As Halloween recently passed, my mind shifts to the commodification of culture. Nowadays you can purchase anything from toy guns to real guns, and murdering video games to watching WW2 in colour. (Greatest Events of WW2 in Color – Netflix). I feel less as if war is in the past but more present through these transactions. I think it is just as wrong to dress up as a soldier as it would be to dress up as a Native American. It’s like watching American people do the haka. It makes me fume. It strips away the mana that is held through their actions and uniform. It may not make Soldiers or Native Americans fume but it does not mean they should be disrespected and wrongly replicated.
These instruments of entertainment create a culture that idolising total violence and death. Possibly even inspiring children to be a soldier one day. – a tool of destruction. ( because I don’t see them making air force electrician outfits or field medic costumes.) I think all of these clouds our children’s brains. Yes firstly for fun and games but it shelters their view of fear. It says total violence is acceptable because you can not feel it because you can pause the game because you can respawn while still sitting on the couch. It has become a farfetched norm.
The rubber bullets and console prices do not reflect the reality of what happens around the world. It does not replicate the sorrow and destruction of a family or their homes. Or the sacrifices of your own ancestors. From my position, it disregards the blood, sweat, and fear of anybody who faced WW2 or who still face war today. We have now created a bubbled perception of total violence. These commodities create historical ignorance of those who fell before us especially.
In this case, I feel like people (exploitation industries) certainly don’t have the right to exercise their commodity upon a soldier or any culture. If all the money made by selling these things was put back into the veteran communities, I think it would make a beneficial impact on their overall wellbeing. It could restructure their social, mental, and health support. And because an army will always be an army, it realistically would go somewhere else.
And in the chance of war, civilian or not, you can not bubblewrap fear with commodities.
If anyone agrees, disagrees, or would further like to discuss how soldiers are used and portrayed in film, music, art, photography I will be here. I am interested and this is just my opinion.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2014/aug/13/kids-call-of-duty-cure-with-trip-to-real-war-zone
