Transitioning from military life to civilian life is a momentous and potentially traumatic life event, especially now when many military veterans separating have served in Afghanistan or Iraq. This has created unique social challenges for healthy civilian integration. Indeed, the rates of military PTSD and veteran suicide are a national concern. But even on a more mundane and prosaic level, the transition from military to civilian is complicated and potentially fraught. The HBO seriocomic series Barry chronicles the travails of a former Marine turned low-rent hitman as he attempts to start a new life as an actor in Los Angles. Although Barry touches on aspects of PTSD and veteran trauma, the general thrust of the show is concerned with Barry’s struggle to “act” normal in a civilian world completely disconnected from the military world.
This paper will argue that by deliberately conflating both comedy and drama and playing with action film tropes of the “disaffected veteran,” (alluding to films such as Taxi Driver, Rolling Thunder, Rambo, and even Grosse Pointe Blank), Barry comments on the often absurd disconnection between military life and civilian life and the difficulties servicemembers often have in navigating between these two worlds. For Barry, acting functions as a simulacrum of “normal” behavior. Additionally,the acting class he joins functions emotionally like a military unit. I maintain that the absurd clashing of Barry’s violent “hitman world” and his acting world, as well as the show’s deliberate clashing of dramatic and comedic tones can be seen as representing the absurdity faced by returning servicemembers who often go from operating in dangerous war-zones to taking out the garbage and working in cubicles. The tragedy and absurdity works the other way as well with a largely disconnected civilian world having to accommodate the peculiarities of combat veterans now among them.
About the presenterMichael Wycha
Michael received his B.A. in English from Shippensburg University in 2007. From 2008 to 2014 Michael taught high school English in Harrisburg, PA. He received his M.A. in American Studies from Penn State Harrisburg in 2016. Michael’s research interests include American literature, cultural and intellectual history, and popular culture. Michael is currently a PhD student in the American Studies program at Penn State Harrisburg.