~AMERICAN SNIPER . . ‘CRAFT’ SERVICE ?!!!
so.
so, I was right !!
about . . ‘AMERICAN SNIPER’ – being all about craft.
‘skills’ – marksmanship, sharpshooters, snipers – as American as the Civil War, as homemade as apple pie.
turns out the real CHRIS KYLE had a sharpshooter / SWAT team training business, and it was called … ?
CRAFT !!
CRAFT INTERNATIONAL LLC. oh yeah.
talkin’ about – graphic design !!
the CHRIS KYLE – CRAFT INTERNATIONAL LLC – LOGO.
‘despite what your momma told you . . . violence does solve problems’.
I’m always dumbstruck by the violence of the American Civil war re-enactments.
I’m always dumbstruck by the violence and threat of our real-time global disaster of a DNA doomed low IQ habitat. and hell, no. I don’t want Iran to have nukes.
that’s totally the wrong-ass approach: take-away nuclear capability, don’t make even one more . . nuke the norm.
fuck treaties, disarm.
arm-to-arm combat any day, over total extinction.
hooray for snipers. they kill one person at a time, not whole islands.
but, hey.
away from our deeply wired & totally embedded fucked-up bio-genetic make-up – and, back to: ‘craft’ !!
back to: ART.
does art today – have any meaning, any skills – what a dumb question.
of course, and it’s coming to you, as a ‘SELFIE’, as in ‘a first person bio-narrative’ – this particular time around.
I’ve seen a lot of ‘skulls and crossbones’ in my travails in the art world, and so have you – from the punk underground, biker clubs, on up into the diamond-encrusted secondary markets . . so if you are any kind of artist, or just curious art fan with any ‘eye’, you also should have noticed those great, silk-screened, gray ghost-like skulls that appeared on the American soldiers’ uniforms, and maybe also on the gear, towards the end of the movie. for sure – I was: who silk-screened that ?
great job.
I just re-checked the ‘American Sniper’ trailer – but there were no skull bearing ‘frames’ to screen grab.
keep your eye out for them, next time around.
I thought they were really exceptional, very ‘ghostly’, as in ‘deadly’, minimal, but eerie, no words but doomed as hell. like, art-wise they are life . . . life slip, slip-sliding away, kind of melting with a curiously not funny cartoon ‘edge’ to them. a kind of street tagger all-American Casper the friendly ghost – who got way pissed off. lethal. yeah, that’s it, they speak to lethal, design-wise. no threats, just doing. zero tolerance. zero chances. in a word fed up, and seen too much. the scale of the design was just right, too. I kind of noticed them, but then shook them off, just long enough to think, did someone on the movie crew do that . . did a kind of random day job gaffer, street artist by night, just happen to be on the set, and they let him loose ?
was it the costume design pros, having a little fun ?
I sort of accepted it as a kind of folk art that soldiers do, painting scary icons on the noses of their fighter planes. wartime folk art. it’s called: sending a ‘message’.
also known as . . the visual arts, in general.
but then when I read this random article, below, in the ‘Business and Finance’ section (!!) of the Wall Street Journal, and found out about Chris Kyles’ enterprise, named: ‘CRAFT INTERNATIONAL’, I realized – damn I nailed it.
yep. dead right center in the cross hairs of understanding ‘American Sniper’.
sharpshooting is a skill, and CLINT EASTWOOD told . . a hell of a technical beauty of a tale.
see: “Legal Sniping Behind ‘Sniper’ Movie” – by KATY STECH, Wall Street Journal, Jan 24, 2015
“despite what your momma told you / violence does solve problems.”
is that not an all-American ‘SELFIE’ . . to reflect upon, or what ?!!
a ‘SELFIE’ – that speaks from . . experience.
don’t tread on me, an early American colonial battle cry – if you know your American quilt history, you know it . . well.
it was writ large, sewed into many a cozy bed cover, and later found prominently re-born among confederate civil war flags, the accompanying motif always being a very pissed-off snake, uncoiling upward.
in other words:
for better (old Europe) or worse (Native Americans), American vs American re slavery rights:
don’t mess with me, or there will be no more ‘SELFIE’ – for you !!
old American mantra.
old American arts & crafts.