Hell,_Healing_and_Resistance

Hell, Healing and Resistance I know enough about American culture not to be surprised that films like Schindler’s List, about the Holocaust, and Saving Private Ryan, about war, have had Hollywood’s highest honors bestowed upon them. These are well produced and directed fantasies. However, after reading the rest of Hell, Healing and Resistance, I realize that there is a huge and significant difference between movies about violence and real violence. In reality, war is prolonged, messy, and has an impact which goes on much, much longer than the hours it takes to watch in the comfort of a movie theater. I guess it is easier to justify genocide and war as entertainment if it is fictionalized and not real, but it is why we can view these subjects as desirable for entertainment that is problematic for me. Daniel Hollack agrees saying, “Knowledge alone does not lead to truth. Films like Apocalypse Now and Platoon offer no answers, no matter how powerful and convincing the drama may be. They have become ends ! in themselves, and the fact that such graphic depictions of war have become entertainment is an indictment of our unfeeling culture (406).” Only powerful documentary and true narrative, war, peace, book, about, powerful, healing, entertainment, violence, veterans, truth, time, stories, simply, resistance, real, path, offer, much, lead, hell, films, enemy, ends, effects, disturbing, culture, considers, comfort, become, because, after, years, world, women, wide-ranging, wide, whose, watch, view, variety, upon, unnecessarily, unfeeling, understanding, two, try, true, trained, through, think