War is a beautiful thing

DadaKopf

For twenty-seven years we Futurists have rebelled against the branding of war as antiaesthetic .... Accordingly we state:... War is beautiful because it establishes man's dominion over the subjugated machinery by means of gas masks, terrifying megaphones, flame throwers, and small tanks. War is beautiful because it initiates the dream -- of metalization of the human body. War is beautiful because it enriches a flowering meadow with the fiery orchids of machine guns. War is beautiful because it combines the gunfire, the cannonades, the cease-fire, the scents, and the stench of putrefaction into a symphony. War is beautiful because it creates new architecture, like that of the big tanks, the geometrical formation flights, the smoke spirals from burning villages, and many others .... Poets and artists of Futurism! ... remember these principles of an aesthetics of war so that your struggle for a new literature and a new graphic art... may be illumined by them!

This quote is excerpted from the Futurist Manifesto and is included in Walter Banjamin's essay The Work of Art In the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. It was written in 1936 and predicted the Second World War in all its horror with startling accuracy even though it's really about how art has fundamentally changed with the arrival of the photograph and film and how technology radically alters our perception of the world. The article, also a polemic against Fascism, took on greater poingnancy when Benjamin, a Jew, took his own life rather than be captured and tortured by the Gestapo in 1940.

With the year that's in it (Afghanistan, open-ended war and the "Avis of Evil" etc.), I thought the above quote might start a general discussion about what war is - what it's been in the past and what it is now. What the hell is going on and is it really anything new at all and what does all this have to do with freedom?

Biffa Bacon

War is a means of forcing other people what you want them to do. It can, like in Afghanistan, be used for good to ensure freedom and peace for people. Dunno about the quote though, is it supposed to be ironic?

scipio_major

"War is robbery on a large scale." - Tom Clancy

"War is diplomacy by other means."- Machiavelli???

"War is hell." - General George Patton

"War does not determine who is right- only who is left." Bertrand Russell

"Wars have never hurt anyone except those who die." Salvador Dali.


"I never trust anything quoted at me." - Voltaire

"He who quotes others often has nothing to say." - Wilde

Fade to Credits
Scipio_major

The Sweeper

Can't remember the exact quote, or the or the original speaker, but something like:

"I do not know what weapons mankind will fight World War III with, but I know we will fight World War IV with sticks and stones."

scipio_major

Might have been JFK. I know he said:

"Mankind must finish with war or war will finish with mankind."

Fade to credits
Scipio_major

flyz

Originally posted by Minesajackdaniels
Can't remember the exact quote, or the or the original speaker, but something like:

"I do not know what weapons mankind will fight World War III with, but I know we will fight World War IV with sticks and stones."

It was Albert Einstein




Now your soul may belong to Jesus, but your ass belongs to the Marine Corps
- Full Metal Jacket

Clintons Cat

Dadakopf i would tend to agree with the assertation raised in the piece that the imagary of war is an asthetically pleasing concept,Hollywood has built an industry around,esentially the replication of the violent imagery,glorification and ultimately sanitisation of war .
Take any major blockbuster at random in the last twenty/thirty years chances are they featured at least one explosion,several gunfights or a car crash.
Prior to that the imagery of war was more overt and prolific,
That is not to say the Americans are particularily desensitised to the concepts of war,Hollywood movies universal appeal worldwide would suggest it is a phenomenon that transcends national boarders and cultures.
Throughout history Civillisations have applied the highest asthetic
qualities possible to their warriors and the imagary of war from carvings, paintings, and burial sites to cerimonial and battlefield equiptment.

The piece you chose to quote,was by Itallian fascist writer named Marinetti rather than benjamin himself.Benjamin appears to rally against this notion,whilst recognising its seductive qualities.
Whilst the piece may be thought of as prophetic in its forshadowing of the second world war it is as much a reflection of its time.The spanish civil war would of been getting into full swing.The article makes reference to the abbysinian war where much of the arms and equiptment and tactics were used in 1940 including wholesale ariel attacks upon civillian areas.Il Duce 's news reel propaganda often set to operatic music was pretty much the prototype for the Triumph Of The Will,which alongside the film of the 1936 olympics was the highpoint of nazi filmmaking.
Benjamins main assertation appears to be that the audience is a passive receiver of the medium,and fails to appriciate the complex processing or decoding of the message.Something the Nazis were more adept at realising.Effective propaganda relies upon the exageration of rather than the creation of a given political reality.Thus Nazism didnt create anti semitism,what it did effectively was tap into a underlying social phenomenum and exagerate the receivers own prejudices.Thus the case of a jewish german officer in the first world war who was exposed as a spy for the french became the benchmark on which all jewish officers were judged.A physical manefestation of the widespread sentiment that Germany had been betrayed from within by "the 1918 criminals".Personal comradarie was harder to break down for many years jewish war veterans were spared the more stringent anti semitic meassures,whilst the propaganda machine wore down the concept of "the good jew".
Thus Benjamins piece whilst an important doccument of its time exposes the limitations of the understanding of the mechanisms through which propaganda diseminates itself into a host culture.



......Or am i missing the point?