Be it books, movies, documentaries, or even music. I feel like I have people around me whom wish to fight violence with violence, with mentalities like “we should just counter-invade and show them who’s boss” or “I’m not afraid to fight for what I believe in”, showing a clear intent against an “enemy”.
“The enemy” is such a dehumanizing perspective, and only breeds further animosity. I wish for them to see that we all manage to find justifications for our actions, but that doesn’t make it worthy of just any sacrifice.
I recently saw the Norwegian movie Max Manus, which is about real events during WW2.
Tap for spoiler
He survives, but with almost none of his friends, and after the war he struggles with alcoholism and nightmares for the rest of his life.
It left me with a feeling of despite “victory”, many people paid with more than just their life. And this is the feeling I wish others to feel, just for a bit, and ponder if “doing the right thing” really is the best thing.
No one should want conflict, and I wish to emphasize just how much we really should try and avoid warmongering. I’ve seen uncensored videos from modern wars, been in the military, had a great grandfather who fought in WW2 (who also struggled with nightmares and PTSD until his natural death), and all of it makes me dread the potential of the horrors that happen to everyone involved in an armed conflict, especially the innocents and the kids…
So, any suggestions for media that conveys this in a way that makes one really reflect?
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Was about to comment about watching that and then realised I was thinking about Land of Mine, but that is also a film I would suggest.
Empire of the Sun is a film about civilians caught in a war zone.
The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, is a collection of short stories about the Vietnam War. It shows the exhilaration, the terror, the cruelty and hardship of living through a war. It definitely doesn’t glorify conflict.
My War Gone By, I Miss It So, by Anthony Loyd, is a firsthand account of the Bosnian conflict of the 90s. It is ugly and brutal, and the author tries to give an honest presentation of his own state of mind at the time.
Black Hawk Down (the book, not the movie), by Mark Bowden, is a fairly thorough account of the incident in Mogadishu in 1993. Bowden did a lot of research and describes the political background that led to the UN and US presence in Somalia, and all of the mistakes that led up to the helicopter being shot down and what happened after. He interviewed many of the military personnel who were actually involved and recounts the events from several different perspectives. And as the Wikipedia article says:
Bowden simultaneously manages to capture the siege mentality felt by both civilians and the US soldiers, as well as the broad sentiment among many residents that the Rangers were to blame for the majority of the battle casualties.
This is a very realistic presentation of what combat is like, framed inside the perspective of the overall military operation. Bowden doesn’t shy away from describing the mistakes in decision-making, but also does a fair job of describing how lack of information or bad information leads to bad decisions in the moment which result in people dying for no good reason. He definitely doesn’t glorify the conflict. My overall impression after reading it was “I hope I never have to be involved in anything like that”.
And finally, Alice’s Restaurant, by Arlo Guthrie, is a song about the draft.
if you wanna end war’n’stuff ya gotta sing loud
The Unknown Soldier is quite well made and high budget war movie by Finnish standards and it does nothing to glorify war.
For some incredibly good sci-fi: Some desperate glory by Emily Tess
Tap for spoiler
About a teenager, groomed from birth to be a true-believing elite soldier, who is starting to question and escape a fascist, rapey, ultra-militarized hellhole while looking fo her lost brother. Her mental journey is superbly written. Also includes gay awakenings.
2000 meters to Andriivka
It follows the Ukrainian push through a narrow strip of woodland to a town that has been destroyed by the war.
The Great War channel on YouTube.
For fiction: Band of Brothers.
Defcon: Everybody Dies
That game has actually been studied by scientists, because it changes people’s attitudes towards nuclear weapons.
The game literally is about using nuclear weapons to win.
How does it look? It isn’t overly grotesque. There are no melting faces, no devastated landscapes. Nothing. It’s just a minimalist map of the world.
You might hear that and think that it’s a pro-war game. But it actually has the opposite effect on players.
How can it be? Simple. The game is accurate in how swiftly it all ends if there is a nuclear war. And by playing it, that truth is engraved into players’ intuitions.
The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On.
Click for summary/spoilers
Kenzō Okuzaki was conscripted to fight in WWII and the experience radicalized him against the Japanese government. He deliberately attempted to get himself shot by Allied forces but was captured instead. After the war, as the years passed, he became worried that the younger generation was growing up unaware of the horrors of war and the atrocities that their government had committed, and so would be prone to repeating the mistakes of the past. He became desperate to do something about it.
Okuzaki brazenly defied norms about politeness and drove around in a car covered in slogans, shouting out of loudspeaker that the emperor was a war criminal. The film focuses on his attempts to track down elderly veterans and get them to record testimonies in front of a camera, specifically investigating allegations that Japanese soldiers resorted to cannibalism in New Guinea. Of course, people generally aren’t particularly thrilled about a stranger showing up to relitigate old war crimes and interrogate grandpa about The Things We Don’t Talk About. There are times when Okuzaki even gets involved in fistfights with people over it.
After collecting testimony from a bunch of people, he comes to the conclusion that a colonel was responsible for the war crimes, and he decided to kill him over it. However, when he arrived at his house, he only found his son, who he shot and injured instead.
Okuzaki is a complicated and problematic figure but in some ways that makes the film all the more unsettling and challenging. Shooting someone for just for being related to a war criminal is pretty indefensible, but Okuzaki was broken by the war he wanted to avoid repeating (the decade in solitary confinement probably didn’t help either). He wanted to remind people of the horrors of war, but it’s because of what the war did to him that he had become maladjusted and prone to violence (although it’s worth noting that a lot of his protests had been nonviolent, and had gotten him jail time). I think there’s a natural inclination to look at things like this in the abstract, to ask, “how for is it justifiable to go in pursuit of a good cause?” but the film pushes us to consider the psychological, human aspect of this traumatized killer trying desperately to create a world where people like himself would not be created.
I think most even slightly accurate war movies don’t really glorify the war bit. Two recommendations.
There is a film A24 distributed last year called Warfare that follows a very accurate telling of a single operation of a platoon in Ramadi. It is pretty grim, but really gives a sense of just how brutal it can be for a small group. A lot of movies show slaughter at scale, like beaches of Normandy. That is always fascinating and dark too, but it slightly diminishes the struggle of the individuals. This does not.
Another recommendation is Tora! Tora! Tora!; an absolute classic from 1970. This movie shows you many of the mistakes and oversights, big and small that led to the Pearl Harbor attack being so crippling. Aside from huge ship and air guns there aren’t many guns. I think many people would enjoy it at the moment because it shows the USA on the rout.
Haven’t seen Warfare, but would definitely second Tora! Tora! Tora!, it’s a magnificent film.
Some episodes of Star Trek do this well. Off the top of my head, “The Drumhead” is a great example of rejecting fearmongering and witch hunting “The Enemy”.
Anything written by Kurt Vonnegut
most of them are pretty right wing, so its mostly propaganda anyways, the MSMs are pretty much this.
Appreciate this post. I’d welcome any suggestion to help deglorify guns to a kid, too
NSFW, but you can youtube a number of firearms accidents. Blown barrels peeled like bananas, exploded chambers etc…
Guns are fascinating to some boys, until they see the accidents of simple range use. Blinded. Dead. Near misses of dead. Lost hands and faces. Gun safety vids serve as a warning to not fuck around.
Careful with age appropriate. Seriously nsfw nsfl.
Spec Ops: The Line I heard is a game like that
