I recently saw the HBO documentary "Alive Day Memories: home from Iraq" and suffered a nasty brain wrenching. Focused on seriously-injured vets, the program was admirably produced and hosted by "Sopranos" lead James Gandolfini, who got consistent variations on a disturbing theme.
Apparently, many of today's troops first got gung ho on war and the military while viewing what most boomers would consider anti-war movies -- about Vietnam. One terribly wounded soldier specifically mentioned "Full Metal Jacket" and "Platoon" as having inspired him to join up.
For those who haven't seen it, "Platoon" is a semi-autobiographical account of director Oliver Stone's Vietnam experience. It's as gritty and anti-war as they come, like Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket." Yet, as a kid, this guy came away from these films with the same pumped up message I got from John Wayne's "Sands of Iwo Jima" and too many others like it (I'm now 62).
Regardless of who starred, "John Wayne war movies," some made during WW2, glorified a form of sanitized violence and macho high adventure whilst ridding the world of Japs and Krauts and, of course, following the dictates of a still-trusted American government. Along with War Bonds and patriotism, these films sold a form of warrior hero worship that's plagued humanity since before Achilles.
How did "Platoon," "Full Metal Jacket," "Apocalypse Now," "Deer Hunter" --with their gruesomely-portrayed combat and its aftermath, the policy absurdity, political cynicism and sheer ambivalence -- end up brainwashing the Iraq War generation with the same GI Joe crap that suckered boomers into Vietnam?
As with so much video news, it seems that violent images simply trump any overt message. A few exploding heads is all it takes for the average male to become sufficiently aroused to sign up for a needless war in which he, too, may enjoy severe brain trauma or stress disorders for the rest of his -- and even her -- life. (I like to think that women, not ordinarily big war movie fans, enlist for the "God, duty, country" angle over the exploding heads. But who knows?)
Can we ever expect a genuine anti-war culture given this passion for the warrior hero apparently written into our DNA? If it weren't so littered with history, Ken Burns' "The War" could end up recruiting grunts for the upcoming funfest in Iran. History is merely information that may save your life, or even the world. The warrior hero gets your rocks off.
I love good comic book violence and can't wait to see "300" on video (I wouldn't buy a ticket). But so many of us are so hopelessly infected by what amounts to a wild and primordial disease in mankind, that art quickly morphs into reality -- and policy. Our development here seems to have gotten stuck at the Iliad or the Old Testament. The poetic image of Achilles was enough to inspire Alexander "the Great" to go thieving throughout the ancient world. Neither he, Caesar nor Napoleon had any video assist. As for the Bible, most kids thrill to the adventures of Samson over any New Testament, "love thine enemies" stuff -- just as I did. The preference clearly sticks with them right into the White House.
The perverse persistence of our love for war is all the more discouraging for its sheer distraction from our numberless additional disasters, national and personal. Universal health care is stalled not only by our politically-manufactured need to subsidize a parasitical insurance industry, but by claims of insufficient funds! By spending our treasure on exploding heads in Iraq, all genuine priorities suffer.
There's no accounting for taste, and I still love my warrior heroes, so long as they're safely contained within the pages of Homer. But, apparently, there is no "safe containment" respecting this art/life, chicken/egg conundrum where exploding heads turn anti-war films into recruitment propaganda. The warrior heroes first burst their bonds in cave paintings. Today, their media-multiplied imagery breeds a species-wide psychosis so disruptive of moral progress that it pretty much guarantees we can't get any. Oh, for time enough, and will, to grow out of this.