Hell, Healing and Resistance

2 Pages 519 Words

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, like in this book, will lead to understanding and truth of the evils of war and the path to peace.
The book considers the effects of the anti-war movement, and attaining peace, including “inner” peace involving healing spaces and managing survivor guilt. There is power in the real-life accounts of the destruction of war both immediate and long lasting. Take, for example, Agent Orange and the years it has taken veterans to force the military to recognize its effects and offer some compensation for it. But, also, there are powerful revelations that suggest that war might be fought unnecessarily.
Contributors to Hallock's book represent a wide variety of veterans living in wide-ranging situations from a Jesuit hospice in Manhattan to a Black Panther in New Haven;...