Absolutely NOTHING!! Or so goes the song anyway - and the truth to a large extent. War is the failure of negotiation, of diplomacy, of the feelings and practice of humanity. It usually accomplishes nothing but death and maiming, destruction and of course, the sowing of seeds for future wars and the profitable sales of the accoutrements of war, from bandages to armaments, from uniforms to research of all types.
WWI accomplished nothing but setting the stage for WWII, the battles of nationalism that we are still facing today and terribly so - just look at the states of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union or Turkey or Syria or the tribal warfare of Africa and the list is almost infinite. It was one of the world's worst series of years of carnage that had ever been seen.
WWII, the stage of which had been set by WWI treaties and terms, had to be fought but its outcome was almost immediately tainted by the next "war", that with Communism. Much was excused in the name of that war indeed and we are paying for that right now.
Then we bumbled through the Korean War, the "forgotten war" except to those veterans who had fought and lived through its horrors and the memory of those who had died there in the frozen lands of Korea. Vietnam was a war started by outright lies and the jingoistic early patriotic chants, almost immediately eclipsed by the roar of the younger generation. We gained ZERO from that war except for the rending of a nation.
So it is interesting that three new movies have discussed or presented the issues of war in differing manners and with different focuses. Here art is imitating life - or is it so entangled that we really have no idea here which came first - life or the ideas of the movies.
In Batman Vs. Superman, the war is a personal one between two giants of the world, a war begun by a nasty so and so who had nothing better to do other than to instigate war for his own enjoyment and benefit. He successfully latched onto a good person, inserted himself into Batman's head via his thoughts until Batman heard his own mind vibrating with these ideas against the injustice, the perceived injustice, of Superman towards him and how he supposedly destroyed Batman's world and that of the world at large. And so they fought, reluctantly on the part of Superman, but fight they did, nearly destroying each other and for what? Only at the almost bitter end was sanity introduced via Lois Lane and a cooling down of the hatred that had grown between the two. They found that only by working together and ignoring their differences and concentrating on their similarities, could they defeat evil, could they hear the thoughts each other had and finally form a constructive and positive front.
Yesterday we saw Eye in the Sky, a tense on the edge of your seat movie, one which induced people in the audience to mutter their own feelings about what was happening here. It raised the question of the responsibility of war, how or who runs the joint, who decides how to conduct it and the new issues as we are better able to actually see what and who is being destroyed and how do we weigh that? Is the person we see more valuable than the ones we don't? What is collateral damage and hey, wasn't there such damage in all wars, by us and towards us, and how can it be eliminated totally or is that simply a pipe dream? The one or the many? Who or what counts for more? Is it the civilians, the politicians, the jingoists, who get us enmeshed in war and then the military deals with the consequences and who is paramount at that point and from then on - the civilians who know nothing or the soldiers who are the professionals here? These are questions that are difficult to face, let alone answer, but until we do, there is little hope of future peace and a "pure" war, if such a thing actually exists. What to do? To think beforehand and then understand the results of the decisions we make and the realization that we cannot avoid that responsibility and we must have the courage of our convictions if we are to move forward at all. Personally, I believe that few today amongst the politicians of the world have that courage and thus the lack of such people have helped us and the world reach this forest fire world of conflicts.
Finally we have the movie soon to come out that is the first of probably a long series of films dealing with the long running series called Civil War. On the surface it is an exciting split amongst the super heroes, the entire pantheon of them, for there is no neutral position here, for meta humans or plain old everyday ones. Who controls whom? Can the normal control the superior beings that have come to the aid of the earth's countries many times before or are they above that control? Does that mean that some others could be above control and the rules of society? On the other hand, who makes these rules and are the superheroes truly understood and can mere man deal honestly, with understanding, with them and in fact, is there a right for any element of society to dominate another, create special rules for and about them? The questions are myriad. The answers few and far between.
And lest any not get the point, these questions do not exist only in the colorful and "fantasy' world of the graphic novels. No, it exists in real life and who imitates whom, who reflects whom and who provides the answers to the questions raised is not quite clear. Anybody with a brain can see that here, especially in today's world, here we have another form of art or literature and this is not just the Archie comics of yesteryear. Even in that series we now have a gay character, a Jughead who says he is asexual, the Betty and Veronica we know are not such good frenemies, and serious topics are raised, not just whether Archie escapes the wrath of Mr. Lodge!
It forces us to think and to apply these eternal and world reflective questions to our own worlds. Are there people who negatively influence others? Are we raging and waging a battle, a war, which need not be fought if only people would stop and listen. Are we creating a bafflement of laws, rules that apply to one group and not another? Are we unfairly dividing the world we live in, macro and micro? Need we stop to evaluate and think and think again, weigh all in a harsh evaluation and on a scale of truth? Difficult, but I truly feel that these worlds, macro and micro, are both teetering on a dangerous edge, a crumbling edge and the clock is no longer at five minutes to midnight, but perhaps two to midnight or worse. Much to think about. Much to do. But who will do it? Tick tock.
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