This Is What War Looks Like

Zero Dark Thirty was criticized for tacitly glorifying torture. There's an argument that the film's presentation of the act being performed by the protagonist and other supporting characters on her side in the service of the search for Osama Bin Laden ultimately paints a more forgiving picture of the use of "enhanced interrogation" techniques. They might not be 100 percent reliable, but they get results, and at the end of the day they led to a successful raid against a mass murderer, a fact every audience is very aware of as they take their seats.

This is true.

The reply to this argument could be phrased as: while torture was used and some intelligence was gained from it, the film takes great pains to show these practices in unflinching detail. The viewer isn't meant to come around to a position of supporting the use of these methods, but they are necessary for understanding the full history of the war on terror and the search for bin Laden. They are there not in the service of propaganda, but rather of cinema verite, further reinforced by the documentary style in which the film is shot.

This is also true.

******

The Nazis and Japanese soldiers of World War II era action and adventure films, both contemporary works and more modern ones, are basically an amorphous blob of clones. They talk funny and all dress the same, and history has vindicated the wickedness of their cause, so go ahead and shoot about eleventy billion of them to prove how awesome you, the hero, are in the face of overwhelming odds. It's no surprise that some of the first video games to feature the player shooting humans and not aliens or demons saw Nazis as the targets. The National Socialist party was one of the most evil movements of the 20th century, and the conflict in question really did see scores of men charging at each other across fields and down bombed-out city streets. These images and the soldiers like Audie Murphy that spawned them were canonized as modern day warrior-saints, and subsequently elevated to the position of epic heroes like Hercules or Odysseus.

World War II has provided so many irresistible images that it has become the template of choice for politicians to use when arguing for war. Appeasement at Munich was the example provided to urge action in Vietnam and Iraq. After all, the Greatest Generation proved themselves in war, why can't we? I mean, if we couldn't, then how could we be Great, right?

*****

Nukes and TV (then later the internet) have ensured that we don't get to have our own World War II. The threat of mutually assured destruction from total war is too great to allow for that kind of conflict, first of all. But just as importantly, the world has shrunk. It's hard -not impossible, but still very hard- to label entire swathes of the world as vicious and savage when you can find out about what they're really like relatively easily. It's even harder to do this when you're supposed to be the good guys because you beat the bad guys who did just that in order to justify genocide on a previously unheard of scale.

9/11 was an evil act that killed thousands of innocents, but it wasn't perpetrated by a singular nation state, or even one definitive group of people. The perpetrators might be more accurately likened to a cult, both in their devotion to a warped creed and the manner in which they operate. But who's going to pay billions of dollars to mobilize the American war machine to go to war with a cult? And just as important, are you really going to sell what happened to the American people as the actions of a relatively small and messed up portion of the Earth's population? Will that be enough to rile them up in the face of this overwhelming attack? No, you're going to need a force of pure evil, formless but deadly. The problem, of course, is that they happen to look just like regular people. That, in fact, is a key component of their strategy.

We can wage war on armies quite well, better than anyone else in fact. But how the hell do you fight a war against people?

*****

The first scene of Zero Dark Thirty occurs over a black screen as audio from phone calls and radio dispatches culled from the events of September 11, 2001 play. The image of the towers on fire has been overused to the point of banality. Just over a decade out, it's hard for most people to feel much more than odd pangs of reminiscence when they see it. This audio, however, is not only fresh but effective. It's a singularly terrible human experience diluted to its essence, and accomplishes in just a minute or so what no bloated montage could hope to. Immediately after this, we cut to a scene of the main characters torturing a man. Not even a terrorist, but a middle man who handled finances for other terrorists. There is no soundtrack and the loud echoing of the interrogator's harsh commands all lend the scene a brutal immediacy. We can't help but sympathize for the captive, despite the fact that he helped murder 3000 innocent people, as the interrogator is quick to point out.

We don't know how to feel, and that's really the point. The truth is that the war on terror is such a complex mess of morally gray areas that there is no narrative that neatly fits it. In some cases, America kind of is the evil empire taking on the underdog rebels, which is supposed to make us the bad guys. In many others, we are the battered but still standing bastion of freedom staring down a violent fanaticism. We can be both and neither at the same time because the truth is there aren't ever just good guys and bad guys. At the end of the day, we're all just guys. And girls, fine, but you get the point.

*****

Commander Vimes, head of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch from Terry Pratchett's Discworld, is a great cop not just because he's diligent about enforcing the law, but because he's willing to ask himself if the law is worth enforcing. When his hometown is all set to be embroiled in a war with a far away, vaguely Middle-Eastern country, he at last manages to do the only sensible action available and moves to arrest both of the armies for attempting to commit the greatest crime of all; starting a war.

My Top 10 Everything Else

In this post I discussed the ten video games that have had the greatest impact on me, partially to get people inside my head but also as a way of showcasing what I saw as some of the most triumphant examples of the medium. This post right here is a lot more focused on that first part. What follows are the top 10 pieces of media that have stuck with me the longest and are also probably the most influential when it comes to my creative output. Again, this isn't supposed to be a list of favorites, and certainly not of bests. Just what's stuck with me the most at the end of the day.

10. My Neighbor Totoro

"Next stop, little sister!"

This is one of the first films I can ever remember watching that I can still point to as a legitimately great movie more than a decade after I first saw it. It was one of those VHS tapes that was just on repeat for a couple of weeks, which seems to be the preferred method of movie-watching for most people below the age of five. Re-watching it again a couple years ago was like seeing an old friend again and finding out that they were exactly as cool as you remember them from last time you met. A serene, charming peek into the life of two young girls struggling with life in a new home away from their ailing mother that serves not just as a fantasy for children but a reminder of what it's like to be a kid in the first place. There's a very good reason Hayao Miyazaki is considered the American Walt Disney, and it's not just because his films are animated.

9. The Dark Tower

"The man in black fled across the desert,

and the gunslinger followed."

I read all 7 books of the Dark Tower cycle over the course of my freshman and sophomore years in high school. Part of this was driven by curiosity over such an ambitious work, one that Stephen King himself considers more like a novel spanning a thousand pages rather than numerous separate stories. The other part was fascination with the idea that an author who cranked out as many stories as King did could try and construct a universe that would encompass all of them in some fashion or another. As I worked through the books, however, what kept me coming back was the way he tried to blend such disparate genres as the western, horror, romance, political drama, and more, producing an unforgettable world that took my preconceived notions of what "fantasy" was and shot them full of holes. The Dark Tower showed me that there's no reason to let yourself become pigeon-holed into one type of story or one genre in particular. If you believe in the vision, no matter how crazy, pursue it to the ends of the world.

8. Fullmetal Alchemist

"Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy's First Law of Equivalent Exchange. In those days, we really believed that to be the world's one, and only, truth."

This was the only anime series I actually followed semi-religiously. Part of this was thanks to the fact that it aired on Adult Swim, which made it relatively easy to find time to watch. The other reason was because it appealed to me in a way other shows didn't. I didn't watch a whole lot of anime, but this was a show that caught my gaze and held it. Maybe it was the setting, set on an alternate history Earth in a country modeled off of World War I era Germany where alchemy is widely practiced and regulated by the state. Maybe it was the memorable characters or the political drama that occurred alongside the standard battle sequences. If anything, the show was a prime example of how to break the mold: it took some of the staples of anime and used them in exciting, novel ways to create a unique and entertaining experience.

7. Aqua Teen Hunger Force

"Some would say the Earth is our moon.

But that would belittle the name of the moon, which is the real moon."

My sense of humor is probably one of the weirdest things about me. I frequently find hilarious things that most other people would find just too weird to consider. Aqua Teen Hunger Force was there to remind me that I was not the only one. It's pretty much Dada: The Cartoon. Characters frequently die at the ends of episodes and then just show up again next time like it's no big deal. Some episodes have no plot whatsoever. Most things characters throw to the ground explode for no reason at all. One of the recurring characters is The Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future. Explaining anymore kind of defeats the purpose of the show. Long story short, this show is drugs and amazing, and was super influential in shaping my comic sensibilities, for better or worse.

6. Star Wars (Episodes IV, V and VI)

"The Force will be with you. Always."

Star Wars as a whole has a very troubled legacy. The franchise has become synonymous with merchandising, and the body of work surrounding the movies ranges from comic books to video games to novels to action figures, all of which also range from great to good to godawful. And of course the prequels, but the less said about those the better. Amidst all of this it's easy to lose sight of why all this ancillary stuff was made in the first place. The original trilogy was amazing. The evocative nature of the mythical story it presented took place in a world familiar enough in its fantastic trappings but still genuinely new. Like with Totoro, I fell in love with it at a very young age, and upon seeing it again years later found that love wasn't misplaced at all. If I really have to explain why this is, you haven't seen the movies, which should be remedied immediately. As for the new ones they're making, I don't have any particularly strong feelings, so let's just go with "cautiously optimistic".

5. DMZ

"The only way was forward. Into the belly of the beast.

But my path was not with these men. It never was."

Matty Roth is a photojournalist in his early twenties whose cushy summer internship becomes something very different when he finds himself stranded in Manhattan, the no-man's-land that has become the one physical battleline between what's left of the American government and the Free States of America, who've taken over pretty much the rest of the country. The alternate history this comic presents of a second American civil war should be regarded as a manual for how to write about war in the 21st century. While it might seem like a stretch to say what's happening in Iraq could happen here, the comic brings it home by showing that in any conflict, the "enemy" is never just a group of evil terrorists who want little more than to wreak havoc. 99% of the time, it's scared people made stupid by fear and oppression, who just want to be able to eat, sleep, and protect their community without getting bombed into oblivion. In every war, there are three sides: the two who started fighting, and the people who never wanted to in the first place.

4. Transmetropolitan

"Journalism is just a gun. It's only got one

bullet in it, but if you aim right, that's all

you need. Aim it right, and you can blow

a kneecap off the world."

When I stumbled across the first issue of this comic, it was a revelation. Part of that was because it was the first comic like this I'd ever read, one that wasn't part of a years-long superhero franchise but rather a long form story that was focused first and foremost on just that: telling a compelling story. Most of it, though, was because it's such a damn great comic. The revelation in question was a vision of a future with fantastic technology and wonders beyond our wildest dreams where the people haven't changed a bit, because people will always be people. We live in a world where you can walk around with a device that can access all of the information known to man and most of us opt instead to use it for taking pictures of cats and arguing about trivial crap with other people. Warren Ellis understands this principle quite clearly, and the result is a world that feels intensely believable despite it also being one where powdered Welsh children can be bought at the supermarket. On top of all that, it has pretty much the best main character ever, who proves that it's fine to be a bastard so long as you've got a point to it.

3. Children of Men

"Last one to die, please turn out the light."

I've already talked a lot about this film, so I'll keep this relatively brief. Basically, everything I talk about in that post, about the way the movie accomplishes such a nuanced portrayal of our relation to technology and the world we live in without ever uttering a single word directly about that subject, is to me exactly the sort of thing I'd like to do in science fiction. Sci fi can be great for examining the human condition through fantastical settings and scenarios, but as soon as it starts getting preachy at all the effect is lost *coughAVATARcough*. Connecting those scenarios to a human story populated by people who act believably, however, can allow that sort of film or story to have a message without feeling the need to beat the audience about the head with it. For amazing cinematography and a harrowing, unique story, Children of Men makes my list.

2. Brazil

"Where would we be if we didn't follow the correct procedure?"

My roommate is a huge fan of Terry Gilliam, and as it turns out, so was I. I just didn't know it yet. I first saw this movie, then devoured most of the other movies in the director's ouvre, and while I liked them all for various reasons, none of them matched up to Brazil. A better 1984 story than the actual 1984, it used black comedy to paint a picture of a world where dystopia exists not because of some evil cabal consciously enforcing it. Human virtue can't be mercilessly stamped out, but it can certainly be commoditized, and an evil regime can be founded entirely on a bunch of people sincerely trying their best to do what they think is right. Add to that the way the effects manage to amplify the surreal atmosphere throughout and the result is a dream-like story about a dreamer who doesn't want to wake up.

1. Discworld by Terry Pratchett

"Stories are important. People think that stories are shaped

by people. In fact, it's the other way round."

What I said about sci-fi above for Children of Men and fantasy for the Dark Tower applies here times a million. I picked up the first book in this series on a whim, figuring it would basically just be comedy stories with fantasy archetypes thrown in and skewered, good for a laugh. I was in for quite a surprise. While the books are very comedic, they're actually more like straight up fantasy, and the parodic elements are usually there to subvert tropes, not just make fun of them. The result is a wide range of stories, about everything from watchmen to witches, all of them dealing with actual issues that prompt the reader to think and consider the world in ways they probably didn't before. When I think about what I want to do with my writing, that's always part of it. I want to write things that can make people thoughtful, and Sir Pratchett was there very early on to show me how to do that without sacrificing entertainment or genre. By carefully examining one of the most rote and cliched settings out there, he's managed to craft a wholly original world that has managed to be bigger than merely the sum of its parts.