The Magazine

How to Woo a Warrior

The National Guard, now showing at the multiplex.

Nov 3, 2008, Vol. 14, No. 08 • By JUSTIN SHUBOW
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Now airing in theaters before the coming attractions, "American Warrior" is a stunningly unorthodox commercial for the U.S. National Guard. Directed by Academy Award-winner James Mangold, the two-minute-and-35-second music video combines a kick-ass song by Kid Rock with visuals that cut between the rock star in concert, Dale Earnhardt Jr. braving danger in a stock-car race, and guardsmen deployed at home and abroad. The ad, which is running on 27,000 screens through October, serves as a model example of how to advertise the military during a controversial war.

Right from the get-go, the ad shows zero tolerance for naysayers. The muscular opening lyric alludes to and brushes aside any doubts about the war in Iraq: So don't tell me who's wrong and right / when liberty starts slippin' away / And if you ain't gonna fight / get out of the way.

Even more boldly, the video does not shrink from the fact that a guardsman might be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan; it shows soldiers in what is clearly a Middle Eastern country. This is a marked improvement over "Citizen/Soldier," a cinematic National Guard ad from 2007 that portrayed combat soldiers primarily in the Revolutionary War and World War II. "American Warrior" perhaps takes its forthrightness to an extreme when Kid Rock solemnly sings, "I'm giving all myself," which could easily refer to sacrificing one's life.

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