July 11, 2011 19:41 Intellect/JWCS Page-223 JWCS-4-2-Proof-1 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 JWCS 4 (2) pp. 223–234 © Intellect Ltd 2011 Journal of War and Culture Studies Volume 4 Number 2 © Intellect Ltd 2011. Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/jwcs.4.2.223_1 THOMAS ÆRVOLD BJERRE University of Southern Denmark Authenticity and war junkies: Making the Iraq War real in films and TV series KEYWORDS war films World War II Vietnam Iraq authenticity war junkies ABSTRACT This article examines some of the important changes in the films (and TV series) about the Iraq War. Focus will be on the combat films: Brian De Palma’s Redacted (2007), Nick Broomfield’s Battle for Haditha (2007), HBO’s mini-series Generation Kill (Simon 2008), Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker (2008) and Paul Greengrass’s Green Zone (2010). The films break from tradition by dismissing both the mythic heroism that pervades World War II films and the disillusionment of many Vietnam War films. A shared trait in the films and TV series is a striving for authenticity and a tendency associated with this: the depiction of American soldiers as war junkies. What has become of the noble intentions, the ideas of freedom and democracy, once linked with the US military? Without judging, the films depict the new generation of American soldiers, raised in a historical vacuum, as young men who see war as just another extreme sport. The American war film hails back to the beginning of cinema. As a genre it has been instrumental in shaping Americans’ ideas about their nation’s his- tory and their role in it. Today, most people probably associate the genre with World War II and the Vietnam War. The World War II films, both the propagan- distic and patriotic productions from the 1940s and 1950s as well as the cycle that emerged at around the millennium, are about ‘the good war’, where the 223 Copyright Intellect 2011 Do Not Distribute