ARCHIBEQUE'S LAST WORD

FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT
Why Anti-War Movies
Encourage Violence

"So long as there are men, there will be wars." --Albert Einstein A funny thing happened on the way to the anti-war column, after watching about a half-a-dozen "antiwar films" I realized that antiwar films require a war. I asked friends and family for a list of favorite antiwar films and got the usual titles: Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Dr. Strangelove. They all give you that feeling that it's bad to get into a situation where you might get shot, taken prisoner or lose a limb. But do they give you the sense that war is ideologically wrong? Or do they just give you the feeling that losing is bad? Some of the best antiwar films are actually stories that are told from the other side of the battlefield: All Quiet on the Western Front, Das Boot, Underground, and Richard III come to mind. What gives them the feeling that war is bad is that the characters are all losers, and American's hate losers.

Violence occurs when one person wants one thing and another person wants something else, like you want to be doing 85 in the fast lane and the person in front of you is doing the speed limit. Riots occur when one group in a country wants one thing, voting rights, equality, and the ruling body doesn't want to give it to them. War occurs when one country wants to practice an ideology that another country disagrees with it, like being communist or incinerating 8 million people. Either way it's all based on power and control and fighting the power.

What I'm saying is, of course war is bad, anything that can get you killed is bad, but there are few people I know, short of Buddhist monks who don't have a negative reaction to being controlled or attacked. War films, much like any action film, allows us to identify with a character who is being controlled or attacked and fights back. We identify with the hero and want him to win because we want to win, and more importantly, we want to see the bad guys get theirs. But of course, we just talking about films, aren't we.

Let's take a look at our list. Apocalypse Now, great film, but why? What's our favorite line? "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." It's based on the story by Joseph Conrad called The Heart of Darkness about a rogue cornel, Kurtz, who goes native and becomes a cannibal. A soldier is dispatched to kill him and the soldier has to ponder the morality of killing to prove that killing is wrong. Same basic line in the movie, and after a couple of hours of watching needless killing not only do we believe that Kurtz needs to die we would also like to see the government that sent his killer put in stocks. Born on the 4th of July? Doesn't it leave you wanting to take those clubs from the Chicago cops and beat them silly with them to let them know how it feels to be beaten? For viewers to actually feel that war and violence are ideologically wrong they would have to be left with the feeling that no one should be punished. Have you ever seen a film that has left you feeling that way?

In the new film 28 Days Later, after animal rights activist let loose infected primates that the isle of Britain is struck by a virus: Rage. Scientists were studying how to diminish violence in people and studied the problem to find the cure. The infected people attack every living creature they run across mindlessly pummeling it to death, unless it too becomes infected and then they seem to have no interest in killing it. As the survivors eat dinner they discuss a return to normalcy. One thinks that the end of man will return the world to normal, but an army captain has a different idea. "What I've seen in the 4 weeks since the infection: people killing people. What I saw in the 4 weeks before infection: people killing people." For him the world is normal, just sped up. It's a fabulous film and I highly recommend it.