Chris Kyle Stereotypes And Sniping

Chris Kyle’s first interaction with the Orient on the battlefield occurs when he has to protect a military convoy from a rooftop. He spots a woman and young boy in the path of the convoy and quickly notices that the woman has a hidden grenade which she hands to the boy. The orientalist stereotypes of being cunning and secretive are shown by his description of the woman who is shown to be walking a certain way in order to conceal the grenade. When Kyle shoots the boy and shortly after the woman, the camera angle changes from traditional angles into Kyle’s point of view through his scope. By putting the audience into the scope, the audience must focus on Kyle’s technique in shooting instead of who he is shooting at. In fact, seeing the targets

When Mustafa is first brought up by Chris’ support marine at the beginning of the film, he is told that Mustafa was in the Olympics for sniping. Chris reacts by saying “They got sniping in the Olympics now?” in a very sarcastic tone. Chris’ tone implies that he does not believe that sniping is a sport and does not respect the ability of Mustafa. In a later scene, Mustafa is shown receiving a call to action and the camera follows him around his home. The shot passes by a photo on Mustafa’s wall that shows him receiving a medal at the Olympics. In this photo, it is discernible that Mustafa is not from Iraq but rather from Syria. Throughout the film, Mustafa had been portrayed as being an Iraqi insurgent, but in reality he is from a country that is thousands of miles away from Iraq. This blurring of clearly different countries plays into the Oriental stereotype that all countries in the Orient are the same. In the final scene that takes place in Iraq, Chris Kyle and Mustafa are pitted directly against each other. In the scene, Mustafa is shown to be 1,900 yards away, hiding behind clotheslines, while Chris Kyle is in clear sight of Mustafa on the top of a building. The difference in their locations depicts the stereotype that people from the Orient are calculating and cowardly. When Chris decides to shoot Mustafa, close ups of him are shown to allow the audience to understand the process Kyle goes through to take such a long shot. When he releases the trigger, the camera follows the bullet as it travels to Mustafa and the angle only changes for a split second when the bullet pierces Mustafa’s skull. The thing to notice in this sequence is that the emphasis is placed on Chris Kyle and his bullet instead of on Mustafa and his impending death. This parallels how the western world