*nods* I don't support the war either, but I do support the soldiers. And FWIW I saw some less crude requests in the Army thread. I wouldn't send those things -- I don't *own* those things, so I couldn't. I don't mind sending mysteries and SF books, though. Some people wanted those.
But I don't think comic books and action movies are necessarily bad. These are people who are seeing -- and doing -- a lot of terrible stuff. If what they need to relax and connect to is a story where the good guys are right and the bad guys are wrong and shooting only hits the bad guys and not civilian children, I don't think that's because they're blind to the fact that that's not what's happening in real life.
I think it's because the horror of real life is all they see, and they need to get away from it for a little while or go mad. And maybe to reconnect to the ideal form of what they're supposed to be doing.
I think that's worthwhile. If you're a soldier, you're not there to make friends and it's only rubbing salt in the wound to imagine that you could. But you're supposed to be shooting the right things, for the right reasons, keeping the innocents safe and stopping the guilty and then handing them over to civil authority. Doing a dirty job to keep people safe. And I'd rather have soldiers who believe that's possible, or at least admirable and worth striving for, than soldiers who are so demoralized that they think it doesn't make any difference how they act and it might as well be badly.
America does makes films about connecting to other cultures, but not usually big ones, because big implies big budget and the big budget usually goes for special effects. Movies about talking can be small.
As for the DVDs, they can probably watch them on their computers, and they probably have the computers for non-frivolous reasons. But I wouldn't be all that surprised if they had players. They army adopted film pretty early too, it's a pretty cheap, harmless, and efficient method of keeping morale up.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2004-04-28 11:34 am (UTC)But I don't think comic books and action movies are necessarily bad. These are people who are seeing -- and doing -- a lot of terrible stuff. If what they need to relax and connect to is a story where the good guys are right and the bad guys are wrong and shooting only hits the bad guys and not civilian children, I don't think that's because they're blind to the fact that that's not what's happening in real life.
I think it's because the horror of real life is all they see, and they need to get away from it for a little while or go mad. And maybe to reconnect to the ideal form of what they're supposed to be doing.
I think that's worthwhile. If you're a soldier, you're not there to make friends and it's only rubbing salt in the wound to imagine that you could. But you're supposed to be shooting the right things, for the right reasons, keeping the innocents safe and stopping the guilty and then handing them over to civil authority. Doing a dirty job to keep people safe. And I'd rather have soldiers who believe that's possible, or at least admirable and worth striving for, than soldiers who are so demoralized that they think it doesn't make any difference how they act and it might as well be badly.
America does makes films about connecting to other cultures, but not usually big ones, because big implies big budget and the big budget usually goes for special effects. Movies about talking can be small.
As for the DVDs, they can probably watch them on their computers, and they probably have the computers for non-frivolous reasons. But I wouldn't be all that surprised if they had players. They army adopted film pretty early too, it's a pretty cheap, harmless, and efficient method of keeping morale up.
Mer