// War Literature

I just wanted to add some thoughts to what we discussed in class today, focusing on sound and music, pack mentality metaphors and the reflection to the Holocaust and Nazis, and the aestheics and technique of the ending (which I thought was undeniably powerful)

On sound/music, when we went over the introduction of the film (the dogs running), the musical score definitely leads the viewer to certain emotions and empathy.  If we were to see dogs running without a score, the interpretation of the scene can vary.  I think this goes along with “translation” of text to image, image to film, film to animation, or any combination.  For example, reading a text, say Gravity’s Rainbow, our mind is interpreting what is being read.  We give ourselves an image of Slothrop, of the rocket, of Katje (I imagined to be quite lovely myself).  Anyways, once this text becomes translated to an image, it is both beneficial and a detriment: a plus in that we can personify what was just a thought before, but a detriment in that all other images of the subject are moot, since you are forced upon a certain image.  For example, read a poem, then have the author read it.  It’s quite a difference.

Another note on music, I found it amusing, hilarious, and thoughtful to use songs from the 80’s throughout the film.  The OMD song Enola Gay on the boat, the PiL song This Is No Love Song on the beach, along with the Cake song with a different name.  Not only because I know the songs and enjoyed them, but they presented a seperate “character” along with the documentary: the outsider.  It is expanded when Folman goes back home on leave, but in the fact that nothing has changed, that society for the most part, and excuse my profanity, given a rat’s ass about what is going on.  The usage of pop music in scenes of soldiers not killing, the indifference of the moment, only adds to the detachment of these soldiers, or even humanity as a whole.  If anything, music is the enveloping tie to civilians, soldiers, reality and the unreal dreams, and memories.

The pack mentality discussion we were having ties into the ending I believe, as well as the sense of detachment.  I posted before about the seeming detached movements of animation in this film, that it serves to place the character in the situation, but not in a humane way I don’t believe.  It’s like going through the motions but not believing what is happening is a reality.  The same can be said for pack mentality, doing what you’re told to do, following in the footsteps of another just shooting, not knowing who you’re shooting at, running because everyone else is, et cetera.  But the detachment is not fully accomplished, obvious by Folman’s constant “memory” of the massacre.  It comes rushing back at the very end, without remorse.  The relation from one massacre to the other, the Holocaust, Folman’s Holocaust, and the role reversal of the persecuted and the terrorist.

Watching the film, it felt as if all the actions the characters were taking were very remote, somewhere distant and had no bearing on what is.  It’s probably true of most animations, the kind of escapist behavioralism that is imprinted to us from our childhood.  But the ending turned that on its head: these things happened.  The raw footage drags us back from that kind of indifference, that kind of entertainment genre of film to the terrible reality of our world.