1. Have you read The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien? It's a fantastic book. It's a collection of anecdotes about soldiers in the Vietnam War. According to the author, almost none of it is true. The stories are written to give you the experience of being in the war. I accept that, and I understand that to get at the true essence of a story you have to embellish a bit, but I don't like it. I feel powerless and insignificant. Since reading that book, I have dismissed all war stories and accepted that I will never understand war. All I can do is have compassion for soldiers as I would for any other human being.
2. I dated a guy who lied all the time for such reasons mentioned above, and for others that I still don't understand. He once told me a really cool story about a time when he didn't talk for a whole week. I was super impressed. I made a joke about it later that day and he laughed at me for believing his story. I learned that I'm either too trusting or just not smart enough to figure out when people are lying.
3. My mentor took me to the DoD Worldwide Military Photography Workshop last year. If you look at the Facebook Page, you'll see little Casey in the cover photo, dressed in a purple frilly shirt among a group of manly men in uniform. I just went to hang out, I didn't participate in any of the exercises. I got to meet lots of great people, hear all the presentations, and do none of the work; it was great. I also got a private tour of the military media building. I was surprised by the enormous amount of control and security of military imaging. It's ridiculous. We had to lock our phones in a black box, and one room of employees had to turn off their monitors while we visited. Even if a soldier wanted to tell a true story, the military probably wouldn't let them. Even civilian photographers who are imbedded in in platoons are told when and where and what they can photograph.
There's no way Restrepo is an honest film. Yes, I understand documentaries are "artistic representations of reality" but I'm sure the military has skewed that reality of the Korengal for us. It's movies like these that remind me why I've dedicated my career to honest journalism.
I'm like you, my friends make fun of me for being so gullible. I tend to trust people before I have a reason to. So when watching these documentaries, I try to be skeptical and critical of everything. It's not easy, the visual and audio effects do such a good job of sucking me in that I start believing I know the characters and have seen the setting with my own eyes. I didn't even know there is a military media building, but I'm sure they oversaw every step of Restrepo's production, leaving us with a misinterpretation of war.
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