American Soldiers on 'American Sniper' by Matt Gallagher, The Daily Beast
Contrary to what the Internet would have you believe there are ways of thinking about Chris Kyle other than war criminal or hero.
Countrymen and countrywomen, we have got be smarter about this whole American Sniper thing.
Without question, the film has tapped into that ever-elusive cultural zeitgeist, and think pieces are hardly the only metric proving it. The film has a slew of Oscar nominations, and a $105.3 million long weekend opening, a January box-office record. Surrounding these successes is a lot of rancorous noise and debate, not just about the film itself, but what its’ box-office impact signifies for us as a nation and as a citizenry. Maybe people do care about Iraq and Afghanistan, and the stories emerging from those places, after all—or at least care for a certain type of story from those places…