting, odd, or otherwise worth mentioning. Part II will be a look at using killology for theatrical or cinematic performance purposes.

Note that for the purposes of this piece, I’m looking purely at what’s written in On Killingand On Combat, not in any supplemental materials. If that makes this more of a book review than a look on the philosophy, so be it.

Killology’s basic ideas boil down to these:

- Killing is not necessarily murder. There are circumstances when taking a human life is the necessary and right thing to do.

- The vast majority of humanity has an inherent aversion to killing, however…

- … said aversion can be overcome with mental training and conditioning, and has been in various ways over the centuries.

Grossman’s works have been studied extensively by the military, law enforcement agencies, and others who study the act of, for lack of a better term, “good kills.” His study of what happens to a human being during the taking of another human life, in the physical, mental, and psychological sense, has been put to good use among those who have had to do so in recent years.

Grossman’s work (particularly On Killing) has included two major side digressions:

- The first explores the rise in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder since WWI and the various factors surrounding that.

- The second is a movement against depictions of violence in various forms of media. Although his deepest disdain is reserved for first-person-shooter video games, violent film and television does not escape his ire. As someone whose career involves designing violent scenes for various media, I’m neither going to pretend I don’t have a dog in that fight nor dwell on the subject. I will merely note that Grossman’s views on the matter are expressed rather bluntly in his texts and leave it at that.

The thing to keep in mind when reading either On Killing or On Combat is that killology is a brand spanking NEW branch of science. Before this, killing was studied either in the context of battlefield effectiveness or murder. In essence, Grossman’s work is to studying killing what Alfred Kinsey did for studying sex. That said, just as Kinsey had some serious gaps in his data and work that went unexplored, I think Grossman’s work is just the tip of the iceberg. The next 20-odd years are going to be interesting times for the field.

Out of the major talking points today, I think Universal Human Phobia is going to be the most changed in the future. While aspects of it may be current sociological phenomenon, too much of history is written in bloodshed for me to believe such a thing to be truly universal. Forgive me for using a Barbarism (hell, if anyone’s gonna, it may as well be me), but in the safety of civilization, we too easily forget humanity’s capacity for bloodlust, savagery, and brutality. And modern America has been civilized for quite a long time.

Of the books, On Killing is more raw in form, and it shows. It’s the culmination of years of research, and it reads like the introductory textbook it has become by default.

I’ll admit, on my initial readings in years past I was struck, as many fighters do, with a sense of “finally, someone who understands me!” With the passing of years and a critical eye, a good bit of that remains, but not enough to obscure the flaws.

What became a rather constant irritation to me is the constant cherry-picking of data to support the theory of what Grossman calls “universal human phobia.” (The inherent resistance towards killing one’s fellow humans found in the vast majority of the population)

Again, I’m giving the man full credit for building a new branch of science, and it’s difficult to get significant data on this sort of thing. That said, his historical theories rely very, very heavily on anecdotal evidence (particularly Marshall and Du Pique). A particular habit of his is to rattle off a list of plausible theories for a particular phenomenon, only to declare later that it MUST be what supports universal human phobia.

Case in point: the multiply-loaded rifles of Gettysburg. Grossman mentions an anecdote where 12K weapons recovered after the Battle of Gettysburg were found not only loaded, but loaded with multiple rounds. Grossman makes the case that most of these weapons were left by soldiers who (not wanting to kill anyone) did not fire, but loaded, aimed, mimed firing without actually doing so, and kept up with the rest of the rifle drill along with the rest of their unit. This left multiple loads in the weapon. Later on, he makes an extensive case for conditioning (in the Pavlovian sense) as being the key to overcoming human resistance to kill. In particular, the use of shooting drill among the mass-formation infantry common during the American Civil War.

So which is it?

I can buy tens of thousands of soldiers being able to shoot by peer pressure and intense multiple-count drill in training being used to overcome the universal human phobia he describes. But several thousand managing to not only break their institutional conditioning, but recondition themselves to go through the motions without following through? That I don’t buy.

I find it much more plausible that the proper response to a misfire was for the shooter to remain with the rest of their rank, going through the drill motions and firing in volley until the fire at will command was given. There’s a laundry list of unreliability problems with pre-integrated cartridge weapons out there that could play a part in how many loaded weapons were recovered from that battlefield, be it bad primers, clogged nipples, bad powder, hell, bad weather could have been a factor (heavy rains both preceded and followed the battle, though the first few days of the battle were mostly partly cloudy). But Grossman’s insistence continues to be that universal human phobia combined with human ingenuity met to allow thousands to “get away with” not shooting anyone.

Another aspect of this shows during his crusade against media violence. His claim is that violence in America is skyrocketing, and the murder rate is being held down artificially by advances in medical technology. He therefore uses the aggravated assault rate as an indicator for the increasingly violent actions among the U.S. Population, noting a fivefold increase between 1960 and 1993. (FBI’s Unified Crime report, Aggravated Assaults per 100K people. 86.1 in 1960 vs. 441.9 in 1992). But that argument falls apart in more recent history, as the aggravated assault rate has dropped ever since then, being less than half of what it was in 1993 (252.3 in 2010). I’d venture to go even farther than that, arguing that fights which wouldn’t have resulted in charges (and therefore not counted) are currently doing so. Schoolyard scuffles alone are becoming arrest-worthy charges in ways that weren’t happening just 20 years ago, though I only have anecdotal evidence of that.

To its credit, On Killing does explore a lot of the less often examined aspects of a kill: distance, instinctual responses, group dynamics and an equivalent of the stages of grief psychological model to examine the aftereffects of a killing upon the killer’s psyche. I don’t discredit the book its breadth, but I will say many conclusions seem not only jumped to but tackled far enough for a first down.

On Combat is a more refined book than its earlier cousin, not quite as preachy as its predecessor and less concerned with exploring why people kill as examining the effects that it has on those who kill, whether they be conscious or reflexive, immediate or lingering.

Here is where the limits of killology as it stands now aren’t quite defined but alluded to. Each examination of a lethal force scenario (potential or fulfilled) examine the recorded direct and side effects without trying to draw them up into some breathtaking conclusion. The Cooper color codes are used more as a useful yardstick than an absolute set of limits. Physiological effects (purging, auditory exclusion, memory distortions, effects on the libido) are all listed and examined (occasionally with percentages of known incidents, for the statistically-minded).  Responses, treatments, and preventative measures against PTSD comprise a large portion of the latter half, under the mindset of caring for those who do violence on behalf of others (soldiers, cops, those defending themselves and/or others, and so on). Reading through the various scenarios, I found myself often thinking “yeah, that happened,” rather more often than not.

Where On Combat begins to really quirk my eyebrows is in two places: the constant harping on what Grossman has determined are the necessary elements needed to prevent and treat PTSD, and the (to me) overly simplistic nature of Sheepdog theory.

For those who haven’t heard of sheepdog theory, here’s a link.

Overall, I think there’s a sound idea in there somewhere. But it’s too cut and dried.

I laud his crusade in wanting society in general to treat its warriors better than they have in the last several decades. I particularly laud his mention of those warriors who have had to fight and kill, and then have returned with no psychological trauma, but still face the social stigmas associated with PTSD. After all, who would endure such things and NOT turn out damaged? What was wrong with them in the first place? The idea that nothing is wrong with them was a welcome breath of fresh air.

That said, our limited understanding of what PTSD actually is, let alone any sort of consensus on how treatment and prevention should happen just makes his constant drumbeating about what he believes has to be done more of an annoyance than a call to action in my ears.

As for the sheepdog theory, 2% of the population being the only ones capable of violence? I don’t buy it. It feeds into a heroes, villains and bystanders dynamic more useful to a comic book than reality. Oh, there is a paragraph that mentions this, but it’s buried in the middle of a chapter beating the reader over the head with the idea that sheepdogs are the modern versions of romantic-myth knights of old. While it’s useful as a fable, as far as science goes, Sheepdog theory looks like one of Grossman’s Kinsey moments: he’s on to something important here. What I can’t tell right now is how much or how accurate.

Killology on the whole does exactly what it claims to: looks at killing beyond both the cold judgement of murder and the glorious hails of war stories. There’s a lot more to be learned, and it’s going to take a long time.

It’s a nice start though.

I’ve got a special spot in my thoughts for Henry V.

When going through MEPS (inbound processing before shuffling off to boot camp) I had a paperback copy to keep handy through the various points of waiting. At some point or another I took my “address book,” (A scrap of paper with the addresses of those you’d care to write to. One of the few items I’d be able to have with me during my stay on the island) and scribbled St. Crispian’s Day on the back of it. The paperback I left on a stack of magazines for the next soul passing through. The speech I had memorized by the end of the second week.

Shakespeare isn’t quite the chosen poet of warriors (Kipling likely holds that particular title), but he’s up there. And if he’s been read and/or seen beyond what High School required, Henry V likely makes it near the top of the list.

If I had to take a guess as to why, I’d have to say that its because everyone whose found themselves fighting a war has a counterpart in Henry V’s world. International power brokers who play chess on the world like Henry and Charles. Stoic professional ass-kickers like Exeter. Bearing-impaired shitbags like Bardolph, joined up for loot, adventure, or lack of anything else to do. Wide-eyed boots like The Boy, with no clue what they’re getting into but knowing it’s the most exciting thing they’ve seen in their young lives and not about to let it pass them by.

And then there’s Mistress Quickly. The bit that always hit me hard about Branagh’s film version has dick to do with Hartfleur or Agincourt. It’s watching Quickly seeing loved ones walking out the door, knowing there’s not a damn thing she can do about it except make sure the tears don’t fall until they’re out of earshot.

There’s someone in Henry V that resonates with anyone that’s fought in a war, or had a loved one do so.

But while Henry V resonates with fighting a war, it’s Troilus and Cressida that resonates with living in a war.

I’d only occasionally thought of Troilus before being cast in a production earlier this year. I’d known the gist of it (Romeo & Juliet-ish set against the background of The Iliad) but hadn’t gotten into the story much. The big exception being using Tersities’ “reason you all suck” speech as one of the Machine Gun Shakespeare pieces.

Where Henry’s war has a progression from England to Hartfleur to Agincourt and beyond, Troilus’ war is stuck in Troy, and has been for years. Boredom and bullshit lead to bad decisions all round. It’s one of the most cynical works in the Shakespeare canon. And to an OIF/OEF veteran’s eyes, it looks like Shakespeare embracing the suck.

It’s got moronic higher ups (the entire Greek contigent), the one guy with a clue being unable to get anything useful done (Ulysses), the one guy incapable of shutting the fuck up (Ulysses again), Coming up with conterproductive bullshit as a distraction from all the suck (the exhibition fight), professional shitbags (Thersites), good people dropping their packs when the bullshit becomes too much (Achilles), and a really hideous toll taken on relationships (the titular couple in particular, but it also affects Hector/Andromache and Achilles/Patroclus to an extent).

Even tiny plot points like stumbling around a camp in the dark trying to find Achilles’ tent reminded me of transition quonoset huts in places like Al Taq and Bagram, which all look the same and make trying to stumble back to your own cot after nightfall a mild annoyance.

By the end of the play, nothing substantial has been accomplished but a body count. The suck carries on, as does the war.

For the OIF/OEF vets that read or see both, I personally think Henry V resonates more like the war we fought, while Troilus feels like the one we had to live through.

~J

With the 237th Birthday of the United States Marine Corps yesterday (oorah), this week we’re looking at one of the Corps’ iconic personal weapons: the KA-BAR fighting knife. The Kbar knife company, now KA-BAR Knives, Inc, (the trademarked name is actually KA-BAR, including the all capital letters) was around for a while before creating the blade we all can recognize. A rather large group of Pennsylvania cutlers formed the Tidioute Cutlery Company in 1898.

Company legend claims that a fur trapper wrote to the company praising one of their blades. The trapper was accosted by a bear when his gun jammed, leaving him armed only with a knife. Said trapper proceeded to take down and kill the wounded bear with his knife. However, the trapper’s penmanship was kind of lousy, so that all that could be read from the phrase “kill a bear” was “K a bar.” With a name and story like that coming out of nowhere, the company saw a winning brand name (though they wouldn’t change the actual company name until after the war. They had shit to do, like make a few metric asstons of knives.)

The fighting knife commonly called the USMC KA-BAR was born in the beginning of WWII. Pearl Harbor kick-started an American wartime production machine that needed a laundry list of gear and needed it yesterday. WWI-era trench knives were used for this initially, and while they were decent enough weapons, they were lousy as tools, and both were needed. For a while, a stiletto-looking copy of the British Fairburn-Sykes fighting knife was used by Marine Raiders, but they proved even more useless as tools. As usual, supply was the lumbering paperwork dinosaur it’s always been, and troops often bought their own knives, usually hunting styles.

Eventually the supply pogs got their shit together and took data and suggestions from veterans of the Battle of Guadacanal for a design that would become the K-bar. The initial bits were all there: The clip point, almost like a scaled-down Bowie knife, the small crossguard, stacked leather handle, and thick pommel. There were a few early design flaws, almost all of which revolved around “it breaks too easily with (insert feature here), let’s fix it.” While not all Kbars were from KA-BAR, it was the company that bore the knife’s name that was generally agreed to have made the best.

Then, as now, the Kbar was issued first and foremost to warriors armed with pistols, carbines, and machine guns (riflemen already had bayonets). Today, it is most currently issued to S.A.W. gunners in the USMC.

There have been surprisingly few variants in design over the years. One of the most interesting is called the Stone skull & cobra knife. One of the design problems that cropped up in the Pacific campaign was the leather handle rotting after prolonged exposure to seawater. Enter E.W. Stone, Sr., a sailor aboard the USS Holland. After several Marines and Sailors commented on the problem, Stone used scrap aluminum from downed Japanese fighter planes to form new handles for these blades. Checkered and hand-molded grips based on snakeskin patterns helped assure they wouldn’t slip from the user’s hand in wet weather, and distinct skull-shaped pommels made for useful percussion tools & weapons.

Stone knives are one of the more obscure bits of WWII memorabilia, with a number of fakes and copies in circulation. Stone’s son Bill maintains a website with some nice looks at the originals.

As for my personal Kbar? I have 3, actually. One is in my bugout bag. One was my Grandfather’s from his time in the Pacific theater during WWII. One was a gift from my little brother, which I took into combat (and at one point used to disassemble a particularly belligerent grenade launcher that had gone down at an inopportune moment, but that’s another story) and is kept at hand to this day.

So that’s a look at the Kbar. Happy Veteran’s Day, Semper Fi.

Watching an onstage (or onscreen) gunfight happening can get very frustrating, very fast. Ask just about any operator, and they can probably name a film where they saw a gunfight and their response was a variation on the tune of “fucking bullshit! That never fucking happens in real life!”

I’ll admit to being annoyed at an action movie using the “have a star shoot a few blanks, have a few stunties fall down, instant badass” formula. It has a time and place, I’ll admit, but it just feels lazy.

The unfortunate fly in that jam is that it’s all too often not a case of impossibility, but (occasionally ridiculously) high improbability.

Bullets can (and occasionally do) go damn near anywhere. The axiom that covers this is as follows:

“Firearms are precision instruments by design. Humans are not precision shooters by design.”

There are exceptions, but overall, this applies. The action of a firing gun and the travel of a bullet to the target is a known, quantifiable, and trackable phenomenon that lies well within the boundaries of Newtonian and Einsteinian physics. Then you put humans into the mix and the fucking quantum shows up.

(I realize most of my work is aimed at actors, and I’m bringing in math and science. I’ll try to make it as painless as possible here)

The basic idea of that is that a firearm is designed to send a tiny projectile in a specific path in a specific way, and every variable that a shooter, a target, and the environment brings into the mix affects that path.

Take a laser pointer. Aim it at a spot on the wall. Now see how small a movement it takes to move the dot a foot to one side. Multiply that by all the excitement happening in a gunfight.

(And people don’t believe me when I say pistol shooting is a lot like smallsword)

There is training that compensates for this. But even that only goes so far.

So, getting back to the title of the piece, how this affects performing a theatrical or cinematic gunbattle. There’s a multitude of ways gunshot wounds (hereafter GSW’s) can occur and effect. But for acting purposes, we can distill these down into 5 categories. Organized by severity.

Instant Kill: This is one of the most debatable kinds of GSW’s, mostly for arguments over the definitions of “Death,” “life,” and “instant.” Truly “instant” death for purposes of this category involves massive trauma to the brain stem upon impact of the projectile. In short, the bullet hits a plum-sized target inside the skull, and everything stops.

Instant Shock: Often mistaken for an instant kill, Instant Shock in this case is a GSW that causes enough damage on impact to cause instantaneous loss of consciousness. Short version: getting shot causes enough damage for the victim to pass out instantly and die soon after.

Disabling wound: A wound that causes the loss of use of an extremity or mobility. Major joints and the spinal column are all targets that can result in a disabling wound. Short version: a GSW that renders a limb (or more than one limb) unusable.

Noticed wound: A wound that doesn’t cause loss of consciousness or use of an extremity, but does cause trauma, blood loss, ect. The most “playable” of GSW’s, as the victim is able to continue the scene with the widest range of possible choices, but still noticeably reacts to the wound as it occurs and through the remainder of the scene.

Unnoticed wound: The wound occurs, but is not visibly reacted to by the victim. This may be the result of adrenaline, shock, a supernatural nature to the character, or other reasons. The audience may see the shot occur, or it may be a reveal later in the scene.

As with anything involving firearms, introducing one rule will summon a legion of exceptions, but I’d like to think this at least provides some sort of broad, useable generalization.

Hey folks,

Entirely “real world” post for this one. If you’re here for the stunts, stage combat & action movie stuff, just scroll on past.

…those of you that remained, carry on.

The last couple of months have been an online shitstorm for the U.S. military on multiple fronts.

(not in chronological order)

One mensa candidate (a Staff NCO, no less) decided to wax poetic about Trayvon Martin while on the rifle range. Unspecified punishment.

Then some Army dipshit loses a comrade to an IED blast and takes it upon herself to tell said comrade’s wife that she’s now a widow… on Facebook. Unspecified punishment.

And the blogosphere loses its shit over a Scout-sniper team photo featuring an SS flag. Mercifully, cooler heads prevailed as the team’s higher-ups gave a “put that shit away and never bring it out again.”

One would think that with the educational power and scope of the internet, one could figure out that Scout Snipers, posing in front of a flag that said, “SS,” would realize they stood for the phrase “Scout Snipers,” as opposed to the Schutzstaffel. Then again, that may well fucking be vastly overestimating the average cognizance level of your typical internet user.

((Yes, yes I can use six-syllable words and “fuck” in the same sentence, thank you very much.))

Then a soldier in Afghanistan sends photos of his supposed war buddies posing with corpses and pieces of suicide bombers to the L.A. Times. The Times and the brass do the usual monkey dance of “please don’t publish” “we’re gonna publish just because you asked us not to!” And the internet is presented with posed-for-Facebook pictures of soldiers with pieces of their enemies.

And, lest we forget, video of Marines pissing on dead Taliban show up online.

And I’m not even going into the Qur’an burning bullshit, or the Secret Service prostitutes nonsense, or the Marine getting ad-sepped for talking shit about Obama on Facebook while active duty stupidity.

So, now that I’ve aired some dirty laundry of my comrades, where am I getting at?

One word: crackdown.

I guarantee you that U.S. military units around the world have, over the last few months, gotten word of “don’t let this stupid shit come from YOUR people.” Lectures have been given, PowerPoint rangers have wielded their laptops and spouted their bullet points, and yet another check-in-the-box class, probably with some fucking bullshit title like “social media sensitivity awareness” has already garnered a small commendation for it’s pogalicious author. The latest layer of ass-cover was knitted with precision, every stitch and fucking knot covered and aligned.

In a practical sense, this means that the default setting of saying anything of an active duty military nature online will be boiled down to silence. Yeah, yeah, yeah, OPSEC IS IMPORTANT. The potential embarrassment of your higher-ups shouldn’t be, but it winds up being so (to them, at least).

((Aside: yeah, I have friends that are higher-ups. And they know as much as I do that upper ranks make people political creatures. That’s the only way they last long enough to stay higher-ups. Doesn’t make them any more base or noble, just an aspect of their being. Fuck, “aspect of being?” Fucking liberal arts degree is showing again. I’ll cover that up with some rum later.))

So we hear less stories from the battlefield. We already are. It used to be that online stupidity happened already in the field, and was punished according to higher-ups’ discretion. (read “Just Another Soldier” by Jason Christopher Hartley for a good example of being fucked over for embarrassing your c.o.). Nowadays, incidents like the urination and the SS team photo are coming online well after the warriors in question are out of the battlefield (and in some cases, out of the military entirely) and the shitstorm still ensues.

I’m not going to debate the merits of any of these individual cases((one exception: I believe in treating the bodies of enemy dead with dignity and respect. That said, signing up to be a suicide bomber is probably the most blatant statement of “I-don’t-give-two-fucks-what-happens-to-my-body” that’s humanly possible. You may as well bequeath your un-vaporized bits to the FB photo collage of whoever has to clean up what’s left of your sorry ass. End aside.)), but I will say that this road leads to fewer war stories coming out.

And we don’t have many to begin with. I’ve already written in the past about how student veterans are being actively discouraged from discussing their wartime experiences. That’s only going to get worse as shit like this keeps cropping up.

So, what can you, humble citizen, do to alleviate this? Or at least help it not get worse?

#1: Fucking think. Before you comment, post, resend or what have you, think about what’s going on. And more importantly, think about WHY it’s happening.

#2: Do your fucking research. The Scout-sniper example above could’ve been averted if a few people could’ve stopped to realize something instead of screaming “NAZIS!”

#3: Recognize the actions of an individual as such.

Popping smoke,

~Jay

Let’s get a few things straight first.

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a United States Navy SEAL. Take that for what you will.

I am, however, a United States Marine, a former infantryman, and a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Take that for what you will.

More recently, I left the warrior’s life and took up that of the storyteller. Fight choreographer, actor, weapons specialist, armorer, author, critic, probably a handful more I’m not thinking of right now. Nowadays, and likely for the rest of my days, I tell stories on a computer screen, a video camera, or onstage. Take that for.. you get the fucking point.

Act of Valor is, at least in my experience, a rather unique critter in the cinema world. It’s not the fun-loving early Michael Bay recruiting ad of Top Gun. And it definitely isn’t the sniveling bullshit of a recent Hollywood output that couldn’t put anyone in a modern American uniform without making them a PTSD-riddled victim of the Big Bad Bush or a sadistic baby-eating multiple rapist villain (or both).

Act of Valor‘s story is relatively straightforward: following an element of SEAL Team 7 along the course of a mission to stop a heavy-duty terrorism plot. I’d go so far as to say that the mission, rather than the SEALS, is the main character of the film. To call the SEALS characters may in itself be something of a misnomer: they are portrayed by active-duty SEALS, referred to and credited only by first names (which may or may not be their own. For the record, I personally don’t know, care less, and mildly doubt). We can see their faces, but watching them fade into their roles as part of a single unit is watching them as they are.

These SEALS aren’t actors. And they’re not (insofar as I can see) attempting to play themselves. They do more playing archetypes: members of a SEAL Team rather than any members in specific. This helps from the opening, as we’re spared the action movie cliches of being introduced to the team hillbilly, the team geek, and the other stock characters found in a military-based action film. There’s little to see of a three-act structure, the most bare-bones exposition and mercifully no author avatar-ish speeches on the nature of the world or some such bullshit.

The story moves from action point to action point, pausing only briefly to explain why, and always on the move. The camerawork on the fight scenes gives just enough disorientation to keep the audience unsettled, but never descending into the overedited mess that plagues so many fight sequences in recent films. What struck me was how much it did resonate with actual firefights: the audience knowing just barely enough of what the fuck was going on to keep up with the fighters. Odd angles, bad lighting, gunfire and explosions obscuring dialogue, all of it resonant with actual combat.

If I had to give a glaring exception to these scenes, it would be the soundtrack. The music distracted and took me out of the fights. Just in case anyone was wondering: up-tempo and heavy bass orchestral music doesn’t play during firefights, and that faux-Enya flute-heavy bullshit doesn’t drown out all ambient noise when people you care about die.

The film was made with the full backing of the Department of the Navy, which had final cut privileges of the film itself, and authorized showing the faces of active duty SEALS. (For the curious, this has never happened before. A SEAL’s identity revealed usually means that they’ve either left the teams or are dead). As far as OPSEC goes, the movie neither shows nor discusses actual operations. And with the Navy’s heavy oversight, I doubt classified SEAL tactics were shown. Might deliberate changes have been made? Probably. I’m not going to point any out for you.

Filming the various action scenes involved the SEALS involved planning attack scenarios, with the cameras following them, often in live-fire conditions. I’ve read at least one account of a Canon EOS 5 outfitted with an armor plating over the data card, for the express purpose of a SEAL shooting the camera in the course of a scene, leaving the footage intact.

As I write this, critics are panning Act of Valor across the country. Rotten Tomatoes currently calls the acting “stilted.”

Ahem.

THEY’RE NOT FUCKING ACTORS, YOU MISERABLE FLAMING BAG OF FUCKING DICKS! THEY’RE THE REAL MOTHERFUCKING MCCOY! GROW A FUCKING GENDER-IDENTIFIABLY APROPOS SET OF FUCKING GONADS AND MOTHERFUCKING RECOGNIZE THAT!!!!!!!!!!!

*cough*

Some particular acts of dumbassery below, with responses.

“Employing Navy troops as stars is a clever idea for an action thriller. But the soldiers’ awkward line readings are glaring enough to distract from the potency of the story.” – Claudia Puig, USA TODAY

They’re sailors, not soldiers. Since you’ve ignored that little detail, I’m not surprised you haven’t figured out that they’re not actors.

Roger Ebert spent a paragraph bitching about how he can’t tell performers from characters. The grand high pooh-bah of film criticism, completely missing the point. Stellar.

If I had nothing else good to say about this film, I would praise it for simply allowing modern-day warriors to BE fucking heroes, even though they’d likely kick the ass of anyone who called them such to their faces. The Rotten tomatoes consensus did the most to piss me off, claiming that “a jingoistic attitude that ignores the complexities of war.”

Well, fuck me, RT. But forgive me for reading “ignoring complexities of war” as “not having U.S. service members snivel in their skivvies the way my latte-sipping wannabe intellectual self does at the very fucking thought of coming close to having to do what they do on a regular basis.” Blow me.

I was asked when I came back from the theater how close the battle scenes were to actual firefights. Shy of the music, I’d have to say pretty damn close. Not in the exact details of tactics or sound or movements, but in little details that I can best describe as “could have been.” Little details like gloves chosen and worn by personal preference. One character, in a single shot, had a twitch in their cheek. I remember having an identical one. The little things resonated heavily.

But then again, I’m not a regular audience member. I’m part of the .45% (look it the fuck up). I’m someone in the industry who is sick and fucking tired of being shown on-screen as a monster or a helpless victim time and fucking time again.

In an ideal world, something like Act of Valor might open some eyes. I’m a bit more cynical than that. I saw this film in a packed house opening night, with applause at the end. The spell was broken by some young punks taking a few chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” and some shit-talk about Obama (I wanted to get through the day without hearing about his sorry ass. Oh fucking well). I watched the silhouettes of the punks walking by, one of them with an empty Gatorade bottle…

..And my mind’s eye saw another group of lanky young men with short hair, laughing at some stupid shit or another before business had to be gotten down to.

I can dream of an ideal world, can’t I?