Have you ever pondered the stark realities hidden beneath the veneer of war's glory and honor? Our panelists Jennifer Bouani, Mark Pellegrino, and Jacqueline Schumann join me in dissecting HBO's "The Pacific," peeling back layers of history and the human condition through the lens of this poignant series. We promise an exploration that goes beyond the battlefield, delving into the psychological toll on the Marines and the challenging transition from war to peace. Mark, with his personal connection to the Pacific theater through his stepfather, brings an intimate perspective to the conversation, ensuring our analysis is deeply rooted in authenticity.
War is not just about the conflict; it's about the people, and that's where our discussion leads us. We traverse the landscape of soldiering, from the nuanced relationship between Sledge and Snafu to the cultural portrayals of the Japanese soldiers. The series' ability to juxtapose the romanticized notion of war with its grim underbelly offers endless avenues for examination. Through the character arcs of Leckie, Sledge, and John Basilone, we scrutinize the transformation of these men, shaped by the relentless nature of the Pacific theater, and reflect on the cultural and emotional divides that the series both bridges and exposes.
As we close, we touch on the timeless scars war leaves on humanity, symbolized poignantly in the series finale with the reading from "The Iliad." The conversation about the portrayal of Japanese soldiers' fierce commitment, the dramatic contrast between the combat theaters, and the cultural ramifications of the Allies' response after the war provides a sobering reminder of history's complexities. Through our guests' insights, we grapple with the layered storytelling of "The Pacific" and its attempt to convey the multifaceted nature of American history and the personal sacrifices within it. Join us in honoring the legacy of those who served and in contemplating the impact of their stories on our collective memory.
Have you ever pondered the stark realities hidden beneath the veneer of war's glory and honor? Our panelists Jennifer Bouani, Mark Pellegrino, and Jacqueline Schumann join me in dissecting HBO's "The Pacific," peeling back layers of history and the human condition through the lens of this poignant series. We promise an exploration that goes beyond the battlefield, delving into the psychological toll on the Marines and the challenging transition from war to peace. Mark, with his personal connection to the Pacific theater through his stepfather, brings an intimate perspective to the conversation, ensuring our analysis is deeply rooted in authenticity.
War is not just about the conflict; it's about the people, and that's where our discussion leads us. We traverse the landscape of soldiering, from the nuanced relationship between Sledge and Snafu to the cultural portrayals of the Japanese soldiers. The series' ability to juxtapose the romanticized notion of war with its grim underbelly offers endless avenues for examination. Through the character arcs of Leckie, Sledge, and John Basilone, we scrutinize the transformation of these men, shaped by the relentless nature of the Pacific theater, and reflect on the cultural and emotional divides that the series both bridges and exposes.
As we close, we touch on the timeless scars war leaves on humanity, symbolized poignantly in the series finale with the reading from "The Iliad." The conversation about the portrayal of Japanese soldiers' fierce commitment, the dramatic contrast between the combat theaters, and the cultural ramifications of the Allies' response after the war provides a sobering reminder of history's complexities. Through our guests' insights, we grapple with the layered storytelling of "The Pacific" and its attempt to convey the multifaceted nature of American history and the personal sacrifices within it. Join us in honoring the legacy of those who served and in contemplating the impact of their stories on our collective memory.
Welcome everybody to the viewing room. We are going to be discussing the Pacific, the 2010 HBO series follow up to band of brothers. I have Jennifer Buani, mark Pellegrino and Jack's shuman with me, as always, to dig into the themes, the characters, the acting, the, what it all means and how to help you get more out of your viewing experiences. So I just want to like raise the hands because I don't want to shout it out for you guys who did not see this prior, like when it came out 2010. Who's new to the Pacific? Okay, wow, okay.
Speaker 2:I did not see it, euker.
Speaker 1:I did not see in 2010, but I have seen it several times before. But so if you're not familiar with the Pacific and you know we've done an episode on band of brothers just one quick thing this story is ten episodes, covers, I think, the first, the fifth and the seventh division of the Marine Corps, in their three characters in particular, sledge, lucky and Baselow, and it covers their experiences in Guadalcanal, okinawa, iwo Jima, pellele and a variety of other places in the Japanese Pacific theater of war. So we're gonna talk a little bit about that and how it's all structured. But first we need to go into our thumbs up, thumbs down or Thumbs sideways of your experience, your first or whatever experience of this. So I'll go from on my screen left to right. So that's Jennifer first.
Speaker 2:So I give it a Sideways like sideways Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like I enjoyed it, but I didn't love it like and, and I think are we talking about the themes, yeah well, just just your 22nd reaction, like thumbs up, thumbs your your sister Eber. Thumbs up, thumbs down.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, I'll keep it. I'll keep it, but I think it's because the theme itself and the characters they had good arcs, but I think the theme was just a little bit of a Downer compared to other previous things we've watched. That's, that's all I'll say. Okay.
Speaker 1:Well, I give it Thumbs up. One thumbs up, not two thumbs up. I really liked it and I agree there's something a little bit different and other things we won't mention at the beginning. Well, we'll mention the show a little bit later, as in that, but I I did really like it on its own merits, for a lot of reasons that I'll discuss. But how about you mark a?
Speaker 3:Hard thumb. Sideways hard thumbs. I was okay. Yeah, there were. There are elements that I liked about the narrative and thematic elements and elements that really bothered me, but we'll talk about that.
Speaker 1:Okay, Yep and Jax I.
Speaker 4:I give it a thumb sideways, with a thumbs a half way up, because the last, the last two episodes made made made me go from here to a little bit here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, even episode nine, huh.
Speaker 4:Even episode nine yeah.
Speaker 1:Episode nine was Okay, no, what happened to? So Okinawa, okinawa, yeah. So this, just so everyone knows. If you haven't seen this the viewing room yet, we are going to have spoilers soon. So if you haven't watched the Pacific, I really recommend you go see that, even though we have tepid responses to it so far. But before we get into an actual discussion of it, just like band of brothers, which I'm gonna have to say at this point, we had a kind of his. This is a real historical event. This, this really happened. Many people in our lives, you know, experience this, like we, many of us know people who are in World War, two grandparents and so on, and so I thought, if we had connections? So I don't actually have a connection to, as far as I know, in my Family, to the Pacific. I do have connections to the European Theater for which I talked about last time. But does anybody here have a connection to the Pacific that they want we like talk about the real and then we'll go into the story. Okay, a couple.
Speaker 3:I do as well.
Speaker 2:I think Marx is more dramatic, so I'll share that first. My grandfather on my mom's side was in the Navy and he was stationed off of the the great Great Barrier Reef in Australia. That's all I know. Okay, but he didn't. He's not as dramatic as Marx.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how about you, mark?
Speaker 3:So my stepfather was, I believe, in the first Marine Division. So he he was in the Battle of Midway, guadalcanal. I don't think he might have been. He might have been the rotated out by the time they went up to Okinawa, because I don't remember hearing Any stories which I never heard directly from him. I heard through other family members. He was in, he was in, and one of the things that disturbed me a little bit about the Guadalcanal thing and perhaps it's something that's super hard to do aesthetically, they I never quite got Exactly the the kind of insanity from Guadalcanal, from the Pacific, that was communicated to me from my stepfather After realizes.
Speaker 3:This is where the thin red line also disappointed me, because it sort of came in after all the drama with the Marines and came in with the Army's cleanup. The Marines were surrounded which they, which they suggest, because there is the American fleet gone which is supposed to be backing them up and they were outnumbered 10 to 1 by the Japanese. I never got that sense. So you need to get the sense through the night charges that there's. You know these crazy Kamikaze, ask Japanese that are just sort of flooding the front lines and will are ready to die, but you don't understand that they're. They're cut off from food and water for something like two weeks. You get you they.
Speaker 3:They allude to it, but I never. I, I didn't, I didn't quite think that I could, that I related to the suffering and the the Terror that those men must have been experiencing the way I could. When I heard it through my stepfather who, by the way, came home with awful PTSD and and it was a issue that I think plagued him for the rest of his life when I was two, he apparently held us all hostage in the campground when he was drunk, had a gun, thought there were jabs in the woods and and held us hostage in our, in our, in our trailer, the whole night Until he sobered up.
Speaker 4:Wow, wow, oh, my god.
Speaker 3:You think about a man who volunteered for the Marine Corps at 18 years of age when the war broke out and then to be subjected to that kind of terror at that age?
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, that does. And so, moving into, like the themes, because I think that's a good said way in the sense of One of the things that's unique or that that I thought they were trying to do, and I do have some things about why they probably didn't Fully land, stick the landing of what they were trying to accomplish and why so many. If you look at reviews and I'm just gonna mention the other, the story of band of brothers it's it's always the kind of tepid, like oh, I liked it, it was interesting, it was good, but there was that you don't see a lot of reviews that are just enthusiastic, love. That you do, for example, with band of brothers, and it's an unfortunate thing because I think the Pacific has a lot of strengths but it doesn't stick the landing in a couple of ways thematically.
Speaker 1:And I think, mark, what you're alluding to is one thing, that Band of brothers you know I'm trying not to say too much, but the Pacific really focuses on in a way that other war films Discuss and it's part of them and maybe dear hunters about this if you've seen that movie but is the real all the the negative Aspects and after effects of the war and because, again, with this story you get a lot more of home life that here you get. You're there, really home, right? They're home for a while. It starts at their homes and ends. The whole last Episode is them going home. You know each of the different stories, so, again, the three strings of story to focus on is the story of Robert Leckie, the story of John Buss alone and the story of Sledgehammer and I'm forgetting Sledgehammer's name, eugene, eugene, thank you and they're both they're all three very interesting to discuss.
Speaker 1:But so let's talk about the, the themes, what we saw in terms of the plot and story elements in these three characters, and does it unite into anything Holistic? And I think it kind of does, but well, I don't. I'd be curious your your thoughts on any thematic elements of these characters.
Speaker 2:I, yeah, I felt like the theme was what this kind of war does to the soldiers. Um, in various ways. So from leckie you get a more typical soldier point of view where he's you're seeing Not just how it's affecting him, because he does get the he the name of that whatever he's peeing on himself, but it's really just to get him over to the, the Hospital, where he can witness worst-case scenarios. So the crazy making the lack of sleep with, with, with the japanese soldiers Interrupting them in the middle of the night, how they can't sleep and how I love my favorite line of the whole show was they murdered sleep. If you don't sleep, you don't have health. You, you know you've got to have your sleep and if, imagine if they've, like mark was saying, murdered it for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2:Um, but also you see that how it creates Suicide in some people and other soldiers. It makes them maniacs, like Turning into psychopaths. The guy that was like strangling the Japanese guy, and I think sludges arc really showed how he could possibly have lost his soul. You have his, his father, the doctor, saying I've seen these men come back from the great war and and I just don't want to see you lose your soul, and you see him come to that point where he almost loses his soul and then he somehow gets it back. Uh, so to me the theme is just all of these Different, various negative things that can happen when soldiers go to this kind of war.
Speaker 1:I think that's that's really accurate. I would agree with a lot of that. Anybody else have thoughts on the theme?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I would say the theme is war is hell and what you get, what you get out of it with when you follow the characters, the three main characters, one of whom unfortunately dies in okinawa, one of the better characters and unfortunately dies in okinawa. Yeah, what I got out of it that's hopeful, is the durability of the human spirit, because there are characters like sledge, who, who's a really predominant character in the second half of the Series, who you do get concerned. You see his arc from idealistic young kid who is sort of chomping at the bit to get into the war, to a, a xenophobic, racist, murdering thug. I mean, he's actually going in that direction and when he comes back and he's, you can see that his mind is still back in okinawa, it's still back fighting in the pacific. It's still, it's still burdened by by all the, the Cruelty that he Engaged in and that he saw, and you don't know if he's going to come out of it. Really, of course, um, there's a sort of relieving.
Speaker 3:This is a huge spoiler, but the credits at the end you actually get introduced to the real characters and this is something that's really remote from you when you're watching the, the, the, the film and it's it's a little off-putting because what you see in the, in the, in the previous series that we were discussing is is fraternity, and the fraternity is something Unites them and there's a pride, a fraternal pride, and in in the uniqueness of what they're accomplishing, what they're doing.
Speaker 3:There's zero fraternity in the core, and the core Sort of always comes off as a proud unit. But these guys, these guys are cruel to each other in in more often, unless they're friends and and and and cruel to the enemy in a way that's off-putting, so, so, so off-putting that I mean. The one shining moment is this character, snafu, who's Sort of fallen down the rabbit hole of cruelty in his own way, when he plucks the gold teeth out of the mouths of the dead Japanese, forbids his friend sledge from doing the very same thing as he's about to go and say and I think that was like he saved him at that.
Speaker 3:He saved him for losing his soul. That was one of the more noble and interesting arcs between those two characters, that that I saw how, how protective A nihilistic character like snafu becomes in the end For somebody who's falling down that same rabbit hole.
Speaker 4:I thought it was a beautiful moment too, when they're on the train back and it's uh snafu, they stop at um, it's snafu's, stationed back in, I think, I think, norlands and uh, and, and he leaves a peacefully sleeping sledge. You know, it's uh he. He doesn't say goodbye to him, it's almost it. It was. It was a really well done moment. I'm not quite sure exactly what it Conveyed, but it was almost like he was kind of like I'll, I'll, I'll remove my toxic self for your presence now, because you don't like, you don't need me anymore, uh, to protect you.
Speaker 4:Um, but I there, their romance I thought was really interesting, um, but I mean in in terms of, in terms of theme, yeah, that what I, I got exactly what jennifer said, what mark said. The only thing that I'll add to it is that, um, it was, it was also just showing the different kind of enemy that the japanese were compared to the germans. Um, relentless, I mean just Relentless, and it, and you know, we, we, we could, you know, have have a discussion about, did, did that actually make it, you know, make a case for dropping the bomb, like after, you see how absolutely relentless.
Speaker 4:They are and and the the one I think it was in episode nine where the japanese are are Literally putting their own people in front of them. You have soldiers that are taking civilians, putting them in front of them and strapping bombs to them. You know where have we seen that before? And uh, but, but to actually see them? We? You know, we, we talk about like war theory, like, oh, using people as human shields. Well, they're literally doing that. They literally put Women and children in front of them, as they're, you know, pushing through the trenches, trying to to kill the soldiers. It just the, the, the nature of the enemy was just on a whole different level from the germans, despite the, the horrific things, right, that the germans did to the jews. It just a completely different kind of enemy.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I definitely want to talk about that aspect of it. There's something about the or there's something in the arcs of each of these that I wanted to go over with you guys really briefly before we move on to that. So I mean one there seems to be an interesting similarity between Leckie and Sledge, but not between John Basilon, and there's an interest, there's a difference, and I do think they're. They chose those three obviously for a reason.
Speaker 1:In the Sledge, as you mentioned, he has a heart murmur. He cannot go to war. He actually gives to his friend, sid, this book, barak Room Ballads by Rudyard Kipling. It's very romanticized. They're romanticizing war. That's a big part of this story, I think, is the romanticization of war versus what becomes the reality of it. And you, you, for instance, there's a character when they're in the first episode, cameron Sledge, his name, he's one of the friends of, he's one of the good friends of Leckie and he talks about he's gonna, he's gonna line them all up. You're like I'm gonna take out a whole jab regimen, line them up and shoot them down like a turkey shoot. And the and, and you know, leckie says I don't think it's gonna be quite like that easy, but it is that easy. That's the crazy thing is like I think it's the next episode or maybe it would be at the end of this episode. No, I think it's the next episode, but anyway, literally there's a whole sea of bodies and they just keep running at machine guns and it's like a turkey shoot.
Speaker 1:And part of the difference, I think, in the theaters of war that they're trying to convey in this story is this element of the tenacity of the Japanese warrior and how they just don't have any inclination for human life, it's just throwing massive torrents of bodies. I mean, there's a scene in the Guadalcanal where John Bacelon's character literally pushes a mound of dead bodies so they can have a dead Japanese bodies. So, yes, they're surrounded, and so you know I, by the way, I did get a little bit more of a sense of their surroundedness mark than I think you did. This is one of those scenes where it's like they're just slaughtering everybody. So they are surrounded, but they're just like killing everybody to mount, and then he has to go out there and push those bodies. And you know, it's to me it was just they were conveying.
Speaker 1:The filmmakers and the artists were trying to convey something unique about this war in comparison to the other theater of war. And you see that with you know the John Bacelon character, he goes through this, he has this heroic moment, he gets all this honor and glory and then he wants to go back and, as Mark alluded to his desire to go back, he is the only bootcap scene we have is, I think, with him teaching the next generation. Then they go to what he's, iwo Jima right, and then he, that's where he, you know, dies in quote, unquote glory. And you know the leaky or the excuse me, the sledge scene starts at the heart murmur. Once he has this romanticized view of war, goes off to war, he tries to hold on to his humanity on some level, like you said, and then in the end he wants nothing to do with guns, with his uniform or anything like that.
Speaker 1:He doesn't want any of the benefits that he could be getting, like he could be, like. He's literally over and over and over again told you can get like one. You went through the whole war, war without having sex. Like his friend says, are you kidding me? That's crazy. And they because they have a whole scene where there's like lots of sex going on, right, and then you have this whole sequence where, like women are being thrown at these men, right, and he doesn't want anything to do with it because because of what he went through emotion I think that's a very powerful thing that you would think of all the things get the rewards that, of all the things you went through, and he's not going to do it. I thought that was an interesting arc as well. I don't know if you guys had anything else to say about it.
Speaker 3:I thought he had the most interesting arc. He certainly had the most clear arc of all of all the characters. Yeah, I think that's the lone sort of comes, you know, sort of fully baked like, almost like a Howard Rourke type.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:He's a kid from New Jersey, you know, who finds out that he's really good at soldiering.
Speaker 3:You know, and one of the things that I thought was interesting, the contrast between what he, what he brings to teaching the young crowd of soldiers coming up to fight the Japanese, and what his group thought of the Japanese, which was we're going to kill these guys, they're a turkey shoot. But when the generation he's teaching says they're going to do the same thing, he's like don't you ever underestimate these people. They will run at you, they will run straight into your machine gun fire. And here we have something surfacing, I think that surfaced in the other show, which is a respect among soldiers for the type of courage that it takes. We would consider it probably insane, and not necessarily from a good psychological place, but certainly taking a lot of courage to storm a line that's heavily dug in, where you're probably certain to die, and that a soldier can understand the kind of courage that that takes in a way that no other human being can and then tries to relay that to the next generation, which I thought.
Speaker 1:And I think that's a powerful scene because he is talking about, like you're saying, he's trying to convey the reality of the soldier versus the romanticized caricature they have in their head which is this racist rice eating jack that's easy to kill. But he says this guy has been at war since you were in diapers. He knows more about war than you'll ever know. Never underestimate your enemy. And like this idea and the reason I'm bringing this up, I think this goes to one of the deep themes of this particular story, not just the John Barcelona but the Pacific, one of this idea of war versus the reality of war.
Speaker 1:And because you know, I'll bring in the comparison of Band of Brothers, which I said I wouldn't do, but I think the action sequences in this story are actually somewhat better in a certain sense, in the sense of it's grittier and more realistic. It's that's the. I mean I've never been in war, I don't know which one is more realistic, but it has more of the to me. Like I felt their thirst on Pelleleu when they were really and they found that goat head right and that they had poisoned that river, like they were really going through and like and there's just the baggots and the rice, but yeah, the maggots and the rice, I mean, and there's just, I think there's literally more action, like just pound for pound, in this story, but I think it's because they're going after the terror of that.
Speaker 1:You know what they went through, which was a unique aspect.
Speaker 4:It was. I got to say, though, that that was kind of maybe one of my issues, I guess, with it, and in like just just comparing two episodes like from Band of Brothers versus versus the Pacific, and you open the door.
Speaker 1:So like go for it.
Speaker 4:It's impossible. You know, you open the door.
Speaker 3:I get to possible not to examine.
Speaker 4:But in it is. So I look at the episode on Guadalcanal in the Pacific versus Bestone in Band of Brothers, where they're freezing right and you just in in Bastone you just get a sense of how freaking cold it is and how miserable they are and how they're being, just you know, bombed and bombarded by the Germans, but it's not as graphic as Guadalcanal and in general Band of Brothers is not as graphic as as the Pacific and I almost felt like that was a bit to the detriment because at some point it just got to be too much like sensory overload where, like I just kind of had to look away and I couldn't and I couldn't place myself in it in the in the way that I could with Bastone.
Speaker 4:And I wonder if that is, you know, the way that just better TV maybe, or it was just it was better done. Because if you show too much or if it's too graphic, if it's too too much input, too much sensory, like, you can't feel safe. I guess in a way you can't like as a viewer you can't feel safe to just like really be immersed in the kind of tragedy and trauma that they're trying to convey. So at a certain point with Pacific there were, there were certain graphic points that came in. I'm not a person that shies away from violence and you know pulp and whatever, but it just it got to a point where it almost like kept me at like an arm's length and I couldn't get fully into the mood of it. So I mean, I'll take Mark's word when his stepfather like described how surrounded they were. I didn't get that sense, in the same way that I got how freaking cold they were in Bastone.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, I have to agree, I wasn't, a sense, really engaged either, and even though there was more grit and it was more gruesome and disgusting in a lot of ways. But one of the most horrific scenes was when Sledge is sitting there and he hears a plop and he looks up and it's snafu throwing rocks, volcanic, into the text of a Japanese soldier. And that's certainly gruesome, but and and arresting in all the wrong ways. But with the guys at Bastione it may be because it was much more fraternally executed, so that I felt much more of a camaraderie with the men who were there. Bastone was like I was dying during that episode. I mean, I was freezing, I was eating their dish on another blanket.
Speaker 3:I couldn't get on the and I couldn't get on the page, and maybe Jackson is right, there was, there was a little stimulation just to divert a little bit. One thing that I thought would be in that wasn't was a terrifying episode that my stepfather said would happen if they captured an American soldier. They allude to it because Lucky's writing and they and they say, hey, you don't want to write stuff, man, you get caught. It's either Sledge or or or Lucky's writing. If you get caught, they're going to use that. That's intelligence. Well, they would catch American soldiers and they would use your name and identification against you.
Speaker 3:So at night, when my, when my stepfather was out in the perimeter or whatever it was you know as as a pickets, let's say, watching to see if the enemy would come, they would hear their names being called from the jungle and Guadacanal, but they could tell that it wasn't they. They were pretending to be the wounded friend who was left out there in the jungle and they would call their friends names. They would have tortured that person enough to get names of his buddies and they would call his buddies. Can you imagine how haunting and horrible that would be? That would be a nightmare and I never saw that in the Guadacanal section and I and I wanted they did it in the Sands of Iwo Jima with oh yeah, with the Clint Eastwood.
Speaker 3:No, with John Wayne, I think they might have done. They might have done it in Iwo Jima, the Eastwood film. But in Sands of Iwo Jima, the men who are sitting out in the foxholes, they hear somebody calling their name and they think it's their injured friend.
Speaker 1:Yeah so sad. Yeah, that's, yeah, that that I mean, it's some. I'm curious if you guys have any other thoughts on the theme, because I had something that was unique, that is, I don't know if it's unique, but it's something that I was noticing and watching it again, so I've seen it a couple times. But the one of the things I've noticed in this first episode in particular is how self-aware the story is of the story of D-Day, for instance. So and this goes back to the kind of idea I was talking about with what is the glory of the honor or the fantasy, the romanticism of war you have before you actually experience it. And I think a lot of us probably have people in our lives that we've known like this. I had a friend when I was maybe 19, 20 years old he was younger than me and then he went to, he joined the Marines and I really think to this day that a big reason is because he liked Call of Duty and there was a kind of honor to it, and he lost both of his legs in Afghanistan. He stepped on an IED and I don't know why exactly he joined the Marines, other than there was a kind of romanticism in his head of that glory that you get. And then, of course, there's this reality and this story. This first episode really has this awareness of it. The example I have of this is the, the storming of that first island that a lekkie is going on. Remember, it's this build up, there's all this build up that go on those water boats and, if you look at it, to saving Private Ryan. I really think there's certain almost shot for shot exam, exactly the same. It's like a shot on the one character. A guy throws up another guy yells at him. There's like a it covers the head, it goes, you know, above the boat. So you see the other boats, you never see the island. It's the anticipation Everyone's. And then you get there and you know they're like eating coconuts, like finally you get here.
Speaker 1:What I think that they're saying, and I think it's a great thing of doing, it is like the filmmakers and the artists wanted to really convey just how vastly different this was from the other theater of war, that this was a. In the mud, dirt, there was like I'm not saying that's not the same of the theater of war in Europe. I think both wars I'm I had brutality on both sides, but in the mind of the person at home. There was a big difference. I mean, the Japanese are the ones who attacked us.
Speaker 1:We all know everything, or much more, about the European theater of war. People didn't even know about Pevevu. Pevevu, like, there's that one where they talk about like people and they like fought. They fought a whole battle, one of the most brutal battles in the whole fight of the war, and it wasn't even purposeful. They went to another island or something like that. Right, like that kind of thing is mind blowing to me. And I don't know much about the Pacific. I really, you know, I honestly don't. I know a lot about the Battle of the Bulge and the D-Day and you know the even African war or African battles, but not this. And I think it's interesting that that's a big focus they had of that they were trying to do. I mean, even on the last episode Jackson, you just finished this but if you remember, like one of the things is that the Marines like Sledge, they didn't actually get all that. That you know. Celebratory kissing of the sailor kissing the woman.
Speaker 1:They didn't get that. They came six months later, which is very representative of the whole story, the whole story of the Pacific. It's like these guys fought this dirty, muddy thing, killing the most men of both, on all sides of the war, which is the Japanese, and having some of the biggest losses, and people are like, yeah, you know, thanks, right, and that's not what happened to the people who came back from Europe and there was the celebration, not to say they didn't deserve it, but it's just a different story. So I don't know what you think about that.
Speaker 4:I think, yeah, I think also it's a different. Like I was saying before, it's a completely different enemy and I think they, I think the show had a better opportunity to and maybe a missed opportunity to actually show how they were a different kind of enemy. They, you know, they were trying to like gather my thoughts here. They almost, I think that they almost saw them as like aliens. They, you know they there was, there was, there was a language barrier with the Germans, right, but they, at least they kind of like I had to, at least they kind of looked alike Well, the Western.
Speaker 4:And and and yeah and they.
Speaker 4:But they in Band of Brothers they had them kind of interacting more with the soldiers, with the German soldiers, and you don't see any of that kind of interaction with them with the Japanese soldiers.
Speaker 4:I thought probably one of one of the most this wasn't a soldier interaction, but one of the most amazing scenes to me was when Sledge I think it was episode nine when when Sledge goes in and they they hear a baby, right, they hear a baby, and they think, oh, it's probably a trap, and but they go in and the baby's crying, the baby was nursing at his mother's breast and the mother is is dead.
Speaker 4:They, somebody you know, finally picks up the baby and and takes the baby away. But then Sledge goes into another room and there's a woman who is dying from a, a mortal wound to her belly. But she gets, takes the gun from Sledge and and puts it to her forehead and I mean, it was, it was just this amazing moment and then he puts the, he drops the gun, puts, sets the gun down and then cradles her, basically, and allows her to die in his arms. I think that they had better opportunities for more scenes like that, because it it just. It just showed the complete like I don't know wall or barrier between between this enemy and and the, the European enemy. But I think they could have done a better job of that though.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, I mean I guess I'm. I I'm not a hundred percent sure I understand the, because the German in the, in the German side and and band of brothers, we we only get a little bit of interaction, like we get the story of the one Lieutenant who kills all those men and that you see the men. I don't know if we get that many interactions with the German soldiers that I remember.
Speaker 3:There was one who's from America who goes over Right.
Speaker 1:And that's the sequence where the Lieutenant you know supposedly mows down all the POWs.
Speaker 4:Yeah, but in the Pacific but then also they were, they were interacting with the Germans, especially when they when they found the concentration camp.
Speaker 1:Well, that's the German civilians.
Speaker 4:Right yeah.
Speaker 1:Yes. We didn't get civilians, but they also had they like that.
Speaker 4:Okay, there was that whole speech that the, that the general gave as he was, as he was surrendered and rendering there were, there was the, the, the um.
Speaker 1:That's right, I forgot about that Damien Lewis's.
Speaker 4:Damien Lewis's character. I can't remember what his name was now in what his character's name was.
Speaker 1:In Band of Winters, winters, yeah.
Speaker 4:Winters. Yeah, um, they. He kept having that flashback of killing the young German uh soldier with a uh you know. It almost looked like like there. There was that moment where the German soldier kind of looked, he like stands up and he looks at him kind of almost smiling and then realizes, oh crap, that's the enemy. And and then Damien Lewis's character is like oh crap, that's the enemy, I have to shoot him. Uh, yeah, so there, there weren't those types of moments for me.
Speaker 1:Um right.
Speaker 2:Well, maybe they weren't in reality. You know, I think maybe it's back to what Kirk was saying this is a very different theater. They didn't get the chance to know at all. It's just they just came at them like bombarding, running at their machine guns. That's what they knew of them.
Speaker 4:And that's true, because they were also so kind of dumbfounded by, like, why do they keep coming and don't they know that the war is over, and uh, and I think one of them had a really great line that that said well, the emperor is God.
Speaker 1:So you know they're, they're going to do whatever God says.
Speaker 1:Romney Malick's character says that, yeah, and, and it's a very different culture and I think, jennifer, that's that's exactly what I would think about. Is the problem here in terms of their and that's smashing into this very different culture? One of the things about Germany is Germany is like the most western of all the Western cultures. It's the land of poets and philosophers in the 19th century, like it's very Western and they're so there's, there's a lot of some. I mean there's a point when they're singing Christmas carols across the invest. It's like they're they're same religion. I mean I think the last patrol and band of brothers, the last that episode, they're. They're talking about how nobody wants to make a mistake on either side. The Japanese never have that. The Japanese will die to the last man. I mean there's a famous story where this, this guy was, you know, on a Japanese soldier, was on a patrols in some island and he was found like 25 years later still patrolling, like did you ever hear? Like, yeah, who looked?
Speaker 3:at it he was. He returned to Japan in 1976, or something like that yeah. It was welcome, I might add.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and it just but just like think like just that mentality is so like mind boggling to a Western mentality. We do not have that in our ecosystem. It's just not there. And I think that is what the artists were trying to convey in the story and it's a hard thing to convey, but I think they did it pretty well. Actually, it's just we want the Western story more. I think that's a big part of it, but the reality is that this was their war and that's why they wanted to tell the war of the Pacific is.
Speaker 1:What they dealt with was like I don't know the numbers and I could be 1000% wrong about this, I'm just coming up with this now but I have a feeling that if you took one of the decor or a couple of decorated guys combat veterans on either side of the Pacific the kill count of one would be like a magnitude higher than the other. Like someone at the Pacific probably has a kill count five or 10 or 100 times higher than an active good night. I don't know if that's true. That's just my perception, but the reason I'm saying that's relevant is like part of what you then have to deal with is the reality of that, that. That's what you did right.
Speaker 1:Which, in the Pacific, a lot of it. You know, the focus of the movie sorry, the band of brothers, the focus of the that show in particular but was the forging bonds of what makes us all human, coming to heal. From this standpoint, there wasn't really a healing from Japan. I mean there really was. I mean Japan had to heal and they had their own way of dealing with it historically, but we didn't have to heal from that in the same way, although the soldiers did and nobody talks about it and it's just a savagery that I don't know if it's as savage and better. It's definitely not in the literature and the stories, the same kind of savagery that they experienced.
Speaker 3:And I think that's an important point to make which I sort of forgot about, which is the. The European theater occupies a huge space in our consciousness and we know the Pacific theater was happening at the same time, but we, what we forget is that a lot of those guys came home when the fanfare was over. So not only were they traumatized, there's, there's a healing process that went with VE Day. Yes, you can take raids, and there was a social acceptance for where they were and what they did, that the, that the Marine coming back from Guadalcanal or Midway or Ewo Jima did not get. So there, he didn't have this, this, the balm, let's say, of that kind of mass acceptance.
Speaker 3:But you talked about other thematic elements, because I thought the war is hell, the romanticization of war versus reality of war, is a great, great thematic element that they did do very well, I think, that sort of portraying through the narrative that theme. But what I think sneaks in, which which I said earlier, is the durability of the human spirit, because there's literally not one person in Marine Division, one that I thought was going to make it after, not after, the battle, like I thought they were going home. You mean to tell me snafu is going to have three kids and get married in normal life. No way, yeah, no single one of them that was going to live a normal life.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And what. What serves as the balm for us at the end is to see the real characters and where they wound up in history and to to hear that all of those guys that we lived with that we thought were going to be basket cases in the States became fairly successful people. Yeah, well, we have to be, we have to, we don't know.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it's like the Instagram biography and, who knows, like how they would have described your stepdad.
Speaker 3:Exactly, we had three kids. They were working in Los Angeles time, but they didn't have to live with what I held his family hostage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, thank you.
Speaker 2:Well.
Speaker 1:I mean that's a good point about, like the kind of from a storytelling standpoint, that's a different story and we have had that story told the PTSD and I think it's an important story because the effect it has on the children, the families that's something that's not explored here at all. We just see these kind of like you're saying Mark in the kind of portrait at the end we have the you know a snapshot Instagram story of their lives, which they did have a quote, unquote level of success in their life. They had kids. Sledge has a family. He gets a PhD in biology, so he does figure out his life because it ends with like, we don't know what he's going to do.
Speaker 1:By the way, I thought one of the most powerful lines in the moments of the story was when Sledge again, all of this happens in episode 10. I really like episode 10 is when Sledge is trying to find out what he wants to do with his life and he goes to that college, right, and he and she's like well, did you do this or do that or do this or do that? Like, and what did the Marines teach you? And I think that's an important thing that these guys like that who gave all?
Speaker 2:they were. College was all, by the way, just wasn't called that back then. Oh really, okay, yeah, yeah, would you say, jen, that college was Auburn, by the way, it just wasn't called that. Okay.
Speaker 1:That's not a long. So, oh, college, you're alone. So like they ask like what did this school teach? Or what did the Marines teach you? And he's like, well, they taught me how to kill Japs and I got really good at it. And of course his delivery I thought was bone-gilling and especially, by the way, I also have to say that is one of the best casting I've ever seen, because he is the most innocent looking human I've ever met and that, I think, is supposed to be Sledge's whole thing, like he looks like a baby boy.
Speaker 1:He's a boy yeah, but they're all boys, even said he looks like a.
Speaker 4:He just looks like a boy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he looks so innocent. He even after the war he looks super innocent. And yet you knew that this was a cold-blooded killer, which I think is true like a lot. It's not like every cold-blooded killer on our side at least, on any side who goes off to war looks like what you might think of cold-blooded, Like these are just normal people, right, and they just did extraordinary things and I thought that he was a good person for that.
Speaker 4:I thought it was interesting when he was was back to two things that I really enjoyed about about Sledge's arc. What I really enjoyed seeing, or appreciated, I should say I really appreciated seeing the family dynamic with his mom and dad, because his dad, you know has seen, was his dad in World War One, or did he just treat people?
Speaker 1:I think he just treated people. Yeah, I don't think he was actually fighting in it, not that I know, was it like a medic in the war.
Speaker 4:But so his dad is so fearful. You know his dad has seen PTSD. I don't even then. I think they called it shell shock Shell shock.
Speaker 4:But his and when he's having nightmares, after Sledge gets home and he's having nightmares and his father's just outside the door, that like I'll probably cry if I start to describe it anymore because it totally just like I was like crying and but he understands, he has this very deep level understanding and then of his son and then he's sitting under the tree. Sledge is sitting under the tree wearing kind of like his John Lennon sunglasses.
Speaker 2:Gangster glasses.
Speaker 4:The mom comes out and says you look like a gangster and it's like it couldn't be any. It it's, it couldn't be any further from the truth. But it's also kind of the truth too, because you know, he did kind of he did become a gangster in the war.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no gangster has a body count like Sledge honestly, Right, right.
Speaker 4:No no.
Speaker 1:American gangster Right.
Speaker 4:And, and then that moment when he goes hunting with his father and drops his gun, and you know, and, and then his dad is like well, I think the devil population will be a little bit happier. You know, today that was such a great moment.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I think the theme is actually and I don't know how to formulate it, maybe you guys can help me but it has more to do with glory, honor and the reality of war, and that that's how I kind of hold it in my head, because the reason I say that is like so much of the story and the arcs have to do with each of these three characters, relationship to honor and glory, and it starts off that way in each of the characters. I mean John Bassalon, like the whole point of him, is he is one of the most glorious of all the character, of all the soldiers of World War Two. He's one of the most honored men. In World War Two they name highways and they have to this day. They have Bassalon Day in New Jersey and his what's?
Speaker 1:The city in New Jersey where he's from and that's, I mean, that's the whole point of him is in the sense of this story, is he's this guy who's honored for his actions on Guadalcanal. He comes home, we see him Boink in Starlet's right and he's having all that fun. But he's feeling all this guilt and he wants to live a good life and to do right. So he goes back which is ridiculous, like after sleeping with all the the, I was going to say blondies, but I have two blondies on it. You know, with all the they were blonde, that's accurate, exactly, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:And with all the hotties and he's having a, he's like living it up. He's got his own.
Speaker 4:You have three blondies, by the way.
Speaker 1:Well, he gets. I mean, like the stories that are told even here, I don't know him, I don't know much about him historically. It said he was with a lot, like he would go in with the blonde, come out with a brunette is what one is. What Lena? Yeah, his wife says at one point right, I mean he's, all doors are open for this guy, the whole world is his oyster, literally. And I mean I don't, I can't even imagine like a famous A-list actor today having the level of fame that he had and the doors open. Maybe they do, but man, I mean.
Speaker 1:And then he decides to go back and then he fights in probably, or I think it is the most brutal war battle in the entire war, and he dies, what's? And then, of course, there's that in again, an episode 10. What's the finale? Lena, giving back the Medal of Honor to the father. Right, which I cried every time. Every time I see that beautiful scene.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sledge, what's his story? He wants to get honor, in a sense. You know he knows the stories of his father. He knows barric room ballads by Ruddy Kipling. This is all about stories of men going to war and honor. And he wants that. He gets the glory in a sense, and he doesn't want it. Sledge has to deal with a certain kind of relationship to glory, which is the psychological damage that it does to him, and he actually does use it to some degree. I mean, it's a great scene Again episode 10, when he goes up to Vera's door in his dress blues which he never got to war. They made jokes about it, like their mother's. Like should I send you your dress blues? Like they're in the mud and piss and crap, and what am I going to do with my dress blues? This was lucky, right.
Speaker 1:Like lucky and Vera who he eventually, and he's standing outside her door, that West Point boy comes in and the West Point boy, like you know, he's mad but he is like what's he going to do?
Speaker 1:This guy has all the honor and glory. Even though he doesn't, he has all the honor. To me, that is like a big like that is an encapsulating part of this story and it's the reality of honor and glory and of war. I think that's what they tried to explore with these three different characters, which is very different than the thematic cohesion of the fraternity of band of brothers, when, in part of I think why we love that story a little bit more is because that allows for that story of the fraternity of band of brothers, allows for more lack of a better word heart Like there's. There's more, like there's the positive cohesion. It's not just all this destruction and devastation and like trying to make love with an Australian woman, which is beautiful, but then because she thinks you're going to die, she quits you know, leaves you and says you can't. I hated that by the way.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'm sure that happened that probably. I just didn't like that. They it just didn't bring true for me. It came out of the blue it and it was so odd because here's Lucky is writing to Vera at the same time he's writing to Vera, who he eventually marries Back home.
Speaker 1:but he doesn't actually write to her, but OK, he writes letters to her.
Speaker 4:It doesn't send them, he never but, still he's writing to her Like whether they connect to her Exactly. He's got an emotional connection to her and then he falls for this Australian girl and it just seemed like you know, just I don't know it was. I didn't see how that served the story very well, Because all it did was it distanced me from her and I just kind of thought he was being a little lurchy.
Speaker 1:You don't think that a guy who's going through what he's going through should try to find a love in his one chance? I don't.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry, I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't mind that at all, because, like I just didn't buy, no, I just didn't buy he's going to die, like he thinks more than any of the other characters I mean, they all think this but he really has committed to like I'm going to die, this is it, I'm not going to make it. And he even says that when he goes to the the like I'd yeah. That one I don't agree with.
Speaker 4:Like I just didn't ring true for me, though I don't know why it just didn't ring true. I think there's he wasn't in love.
Speaker 3:I think there's reasons for that that are technical, that we can talk about later is to actually, episode three was one of my favorite episodes, because it was it was. You know, you get to see Basilone being torn about getting this fantastic honor but having to leave the men behind that he's, he's sort of become a leader to, and you get to see a guy like you who has, who has a family that's so remote, so emotionally removed. He's the guy's never really experienced love or acceptance. He got lost in the pack of his own family and you see how emotionally remote his father and mother are from him at points during the script. To actually see somebody who sees him and a family who incorporates him. It was almost too much. Like I was on his, I was in his skin, going, oh, there's something, something's going to give here. This doesn't. It's not just that, this not just a narrative element.
Speaker 3:I think there was a technical reason that has to do with the acting. While you couldn't get on his page, at least at an, I had. Well, even though the story itself I'm a huge romantic Interesting, that kind of thing really affects me normally, but I, you know I wanted to get to your point, though Kirk, of the relationship of honor and glory and all the characters sort of, are related to the concept of honor and glory as well. That to me, falls back to that, the main theme of. You know the reality, the idealization of, and the reality of war. Now, ideals stick around for a long time if there's elements of truth to them. So, so certainly that you know the fact that these men became heroes in the eyes of the world you can see as an incentive to keep this sort of machine, the machine going right, because they're the real deal, unlike the West Point graduate who hasn't seen any action.
Speaker 3:He hasn't been put through. He hasn't been put through the. You know the stage of the trial by fire. You know it's a sort of a christening for a man and it's a. It's, that's a reality of war. Whether we, whether we like it or not, there's a certain amount of respect that a man gets for going through a trial by fire at a certain level that that person achieves, that that somebody else doesn't achieve. And I would be interested in your thoughts on Basilon, and I mean he's the, he's the hero of the story. He comes fully baked in a sense. He doesn't really have an arc but he meets the woman of his dreams. I mean, he throws away celebrity and status. Even the woman who he really loves is this genuine, down to earth, hard hitting woman who could be sort of a Rand's hero in many respects. So she takes no bullshit, she has her own standards.
Speaker 3:She's not rain herself the marine not smitten by his celebrity. She's all about his character. And when, when he proves his character, he has to prove himself to her, to prove himself on the battle. You know, that's a very, very powerful moment to me. Now, what do you think about giving that up? I mean, part of me went you crazy, bastard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I look crazy, go ahead. Well, I think there's, it's deaf. It's definitely why they included his story. So I mean one thing about the on a background of the whole story is the Pacific is based on two books. Actually, unlike Band of Brothers, which is just Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers, this one is based on with the old breed at Pallelu and Okinawa Okinawa by Eugene Sledge and the helmet for my pillow by Robert Lecky. So it's actually their two stories of the primary source material.
Speaker 1:The John Bass alone story is added on. Now I don't know, I don't know the background of why they did that. My assumption is because they were trying to pull out a broader theme and this is why I think it kind of falls apart. It doesn't land as heavily because they're trying to do too much almost. But I think the whole point of his character is again goes to the of that. His art goes to the whole core of what these men gave up and it shows that you know, for the honor and glory that was present at World War Two is that John Bass alone gives up all the, the honor that he gets after Guadalcanal, all the starlets, all the doors open, and he does that for, you know, first for a woman, in a sense for Lena, but he also gives her up for glory.
Speaker 1:I think it's more about integrity. I think he never did his part.
Speaker 2:He's the thing he said, though I don't feel like a hero, he never felt like he deserved that honor. And I think he wanted to go back in order to deserve it. Ok, so.
Speaker 1:I think that look, the gradient of the psychology is men is very difficult. I don't know what his real thinking was and why he did this. I suspect you're correct, but the issue to me, one of the issues, is that he had clearly done his part. You know, he's feeling guilt, they all feel guilt. He's also getting rewards that nobody else gets rewards for. So I think, yes, there is an element of guilt that's there, which I think is unfortunate, because I think that takes in terms of the story, because it takes away from that. He did make the decision to join the bootcamp men that he was training to go off back to war, even though he just got married. So he just got married and he could have waited for the future, but he just wanted to go with them. Now I don't know if I'm even clear of why he did it, but I think you know.
Speaker 3:I think it's also simple. Sometimes the simplest answer is the best answer. And what did he discover over in Guadalcanal? He's a super good soldier. He's very effective at what he does. Yeah, he tried to transmit that to students, but it wasn't satisfying enough. And so he, you know. So in a sense he didn't feel he was necessarily contributing what he could, because he discovered he's a good soldier and so he thought the best way to go back was to do what he was good at. There's that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's, I think that's like winters, like winters found his I mean, you know, whatever winters was before he became battlefield commissioned all the way up to Colonel, which is a crazy amount of battlefield commissioned. He was just super good at what he did, and so he found his life purpose. I feel like Bastalone found his life purpose.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think he, I think he represents symbolically, he represents the the kind of career military man, but not just, not just a military man, but he represents he kind of almost existed to be in, to be at war, like his. It was almost like his, his essence of a, of a human being, his identity is a soldier in a war, and and it was something that he learned about himself, you know, when he, when he the machine gun right, when he picks up the machine gun and burns his hands and and that's how he gets his Medal of Honor right, because he ends up just like massacring a massive amount of Japanese and and it never, he never becomes like Snafu's character, where he's, where he's jaded. He kind of always he remains a good man, his soul is always intact. And I think it was a really interesting contrast between the woman that he married versus the woman that Leckie wanted to marry, the Australian woman who didn't breaks up with him because she knows that he's getting, she believes that he's going to die.
Speaker 4:And Lena, though, who, like, they've been married for seven months and he and he died after that, but you don't ever see her. Obviously she's upset about that, but you don't, you don't you know, when he decides to go back to where they don't have any kind of scene where she's angry about it or upset she, she gets it, she understands, yeah, she knows who he is at his essence and she never marries again after that, right yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh, that was sad. Yeah, I mean, I think that my grappling with the story is the complexity of these three different storylines and what are they all trying to add up to is to me with the question Cause. Again, that that's where I'm struggling, why I think it's as good as the story is. I think it's a story that needs to be told. Uh, like Vietnam, like Korea, like these are.
Speaker 1:These are aspects of the American history that we don't get much, in my view, is what you know. We get a lot about D-Day, we definitely hear a lot about Hiroshima, hiroshima, nagasaki, but we don't. You know, jax, you were talking about this before. We don't really see the visceral aspect of what it took and what it was going to take to get there, to Hiroshima Nagasaki, and I don't know if you guys want to talk a little bit about this, but, like, one of the aspects of this war that becomes clear in this story and that's based on real accounts is the, that the. This is a culture, this is an alien culture to us and we were at war with an alien culture. That was something we don't, we can't fully wrap our heads around. None of them can wrap their heads around. None of the soldiers can figure it out. Now it's we're not looking at the president and the, the intellectuals at the time. That's not what this is about.
Speaker 1:But people didn't know what they were dealing with and you know when, when, an opportunity, you know when you're faced with the biggest body counts on both sides of the Pacific, of the war they're happening here. It's the most brutal, every inch is, and you see it and feel it Like. That is one thing I felt when that woman comes out with her baby and she blows herself up to try to kill them. I mean, that's not happening, as far as I know, in the European, although that, of course, they are doing their own thing with Jews, obviously. So they're doing just as horrific or more in that level. So it's well, I don't even know how to wrap my head around some of it, but the point is that I think there's the real, there's the for me, wrapping my head around the Hiroshima, nagasaki necessity of that, that it needed to happen, is you, to some degree, you need to see Like what they were up against for sure.
Speaker 3:You know, they say the Gaza war is the first time the population has ever been used as an instrument of war by, by, by the, by Hamas, and that's not true. And you?
Speaker 1:said that really people's things say that today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think your own has even said something about Hamas is the first time that the population is used as a Shield, as a sort of device to win the war, as opposed to something that protected and defended. You know, even you know, I mean the Germans had the war machine and they cycle people. You know, the collectivist or society Certainly have less value for life and they're willing to churn out soldiers. Russia's really willing to churn out more soldiers than the American people are. But they, they, they put them into the military system, they don't use them as as right y'all.
Speaker 3:And in this case, you know, you, you had Japanese soldiers doing what you could imagine Hamas soldiers doing hiding within the crowd of civilians so that they could take out a couple of Marines before they're, before they're taken out, or booby-trapping a baby or a mother and a child that would go in, go up to an IDF listening post.
Speaker 3:You'd see that happening today. So it's less surprising to anybody who's acquainted with the Gaza war today to To confront the the the phenomenon of using civilians as as war shields or as a means of beating the enemy. But we see it there and you're right. I think you do need to see it because Okinawa is a Japanese island. They're no longer in the Solomon Islands off of, off of Australia, they're no, they're no longer in Malaysia, they're not and they're not in any other country. They are actually in a Japanese stronghold and heading towards the mainland. And you see how tenacious those folks were. I mean, what you don't see is the, the artillery bombardments of these, these mazes of caves that were in volcanic structures, volcanic met mountains that were impervious to any of their artillery barrages. So these men would have to go in and face, essentially, you know, unharmed and very, very upset, you know a Japanese soldiers who were ready to die for for their cause.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I that's Again, to me goes to a core of what they were trying to do with de-romanticizing, because even though Bandit brothers was brutal, there still is a little bit of a room to me there. It's a little romanticized in the sense that you have an enemy across from you, that you're fighting in a sense right here. You don't have that like they're like mark was saying, they're playing psychological tricks. Their goal is not to, you know, tell a good story and their goal is to slaughter you. They hate you, they, they just like that's the Japanese goal and they just want to kill everybody. They don't care how they kill you, they don't care if they strap. Like you know.
Speaker 1:There's one, and I think episode one or two, where they that guy, a Japanese soldier who's dead, he doesn't surrender, or he's not dead, he's maybe a little bit wounded, he, he doesn't surrender. They're capturing him as a POW. Americans are famous for being good to their POWs in comparison everybody else. And what does he do? He blows up a bomb to kill himself and two Marines. Right, like that's just. I mean, I don't.
Speaker 1:I'm sure that happened with Europeans on some level, but the idea of kamikaze, the this, the suicide life thing is just we really unique and I think this story is trying to de-romanticize this because there we do, in our house. There's more movies made about the European Theater of war, there's more books written about it, there's video games like it's just there's more of it. We do have a romantic, because it is kind of like here's an enemy, here's us. We kind of we're across the battlefield. There's the hero, like winters, running across and he shoots that right and he takes out a whole regiment. It's there's that the Japanese people were hidden in in tunnels and they would pop out, shoot at you, get slaughtered, go back and they'd go like it's just a very was way more like guerrilla warfare.
Speaker 4:I was definitely guerrilla war minded me, it reminded me of, you know, some of the some of the battles in Vietnam. It's the. Pacific room like the. The nature of that kind of war and the Pacific reminded me more of Vietnam than actually the European World War two.
Speaker 1:Well, like the cab driver who dropped off leckie, remember what he said. He said At the way home. He said I may have dropped into Normandy, but you, what did he call them? Like a Jairine or something like that.
Speaker 4:GI Jairine. Yeah, like I read like.
Speaker 1:Jairine who jumped into the jungles. You didn't even like. I got to big. I basically got to hang out in Paris and London and yeah, you guys just got jungle rot and yeah, I think that's malaria and malaria, yeah, and I think that's a part of the story. That's, you know, we just don't know about today, and it's we should know about it, and I think that's why this is a good story.
Speaker 4:Well, I think it's important to sorry, I'll just. I think it's important to know that and and to know it in kind of a graphic way, that you know that that it was shown because there is this in today, especially, you know, when we just saw, like Oppenheimer was just released, there's this Misbelief that the Japanese were on the verge of surrendering. You know that we didn't. You know the the bombs did not need to be dropped. They were on the verge of surrendering. But when you actually see the nature of that enemy, it it brings I don't know I feel like it gets you closer to understanding why we did drop the bombs. And you could make arguments about did we need to drop both bombs? Did we need to drop them directly in the middle of the cities? Could we have dropped them somewhere else to scare the hell out of them? But you really need to understand the nature of that enemy and how they were never going to give up.
Speaker 3:Yeah not, not. I don't know if this is a diversion, but there is some evidence to suggest that the Japanese were had sent out feelers to the Roosevelt administration to surrender, but they wanted to serve. They wanted a conditional, conditional surrender.
Speaker 1:Yeah right, so which, in my mind, would have been completely irrational and I.
Speaker 3:What was the condition? What was the condition?
Speaker 4:That's James they wanted to keep Shinto. They wanted to keep Shinto. They wanted to keep Shinto.
Speaker 3:They wanted to keep their emperor, they wanted they essentially keep their culture. Yeah, they wanted to keep their culture, they wanted the military infrastructure to be unchanged. They wanted, they didn't, they didn't want Western values to be placed on them. And I find that very similar to what we're seeing in the Gaza war today, where what's required is an occupation for a total obliteration of the enemy, and occupation and the forcing of constitutional norms down people's throats, like like MacArthur did in Tokyo. And we're better off in there, better off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we definitely don't seem to have learned the lesson of war from World War Two, which is the opposite direction. I think we saw the opposite direction.
Speaker 3:Water, that the, the intellectuals tried to think of ways like just war theory, for example, of minimizing civilian slaughter. Yeah, and so the the attempt to civilize war has been going on since the 1950s, and it's kept us more or less in a state of constant war.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think, like the, the lesson that you see here, even more than in band of brothers, is that war is a war with a culture, not with any individual people, and that's something that we and I would be willing to bet that these filmmakers don't really get that. I don't know, maybe they do it's hard to imagine Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg being that way but maybe they are. They definitely recognize that war is devastating to both sides in various ways. They definitely understand that very clearly. They're good at portraying the devastation of war, but like what war is and how it concludes. If you look at all the stories they do, it always happens in the background. The war is like this. You know they're like the episode 10, I have to say, and starts. I mean, this should just be our talk today, should just be about episode 10. But episode 10 of Pacific starts Anybody remember how it starts, the opening sequence? They're in a hospital.
Speaker 3:And isn't the girl reading to the?
Speaker 4:Yeah, like he's reading the comics.
Speaker 3:And what is she reading? She's reading what, yeah? What's she reading? The Iliad, that's the Iliad, that's right. She's reading.
Speaker 1:And what is he doing? She's like what does she say? You're not listening to me, right, which is very different than him, and Sledge at the beginning probably, which is the romanticized aspect of it he doesn't care, he just wants to be. That's. That's one thing I took about that, by the way, I, and she's even telling him that what she's reading from the Iliad is something about the band of brothers idea, and he doesn't really care.
Speaker 3:Which I thought was interesting. You may be right, but what I found, particularly for anybody who's read the Iliad, it's surprisingly graphic. Oh yeah, a surprisingly graphic tale of war. So it's not like you know, you think what you're going to get a tale of heroes, of great archetypes, and they're in there. And you know the main struggle of the story is between Agamemnon and Achilles. But the tales of the battles themselves I don't see how anybody would take them as as representing a glorified picture of war, because they are graphic, surprisingly, surprisingly graphic and horrible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I think there's a good connection between the Iliad and this story in that sense.
Speaker 3:Which is a combination of, say, the ideal and the real as well.
Speaker 1:It's so like, yeah, in the Iliad there's the gross slaughter that you're talking about, where and it's described vividly and just like you see it here and the Iliad. Of course he uses words, but there's a lot of spears going through groins, spears going through throats, you know, and the descriptions of the impaled body, like he's impaled to the ground, like a tree and like all these different, like any way you can imagine a soldier dying in a war. Like that it's described you know, bows or arrows through eyeballs and out the other side. It's brutal and I think that he's Homer's doing this on purpose to show you the reality of war.
Speaker 1:At the same time, there is a whole battle in the background about honor and glory. I mean, that story is about honor and glory and so it's like, well, there's honor and glory that we're trying to fight for and we're trying to get honor and glory by doing these battles. Here's what the battle is actually like, which is this brutal. So it's like a weird conflict that you need this destruction and devastation to get honor and glory, but it's like the most disgusting, horrible thing, and I think you see that a little bit in this story here, which is why I can imagine the creators wanted to throw a homage to this. Okay, so how about some final thoughts on the Pacific?
Speaker 3:I wanted to say why I think Jack couldn't get into the love story because I had. But they often affect the viewer unconsciously and that's when the actors are forcing things and they're playing relationships as opposed to experiencing relationships. Use a viewer, step outside yourself and you can't engage. And I found, narratively it's a force, because this woman just takes her to her house and he meets the parents and it's so awkward and strange, even for a person who doesn't have intimacy issues like Licky. It's odd.
Speaker 3:But the way they tried to it was as if the director said smile at each other a lot. When you see each other, because you guys are really resonating on the same chord, it's like you're in love. It's love at first sight. And so they were playing that all the time and it was like maybe yeah, whereas when Lena and Bat would look at Bass alone, you could see her really changing. You know, when she's on the beach with him and she sees what he does when he gets her hat out of the water, you see her shift internally and it's because it's because I know her. I know Annie Parisi who played the part. She's actually having the experience of shifting and falling in love with the man and you see it. They're not showing you it, they're doing it and you, as the audience, can relax and invest in their relationship with them.
Speaker 1:Well, can I ask a quick question before we wrap up here? So do you think there's any chance that part of that was intentional by the actors and the filmmakers, in the sense that the story of Licky and the Australian girl is supposed to be a heightened I'm going to die, you know like this intense, unreal, to some degree, love affair? Yes, when he looks at her so I'm not an actor, I don't know this but when he looks at Vera at the dinner table and all the chaos, like I don't want to buy television sets because blah, blah, blah, and he like and they do the prayer, and then he's looking at you.
Speaker 3:I was drawn into that because that was real.
Speaker 1:That was real. That's my point.
Speaker 3:Vera was good. The other girl who was pushing a relationship and probably compelled him to push a little bit too, vera was totally herself. She was totally in the moment, and when she looks at him and he looks at her, that's an actor who's easy to get lost in, and so the moment when he sort of excludes the whole family and just focuses on her as his new love, that was. That was a great moment to me. I like that.
Speaker 1:That's my point about the fundamental theme, about reality and romanticism. Like Licky has been romanticizing her when she like by writing letters he's not actually sending, she says that their first date. You don't really know me and he's like I guess I don't. And then when reality hits, he's like, well, I don't know what I'm doing Right. And he's like, yes, I do Like.
Speaker 3:So I think there's something, but my question.
Speaker 1:But my question to you about the acting now is do you, is it possible that the, the fakeness that's kind of experienced, and I agree there's a level of like it's so heightened, it's like a melodrama, it's like a romantic, I don't know. It's like the guy has his shirt off in one of those romantic novels or what are they called the that you find in the book. Yeah, like like Javier, like it's so heightened, it's like that versus the Vera thing. They're all of a sudden at the very end there's an injection of reality and then it's real.
Speaker 3:But here's the idea. I see what you're saying, that the heightness makes it that sort of artificial and that there it's just that it's not real and sort of there they're falling into that. No, the heightness Look, the height of the heightness makes it more difficult to act like. There are two parts, hamlet and Othello that I don't see how anybody could do eight days a week, because it's so heightened. The emotions are so incredible that you can't possibly bring yourself to those heights every day of the week without wanting to die. Daniel Day Lewis tried it. He walked off the stage in the middle of a performance because he just wasn't experiencing it, because the actor is left with either. I achieved the heights are you know?
Speaker 3:There's a play called Danny and the Deep Blue Sea by John Patrick Shanley. Same thing. You don't have that. John DeTuro did it on Broadway. You don't have that. What Danny is experiencing through the play, it falls apart. The whole thing doesn't make sense. So the actor feels under a tremendous obligation to feel and unfortunately that's the death of good acting. Now something really profound was stirring between Vera and Leckie in that final scene. That that was was lovely, but you would have gotten on Leckie's side in Australia, had the same thing been off, had he thought, authentically, fell in love with that girl, and has she authentically?
Speaker 1:They didn't, is my point.
Speaker 3:That's the whole point.
Speaker 4:They did, they did You're supposed to believe that they did. That's the thing, even if it's a number one man.
Speaker 1:Two against two.
Speaker 3:You don't think. You don't think Romeo and Juliet were authentically in love.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's a kind of all but it's not the same kind of a permanent lot Like it's warlock.
Speaker 3:It's infatuation Deep in fact anybody who's been in the froze of being in love with somebody that, even if it dies in that moment you know you'd probably go through machine gun fire for that person.
Speaker 4:So yeah, the problem that I have with I don't. I never felt the loss.
Speaker 3:Everything they do is poetry. But look, stanislavski once talked about the problem of acting love. How do I act love? Because most actors want to go. I'm in love, and that's not how you act love. You act love by attention. It is a problem of attention, and that's exactly it in the final scene, when he just goes into her.
Speaker 2:That's beautiful. Yeah, we need to do a love story next, let's do a love story.
Speaker 1:Let's do a love story because we got. We got to get going. I find it's very interesting. I love romcoms and you know I read books like Love in the Western World. I read a lot of romantic literature, so I'm interested in this. We got, I think, one more minute. Jax. Jennifer, do you have a last second thought before we sign off?
Speaker 2:I'll say, because of this discussion I might, be like moved a little bit up because there was some depth to it. I think what made it down was I kept comparing it to Band of Brothers. It is not fair and in and of itself I think it's, it's a good piece of art.
Speaker 1:All right, I moved someone, or we moved someone 20% up Jax.
Speaker 4:I and I I highly recommend the Pacific and Band of Brothers. I think that these two shows I'm really eager to see what. What's the next?
Speaker 1:Masters of air.
Speaker 4:I'm really interested to see, eager to see, what that's going to give us. But both of these, both of these shows are very important, I think for different reasons, you know. One is the Band of Brothers for reasons of camaraderie, and the Pacific for just like being immersed in in this terrible, terrible war, fighting a different, a completely different kind of enemies. And I do recommend both. You know, if I was given the choice of two, on a desert island, I'm going to choose Band of Brothers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, All right. Well, thank you everybody for watching the viewing room. Well, if you have thoughts of what we should be viewing preferably popular movies and TV shows of all time put it in the comments. We'd love to hear from you, and thank you everybody for joining me and I'll see you next time.