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?
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All quiet on the western front (movie from 2022) feels like your example a bit without the post-war consequences. Grave of the firefly (anime) is on my watch list and is very anti-war from what I understand. Catch 22 maybe. The Wars by Timothy Findley felt very anti-war but is a tough read. The cruel sea was a good read. Vinland sagas first season is very good, lots of action but some really hard hitting scenes for an anime.
just make sure you’re in the right mindset when you watch Grave of the Fireflies – great movie BUT it is an emotional gut-punch
Yeah I’m kinda terrified to watch that one, not gonna lie. I get an emotional overreaction just looking at the cover…
Absolutely worth it though. Maybe watch it together with somebody so you can do some adhoc mutual therapy lol.
I love Ghibli movies so much because they tell stories very well, they are never black and white, and they always make me feel and ponder things. (And all that with beautiful art and music).
Grave of the Firefly is the greatest movie that I will never watch again.
Das Boot, it is the classic movie about German Uboats from the perspective of the Uboat crew.
It does not glorify, it does not condemn, but the one thing that stays with you is the feeling of futility.
They did all the terrible and heroic things, cheered at hitting convoys, let allied seamen drown because of their orders, escaped again and again, showed fanatism and self-reflection, panic and comradeship, and in the end, when they come back to their home base, it just doesn’t matter.
spoiler
As they arrive, half-afloat, battered, relieved and enthusiastic about being home, while a marching band plays in the background, they get hit with an air raid. Bombs fall, all die, only the narrator (war reporter) survives to tell the tale. All for nothing. All of it completely futile.
Must give that another watch. Absolutely incredible flick.
Anything written by Kurt Vonnegut
Vinland Saga
“I have no enemies.” It’s an anime with two seasons so far. The manga is getting close to complete. Takes place around 1000 ad with the wars between the Vikings and the English. Basically the first season is about revenge while the second pivots hard to redemption. It’s ultimately a story about pacifism.
Wow. I dropped it too early then.
I kinda rolled my eyes and was like “Is EVERY Viking story just an endless circle of killing fathers killing sons killing fathers again?”
Maybe I should give it another chance…
Ya the first season reminded me a lot of Berserk. You’re following along with a character whose sole purpose is to kill and survive.
But you see his father in the first few episodes, a man who moved his family far away from the Danes, a man who runs a village and is beloved, a man who despite being a master with a sword is shown trying to lean new skills and grow. He was a man who couldve led the Vikings and lived in luxury but wanted his kids to grow up away from the battlefield. The story is the unfortunate journey of Thorfinn having to realize what his father was trying to teach him but the hard way. Even though the first season is a lot of fighting, there is very little in the second.
Don‘t get me wrong the conclusion is phenomenal but the second season just drags on and on and on. They should‘ve made the second part a much shorter movie. The prologue season on the other hand was absolutely amazing and peak television.
Goes to show that every war movie (or in this case TV show) is a pro-war message just as much as it is an anti-war message. It all depends on who you ask. No matter how much effort you put into getting your message across.
pretty much every war movie
the classics have got Saving Private Ryan, Nolan’s got Dunkirk, Best Cinematography’s got 1917, Ghibli’s got Grave of the Fireflies (released same day as Totoro even)…
for anti-war that’s not depressing, there’s also AFAIK the over-the-top Helldivers
for things that feel “clean” instead of bloody there’s the elegant video game Nier: Automata
Pretty much every war movie glorifies war haha. Saving Private Ryan, Dunkirk, and 1917 are famous because of their awesome looking action scenes. All those films glorify war and convey a sense of heroism, urgency, and righteousness for people involved in a war. If the director’s wanted to make a film that didn’t glorify war, they would’ve focused on the shitty parts of war instead of showing the audience all the cool heroic things soldiers get up to.
Grave of the Fireflies does not glorify war. Thin Red Line is maybe the only movie about soldiers that doesn’t make war seem cool.
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.
An amazing movie is come and see. One of the best movies I have ever seen (no pun intended).
Edit: the comments says it all, just the type of thing you asked (or what I understood you asked).
I came here to say this too! The other one that springs to mind is Threads. Nuclear conflict as opposed to ‘traditional’ warfare but very illustrative.
Empire of the Sun is a film about civilians caught in a war zone.
The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, is a collection of short stories about the Vietnam War. It shows the exhilaration, the terror, the cruelty and hardship of living through a war. It definitely doesn’t glorify conflict.
My War Gone By, I Miss It So, by Anthony Loyd, is a firsthand account of the Bosnian conflict of the 90s. It is ugly and brutal, and the author tries to give an honest presentation of his own state of mind at the time.
Black Hawk Down (the book, not the movie), by Mark Bowden, is a fairly thorough account of the incident in Mogadishu in 1993. Bowden did a lot of research and describes the political background that led to the UN and US presence in Somalia, and all of the mistakes that led up to the helicopter being shot down and what happened after. He interviewed many of the military personnel who were actually involved and recounts the events from several different perspectives. And as the Wikipedia article says:
Bowden simultaneously manages to capture the siege mentality felt by both civilians and the US soldiers, as well as the broad sentiment among many residents that the Rangers were to blame for the majority of the battle casualties.
This is a very realistic presentation of what combat is like, framed inside the perspective of the overall military operation. Bowden doesn’t shy away from describing the mistakes in decision-making, but also does a fair job of describing how lack of information or bad information leads to bad decisions in the moment which result in people dying for no good reason. He definitely doesn’t glorify the conflict. My overall impression after reading it was “I hope I never have to be involved in anything like that”.
And finally, Alice’s Restaurant, by Arlo Guthrie, is a song about the draft.
if you wanna end war’n’stuff ya gotta sing loud
The Things They Carried is so beautifully written. The story On the Rainy River, about a young man struggling with whether to avoid the draft, had this which has stuck with me:
If the stakes ever became high enough - if the evil were ever evil enough, if the good were good enough - I would simply tap a secret reservoir of courage that had been accumulating inside me over the years. Courage, I seemed to think, comes to us in finite quantities, like an inheritance, and by being frugal and stashing it away and letting it earn interest, we steadily increase our moral capital in preparation for that day when the account must be drawn down. It was a comfortable theory. It dispensed with all those bothersome little acts of daily courage; it offered hope to the repetitive coward; it justified the past while amortizing the future.
Echoing Alice’s Restaurant. It’s funny too.
New bar trivia team name: The Group Dubya Bench
I’m so scared to play that game. I also am very much not willing to engage in real warfare, so, I guess it’d be preaching to the choir… But yeah…
Was about to comment about watching that and then realised I was thinking about Land of Mine, but that is also a film I would suggest.
The Unknown Soldier is quite well made and high budget war movie by Finnish standards and it does nothing to glorify war.
Defcon: Everybody Dies
That game has actually been studied by scientists, because it changes people’s attitudes towards nuclear weapons.
The game literally is about using nuclear weapons to win.
How does it look? It isn’t overly grotesque. There are no melting faces, no devastated landscapes. Nothing. It’s just a minimalist map of the world.
You might hear that and think that it’s a pro-war game. But it actually has the opposite effect on players.
How can it be? Simple. The game is accurate in how swiftly it all ends if there is a nuclear war. And by playing it, that truth is engraved into players’ intuitions.
“Would you like to play a game?”
Interesting suggestion! I’ve heard about this game, and my initial thoughts were exactly as you described, so maybe I should try it out indeed.
Also thanks for linking a study!
Spec Ops: The Line I heard is a game like that
Civil War definitely wasn’t fun at all
Edit: I mean it was good don’t get me wrong, but it absolutely didn’t glorify war
Really enjoyed that flick, but it was beyond unsettling.
I still feel really curious about getting around to that one.
The most unsettling thing is working at my local library, and that movie’s been out for a long time now, and I see it circulating CONSTANTLY.
That speaks volumes about what’s on people’s minds, I think…
Saving Private Ryan.
If the first 15 minutes don’t turn you into an antiwar activist, I don’t know what will.
If you watch to the end you’ll see a guy who learned to murder a POW in cold blood, though.
That movie is textbook glorifying war 😭 The first 15 minutes especially!! It’s literally called Saving Private Ryan as in here’s a movie about heroic saviors in a situation that is only possible because of war. Majority of the audience doesn’t leave a film like that thinking “war is so awful” but instead thinking “wow the scene where they stormed normandy was awesome it was filmed in such a cool way omg i wish i was also able to be as brave and heroic as those men.”
I think that movie is great, but it is impossible to make any media about war, that directly shows the war, without coming across as pro-war.
Well, I’ll recommend Arcane as a show where nearly everyone wants war and pushes for war, and then regrets it and either changes their mind or dies.
However, I do think war has its place and is sometimes necessary. If we hadn’t gone to war with the Nazis, the world would be a much worse place. I believe we should directly intervene in the Russian invasion of Ukraine and in the Israeli invasion of Palestine, on the side of the defending forces, while limiting our actions to purely military targets. I also think World War 3 has become nearly inevitable, and that it will be triggered by the invasion of Venezuela and Greenland, and that we should be prepared to support the defending forces so as to prevent the rampant spread of fascism.
I’ve already watched Arcane, and it indeed is a great show in how it displays each death as an immensely impactful event for each close character, making them feel anger and desperation, ultimately leading to regretful emotional decisions.
In regards to war being necessary, I partly agree: It only becomes necessary because one side finds it a worthy method to gain what they seek. The Nazi party decided that taking by force is a viable option, and they got support for it. This is what I hope to prevent in the first place. One example is the (initial) support Kremlin had to intervene in Ukraine with a military force. Another example is Trump taking Maduro; also a clear act of war. I’m honestly impressed by the world’s reluctance to give military consequences, though I fear it’s for the wrong reasons…
The people of the aggressor’s side are the ones that would benefit the most from un-glorifying of conflict, and I will surely recommend people I know some of the great suggestions in this post.
The villifcation of war will not persuade those who are already out for blood, they’re determined to have those wars. However, I fear it may drive our potential allies to passivity in the face of fascist expansion, making the fascists’ jobs easier. I very much enjoy media that glorifies war for a just cause, such as Star Wars or Inglourious Basterds.
Everyone believes their cause is just. Every conflict ever can be framed as defensive. The US has compared every major conflict since WWII to stopping Hitler, even cases like Vietnam. My mother once quoted, “All that’s necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing” in the context of supporting the invasion of Iraq.
If You investigate and deconstruct the concept of “defensive” wars (as You are so wont to deconstruct concepts) then You will find that they are entirely dependent on socially constructed ideas about “legitimacy.” If Switzerland does not have “legitimate ownership” of Zurich, then to station troops there or to fight against Zurich being occupied by foreign powers would make Switzerland the aggressor. It could be argued that, when the US invaded Vietnam, it was merely “coming to the aid” of the Republic of Vietnam, which had requested our aid (nevermind that they were our puppet). Likewise, in Ukraine everything about how you view the conflict is dependent on who you think is legitimate - the “consensus” interpretation in the West is that the central government is legitimate and the separatists are just Russian puppets, while the pro-Russia view says that the separatists are legitimate and the central government just Western puppets.
So V.I. Lenin observes:
…the bourgeoisie [of all the imperialist nations] are always ready to say—and do say to the people—that they are “only” fighting “against defeat”.
Funny enough, this observation was shared by Leo Tolstoy, the Christian Anarchist/Anarcho-Pacifist, who writes:
For ever since the beginning of the world, the use of violence of every kind, from the Inquisition to the Schlüsselburg fortress, has rested and still rests on the opposite principle of the necessity of resisting evil by force.
World War I is a prime example of how things can go wrong. There had been a major socialist movement at the time across every major country in Europe, and there had been a significant fear that, should the imperialist powers start a major war like that, it would lead to a coordinated revolution across all of Europe. But instead, when war broke out, the social democrats all found reasons to rally around the flags of their respective countries. They were committed to keeping their positions within the realm of acceptability, and the war narrowed that realm of acceptibility to the point that coordination with ordinary people of other countries (or genuine opposition to the war) was considered treasonous. So, all the social democrats of Europe rallied around their flags and drafted proles to go out and kill each other for no good reason.
If Your “anarcho-antirealist” stuff is supposed to have any merit at all, then it ought to allow You to recognize that the concept of “defense” is largely arbitrary - or are You seriously of the belief that national borders have some inherent natural truth when even the law of gravity does not?
Some episodes of Star Trek do this well. Off the top of my head, “The Drumhead” is a great example of rejecting fearmongering and witch hunting “The Enemy”.
