FILM AND ART

THE HACKSAW RIDGE CONDITION

what exactly is anti-war art anyway?

By Ting Ting Dai

It's not a war. It's a condition.

Hacksaw Ridge is based on the true story of Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield) who refused to kill or bear arms during WWII. He was a pacifist who chose to serve his country as a battlefield medic. The movie forces you to see war not as a battle, but as an incredible loss of human life. The normal narrative of the war movie changes from a story about killing to one of survival and attempting to make other people’s lives better. The film is particularly effective in showing just how horrific war is and how difficult it is to be a pacifist in a world dedicated to conflict and fighting. So, I’d like to coin a term: The Hacksaw Ridge Condition. That would mean any work of art that attempts to not just be anti-war, but to explain the difficulties and complexities of actually living in a state of war.

It’s not common to see a mainstream Hollywood movie make an effort to create an objective representation of war. In every medium war somehow becomes beautiful and glorified, as if it were synonymous with justice. It begs the question: what about the death and destruction. In the film, when the soldiers first enter the battlefield, they see rats eating corpses. They don’t react in the ways you might think. They aren’t born heroes; they just have no choice. Like ordinary people, they fear death in a natural rather than melodramatic way.

In many different genres of anti-war art, we are familiar with depictions of the incredible sacrifice that people make in order to defend their country. It goes without saying that it’s an easy way to thrill, the presenting of war as a glorious adventure or even one in which you give your life for the betterment of your country. We neglect the most essential fact of the drama, which is the intent to kill other people and if we don’t concentrate on that fact we aren’t truly being anti-war. Therefor it is important to see more and more artists put their efforts to a similar philosophical approach as Hacksaw Ridge—that in no way should we depict war in a heroic fashion. Artists like Do Ho Suh, Lee Yong Baek, and Tim Shaw are coming from different cultural backgrounds, but they all have dedicated themselves to the most radical criticism of war, and that it is always about killing.

Do Ho Sup's Some/One

Do Ho Suh is a South Korean artist well known for his large-scale sculptures and installations. His work questions the complex relationship between individuality, collectivity and anonymity. And he is resolutely anti-war in his work. One of his most famous pieces is Some/One. Suh uses thousands of dog tags to make a gigantic soldier’s robe. This armored suit of the dead looks like a splendid Asian robe. In turning this catalogue of death into a beautiful and common piece of clothing Suh drives home a vicious point: When it comes to war, you are not an individual, but just a set of numbers.

Military service is mandatory for every young man in South Korea. Suh was born and raised in Seoul and military service is part of the culture. Even without a war, every male citizen is a potential killer. There is never a peaceful time when you are prepared for war. His point is that the soldier’s identity is so simple to step into, like a beautiful road.

Lee Young Baek's Angel Soldier

Lee Young Baek works in various media in all fields of contemporary art, including painting, film, photography, etc. Angel Soldier is an installation of colorful flowers. If we look closely, there’s a soldier camouflaged in the flowers, holding a gun and moving in for the kill. Flowers often represent peace and so it’s more than a little disconcerting to see a soldier hidden in a sea of petals.

We also send flowers to people we love and when someone dies. It’s a provocative use of the common associations with flowers. Lee suggests that the ultimate end of these soldiers is to disappear into flowers, into the earth. It’s a beautiful image, but also shocking and radically anti-war.

Casting a Dark Democracy

Tim Shaw is a British artist who is anti-war and was especially appalled by the Iraq War. His piece Casting a Dark Democracy is a powerful reference of the infamous images of the US soldiers torturing the Abu Ghraib prisoners. The sculpture is five meters tall, and it’s made of metal, black polythene, barbed wire, and electrical cable. The figure is huge, covered in black, and wearing a cloak. It’s uncomfortable to look at and suggests that war brings no justice. He makes clear that the violence of war is always more than we imagine.

The interesting aspect of Shaw’s work is that he brings attention to the enemy, to the losers. It’s rare to see people think about the losing side, especially if they aren’t on it. The dehumanizing of the prisoners is not an individual case: it stems from a belief that your enemy is at your mercy and can’t be treated like an animals or worse.

This is an extremely difficult position to take. Just to give two examples. Both the Hollywood industry (which is huge) and my home country China (which is also huge) would claim to be anti-war. Who really is pro-war? But both the industry and my country have not entered in to the Hacksaw Ridge condition, which is to see war as an absolute state of injustice.

It’s difficult for Hollywood, which relies on narratives of good and bad, and for countries, which struggle to unify everyone, not to fall easily back into an unconscious pro-war position. We all might claim to be anti-war, but we rarely think about the difficulties of that position. Hollywood is a huge industry that is interested in selling movie tickets based on easy stories about good and evil. But back in reality, it’s always more than pure good and pure evil, every country can find a decent reason to be in war, and yet when the war begins you should only expect injustice.

©Ting Ting Dai and the CCA Arts Review