The Pointlessness of war

I've recently finished watching Park Chan-Wook's Joint Security Area - a film set around the supposedly infamous Bridge of No Return which seperates North and South Korea.

What I found particularly intriguing about this piece was the way in which it attempted to focalise the war from the perspectives of Soldiers from both sides who share the same view that the country should once more be unified and not from the typical nationalist binary of good/evil.

The interesting part comes when you consider that this perspective is also shared by many real people who live in other such conflicts and have appeared in non-fiction films. The best example I can think of off the top of my head comes from Oliver Stone's documentary Persona Non Grata when Stone's film crew was actually allowed to interview a Palestinian terrorist cell who claimed only to strive for a "unified, secular way of life".

The question I wish to pose is why in a partisan situation where both sides want the same thing does there still have to be so much pain and devastation. Why can't people just refuse to fight?

Of course, the problem with historical film comes from the opinion that it can also be used for reasons of propaganda to encourage hatred toward certain ethnic groups, with the best example being Leni Rifenstalh's Triumph of the Will. Even in today's supposedly liberally Democratic world, visual texts which work to provoke those sentiments of violence and hatred are still rampant.

Take, for instance, the upcoming Hugh Jackman film Australia, which attempts to document the Japanese air raid of Darwin's sea ports. Many people in the industry with whom I have discussed about this issue share my fears that this will become little more than a retelling of Pearl Harbor, hoping to promote Australian Nationalism and anti-Japanese feeling. The same can be said of all war films which promote partisan sentiments. War films or rather films about war often carry that emotional element which may lead to them becoming detrimental in a multicultural world and often have an adverse effect to what the film maker hopes to achieve.

Then again, these days it is not just films, books and newspapers which can promote war mongering attitudes. Television also palys a large part through the consistant coverage of veterans day, doctored news footage designed to only show the "good" segments of war and reality shows like Bad Lads Army which attempt to illogically 'reform' petty thugs by training them how to be killers.

The most partisan medium for attitudes to War is probably Videogames (yes, VGs are officially considered a legitimate form of media these days) which have since become the main forum of much debate on the ethics of war. On the one had, there are a swathe of RTS (Real Time Strategy) and FPS (First Person Shooter) games which appear to promote the concept of war and in the most extreme cases even glamorize it. On the other side of the spectrum are games like Metal Gear Solid and Assassin's Creed which attempt to contest these claims and prove that in war there can be no real good or bad side because the reasons people fight are always academic.

Perhaps what I am trying to get at with all this seemingly pointless philosophizing is, to quote Amnesty International's Howard Bell, humanity has not and can not advance as a species if we continue to consider war as a such an intrinsic part of our cultural heritage. Yes, greed and the desire for violence is part of human nature, but how long can people use those alibis to excuse the killing not just of soldiers but of innocent women and children. Not enough work has been done outside of niche market media to investigate the effects to which war has an effect on these people and it is a shame because that is exactly what wars are really about: people. Strip away all the layers of rhetoric and supposed meaning and one is left with the bare bones of what war is - human beings reverting back to their neolithic tendancies and killing other human beings.

More work should be done to promote truly egalitarian representations of how devastating war can be in order to finally ensure that the next generation can realise just how horrific wars really are and realise that we are all one species. One people...