Best job I've
ever had.
So
speaks a character in the war film Fury.
Other
characters repeat the phrase throughout the film.
How
often do we hear the phrase 'just let me do my job' (or some such)
when a character in a film is about to perform a violent act or
deliver a treachery?
One
of the myths of war is that it's a job and someone's got to do it.
Another, the vehement basis of the film
Fury,
is that war brings out the best in small groups of men. And that men
need that.
Shakespeare
knew the truth of such madness.
Some
say he's mad; others that lesser hate him
Do
call it valiant fury.
Repetition
of the phrase Best job I ever had
serves to underline the economic basis of war.
There
are small teams of highly intelligent and educated men now working in
dynamic small groups in the development, production, marketing and
sales of weapons of mass destruction. Not all Shakespeare's madmen
are in ISIS.
Ideals
are peaceful. History is violent.
On
BBC Radio Five Live's Stephen Nolan show on 26th
October 2014, an articulate and intelligent British Army Infantryman,
returned from war in Afghanistan, spoke about bayoneting people
close up. He could not/did not remember how many he had killed. He
noted that he is a not an airman, delivering payloads of death from a
great height. He engages in the close-combat killing of men he
describes, as 'a son, brother, father'.
Here's
a Bible verse I think about sometimes. Many times. It goes: And I
heard the voice of Lord saying: Whom shall I send and who will go for
Us? And... I said: Here am I, send me!
The
listener sees the Infantryman up close to a Taliban soldier,
bayoneting him and wonders at the huge resources it took to get the
Infantryman into that situation in Helmand province, southern
Afghanistan, literally the other side of the world from his home
place. The Infantryman says he notes an 'increased confidence' among
the Afghanistan army and police and the local population as an
outcome of the war campaign. The listener wonders if the resources it
took to bring the Infantryman and his armed colleagues to that
population could have been spent on other, less-destructive,
confidence-building measures.
It will end,
soon. But before it does, a lot more people have to die.
This
is the myth that underpins the war machine. And in the film Fury
an appeal to the deepest of human myths is asserted, naming both the
weapon of mass destruction - the tank - and the heart-place.
[Referring to
Fury]
It's my home.
Football
pundits and other presenters, on British television, wear poppies as
a symbol of remembrance of British military war dead and as a
fund-raiser for charitable acts to the maimed or deranged following
acts of war. The State who sent them does not adequately
compensate them for their losses and their sadness on their return.
O,
yet I do repent me of my fury,
That
I did kill them.
The
myth of sacrifice is offered as a shimmering veil over the slaughter,
the gore and the misery that is war. Without a commitment to 'never
again', earnest in words and deeds, why wear poppies? Poppies, as
badges of remembrance, do not offer such a commitment. Often they are
bugle-calls to further slaughter.
Wars
are not going anywhere, Sir.
Are
we forever condemned to idiot-echo Shakespeare?
Life's
but a walking shadow, a poor player
That
struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And
then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told
by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying
nothing.
Fury;
film; David Ayer; Columbia Pictures; Los Angeles; 2014
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2713180/trivia?tab=qt&ref_=tt_trv_qu
The
Tragedy of Macbeth;
stage-play; William Shakespeare; London; 1605
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