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| Home | Features | DMA® Info | About | Vol 27 Issue 12 May 2003 |
Technology.talk - WarBy Patrick J. Suarez-Regular Contributor to The DataBus During the 1991 Gulf War, the Dayton Daily News carried an op-ed piece by an officer of the U. S. military. The veteran remarked that motion pictures and TV did not, could not, adequately and completely convey the nightmare of going into battle, of taking a bullet and surviving or watching a fellow soldier take one and drop dead on the spot next to you. "War is hell," he wrote, "movies aren't". Then, in 1994 and 1998, came "Saving Private Ryan", "Pearl Harbor" and "The Thin Red Line". "Private Ryan" attempted to show the blunt brutality of war, while "Pearl Harbor" tried to illustrate war interrupting and intertwining with human relationships. To a degree, they were successful, but there was something missing. That 'something' was an exploration of the psychological complexities of war. Having been part of a twenty-one gun salute team at too many funerals for dead 20 year olds in the late '60s and early '70s, I have some experience with seeing, up close, the blank, still disbelieving frozen stares of 40 year old mothers dressed in black, accepting folded American flags, the last physical icons of their deceased sons. Terrence Malick's magnificent "Thin Red Line" nailed that 'something'. But it was still a movie. Now, minute by minute, we watch yet another conflict, this one very real, being played out for many reasons, some stated, others not, most we know, some we can only guess at. Television parades endless images of explosions, troop movements and generals answering what end up being the same set of questions, around the clock. But we are still disconnected as we sit down to dinner, gaze at the sound bites and video clips and try to humanize and understand them. That's what we see on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. Over here, CNN, Fox and the traditional networks offer expected, and filtered, video and commentary. Over there, it's another story, literally and figuratively. Al-Jazeera, the principal among many Middle Eastern equivalents of CNN, telecasts a different, also filtered, perspective. What al-Jazeera runs is chilling and intriguing. To them, we are not liberators but aggressors. Our laser-guided bombs will be answered, they say, in time, if not in kind. With the advent and ubiquity of the Web, the curious among us can read other points of view.Al-Jazeera has, at least for now, http://english.aljazeera.net/. Many of our citizens bristle at that site's content and slant without admitting (or even realizing) that http://www.cnn.com/ and http://www.foxnews.com/ also possess their own slants. The governments in charge want their citizens to feel as if their respective sides are winning. Having taught marketing and global politics at the university level, I am aware that both are at full throttle regarding the current war. But there's more. With the Web, there always is. A trip to http://www.bbc.co.uk/ provides a less impassioned, yet no less complete, aspect of the hostilities. Or, check out the Jerusalem Post, http://www.jpost.com/. Or the Sydney Morning Herald, http://www.smh.com.au/, from down under. The journalistic world, with its rainbow of coverage, slants and opinions, is at your fingertips at http://www.ajr.org/News_Wire_Services.asp?MediaType=9. If we are to (care to?) understand the full impact of war, we should have all viewpoints. If we want to survive intact, we must. We have the luxury, for now, of punching the OFF button on the remote and heading for the mall. Clean. Tidy. Safe. Ten thousand miles out of harm's way. But Islamic extremists have warned us that they intend to bring this fight to our streets. They've done it twice, at the same location. The first failed; the second did not. The irony could be that our future headlines will be their current ones and vice versa. It's all in the perspective. And location. And intent. Not even Hollywood, revered or reviled, can script this future. Terence Malick's masterpiece might be required viewing before it's all said and done. |
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Patrick J. Suarez is a nationally recognized Internet
writer, trainer, speaker and consultant. He has appeared on numerous
radio and TV programs across the United States. He is the Internet speaker
at the annual Computerfest® trade show in Dayton, OH each spring. | DMA® Home | Computerfest® | Copyright Statement | ||
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