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In Reply to: Stalag 17 posted by Scott on April 18, 2000 at 09:35:53:
***Good to see someone more p*ssed off about a movie than me around here. Should I ask where you stand on Hogan's Heroes.......?I actually don't remember that one enough to comment on it. However, as a general rule, American war movies all suffer greatly from the super-human super-hero syndrome, even the early ones. What is borderline acceptable in a toungue-in-cheek rubbish ala James Bond, becomes a complete inexcusable irritant in a movie that pretends to be a "serious" work.
I think people should leave war movie in incredibly sad mood. That maybe the only way to avoid the glorification (a great statement, BTW). I doubt anyone will feel joyful and elated after seeing Paths of Glory. That mood is much more in line with what wars had brought us - nothing but tremendous sufferings. I can't accept any "war" movie where there is even some remote potential for cheering teenagers. Good people get destroyed in war, all things beautiful get destroyed, so there is no reason for any joyful emotions.
That, however, goes agains the grain of the most American tradition - the happy end load of syrup. How deeply engrained it is in our culture you can see, for example, in the SPR "product of the year". There, an attemps was made at showing the true war horrors, with some passable results here and there. However, the director just could not fight that "happy end" tendency in himself and the whole movie industry (I suspect not having it would pretty much kill his chances at Oscar).
Sure, the hero "kind of" dies (in the director's all-out, albeit lame effort at getting the "most realistic movie" recognition), but look at plentiful things directly borrowed from any "made-for-prime-time-TV" Chuck Norris garbage. The worst one being the Merlins arriving *precisely" at the right moment to save the few remaining GI's. That moment alone could be considered a proverbial spoon or tar that destroys the whole barrel on honney.
Perhaps any good war movie should leave you with a sense of no hope and no optimism - because war does nothing but destroys both of these. It should leave no room for "Gee, that was great!" type of comments from the crowd.
Breaker Morant IS a war movie. One with Clint Eastwood killing twenty Germans with one bullet is not. I long for one where real people, with *real* strenghts and abilities, with real pains and feelings, try their darnest to prevent the horrible from happening.
And no, that woesn't mean a hero can not survive in a good war movie. He just should not be honney-dipped at the end.
It is a fact of the human condition that while the enlightened deplore war, nobody wants to put an end to it. What?? Not even me?? No, not even you. While war for war's sake seems beyond defense, wars are generally the result of nations or peoples preferring war to the alternatives. Who is willing to say they would happily become the minion of Hitler or Stalin rather than resist at the risk of life and limb? There are pacifists and some religious groups who feel this way, and I am glad there are such people, but their stance is a hard one to maintain. The pacifists of the Viet Nam War era turned militarists when it came to intervening in Bosnia and Kosovo. So long as we have a multi-cultural planet and significant poverty we will have war. Even if poverty is ended by productivity, man's innate cruelty, his lust for power, and even boredom may revive international or intranational violence. Meanwhile the goal of reducing the world to a universal belief system so as to end conflict is typically the prelude to a scheme of forcibly imposing one culture on the others, utilizing violence, subterfuge, blackmail and centralized government power -- which is one small part of what the recent demonstrations in Washington were about.
As long as there is war, there will be stories about war, and it is inevitable that they will often attempt to focus on some positive aspect. After all, given that we fought Germany, aren't we glad we won? Wasn't Eisenhower brilliant? Wasn't Rommel a worthy foe? And so forth. There are heroes in war, just as there are heroes in a fire. That doesn't make the fire any less tragic. I have never seen a movie about a real fire, but if there were one I wouldn't want to sit in my seat watching people burned alive, one after another, even if that happened in the actual fire. I suppose, for educational purposes, we need to remind the public just how horrible wars are, and also just how horrible fires or shark attacks can be. But it is just not possible (unless you are perverse) to enjoy watching hours of horribleness if you have the option of changing the channel. Even the most negative portrayal of war will be less horrible than the actual experience. Human life takes place in a space suspended between good and evil. If you can figure out a way to get rid of the evil that doesn't involve taking humanity by the scruff of the neck, let us know. Religion tries, and though it is often abused by bad people (especially politicians), the underlying doctrines of western religions tell us to be content with our lot, try to behave as well as we can, and treat others kindly. They also postulate a perfect being above us to whom we are accountable, which may drain off at least a portion of our excess of pride, vanity and arrogance. Humanistic creeds tell us to object to our lot and sacrifice some people so that others may rise. They provide us with an allegedly value-free social science with which to manage the process. With their cost-benefit calculus and winner-loser methodology the humanists are morally more primitive than most religions, though we think of them as more advanced. Once one begins a process that creates winners and losers, strife is inevitable.
America is a country of optimism and idealism. America has a shared religion if you will in which happy endings are possible, even likely. I dare say this trait is a good one and to be nourished, not deflated. For our chronically positive outlook has a lot to do with making America a good place to come to, and making America a relatively benign corner of the globe. These qualities have eroded in recent decades, in part because we have been tongue-lashed by radicals and bohemians into believing ourselves to be crass and animalistic. Though the premiss is one of moral instruction, the effect is often one of diverting us from the moral life, as if morality itself had been shamed. Millions of people have come here of their own free will, escaping one thing or another, or merely seeking their fortune, while hardly anybody leaves. Yes, some people came here as slaves, but mostly by way of South America and with the help of European slave traders who had been operating for centuries. In America's devout and libertarian culture, slavery and its worst abuses quickly melted, whereas they lasted many hundreds of years in other locales. Today America is obsessed with racial justice, but where are the Dutch, the Portuguese, the Spanish, who instigated the slave trade and kidnapped many millions over the years? When will the Dutch consider paying reparations to the black inhabitants of modern Surinam, or the Portuguese pay reparations to the Afro-Brazilians, or demand that Afro-Brazilians hold high office in proportion to their numbers? I doubt they give it a moment's thought!
Exaggerating our idealism is a way of preserving it from generation to generation. The fashionable skepticism toward American idealism has grown alongside an ever diminishing quantity of idealism. Nowadays, we do not expect ourselves to behave nobly, so we don't. The gratuitous violence and horror in modern-style war movies conveys to me a nihilistic viewpoint or even a thinly veiled sadomasochism. It aestheticizes blood and death, sweeping aside the heroic dimension consisting in the hero's choice of how to respond to a terrible but inevitable situation. It also pressures us to think that heroism is a conceit if not a sinister fraud, which is sometimes true but sometimes not.
I don't object to war movies that leave us feeling very sad and/or angry that such things are allowed to occur. But neither do I object to war movies that downplay the blood and gore in order to focus on the larger struggles that these wars are a part of (e.g. against Nazism) or the heroism of individuals caught up in them. Each type of movie is true in its own way. But I hope that in the future heroism will be less necessary than in the past, and I freely grant that much glorification of war has been practised from bad intentions and has perpetrated lies of the sort Mr. Khomenko would point to.
A final thought: Americans sometimes speak of having paid a price in blood for our freedom. If that is true, the consequence should be that in the future, as free men and women, we don't have to put up with someone telling us to go out and die for what he or she considers to be imperative. We would not want to say, "the price of freedom is eternal slavery", for that would make no sense! But so far, the price of freedom seems to involve a little slavery now and then, and I don't know how to remove this imperfection.
I'm not quite sure about your premise.... but.... you have a very interesting way of stating it!I'm reminded of a line of dialogue from that most classic of movies, "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken", in which Don Knotts comments on a brutal murder by saying, "the horribleness and the awfulness of the situation will not be soon forgotten." Naive? Perhaps. Awkward? Undoubtedly. Yet in light of the character he played, few other statements could be as honestly stated or as refreshingly direct.
Thank you for your unique perspective, uniquely stated.
hi,
you write well. But... i am writing this, in part, to decide
whether what you have written is utter nonsense, or an awkwardky expressed thesis.
The use of the word slavery to describe military service is
decidedly awkward. Historically, slaves were often freed, towards the end of their lives. The rise of market economies also brought the
sort of slavery you seem to be talking about.
Military service involves surrendering certain civil rights. But... not all rights are sacrificed, the length of service is chosen, and there is compensation.
Yet, if i understand it, you don't want to "die for...imperative". Or to rephrase, you don;t want to die for someone else's imperative. That sounds rather a lot like those "pacifists of the Vietnam War era", does it not?
Speaking of 'Nam, it is an interesting piece of history. During
WW2, Roosevelt had the habit of freeing colonized countries, a few at a time. If he had lived just a couple of weeks longer, Vietnam would have been freed. France had no ships, if we had not supplied them,
Vietnam would have been free. Military analysis , by both the French and the Amercicans, concluded there was no easy way to reconquer the country. Actually, the french analysis was quite piquant.
If conservatives had not thrown everyone out of the State dept
who had any experience in asia ( during the Red Scare ); someone would have pointed these things out to later administrations. One of the things that would become clear, if you had read the history of this, is that the civilian govt of the era had not developed adequate oversight of foreign policy. Foreign policy was largely conducted by the CIA in the 50's. Actually, the relationship of intelligence depts, civilian govt, and the implication that representative govt is
meaningless if you are never informed what the actual conduct of the government is- is another subject worth study.
There is much more to discuss, especially the role of economic forces in the development of war. Just before that series of 4 or 5 wars started in the former Yugoslavia; the economy experienced the worst overall hyperinflation in history. Germany, shortly before WW2, also experienced hyperinflation. But i am tired.
So i will conclude by saying, nice effort, needs work.
What did you think of Saving Private Ryan? The early scenes in this film struck me as capturing the barbaric hopelessness of combat where being in the wrong place at the wrong time is all that matters (the men in the LST that drops its door on the beach right in front of a machine gun nest for example).I tend to agree with your asssesment of US & Hollywood idealism regarding war. I suspect it is born of geographic isolation in large part. The fact is that the US has never suffered invasion and the consequences of war first hand - the only Americans who have are the ones sent to combat. And even among them the number of casualties has been remarkably smallcompared to many other nations. As a result the bulk of the population has no context for what it is actually like - and in fact often respond negatively to films which depict it accurately as it doesnt fit with their sanitized preconcieved notions. On one hand the fact our society hasnt faced the cataclysm of war on its home ground is a wonderful thing, on the other it does breed a certain naivety regarding what war is actually like.
The one war that should serve to offer that context (the US civil war, which took more American lives than any other war the US has ever engaged in) is over a century behind us - and given the short historical attention span of the average American that basically means it never happened...
joe
***What did you think of Saving Private Ryan?On the whole, not much. Way too many weaknesses.
***The early scenes in this film struck me as capturing the barbaric hopelessness of combat where being in the wrong place at the wrong time is all that matters (the men in the LST that drops its door on the beach right in front of a machine gun nest for example).I agree here. However, in art, in most of its forms, I seek subtle ways more than gross, primitive, overt ones. One can get a person's attention by striking him on the head with a hammer. One can also use more subtle forms. My problem with SPR is that is is much more the hammer thing. So while being effective at getting attention, it also lacks in the artistic department.
***I tend to agree with your asssesment of US & Hollywood idealism regarding war. I suspect it is born of geographic isolation in large part. The fact is that the US has never suffered invasion and the consequences of war first hand - the only Americans who have are the ones sent to combat. And even among them the number of casualties has been remarkably smallcompared to many other nations. As a result the bulk of the population has no context for what it is actually like - and in fact often respond negatively to films which depict it accurately as it doesnt fit with their sanitized preconcieved notions. On one hand the fact our society hasnt faced the cataclysm of war on its home ground is a wonderful thing, on the other it does breed a certain naivety regarding what war is actually like.***The one war that should serve to offer that context (the US civil war, which took more American lives than any other war the US has ever engaged in) is over a century behind us - and given the short historical attention span of the average American that basically means it never happened...
That is precisely true, and expresses my feelings 1000%.
..I found the whole film relentless as well. It certainly didnt provoke thought as much as it assaulted you. But given American views of war it represented at least a bit of a breakthrough for Hollywood in depicting people as less than bulletproof heroes. I'm wondering if thats the most we can hope for given where the average moviegoer here is coming from.Hey, at least Tom Hanks didnt have a limitless clip machine gun in each hand taking on the entire Wehrmacht all by his bulletproof lonesome. Unfortunately, in Hollywood, this must be considered a small victory...
joe
***..I found the whole film relentless as well. It certainly didnt provoke thought as much as it assaulted you. But given American views of war it represented at least a bit of a breakthrough for Hollywood in depicting people as less than bulletproof heroes. I'm wondering if thats the most we can hope for given where the average moviegoer here is coming from.
Hey, at least Tom Hanks didnt have a limitless clip machine gun in each hand taking on the entire Wehrmacht all by his bulletproof lonesome. Unfortunately, in Hollywood, this must be considered a small victory...That is true. I sometimes tend to see things in an absolute, rather than relative, way. When taken against the rest of that almost invariably pale background, it stands out.
Perhaps my frastration with it is from realizing that it was not all that it could have been. They had all the resources they needed, they had a good shot at greatness, and all they have achived was just above the average.
We may not get another chance for quite some time.
...Spielberg somehow missing the mark on the concentration camps in Schindlers list. That film also felt staged and lacking in the otherworldly sense of daily regimented brutality that places like the camps must have really been. Regarding reality vs film for a moment, I'm not sure what was scarier - what happened in the camps or that an entire regimented routine of procedure and order was created and sustained to do it. I'm not sure I would want to see the movie that would really convey that...joe
Human beings have been on that mission for the longest time. Still, the inventiveness of the evil mind sometimes is striking.It can be argued than no intelligent person should go through life without reading the Gulag Archipelago. In that endless narration there is a particular interesting moment.
The chapter deas with the subject of latrine bucket and its effects on lives of former human beings, now denied any rights. The author notes that it is common to talk about the bucket as the symbol of suffering and opression, of complete lack of any comfort and of total humiliation. People talk about prisoners sleeping on top each other, of having to step on many bodies on your trip to that bucket. About the horror of being placed, and forced to sleep right next to it. Of an awfull smell...
All that is not real horror, the author states. The *real* horror begins when the bucket is removed from the cell.
... the next Hollywood war epic coming soon to a theater near you will surely miss. I dont wnow if you've heard about it yet but a production is in the works called "Pearl Harbor". Word is the director is planning to show the US putting up a rather spirited and more or less successful defense. When it was pointed out to him that the battle was one of the US's more thorough and profound defeats he is reported to have said something to the effect that "To hell with historical accuracy. It's my movie and this time we win!"I can't wait. Want me to preorder a ticket for you?
But back to the more profound for a moment. Yes, the ability to systematically inflict pain and suffering is a most remarkable aspect of the human species. History has proven time and time again that civilization is a veneer on human existence which is tissue paper thin. It take precious little to disrupt it. And the fall into chaos and behaviors that are otherwise unimaginable is remarkably rapid.
joe
In a sense, the out of place clean shirts, uniform pants with belts, and leather jackets Victor complains about in Stalag 17 have a long heritage. WWII was a terribly messy affair. Disorganization, incompetence, and simple stupidity at all levels. The U.S. military wanted us to see an orderliness which in reality wasn't there. It enlisted the aid of Hollywood and was largely successful. Films such as Stalag 17 are descendents of the propoganda produced during the war era. They inherit the veneer, which is part of the genre.Hogan's Heroes relentlessly transfers disorganization and incompetence onto the enemy.
I think thats the province of all goverments attempting to rally a population behind a war and maintain morale. The puffery of the movies lends itself quite handily to the purpose. The psychology of rallying public support for war is aided by the dehumaization of opponents or the depiction of them as oafs and fools making it all the easier to rationalize to the public why we should and will triumph - of course every country is doing the same thing with their popular media at the same time. Whose right? Whoever actually wins. They get to write the history books. Of course thats the cynics view (who me?).And dammit, yes it was messy. But what war isnt?
Hogans heroes? I suspect the depiction of Germans as likeable oafs (those silly Nazis, what are they up to now?) had more to do with cold war politics and depicting a necessary ally in a positive light rather than as cold blooded monsters.
joe
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