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?
I would compare the action scenes in Saving Private Ryan to the “action scenes” of Schindler’s List. It tells you how hard all of this is, how everybody’s confused, how nobody knows what they’re doing, how it’s all a hellhole. I would not describe Schindler’s List as “glorifying” the plight of the Holocaust victims. It tells you how horrid this all is, not that you should be part of it.
(FWIW, Saving Private Ryan and Thin Red Line are often put in the same category of “glorifying the people who fought in WWII”. But in my opinion, “glorify” here means “elicit sympathy for their effectively-forced situation”, and not “glorify”, which I would say is something like La Grande Vadrouille (1966).)
I agree that Saving Private Ryan action scenes are supposed to show what you’re talking about, but that’s not what they do. To an American audience (which the film was made for) the chaos and horror is justified and honorable. The audience has been taught that America is always on the right side of history, they have to honor soldiers at every sporting event, they have a general riding a horse into battle in the middle of their town square, they had to pledge allegiance to war every day as a kid, etc etc. The title Saving Private Ryan tells you everything; war is heroic and necessary.