The Fantasy of War
Written April 1st.
I’ve come to realize more and more that what I write about in this blog actually usually stems from my childhood, and how I glorified war. Does any one else remember running through their backyard with a bunch of friends; toy pistols (or twigs shaped like guns, whatever you had handy) at the ready, and your stealth shoes on, getting ready to kick some bad guy butt? I remember how good it felt to pretend like I was shooting some evil guy, and rescuing the world and all the pretty ladies from whatever death machine or evil mastermind happened to be attacking that day.
This fascination with war only grew after watching movies where the good guys always win, the bad guys always lose, and there is ALWAYS a happy ending. Lets see, how about Star Wars? I know its science fiction, but its still war nonetheless, and at that impressionable age, that meant a lot. Now what about the Rambo movies? I’m talking about the early ones, the ones I watched without telling my parents. Where he walks into a place with guns blazing and looks like the coolest person ever! Oh, and he never gets shot anywhere vital and always wins.
The YA book that we have to read for class next week is called Fallen Angels, by Walter Dean Myers. In that book is a character named Lobel. Lobel is Jewish, and throughout the book gets quite a bit of harassment from that. From what I can tell is possibly homosexual, and is basically downright scared. Lobel is obsessed with movies, and is always talking about them.
Lobel escapes from the world and reality in which he lives, and pretends everything’s a movie. He tries to convince Richie that movies are the only real thing in life. Every time Lobel goes out on patrol, he becomes Lee Marvin, the hero, and the guy who can’t be killed, because then the movie will be over.
*whew* Talk about not confronting reality. Lobel tries to explain to Richie that he should not play the part of the good black guy, because everyone will think he is a coward and at the end he will die saving everybody.
When I read this part, I actually laughed. Lobel decided that the world they were living in needed to become a musical, because nobody good ever dies in a musical. This seemed ridiculous to me, a little outlandish even. Who goes to war and pretends that they are someone else, believing they won’t be killed if they play a part like a movie?
Isn’t that exactly what I did when I was a kid? Didn’t I always choose the part of the guy who never died? Lobel is taking his fear and transforming it in the only way he knows how.
Suddenly I wasn’t laughing anymore. What else can you do??? What would I do? There are millions upon millions of soldiers around the globe, not just ours, but every countries soldiers. People who have fear, and need to escape from it.
If I ever get drafted, I’m gonna be like Lobel. Except, I think I want to play the part of Jack Conrad, from the movie “The Condemned”. He was so cool, plus, he didn’t die….
