May 6, 2007
The War game today?
The Peter Watkins film The War Game which was originally made for BBC would not have the same effect today as it would when it was made. After networks telivised nearly all the action taking place in the gulph war, this country has been completely desensitized to images of war and violence. Not only the Gulph War , but images of the kids inside of Columbine High School, the footage of two planes flying into the world trade towers and a barrage of news footage everyday have shaped the way people view tthis type of footage. A film like The War Game would never fly these days. In it's time i'm sure it was shocking and contraversial, but nowadays it's watered down fiction. People are too burned out by images of human brutality that we actually expect to see it now; as disturbing as this may be it is the sad truth. And even more upsetting then that is the fact that it's only a matter of time befor someone does a terrible hollywood remake of The War Game and adds a ton of computer generated images and blood and gore. That's the only way people today would swallow it.
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2 comments:
I agree with what you are saying. Violence has been becoming more easily accepted as each year passes. Look at film for example. More and more violence makes it into the cinema and people start to view it as entertaining or just something fun to watch. Maybe because they can handle it and not go out anf imitate what they have just seen, but there is always that small percentage of people that will go imitate it or even be inspired by it. Sure, you can blame the media and film, but the reality is that it is many other things that is to blame. It jsut seems that the media and film are the first to get the blame.
I think both of you make good points, we are de-sensitized to violence and we do view it often as entertainment and there are tons of images that perhaps should remain private (columbine shooting) that are made public and exploited by the media and consumed by us almost whether we want to or not. But, I think there's alot to be said for a well-made film, and I would argue that the War Game is. The structure, the pace, the narrator, the research, the artistry and integrity and motivation with which the War Game is crafted is worlds away from the schloch on the nightly news or a horror flick and I think these elements make the film relevant today. Too, I think there's much to be said for the imagination - there was enough graphic images in the War Game to get point across, but that wasn't THE point. We can empathize with this crying little kid whose retinas have been burned out who is lost and in pain in the middle of his yard - without seeing a graphic enactment of bursting eyeballs. My imagination did that work and kept going and I found myself thinking about how that, in and of itself could completely ruin your life in mere seconds, if not eventually get you killed, since you are instantly blind with no skill set available to you that someone blind from birth could have developed, and your body is in a state of shock and trauma. Then I thought about disability in general, about how victims in Katrina that were in wheel chairs or who were old or unfit and had various disabilities just did not survive. I thought about the fragility of the human condition, how we are so delicate and yet survive; how much effort we put into killing one another. If we are desensitized, it's up to us to do the work of re-engaging with the images around us and the conditions we make for ourselves and one another in the world- and there is plenty to see.
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