(Note to literalists: the Watched column presently contains only a smattering of 'warblogs' because the facilitator of the template-change--Dr. Menlo--is not very familiar with them, and will be adding more as they are sent to him. Also, this blog may contain areas of allusion, satire, subtext, context and possibly even a dash of the surreal: wannabe lit-crits beware.)
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[Watch this space for: Pentagon and Petroleum, The Media is only as Liberal as the Corporations Who Own Them, Wash Down With, and Recalcify]
WARBLOGGER WATCH
Wednesday, March 05, 2003
Anti-war war movies?
Can you name a war movie that is anti-war? ''Vietnam War films are all pro-war, no matter what the supposed message, what Kubrick or Coppola or Stone intended," former US Marine sniper Anthony Swofford writes in his book Jarhead - A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles. "The magic brutality of the films celebrates the terrible and despicable beauty of their fighting skills. Fight, rape, war, pillage, burn. Filmic images of death and carnage are pornography for the military man.''
Violence, sex and male camaraderie are the big draw for many adolescent men who enlist. As a 14-year-old, Swofford was moved by pictures of the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1984: ''The marines were all sizes and all colors, all dirty and exhausted and hurt, and they were men, and I was a boy falling in love with manhood. I understood that manhood had to do with war, and war with manhood, and to no longer just be a son, I needed someday to fight.''
So, which war movies do not "celebrate" the "terrible and despicable beauty" of "manly" fighting skills? I can only think of "war movies" about civilians that really seem to be "anti-war". A Petal, and Address Unknown for example, both from South Korea. Can you think of a movie in which the main characters are soldiers that leaves you with a genuine feeling of horror about war? posted by Anonymous4:21 PM
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The Watchers
WBW: Keeping track of the war exhortations of the warbloggers.
