October 30, 2006
War Boredom Posted by Fredric Smoler at 08:25 AM EST Two articles in today’s “Week In Review” section of The New York Times make for an interesting juxtaposition. One, by David Halbfinger, is titled “Burying Private Ryan” and asserts that no one wants to hear about World War II anymore, taking for evidence the relatively small audience that has so far turned out for Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers. This seems a modest amount of evidence for so large a claim. This evidence is interpreted rather than amplified by an anecdote from a local professor of film studies, who took some students to a showing—the students were bored—and by Douglas Brinkley, who opines that “This movie doesn’t fit into the zeitgeist of our times.” A decade or two ago, “writers and filmmakers were honoring World War II veterans. Those mining that field in 2006 seem to be capitalizing on them.” Take that, you pandering jingoes. The article rather gives the impression that Mr. Halbfinger is cheered by this asserted trend, and thinks it politically progressive. He ends with an extended quote from a man described as a 45-year-old writer, who lives in North Adams, Massachusetts, and seems to think that the Iraq War has allowed us to see through, or at least past, Saving Private Ryan. On the other hand, an article headlined “‘Antiwar’ and Other Fighting Words,” by David D. Kirkpatrick, notes that many Democrats meditating their likely victory in next week’s national election are dreading a subsequent attempt by antiwar activists to model the 2008 presidential campaign on the 1972 one. That was the last time the Democrats ran on a strong antiwar platform, and they were defeated, quite disastrously. Some Democrats think that running against war in broad and total terms seven years after the country has been attacked, in a world teeming with people who announce that they hate us and live only to die killing us, is asking for another electoral disaster. I think they may be right. Then again, I do think that a strong and broad antiwar approach will carry North Adams. It certainly did in 1972. In fact, that year the antiwar candidate carried the whole of Massachusetts. “Burying Private Ryan” seems to see history, at least the history of World War II, as having little wisdom to impart, nor, it implies to my eye, are we are we going to sustain much if any pietas—any sense of duty and devotion—toward the men who helped bury the Third Reich and put an end to the regime that inflicted the Rape of Nanking. Mr. Halbfinger notes, with no particular expression of regret, that hundreds, perhaps thousands of those guys are dying every week, and he notes that the ones not yet in their graves aren’t buying too many movie tickets. Mr. Kirkpatrick doesn’t seem quite as sure about the irrelevance of history, or the impending disappearance of pietas. My money is on Mr. Kirkpatrick.
|
