I think when Marcus Luttrell complains that he doesn’t
understand how people could possibly say Lone
Survivor, the movie based on his memoir, glorifies war because “there is
nothing glorious about war,” he is missing the point. Due respect to Luttrell –
he’s been to Afghanistan, watched his friends die, and was incredibly lucky to
come out alive, but saying that a Hollywood movie glorifies something is not
the same as saying that that something is glorious. No doubt being in war is
terrible beyond words. That’s why veterans tend not to talk about the
experience of war outside the context of the buddies they made and the stories
they told and created. But a movie can make that experience seem, to the
uninitiated, sexy, desirable, exciting, fulfilling, and yes, glorious. There’s an extent to which all films that depict war are
inherently pro-war. You can’t show an image of something without tacitly
endorsing what it represents. Whether or not Lone Survivor goes out of its way to glorify war or whether it is a
form of war porn I’m not sure. Does the level of realism make it more or less
responsible?
