The Pacific

[nacho]

Okay.  Episode one is March 14th.  

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0374463/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pacific_%28miniseries%29

http://www.hbo.com/the-pacific/index.html

If it's even half as good as Band of Brothers, it'll be the event of the decade.

I've read two of the four books it's inspired by...great stuff.  We get the grueling attack of Guadalcanal, which takes up the first three parts.  Episode list also shows a Peleliu arc, which was another fucking brutal campaign: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Peleliu

Way back when, there was talk of following the 1st Marine Div. a la Band of Brothers through the endless, stalemate slogfest of the Pacific War.  Looks like it's been boiled down to just key actions.  But, really, you could do ten parts just in Guadalcanal and it would be great. So no problem.

[Cassander]

i've heard this one is going to be more gung-ho America and less war is hell than band of brothers.  we need more dramas about American Expeditionary Forces in Mexico!

[nacho]

We do... Which is the best of both of those worlds, eh?

[nacho]

Oh, and Pacific War has to be more gung ho.  That's the theater where the "greatest generation" cut their teeth.  Europe was a sitzkrieg until 1944.  But we were throwing cannon fodder against immobile Japanese lines for years before that. 

There's a great graphic somewhere of the progression of the war.  Hitler's holdings in Europe and Africa start to shrink in 1942, almost as fast as he can expand them.  The Japanese Empire just slowly inches back.  The Nazi's are dead and gone and we're still massing a million men in Okinawa preparing for an invasion of Japan, and their Chinese holdings had just begun to crumble.  They could have gone conditional surrender in spring 1945 (which we would have gladly accepted) and "Japan" would stretch from Okinawa to Burma, and from Manchuria to Sumatra.

So, of course, the American viewpoint (and the whole reason we got into the war) is the Pacific.  We still believe ourselves to be a "Pacific power."  It's Manifest Destiny.  Go West, Young Man.  War in Europe, Peace in America.

[Cassander]

i'm sure all of that will be subtly handled in the show, and not be about a bunch of men crying in tunnels. 

[nacho]

And...we're disappointed a bit. It's no Band of Brothers.  Half of the first episode was weird homey sappy shit, and Guadalcanal's early days seemed rushed.  Such a great battle, with so many cool things -- the Navy vanishing in the night, the brilliant pillow defense on the part of the Japs -- kind of raced through.  We basically get a week's worth of desperate action and guerrilla fuckery thrown together in 20 minutes, with a battle sequence designed more to wow than tell a story, and a weird moment with a Japanese officer having a river-wading meltdown.  More like a pastiche of images cobbled painfully together.  And clumsy attempts at Thin Red Line poetry.

[Cassander]

ah, but my baby boomer co-workers went apeshit about it this morning.  you need to realize that you're in between two demographics: the stupefied, Team America older crowd and the college age to late 20s WWII hobbyists. 

i seriously listened to one of my co-workers try to explain why the Japanese had no concept of honor in war like the Europeans and Americans did and how he felt it's shameful that some people today collect samurai swords (or replicas) because they were used to behead americans.  I wanted to unload on him with all this new knowledge I've acquired about Stalin (and the wartime brits, for that matter) but it's no use, really.  he'd been taught by his dad since he was born that the japanese were savages and that Nixon just got a bum deal.  He's beyond convincing of anything. 

sorry.  ranted there.  But, yeah.  I don't think the goal of the Pacific is to be anything more than showy.

[nacho]

Tell him how it was the custom for US soldiers to collect ears from Japanese bodies and dry them and string them together into necklaces.  And how the number one gift mailed back to loved ones was Japanese skulls.

That's the thing about Pacific, though.  It's clearly geared towards those folks.  People who have no sense of the history, and who don't care.  And the first half is all a tale of these boys leaving their posh suburban homes (which are surrounded by rural paradise woodlands) in their Rolls Royces and shaking hands with dad and saying I'm off to war and so on.  Like how the Brits make fun of the Victorians these days mixed in with the role reversal bravado talk of Slater and his dad in Heathers.  Hi son!  How was your day!

Now, the demographic argument doesn't work, because Band of Brothers wasn't like this and it was a hit.

But, then, the Pacific War is a bit closer to the bone for America. We've made the Nazis a sort of comical enemy in the last 20 years or so.  WAIT FOR ZEE CREAM!

[Cassander]

i haven't seen the Pacific yet, so I can't compare the two.  suffice it to say I feel like we've been stroking this WWII hard-on for 60+ years and it's time to call our physician. 

[Cassander]

Tell him how it was the custom for US soldiers to collect ears from Japanese bodies and dry them and string them together into necklaces.  And how the number one gift mailed back to loved ones was Japanese skulls.

oh, yeah, and like I said, the truth doesn't matter.  the education has taken place, and anything that's brought up now either has to jive with the accepted beliefs or just deflect away into the ether.  just another neo-con who doesn't realize that if the country operated the way he wanted it to, he'd be shot dead within a week. 

[nacho]

People like that make me start web blogs under an assumed name.

[nacho]

"Howdy Rutiger!  It's me, your neighbor, Winston Moneyworth III.  I was just walking to the store when I saw this church and thought I'd stop in and pray for America!"

Tonight on: The Pacific.

[Matt]

Here's a good essay on World War 2 as it existed in the collective imaginations of the people then and now.

http://leesandlin.com/articles/LosingTheWar.htm