Our Own War, Part II
by Nate Wood

This is the second of two articles in which Nate Wood explores the implications of the Iraq War for the generation that grew up in the shadow of Vietnam. The previous article is available here.

Despite depicting miserable, homesick young men in a brutally hot and boring desert on the brink of war, Jarhead is a captivating film. I saw it the day it opened in theaters. A week later, I went back and saw it again. I admired the toughness sniper Anthony Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his fellow Marines developed to deal with such a situation. I envied the superlative relationships they forged. And I found myself thinking I had missed out on something by not being there.

The problem with stories — even true stories like Jarhead, which is based on the real Swofford's memoir — is that even when they're true, they're not. No matter how richly detailed, the account can never fully capture the whole of the event. We make peace with this fact daily by resolving the inevitable inaccuracies, forgotten details and wide-angle nature of stories with our knowledge that they are only meant as an approximation of who a person is or what they have done.

The same is true of the stories, particularly the war stories, that many of us who are Swofford's age grew up hearing. Images of the Vietnam War flooded our childhoods and shaped our understanding of the conflict. Our feelings about the war were based not on personal experience — we were born after the conflict ended — but by our experience of the war through popular culture. Textbook accounts and reams of statistics might have presented a more accurate, sobering picture of the era, but they paled in comparison with the rich, vivid depictions of television and film. From the acid-trip Apocalypse Now to the epic The Deer Hunter and the stirring Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, our visions of war were often not visions of war at all. Instead, they were highly stylized stories that happened to take place in combat.

But war stories are meant to be this way; it's why they're appealing. In Jarhead we follow Swofford's experience, set to music and shot with nifty camera angles, without the burden of actually going through it. We know the film is only going to last two hours, and that we can get up and leave anytime we want. We watch with the knowledge that all the cruelty, pain and boredom will be subsumed into a larger narrative with a tidy ending and a wise, omniscient voice-over that will render it acceptable.

There is an uncomfortable sequence in Jarhead in which the war stories of our youth and the war stories of today collide. Prior to shipping out, Swofford and the other Marines watch the famous helicopter scene from Apocalypse Now on the big screen. We watch the soldiers cheer as Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" booms from the choppers' speakers and the formation swoops down to obliterate a Vietcong village. It is unclear, however, whether this scene is meant to demonstrate the absurdity of war on film when held up to the real thing, or is meant as a commentary on the extent to which war stories have influenced the way these kids (and all of we kids) think and feel about war. Either way, it is effective. The audience is left questioning its own response to the films: are we simply watching a grown-up Apocalypse Now, or is Jarhead something else entirely? Judging by its tone, the scene seems less an echo of our childhood than a criticism of it.

The real problem, though, is not the nature of stories or their inevitable inaccuracies. It is that many real-life stories are now cut of the same cloth. When we pick up the newspaper and read headlines about the deaths of US soldiers or the plight of Iraqi civilians or a new set of hostages taken and beheaded, it is too easy to set the story down, to wait for that voice-over and the tidy ending. We force these real stories into familiar formats, easier to digest or ignore.

The books, films and television of our youth may have taught us that war is an ugly thing, but in the end, they also taught us to envy that hero on the battlefield. And, rightly, we should admire the soldiers that fight on behalf of our country. Their sacrifice and heroism is all too true. But when these popular imaginings lead us beyond admiration of their toughness and resolve, and on to the glorification of war, it does a disservice to those who fight, and to us.

It is by now cliché to say that younger generations grew up surrounded by media versions of life rather than immersed in the real thing. But at least some of this rings true. For most of us, the experience of war is limited to its cultural representation. Though we may be thankful for this distance, it means that we are also desensitized to the real consequences and costs of combat. Even the first Gulf War, with its 24-hour cable coverage and relatively bloodless execution, was, disturbingly, just something else to watch on TV. Maybe our pop-culture upbringing has rendered us incapable of dealing with the challenge of formulating a response to this changing world of terrorism and globalization. Or, maybe, as my favorite professor once pointed out, if there were a draft today, as there was during Vietnam after 1969, the problems of disinterest and lack of involvement in the war would quickly be cured.

Our grandparents mobilized the entire country during World War II. Our parents, those not fighting, engaged the issue of war in a passionate and political way. But most of our generation has yet to think deeply, much less do something, about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Our challenge is to get beyond the easy stories, to appreciate the vast difference between a headline in the newspaper and a preview in the theater, to realize that the soldiers and civilians on the ground aren't characters, that there is no promise of a tidy ending. As far as generational challenges go, this may seem pretty weak, but it's still a difficult one. We have to learn to separate the fictional from the consequential so that we can begin to recognize the costs of the real war being waged by real people.

Email Nate Wood at wood dot nathan dot a at gmail dot com