American Sniper; A True War Story?

War stories are some of the most common kinds of story in American pop culture. They are everywhere and we hear about them all the time whether it be on the news, in a book or on T.V. In his book The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien talks about telling a war story and how to tell if a war story is true or not. From what O’Brien says when telling how to decide if a war story is true or not, it seems that most war stories we read or see are in fact false. Even the true ones can be false in a sense that is hard to describe. The 2014 Clint Eastwood movie American Sniper tells a war story based off of a real war story. Most pieces of American pop culture contain some dominant ideologies or stereotypes that we often don’t notice. This specific piece of American pop culture does contain some dominant ideologies and stereotypes despite it being based off of a true story. Many dominant ideologies don’t only exist in pop culture. Many of them are alive and well in American culture itself. In American Sniper the movie focuses a lot on the roles of men and women. The movie portrays the man as the protector of the woman and the dominant figure in a relationship/family. This is a very common ideology in American Culture and has been in recent years a topic of debate. In recent years there have been more and more pieces of pop culture trying to defy this ideology of women being dependent on men. American Sniper doesn’t try to defy this ideology, however it does defy the common ideology that all war stories have a happy ending. Usually when we see a war story in a movie or on a T.V. show, there is a happy ending whether it be an act of heroism, or a battle won for the good guys. However American Sniper is based off of a true war story that did not have a very happy ending. In a way that is defying the common ideology that all war stories have happy endings and tells viewers what real life is like. Real life isn’t always happy like the movies.