"Deathmatch": Peter Sattler's Camp X-Ray vs Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas

Kind of.

Pete Sattler's debut feature, Camp X-Ray, deals with a newly enlisted soldier of the U.S. Army who is deployed at Guantanamo Bay (GTMO) to babysit detainees. It's a film that is sympathetic to the treatment and the supposed unfair trial(s) that the quarantined men received. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas may just disagree a bit. Okay, maybe a lot.

This video was brought to my attention thanks to this post by Neo-NeoCon. I think it's good timing since after I watched the video memories of Camp X-Ray, which I saw last November, came immediately back. As I walked out of the theater I thought that it was fairly naive in its humanistic worldview. It also didn't help that the "caged tiger" analogy just made me roll my eyes - though it seemed I was the only one who was withholding laughter when that scene/monologue was finished. Add to the fact that lead actress Kristen Stewart, when it came to the film's promotion, went on to say some ignorant things about the military, those that join and the world of GTMO -

(bold: interviewer)

With Camp X-Ray, this is pretty heavy subject matter here in Gitmo. President Obama promised to close the place down in 2009, but hasn’t done so yet. Was part of the attraction to the project shining a light in this bizarre blight on America?

I was forced to really investigate. I knew that Obama wanted to close it down, and I knew that everyone else wanted to, too. Most people you talk to in America have kind of put it out of their minds. I didn’t jump on this movie to make a huge political statement, but it’s such an interesting story within an interesting context, and it’s more of a poke on the shoulder to remind you that this thing is here.

Your character’s relationship with Peyman’s detainee reminds us of the humanity of these people. We tend to view suspected terrorists as this nameless, faceless “other,” when they’re human beings, too.

As Americans, we should absolutely aspire to more than that. If you label something “bad,” people will justify the most terrible things. Just because you’re following a greater whole, suddenly you take the individual out of it and no one bears responsibility for anything.

The film doesn’t show any of the more controversial practices at Gitmo—like waterboarding, sleep deprivation, force-feeding, etc.

It alludes to it. But if we showed all that stuff, people would instantly demonize the film. You see something like that and it becomes so polarizing. Yes, it was cool to be in a Gitmo movie, it was cool to play a soldier, and it was cool remind people that this still exists, but I also thought it was cool to play a simple, American girl who wanted to find her line and aspire to something bigger than her—only to find that things aren’t so simple. Most people in every state think, “Well, of course it’s a great thing to sign up for the Army,” and there’s no question asked beyond that—ever.

She really gets swept up in all the post 9/11 patriotism and signs up for Gitmo duty, only to find that it isn’t what she thought at all.

She’s simple, not very smart, and really socially inadequate—but a good person. So, if you can sign up, put a uniform on, and erase yourself, you don’t have to consider yourself anymore. You can take the individual out of it and say, “Well, this dignifies me. I’m good because of this.” And when that doesn’t end up being true, you actually have to contend with who you are. All she wants is to think, “They did 9/11, they’re bad, fuck that, I’m going to do my job and I’m going to do it well.” But then she gets down there and just can’t accept it; she can’t conform to that.

Right. The mistake we make is not viewing these detainees down there as people, too. We’re all people. 

That is essentially so fucking evil, it’s crazy. It’s a ridiculous idea for you to think that you know anything for sure in life—other than to take care of your fellow people. Where the fuck do you get off thinking otherwise? These two people couldn’t be from more different worlds and perspectives, and probably disagree fundamentally on most things, but there’s a through-line for all of us—and that’s what people forget, and that’s what makes people capable of doing terrible things to each other. What makes you different from any other person that walks the earth?

Given Senator Tom Cotton's military experience (and not being a Jon Michael Turner type or AWOL type) it's a good thing Ms. Stewart wasn't interviewed by him. It would have ended very badly. She'd probably use the "through-line" bit like it was an ace.

P.S. The answers given were probably lightly "taped together," though not manipulated, by the interviewer himself. If anyone is familiar with Kristen Stewart's live interviews she is, sadly, incapable of stringing together that amount of words for an answer - let alone incapable of going an entire two minutes of straight talking - without succumbing to "ums," silent pauses, unfinished thoughts (maybe they are finished?), weird facial expressions that might be expressing gaseous pain (or maybe she's thinking really hard) and cussing.