I.S. compares a blockbuster hit with bin Laden’s death
Eric Batke
Senior Staff Writer
With seniors now fully in the throes of I.S. crunch time, many students are finding themselves receiving unsolicited elaboration from someone desperate for reassurance in these dire times. While the accessibility of an average I.S. topic usually does not extend much farther than its department, every year we are introduced to a number of projects that operate on a level of, “so crazy that it’s beautiful.” Among the most ambitious projects this year is that of Matt Kodner ’12, an English major with a minor in film studies. His project wants to show you some possible implications of one of America’s most compelling recent film — “Fast Five.”
According to Kodner, there exists in this movie “weird elements that we can read between the lines, things that cause us to ask, ‘Are the heroes [of the movie] good?’” By objectively analyzing “Fast Five,” Kodner makes the case that many of the heroes’ actions in the movie would in reality qualify as terrorism; if he is successful in labeling these characters as terrorists, Kodner says they would constitute “the first protagonists in modern mainstream film who are terrorists.”
Kodner’s project becomes even more compelling after you learn that he is comparing the movie’s cultural success as a Hollywood blockbuster with the public’s reaction to the assassination of Osama bin Laden. “People as a whole don’t understand what terrorists are,” said Kodner. “People aren’t interested in the method or facts behind an event [like bin Laden’s death] — it’s significant only as a part of the War on Terror narrative.”
Because “Fast Five” is a PG-13 action movie, there are no graphic depictions of people dying. Kodner uses frame and scene analysis to note that the movie only shows people diving out of the way of an out-of-control vehicle, cutting away before the extras’ inevitable demise. The movie avoids portraying reality, which becomes a key parallel in Kodner’s comparison to bin Laden’s assassination. “Our government kept changing the story of the moment’s leading up to his death,” Kodner pointed out, “when the reality of the situation shows that bin Laden was unarmed when he was killed. People weren’t interested in questioning the details.” According to him, it became a matter of “how we got here” versus “unintelligent and vague news bites.”
Kodner attributes a lot of his enthusiasm for the project to the dynamic between himself and his advisor, Professor Matt Hooley. Describing their relationship, Kodner said, “He’s always four steps ahead of me. One day he sat down with me and said, ‘You understand that this topic is crazy. Nobody makes a comparison like this. But it’s so out there that it works, and you can pull it off.’ He’s so great.”
Despite tackling such an ambitious topic, Kodner does not see himself further pursuing academia. Speaking on his goal of working in film or media journalism, he said, “I can only function if there’s an audience for what I’m creating. [This project] doesn’t mean much in terms of showing what I can do in that field, but academia is not for me.” However he may feel about writing a critical article for I.S., Kodner shows with this topic that he is capable of finding and portraying unique similarities between fiction and reality. The conclusion of the I.S. process will be greeted with relief by seniors, but the enthusiasm and ambition exhibited by seniors like Kodner should have the rest of the campus anticipating the opportunity to discover the finished products.