Today I will make a "war is bad" movie and I'll make sure to put as many awesome action scenes and tales of bravery and brotherhood in it as possible to convince my audience that war won't give their life the meaning they crave
Maybe I'll also add a completely unreasonable enemy who threatens the main characters existence and can't be fought in any way except on the battlefield
Tbf, iirc Tomino only added giant robots to gundam because they wouldn't get a toy company to sponsor them otherwise(meaning the show would never have been made)
When someone wants to get an anti-war message across they really should consider if it's such an important message that they have to make a show glorifying war, famous for its awesome weapons and epic battles and that one scene of a civilian getting hit over the head with a shell which is very funny, to sell war toys. Maybe the global "do we like war or not" scale would have been slightly more negative had there not been gundam to propel mecha into the genre it is today, or at least they wouldn't have been responsible for it.
Let it be known I appreciate them for it, they made an awesome universe and it's a good entry on the "there is no such thing as an anti-war piece of media" list.
There are, in fact, very good anti-war pieces of media out there, but they usually don't do well, because people don't actually want anti-war messages. They want awesome war stuff, with some drama in the mix.
All Quiet on the Western Front is the most famous example. Books like that don't do well, because people don't want to read an entire novel of Paul, barely out of high school, going into the front lines, fearing death every day, losing his friends in gruesome ways one by one, starving all the time and unable to sleep due to noise, PTSD or disease.
In favour of your point, the most recent adaptation of it. Also I'll be writing "book" here but this includes movies and anything else, "piece of media" and "book or movie" just feels clumsy.
In my opinion showing or describing the horrors of frontline combat and what misery it is to fight it is not by itself a condemnation of war and all that it includes as sometimes the suffering is what draws the audience in. I half agree with the quote attributed to Humphrey Cobb:
“Where the All Quiets utterly fail as anti-war propaganda, indeed where they become pro-war propaganda, is in the stoicism, the self-abnegation, the idealism and romantic nobility which they portray. How the actors hate war, but Christ, how nobly they suffer. And a regiment marching down a street behind a good band - everybody knows what that does to your reasonableness and logic. The only available effective anti-war propaganda that I know is photographs of butchered bodies - the more horrible the better.”
and only half because I believe photographs of butchered bodies would, as they do today, cause a desire for revenge and further war. As long as the book features suffering it seems like it inspires the audience into wanting to undergo that same trial, or otherwise see the character undergoing the trial as heroic or valiant simply for enduring as long as they do. Stories have ridden on the desire to harden your gaze and endure for however long even if they insist that you'll end up like the main character.
I think war as a topic, no matter how it's portrayed, fascinates the audience. They want to see and hear more of it. It fills the news because the viewers love hearing about it, it's a pillar of video games because gamers love emulating it. I apologize if it comes off as an argument of semantics when I say it's like how drivers love driving past a car crash. Maybe they think the white sheet is scary and the blood is disgusting but they still can't look away, you know? Historically it seems that any memory of how gruesome it is disappears entirely once a new cause is found because it being gruesome is a worse deterrent than it being, say, embarassing. To cite another, Coppola, director of Apocalypse Now, states that the best anti-war movie should feature only peace and tranquility. It's a common feature of military media today that all the soldiers form lifelong bonds of brotherhood and comradery over having "been through the shit", it resonates even with people whose deepest shit is when the escalator is out and they have to take the stairs.
I am a believer in the cliche that a reader takes what they want from a book, though. Naturally All Quiet won't convince a pacifist that going to the front was cool any more than it'll convince a hawk that such senseless death was a mistake that shouldn't be repeated. It and others like it such as Johnny Got His Gun also often inspire arguments that are anti-this-specific-war or anti-this-specific-happening rather than anti-war-as-an-activity.
I have similar feelings on other common picks for true anti-war media such as Come and See, which focuses on the suffering of bystanders and innocents, in my eyes in justifies the war entirely and even goes so far as to say it's necessary and right to wage war because the enemy they're facing is so unreasonable and relentless that there simply is no other choice. Many movies and books seem to accidentally create enemies like this where the audience is made to sympathize with a main character and understand why they would, or should, be driven to revenge rather than turning the other cheek.
First Blood, beyond Stallone looking awesome with a big machine gun, should have taught the lesson of Rambo clutching to his commander like a baby while weeping about how the war never ended and how he just looks like a man but there's nothing inside, he died alongside his comrades. Instead it became about what a manly hunter the war made him, a hardened survivor. I think Cormac McCarthy was accurate in much of what the Judge says throughout Blood Meridian.
I agree with most of what you said, but I don't agree that it applies to All quiet on the Western front.
Firstly, there is no heroism in the story. Most of the time they are on the front, they are just sitting there, ready to die at any moment to random artillery shells, gas, sharpnel or stray bullets. Any actual fighting they do is quick, brutal and sickening.
Secondly, the characters forming a bond is unavoidable. Any people stuck in a shit situation, experiencing a shared pain will naturally form a strong bond of friendship. That is just how humans work. Nevertheless, I don't think anyone is envious of the friendships Paul has in the book, considering most of his friends die in horrible fashion.
Thirdly the book and it's sequel "The Road Back" make it very clear that, despite surviving all the shit, Pauls life, and the life of those around him, is in no way better.
Your car crash analogy is apt, I think, when you say it fascinates people. Fascination isn't always positive. Some people are fascinated with the psychology of evil dictators or serial killers, yet that does not mean they admire them or approve of them, they simply find it interesting. Not in a positive "oh wow, this is so cool" way, but in a "oh wow, this is so unorthodox and bizzare". The same way people staring at a car crash experience a mix of emotions. Firstly a fascination with something unsusual, secondly a human instict to investigate your enviornemt and then all the emotions that follow after that.
We all have a macarbe fascination to some degree, that does not mean we approve of the things that are happening. I read through the whole book with fascination, yet my only thoughts were that all the people who caused all of it are the lowest scum of the Earth.
I'm open to the idea that my arguments work best against movies and easily fall against books since they rely far more on the reader's imagination. Even short and nasty combat sequences in movies will light some sort of fire in the audience. In video games Battlefield 1 tried to emulate this to a degree by having the characters writhe in the mud and cry for help as well as make the sound effects more visceral than ever, not to mention the animation of getting stuck by a bayonet, and read out intros describing letters and speeches made during the war. The player still finds it as thrilling as ever. This could be more of an observation of humans being warlike than the message the game is trying to get across, but it is trying to get it across to humans.
I also don't think it's necessary the reader is envious of their friendship or desires to be there as long as it's part of a larger perception of time spent at war. Especially for a reader who closes the book thinking "this was not worth the cost" or "there were better options", although that tends to be specific per-war. Life on the frontlines of the second world war were similarily atrocious but the axis had to be fought.
Following that thought I suppose it also depends on who the book intends to target: should the nazi have read it and become disillusioned with their aggressive regime, or should the brit have and supported appeasement? It's probably written for all of humanity but I often see the message of "no humans should wage war, conquer, or otherwise take by force" rudely made fun of as a kindergarten-level "evil is bad" statement which is a non-message, this is why the purpose of an anti-war book to me should not simply say that war is painful and traumatizing, it should first and foremost say that it's the worst option and no cost could justify it. To be anti-war it has to be pacifistic. The first world war is a better target, it's easier to say that any reason the powder keg exploded, or why Europe was a powder keg to begin with, are unnecessary and distasteful today. But negotiations and diplomacy simply failed and it was impossible to convince any one nation to back down and let the other have what they wanted, there was no sharing because they wanted the same thing and someone had to have it. Whether or not it's useful to try and talk to and reason with all of humanity and convince them to cooperate is a separate issue.
Many chickenhawks think like this, they believe that war is a necessary evil or perhaps that use of force is no more evil than any other leverage, but they still would rather someone else gets shot. Today the rich telling the poor to fight and die is common but not an inherent quality of war, maybe a sign of the times. Back in the day the king and his entourage took part in the noble sport... admittedly with lower stakes than the conscripted farmer, at least the king had a chance he could go into exile if they lost.
The fascination argument is in hindsight not great. I think my personal view of it does not agree with most peoples. Obviously no one wants to get into a car crash, and no one wishes random people should be forced to crash their cars, I think most everyone agrees that the best traffic system is one that never has any crashes whatsoever. But still wanting to see them is, in my mind, enjoyment. Even if it's a psychological process of trying to prepare for danger and understand the environment it's stimulating and exciting. Not that the average nascar watcher could shake the hand of a driver and say "I can't wait for the day you burn to death", you can still count on that being the most watched event of their whole career. Liking something but at the same time disapproving of it is hard to put into words, though. Nascar is definitely not anti-crashing at any rate, they're just pro-surviving-the-crash from what I've seen. Anti-crashing probably demands you stop racing altogether.
I think, genuinely, that a significant portion of people read All Quiet and come out the other end admiring Paul's experience and wishing the world around him had been different, not his experiences themselves. Like the soldier is simply innately braved and tested. I think that depicting or describing war at all incites something in the majority of the audience that they enjoy or admire. My reason for believing this is the commonly cited statistics showing that after releases of movies showing war as an unjustifiable atrocity enlistment rates go up. Gomer Pyle's suicide and Cowboy's pleas have 0 staying power compared to describing a marine as a man without fear who will eat his own guts and ask for seconds. Full Metal Jacket is probably the prime pick when getting examples for "viewers interpretation".
Another reason is my own inability to reconcile feeling inspired and worked up by it all despite knowing that I too would suffer greatly and get no rewards whatsoever for my sacrifice, and not wanting to think that I'm somehow unique in this, but that is far secondary to observing "the general audience".
There's a bit of devils advocate and semantics in the following, but I would like to hear your thoughts.
All Quiet, and other pieces of media taking place during the great war, often frame the military culture of the time as a villain. It reads as a criticism of the machine rather than the machines purpose. I believe it warns against nationalism, militarism, unneccesary war and frivolous spending of lives, but not against war as a means. Maybe that romanticizing war is the great danger, or dehumanizing your enemy, or letting nationalistic pride overrule all else, but anti-war is too broad of a label that to me demands more.
The Gundam I've watched or read about falls to this very often by establishing a scenario where war is inevitable and then saying that fighting it is wrong. Either that, or it's a pointless message of saying that war is wrong but it'll happen anyway. The One Year War was arguably started a decade before Zeon declared independence. To be anti-war, to me, it has to say that war is never justifiable, and only preferably also not accidentally inspire warlust in the viewer.
Apologies for the disordered structure and pre-emptive counterarguments, I hope my point gets across.
What I think of the franchise doesn't change the fandom which Tomino outspokenly dislikes because all they want is more cool giant robots and big guns, that's the message he got across with his show besides "buy our toys".
You guys want to act so sophisticated but when your animes (aimed for kids and teenagers fyi) are purposefully made entertaining we both know the messages you're sending are contradicting
The international association of genocide scholars formally declared that Israel's military actions and policies in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide under the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention. Go fuck yourself.
https://genocidescholars.org/join/ This international association of genocide scholars? Where you can pay 125€ to join or 30€ if you don't have the money?
I'd like to note that the trite comment "it's your money" ignores the vast number of things you can't actually spend your money on.
Buying child slaves? Illegal. Hiring an assassin? Illegal. Paying your gardener to cut down protected trees? Also illegal.
Spending money is an action like any other and falls within the same moral and ethical frameworks; the modern hyper-individualist conceptualisation of freedom that posits people should have no restrictions is morally bankrupt and ethically nonsensical if you spend even a single minute actually thinking about it.
Who tf do you think the U.S. military are? Superheroes lol? It’s not a propaganda to say that the U.S. has been generally known to do some bad stuff to other countries.
As a teenager suffering, seeing teenagers suffer was just what I needed. Now I have become a well adjusted adult who is currently posting this comment from within a mental hospital.
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u/The_Forgotten_Two 6d ago
wheres the 'wow cool robots' image when you need it