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The thing that struck me the most of all of this was the 3 guys in the middle of Jeff Wall’s picture or painting or drawing or whatever it is. The guy on the top has his bowels exposed and is “riding” the guy under him. The guy under him is kicking his legs and his blood covered face is playfully disgusted at the piece of flesh being dangled in front of him. It is so strange. It is like Slaughterhouse Five in that it takes something normal – a couple “fools” as Jeff called them – and makes it, or links it to, something horrific.

The Goyas weren’t “real” enough for me… very ironic when I consider what Sontag said in those interviews. However one picture I will never forget is Goya’s picture of Saturn.

http://images.bridgeman.co.uk/cgi-bin/bridgemanImage.cgi/400.XIR.52730.7055475/546.JPG

I think the Jeff Wall work is a photograph-the Goyas were considered almost too real at the time.

Another one to check out is Picasso’s Guernica painting depicting the bombing of the village of Guernica. He goes another way-like Vonnegut he kind of strips away the realism, and with it our expectations. What do you find more real-impressionistic images and works that concentrate on the feeling of the event or ones that try to depict it as accurately as possible?

In other words do you prefer art or photography?

Picasso’s Guernica http://arts.anu.edu.au/polsci/courses/POLS1005/2007/Images/Picasso.Guernica2.jpg

We studied that Picasso in spanish last year. “Studied”. It really does nothing to me, I guess I prefer photography when it comes to evoking these types of emotions.

I think what goes through my mind when I see anti-war art is “Oh, I see what the artist is trying to make me think here. Good try though.” I can’t say that I know what a mutilated corpse wants me to think about his (or worse, her) picture, and I can draw my own uninfluenced conclusions. This is what makes my stomach tighten. Does that make sense?

I think you do know what the corpse wants you to think because you said it was worse when it’s a female victim.

I don’t think the art is supposed to be anti-war. It’s just honest-the victims simply want to be acknowledged as what was once a person with a history and is now referred to as a causality or damage.

That’s why Wall’s work is so disturbing. It re-humanizes the corpses without changing their destroyed status. You don’t have to imagine what the bodies might have done because they’re doing it. We all become Billy Pilgrim when we look at Wall’s photograph. We can see the soldiers as both dead and alive at the same time. What Wall and Vonnegut are doing is trying to describe something that we don’t have a vocabulary for.

I thought it was ironic how Susan Sontag explained how a man questioned her about her experiences in Sarajevo (was it?) by asking her if she “personally felt that she was in danger” while she was there, and she didn’t even know how to respond, because of course she felt it danger—it was a war zone!

I think sometimes we are all guilty of it, but often times the images we see on the television screen don’t convince us of reality. Honestly, how often do we really stop and think “oh my gosh this is really happening?” I think Sontag was right when she said that until you are right there in the action, experiencing the violence and the horror firsthand, you truly can’t understand what is actually occurring. I think in this respect we are desensitized to war and images of violence. It’s hard for me to believe that we are indifferent towards images of war because we just don’t care about what’s going on, so I would have to agree with Sontag that the reason we find ourselves this way is because we feel powerless. I think this probably has something to do with Billy Pilgrim’s character in the Slaughterhouse 5; he has become so desensitized towards death and violence that his experiences in the war have almost dehumanized him, so much so that he doesn’t know how to return back to reality.

I also checked out the art work. I thought that Jeff Wall’s photograph was really disturbing, I’m not really sure why, but it bothered me a lot more than Goya’s work.

Is Susan Sontag from the east (NY or NJ)? She says “foreign” funny like Katie with her New Jersey accent. I agree with Sontag on the point that we so many images of atrocity we become desensitized. We see violence on TV, in the news and hear about it on the radio; we don’t ever stop to think about how all of this violence affects us. Random thought: Is it just a coincidence that the song in the middle of Sontag’s interview there is a little song about Green Berets and Billy’s son in Slaughterhouse Five is a Green Beret?

I don’t agree that Americans are made to fight but I do think that war (defined as a period of conflict) is inevitable. There is no way everyone will agree on everything all of the time. However, I do think we could escape the extremes to which wars are taken

I’ve viewed all of the stuff on the links and responded, but my response is kind of long- I didn’t want to post it on this site, so here’s a link to the page: http://lallal.learnerblogs.org/slaughterhouse-five-response/
Very thought provoking, however scary and depressing those thoughts may have been. So it goes.

I think that Americans are desentsitized to violence because we see it so often in films and on the news. I think it is easy for people to sit at home and see all those pictures and not even think of it as really happening. Like Susan Sontag said about the man asking her if she felt in danger while taking pictures, because many people think those pictures where almost “posed”, because sometimes politicians do that. So when they see violent images, they say oh how horrible but never do anything about it. The pictures of the “Dead Troops Talk” was really interesting to see because it puts images in people’s heads of how different people handle things or how different people appear in death. I was really disturbed by the picture of the three fools, because it almost seems like they are making fun of those men who died but the picture is trying to prove that there is always a fool in the group.

As far as the question of war being inevitable I am not sure where I stand about that. I believe that there is reason to fight sometimes to protect ourselves and then other times I feel people abuse the media to creat an idea that there is a reason to fight. A lot of things in this world have been gained or solved with violence and I don’t think that is something that is going to change. Is it impossible for us to escape this fate of war? I don’t know really, I feel that if people are willing to brave their life, there will always be someone to pose a threat.

I’m not sure where to start. I was too much of a coward to enlarge some of the thumbnail images in the Goya collection, and one of the more gruesome pieces of the photograph compiled by Jeff Wall. When I was younger, I watched the movie The Mummy and found it very difficult to sleep for the next few nights. I couldn’t get the image of the corpse out of my head. Every time I turned out the lights, I saw it. There is just something that isn’t right about animating the dead. My mom’s uncle just died two days ago. It was sad, of course, that his wife and friends were left without him, but he was suffering from Alzheimer’s. There is something peaceful and beautiful about death- even if a healthy child is killed during a war, at least he doesn’t have to spend the rest of his life knowing that such horrors as those that occurred during the war that he witnessed exist. I just don’t like the idea of bringing back to life a person who has been scarred by his death, or, in the case of the mummy, who has been dead long enough to rot. I don’t mean to say that everyone who dies brutally during a war wouldn’t be better off injured but alive, but it was horrifying to see the look on the soldier’s faces when they were brought back to life to see their horribly marred bodies. Am I making any sense at all?

It was really disturbing to me to see the soldiers in Wall’s photograph responding to their injuries. It reminded me of a play I saw when we hosted the MIFA competition over midwinter break: it was called Bury the Dead. it was about a group of animated dead soldiers who refused to be buried. The president of the US had the wives of the dead soldiers go try to persuade them to be buried. I had such a problem with the way the wives reacted and agreed to persuade their husbands. Every one of their various reactions seemed so unreal (and it wasn’t just because they were bad high school actors). But then I thought: How are they supposed to react? How am I supposed to react? What should I feel when I look at those paintings and photographs, or film clips of war on the news. I don’t think I’m desensitized to them yet, or else I could look at them without a problem; I just can’t imagine what it would feel like to see my husband dead, to see other people dismembered, or hanged. It’s too unreal to me- when I see them in print or on the tv or on the computer, sitting in my pjs, under a down blanked with the heat on in my cozy little house, eating a piece of red licorice, I can’t help but think of them as happening in any place other than in a movie or book. That’s the only place I’ve every experienced those horrors. And (in response to the question Mr. Kreinbring has posed) yes, I do feel powerless in the face of war; not necessarily because I can’t do anything to help, but because I know I’m not willing to do anything that would really be effective. I’m too selfish to put my own life in danger, or to expose myself to horrors that will haunt me the rest of my life. I suppose war is inevitable, because there are, and probably always will be, people who can think of no better or more efficient solution than to fight over it. If animals use violence to solve their problems, why shouldn’t we? We are, after all, animals. Maybe it’s our nature to use violence. But we aren’t just animals. If we can think and reason and invent wonderfully complex machines and medicine, can we think of no other method of resolving disputes than to resort to our animal instincts?

I also wanted to mention a point that Sontag made about Goya’s paintings: she thought Goya’s captions added a lot to the effect they had on the viewer, and I agree. (Luckily, they were in Spanish, so I could understand the majority of them) They were so simple… just by saying “yo lo veo” (I saw it), (which Vonnegut does in SH5 as well), it makes the painting seem a bit more real. It made me think, “wow- somebody actually saw this in real life?” which is completely ridiculous, but it was my honest reaction. I suppose that is basically my reaction to most war films, books and images: it’s really hard to imagine that crap like that actually happens. I guess people must become desensitized– how could someone do any of it?

It is hard to write about what war means to me because I have so much to think about it all gets mixed up together. When I think of war my natural response is somewhere along the lines of, “ooh that’s terrible” or “that’s so tragic.” War pictures are heartbreaking and are terribly grotesque to look at. I cannot speak for everyone, but quite frankly I think it’s a response that is desensitized to a certain extent from lack of experience. It is merely a reaction of the moment. You may know that war is terrible, but I think that most people are immune to intense emotions that it can evoke. I think that we all go on living our lives not deeply caring about war when it does not touch us personally. Most every day I wake up… go to school…go to soccer practice…maybe to work and there is never usually a point in my day where I stop and think about a war that is waging right now and the violence that is going on in a foreign country. It isn’t directly happening to me, or my family, and not to any of my friends so therefore I go on living my life with my biggest worries encompassed by my AP calculus test tomorrow. This may not be the way that I should react to war, but essentially it is. Don’t get me wrong it is not that I am a terrible person and just don’t give a crap. It’s just that I haven’t really been touched by a war that has felt real to me. I still have goose bumps when I look at violent scenes and feel pity for those soldiers who risk their lives. But, all in all, it is still a 2-D picture on my computer screen. My ignorance combined with a lack of options to take on such a huge task to make a difference make me feel powerless in the face of war and as if there is nothing that I can do about it. I agree with Sontag when she states that people are not fully convinced of the seriousness of war.
Billy pilgrim’s reaction of “so it goes” is his desensitization to war and violence by equaling the playing field and just saying that stuff is going to happen no matter how terrible. I do think that war is inevitable, but I also think that it is just an appalling solution that is a fall back plan. Some of the solution may dwindle down to human nature and the raw anger to fight for something, but even that explanation is disturbing. I don’t believe that Americans are made to fight, but I think we do it for lack of a better solution. The pictures by Goya are gruesome and show the violence and disgust in savage war. War is quite barbaric and it is just sad to think that it is the only option that we think of when we want to get our way. The picture by Wall is harrowing in its own way. When I first looked at it I was kind of taken aback because the soldiers were laughing. It kind of made me mad at first because I thought “that’s not funny.” The picture evokes a different emotion about war unlike a typical gory war picture.

Billy Pilgrim’s Reaction:

The violence is inevitable to Billy because it *was* inevitable for him. He was drafted and forced into World War II. He was forced into seeing something he wished not to see, something that forced him into a seclusion of sorts. Billy has gone to war. He went to war and saw. He saw the horrors and atrocities.

How boys aged within minutes, how innocence, for lack of a better term, was robbed from them.
Because of his powerlessness to remove himself from the war, there were only two things he could do: Accept or deny.

Throughout Slaugherhouse Five, Billy Pilgrim is stuck regarding Dresden. He logically knows that Dresden occurred and accepts it as fact. However the terrors are so dreadful he wishes to deny it.
Through the Tralfamadorians, Billy learns to accept everything as is. Everything becomes routine, mundane. To reach harmony of sorts, this he unsticks his emotions. He becomes inhuman.

As we have discussed in class, Slaughterhouse Five makes war horrifying by making it common and everyday, by illustrating how inhuman it forces us to become.

Sontag, Goya, Wall, and Being Desensitized:

We are indeed desensitized to images of violence by seeing it. Humans and all other animals have evolved to adjust to our environment, whether it be sun, rain, or war. What has kept us in existence demands that we adjust to survive.

Humans come with defense mechanisms like denial, repression, and suppression to help us cope with such startling situations.

However, this does not affect our ability to comprehend. As an intelligent person asks Sontag about Sarajevo, realizes that those images were real, and reacts, he proves that our exposure to images of violence is often repressed, kept out of conscious awareness but does not affect our actual grasp of the situation when made complete unavoidable.

Before hearing Sontag’s commentary regarding Goya’s Los desastres de la guerra, I flipped through them rather quickly. None of it phased me. I had only looked at the pictures, completely disregarding the captions. It wasn’t until after I heard Sontag’s comments regarding the captions did I revisit the pictures and look at the captions.

Some of Goya’s captions does some of what Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five does to Billy. It makes it unavoidable and mundane for me. For example, item 8, where a woman stands over several bodies to light a cannon. The caption says, “What valor!” I say, “What horror!”

Jeff Wall’s photos shocked me. The intensity of it. It blew me away for a second. The second picture in the series, the one with the young boy whose missing a part of his skull and right hand. The appalling sight was revoltingly fascinating. The intensity? The vividness of it? Whatever you’d like to call it. It ensnared my eyes.

Before the taking in the captions, I considered the photographs of Jeff Wall as more effective. In hindsight now, they are probably equally effective in their personal eras.

Had I took the time to carefully look through Goya’s pictures instead of succumbing to today’s instant coffee culture and need for speed, I may have been more shocked by Goya’s but as it stands now, Jeff’s shook me into a stupor.

Vietnam on Screen:

I agree that war is indeed inevitable. Those who fear war are doomed and destined for war, as seen by World War II. It is regrettable that we have yet to discover a way, and chances are will never discover an acceptable way, to stop war and violence without war and violence.

The only times I believe Americans are forced to fight are when they are drafted. The only times I believe America has been forced to fight include the Revolutionary War, World War II, and the War in Afghanistan. During all other times, Americans are not made to fight but are taught propaganda that lead them into thinking war is the only option or war is the just route. Like Great Britain, America has often fought for her gain. That is neither right nor wrong, but just is. There is no being that is unselfish. It is nothing more than another part of human nature.

Because it is human nature, it is impossible to escape such a fate. As Franklin D. Roosevelt has said, “The only thing to fear is fear itself.” If we fear war, we will always have it and would succumb to it. To rid ourselves of this fear of war, not embrace war, we make ourselves less vulnerable. Alas, like many things, this too is but a slippery slope.

Emmanuel Dongala:

As a matured, fully-developed person, one must acknowledge his or her faults. Responsibility is a part of growing up. I believe one should and must, in order to be an adult, take full responsibility of one’s actions whether the effect of one’s actions is intentional or not.

However, I do not agree that we cannot be surprised by the horrors that we ourselves create. Not all actions have a foreseeable result. Only hindsight is 20/20. Had every action have a foreseeable result, we would not be human but all knowing gods. Had every action have foreseeable consequence, life would be all sunshine, flowers, and happiness.

As I have listened to Sontag’s ideas of being desensitized to violence and seen the pictures of Goya and Jeff Wall, I have arrived at the conclusion that they are wrong. We are not desensitized to violence; we cannot be desensitized to violence because if we were, then the pictures of Goya and Wall would not seem abhorrent. If we were desensitized to violence then no person would protest war because they would not care about the violence in war, it would be seen as a normal event that is inevitable. However, that is not the way people around the world, let alone Americans view war. There has been countless war protests, people do believe that war can be stopped, people recognize the violence that is there. Often, it is indeed too horrible for it to be truly understood, and such psychological defenses such as repression and denial force us to look away and pretend that the violence we see is actually not real. What must be understood is that war is not honorable, it is not beautiful, it is not heroic, it is a horrific event in itself, and it provides the perfect opportunity for even more horrific events to happen. I watch the news, see that a woman was raped, and people think “so it goes. Stuff happens. Too bad.” Later on the news a squad of soldiers rapes a girl in a war zone. When this happens, there is a national scandal, everyone cares, and yet the poor girl on the corner of the local city is told that what happened to her was bad but not much else. People make a national outcry when a local solider dies in war, but when my cousin is shot in the drug store the event is on the news for a day maybe two, then the story fades. There is no sense to the reactions, I expect the local solider to die in war, and I am not surprised that a girl could be gang raped by soldiers in war because it is during war that it happened. I feel much more horrified for the girl on the corner and the guy in the drug store. As civilians we have no right to judge the horrors of war until we have experienced them. Until we have been in the fighting and have had comrades die at our side, how can we possibly judge their deaths to be more horrible then the murder of a local person? We may feel powerless in the face of war, only because we do not understand it, because we have not experienced it and cannot understand it until we do experience war. We think war will come and hope that it does not reach out to affect our lives, but ultimately whether war will or will not come is never set. Just as glaciers may melt away into nothingness, war may be delayed, stalled or prevented, and the decision does not lie with one person or with one group of people, it takes the actions of many to forestall war, just as it takes many different climate factors to melt away a glacier. Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse V accepts this just as he accepts everything else that is mapped out in his time traveling life. So it goes. He blindly accepts what is going to happen because he believes that that was the way it was meant to be. Based on this, Billy Pilgrim would think that some wars are meant to be fought, while others are meant to be averted. The ones meant to be fought are inevitable. The others are not.
Yes I do believe that war is an unavoidable inevitable event. This is because war is a tool for those in power. War is a means by which certain ends may be achieved. It is also one of the easiest and if won, most beneficial ways to accomplish a goal. As long as there are nations and governments there will be war. The fact that people view war as a bad event is not going to change the fact that armies enlist, people volunteer to fight, and leaders call upon people to fight for many reasons. As for Americans, we are not made to fight. We may have won our independence with war, ascertained out freedom with war, but every other county that exists in the world today has the boundaries they have because of wars won or lost. Every country has been impacted by some war in their history. If Americans are made to fight, then humans in general are made to fight and our entire race will eventually expand to fight other races now unknown, or our society will dissolve into anarchy and chaos.

Why is it that so many little boys are fascinated with the idea of war, guns and planes? Is it because America has taught them from an early age that war is cool, war is good, and WAR IS INEVITABLE? Is it truly inevitable? The inevitability of war is really a question left up to society. We see it as inevitable, as part of our daily routine. If we were to really try and rid ourselves of this mindset would it be possible to rid ourselves of future devastation and humiliation of war and its destruction? We are taught at an early age that war is inevitable, it will always be here haunting us, and so we must move on and hope that we won’t have to physically involve ourselves in the matter. No matter how hard we try we cannot get rid of its inevitability and all its associates.
Sontag’s use of the word, blasé perfectly illustrates our reaction toward today’s world. We have become so accustomed, so familiar and comfortable with the idea that millions are dying over an argument, that if correctly, could be solved with conversation and compromise we forget it’s a war, and see it as every day life. Have we become desensitized? Yes. Sontag describes our reaction (emotion) as powerless or impotent. I disagree. Sontag’s reference to Homer’s Iliad recognizes the idea of war being a natural human activity. After listening to Vietnam on Screen, McAdams and Suid, the reaction they received after returning home from the war, wasn’t bliss or a multitude of thanks, it was how many people did you kill? If we see war as a means of killing for the fun of it, how do we expect its inevitability to disappear? Although war films are supposed to create a sense of fear and awe, it becomes a form of entertainment when constantly portrayed over and over again; similar to how television audiences are desensitized from its meaning. Producers and film directors recognize this emotion and instead of using the film for the sole purpose of educating the American people, entertainment becomes a definite factor, and it takes away from the value and respect for the people who fought and died during the war. If people see war a source of entertainment how can we ever expect to move on from its devastation?
The images Goya and Jeff Wall portrayed of war are just as moving as Vonnegut’s writing. Both alluded to the idea of the war being mundane, and inevitable. Jeff Wall’s picture, Dead Troops Talking reminded me of Vonnegut’s So it Goes. People see war and hear about the casualties and for a second stop and think and then this feeling of sympathy and shock wears away and they continue life as if it were to have never happened. The talking and laughing dead illustrates society’s reaction to their deaths, risks and work. Today over seas, millions of people’s heads, legs, and arms were blown off, So it goes.

I started by clicking on the illustrations in the collection by Goya, and honestly I had no interest in looking at them. They were much too boring; I guess I can formulate the idea that gruesome images full of blood and guts and horror, along with sex, is what society wants, it is what sells. For instance, movies like Saw and Final Destination are full of the most, well I guess not so much “unthinkable”, but gross depictions of death. I don’t believe that the actual act of dying is what scares people or gives twelve year olds nightmares, but more so the moments before you die, when you see what’s coming to get you; the axe, sharp/pointed or blunt object coming full force to bash your face in.
I immediately click on the link to Wall’s photographs.
Here I found what I was actually wanting to see, the most shocking and disturbing image; a young soldier with his brains showing. Collectively the photographs as a whole were shocking, which began to fill my mind with questions like, is this real? Who were these people? How could you think of such a thing to create? How did he do that? I carefully looked each one over and read each of the captions.
Again I was reminded to what I had said earlier and about the questions headed by Mr. Kreinbring about being “desensitized” to images of war. Of course we are. We see them at a distance, as Lea has said it best, “…when I see them in print or on the T.V. or on the computer, sitting in my pj’s, under a down blanket with the heat on in my cozy little house, eating a piece of licorice, I can’t help but think of them as happening in any place other than in a movie or book. That’s they only place I’ve ever experienced those horrors,” People are powerless in the face of war: we have been taught, all of our lives, how to react to these images, to be shocked, to cry, to cover our faces, but is there really a reaction to act? Kurt Vonnegut, in Slaughterhouse Five, illustrates the reaction of desensitization with Billy Pilgrim. I can happily agree with the idea that war is inevitable: People have been at war with each other since history has began, they have this natural and constant want to be dominant over one another. Because of this, I don’t believe that Americans are made to fight but every country’s people, forever. End.

I found this assignment to be bizarre. Like every generation in the US, I’ve grown up hearing about war, terrorism and violence….but not just from the news. It’s in the movies I watch and the music I listen to. And as much as I hate to admit it, I’ve become desensitize to violence. I think propaganda and the media is partly to blame for this; but I also think that human ignorance is the other factor. As much as I would love to say that war in Iraq touches me in some way… I can’t say it honestly. As much as I would love to travel to Iraq to help those who desperately need me…I can’t. It would be too hard to face the reality of war. And I think that it is fear, not “lack of interest,” that people like me suffer from. The pictures, although grotesque, I could face. But to see something in person, would traumatize me and essentially put me in the place of Billy Pilgram. I would be immersed in my own thoughts, to the point where I don’t know which way is up. I would drown in memories and nightmares and possibly face them in a nonchalant manner, like Billy.
So then, is war inevitable? Can we truly stop something that we don’t want to see? As much as I would love to live in a world of peace, I don’t think it will be happening very soon. I don’t think war is inevitable and I don’t think violence is human nature (call me naïve, but I like to believe that people are generally good). But, I do believe that hatred is inevitable. I don’t know how to convey this properly, but feelings of jealousy and fear will always exist. For instance, even though the Civil Rights Act was passed, racial discrimination still occurs. I see it everywhere…my own friends will admit their prejudice, and sometimes I find myself being a bit racist. But never truly do I understand the effects, until I, myself, can feel the judgment burn through me. So then, I make the initiative to stop my own prejudice, hoping that it will “pay-forward.” The same goes for the war in Iraq. I said before that the war never truly touched me, or never really caught my interest. However, a few months ago, Prime Minister Benzair Bhutto was assassinated. And for some reason, I felt drawn to her, probably because of my feminist tendencies. But that’s when I learned that I would have it hard too; I learned that regardless of my status in American, or any other “liberal” country, I would always be hated or regarded as a piece of property elsewhere. Last semester in Composition, I read a short story called A&P, and this quote, which I will never forget, came to mind: “(…) and my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter.”
I don’t know if this truly answered the question, but I feel as if I just defended myself against the attack of being blind. And with that, I have learned that I must attempt to make the reforms need to change the problems that I did not create.

**SORRY ABOUT THE DUPLICATE. THIS ONE IS MORE ORGANIZED.

I found this assignment to be bizarre. Like every generation in the US, I’ve grown up hearing about war, terrorism and violence….but not just from the news. It’s in the movies I watch and the music I listen to. And as much as I hate to admit it, I’ve become desensitize to violence. I think propaganda and the media is partly to blame for this; but I also think that human ignorance is the other factor. As much as I would love to say that war in Iraq touches me in some way… I can’t say it honestly. As much as I would love to travel to Iraq to help those who desperately need me…I can’t. It would be too hard to face the reality of war. And I think that it is fear, not “lack of interest,” that people like me suffer from. The pictures, although grotesque, I could face. But to see something in person, would traumatize me and essentially put me in the place of Billy Pilgram. I would be immersed in my own thoughts, to the point where I don’t know which way is up. I would drown in memories and nightmares and possibly face them in a nonchalant manner, like Billy.

So then, is war inevitable? Can we truly stop something that we don’t want to see? As much as I would love to live in a world of peace, I don’t think it will be happening very soon. I don’t think war is inevitable and I don’t think violence is human nature (call me naïve, but I like to believe that people are generally good). But, I do believe that hatred is inevitable. I don’t know how to convey this properly, but feelings of jealousy and fear will always exist. For instance, even though the Civil Rights Act was passed, racial discrimination still occurs. I see it everywhere…my own friends will admit their prejudice, and sometimes I find myself being a bit racist. But never truly do I understand the effects, until I, myself, can feel the judgment burn through me. So then, I make the initiative to stop my own prejudice, hoping that it will “pay-forward.” The same goes for the war in Iraq. I said before that the war never truly touched me, or never really caught my interest. However, a few months ago, Prime Minister Benzair Bhutto was assassinated. And for some reason, I felt drawn to her, probably because of my feminist tendencies. But that’s when I learned that I would have it hard too; I learned that regardless of my status in American, or any other “liberal” country, I would always be hated or regarded as a piece of property elsewhere. Last semester in Composition, I read a short story called A&P, and this quote, which I will never forget, came to mind: “(…) and my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter.”

I don’t know if this truly answered the question, but I feel as if I just defended myself against the attack of being blind. And with that, I have learned that I must attempt to make the reforms need to change the problems that I did not create.

As I sat and listened to what Susan Sontag was saying I was forced to think about what we had talked about in class about the Odyssey. It is amazing the way people’s view on war has changed since we have been able to view it on a day to day basis on the news. In Homer’s time war was something that was for the most part seperated from the life everyone who was not a man or was not old enough to fight, and the people who did not expierence it had no clue about the horrors of war. As I take a look at myself I find myself in the same position. I have a hard time being moved by something I have not been a part of, or that I did not look at personally. There is too much missing. There is much more than words, and pictures in war, there are sounds, and feelings, and sights, that a person who has not expierenced it cannot relate to. My feelings were not provoked in anyway by Goya’s and Wall’s pictures. I feel no connection to the time or the place. I am however, upset about the possum I hit tonight on my way home from work. That is because I was there I felt, heard and saw it, and when it happened I felt nothing but sadness.

What I am getting at is, there is nothing that can replace the senses in such a situation. We can pretend we know about the feelings of people who have been in war, but the truth is we are too far removed from it, and because of that I do feel powerless when it comes to war. I feel powerless because I am not there. I am not saying I want to be there, but because of how removed I am from it, I feel there is nothing I can do to prevent it, provoke it, or have anything but fake feelings towards it.

I do have feeling about whether or not Americans are made to fight though. I think most people in the world are not made to fight, especially not Americans. We are given a choice in most cases, it’s either enlist or you don’t. Unless of course there is a draft, in which case yes, we are forced to fight. I feel people are more of tricked into fighting by the false feelings they have towards war, something they usually have no experience in. They feel patriotic, and they feel the heroism we associate with war, and think it is really like that despite the fact they, don’t know anything at all about it. When it comes down to it what disturbs me is the thought that people think such things about something they don’t know enough about. They fall victim to the stereo types and cliches, and other people’s reflections.

War, because of the views that surround it that make it seem heroic is inevitable, and until that perception is broken, it will always be around, and i feel that perception of war will never be broken. It cannot be broken until everyone has first hand experience in it. I know there are people who have never had a part of that, that don’t have that perception of war, but my question is how do they know if they have not had a part in it? How can a person support their feelings towards war if they don’t know all they can know about it? They can see, and hear about what goes on, and judge based on that but they don’t get the full story, they get bits and pieces, nothing more than a reflection of it. It is the same reason why I find it hard to believe in God. I simply cannot force myself to fully believe something I have not seen through my own eyes, because I know people have a way of twisting things to support what they want others to believe.

I want to feel something towards war, but i want it to be a true perception of it, and nothing I know of can beat experience. I am afriad that is the only truth.

After listening to Sontag, and viewing the photographs from Goya and Jeff Wall I feel that in ways we are and we aren’t desensitized to war and violence. I agree with much of the other students in saying that in the face of war we as individuals are fundamentally powerless. Billy Pilgrims’s reaction to this inevitability in the novel is his disassociation from time, sense of detachment, and his stress on the mundane aspects of life. Vonnegut uses repetition in the novel to demonstrate how the mundane is constantly interrupted with other events, also demonstrating the life lived by a soldier.

In the society that we live in today, we are ultimately raised on the idea that war is inevitable and that we don’t really have a choice as to whether it continues or not. Our only access to images of the war is through the media. Ignorance would lead us to believe, as many are lead to believe that the images we are presented with on TV are actually “true” images of war, not selectively chosen to be “suitable” for the citizens in the United States. The images that we are presented with we view from a far, few of us have been there to experience the harsh reality of what is actually occurring in Iraq. This idea along with the idea that Sontag presented “it is hard to take in reality through images” leads us to become desensitized towards war and its powerful effects. At this point in our lives I’m sure many have us have seen several horror movies or cliché war films in which over and over we have been introduced to the same idea, that war is just something people do. We don’t at this point really react anymore to the images we see, and who can really blame us? As long as I can remember I have seen images of soldiers killing each other whether in movies or on the news. Now for example we see first hand how the amount of media coverage on the war has changed from the beginning of the war in Iraq up until now, and how little we hear of it. Many people have lost interest and accepted war as the answer and a part of life.

On the other hand I disagree somewhat and only slightly by saying that if viewing the images of Jeff Wall has an effect on us then obviously there is some sense of sensitivity in us. Meaning that we are not fully desensitized to violence and war when in direct view, but from a far we are and feel as if we are “powerless in its face”. I feel that it in the world we live in today it is fundamentally impossible for us to escape this fate, and if there is any hope I wouldn’t expect to see a change for many years to come unfortunately.

I agree with Sontag’s assertion that in order to be “morally adult” we cannot be surprised by horrors that we have seen and still see ourselves create. I agree with this because we have the option of changing and always will but ultimately always opt to not deviate from the ways in which we are already set.

In Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, the character Billy Pilgrim recalls when he was abducted by the tralfamadors, who were aliens of a different planet. Something that he learned from these creatures was to understand that death was just an even that occurred in life. One could look back on the different memories at any time he chose, and death, was just one of the events, rather than the event that ended it all. The way the tralfamadors would approach this concept would to be to simply say the phrase “so it goes”, as in, it is just another event of life. This was the start to renewing Billy’s mind so that he could deal with the horrific things he experienced in war, as just another event that occurred in his life, which does leave one feeling powerless. In Songtag’s recollection of the horrors of the war that she saw in Iraq in 2003, it was clear that there was nothing that she could say that would be able to make anyone fully comprehend what went on there unless they had been there. There is helplessness because people cannot understand it if they have no experienced it, and the way our society approaches war, leaves us desensitized to it. To express this idea, Goya and Jeff Wall had taken photographs of gory war scenes that they staged, where wounded men with missing appendages and insides spilling out, were having a fun time and laughing with each other as though nothing were wrong. These disturbing images play up the idea that we are desensitized to war, as though it is no big deal, just another event of life. This idea leaves us feeling helpless and powerless in the inevitability of war, and how it will affect people, in addition that no matter how one might try, mere words will never be able to fully do it justice or give even a glimpse of how it was to experience the war first hand.
I do believe that war is inevitable. There will always be conflicts in the world, and, since we are human, those conflicts will get out of hand, and people will want to fight over it to make a point, or to display their power. I do not think that Americans are made to fight, but I do believe that nationalism is encouraged, which prompts Americans to fight if there is a war to fight in, and because of this, I think it is impossible for us to escape this fate. There is no way to control everything that goes on all around the earth, and sometimes the problems hit close to home, therefore, if it does, we are supposed to defend our homes, even if it means turning to gruesome tactics, and though I do not believe this is right, I do believe that there is nothing I can do to stop this. However, I do not believe that in order to be “morally adult” we can no longer be surprised by the horrors that we ourselves create. Like Emmanuel Dongala gives as an example, he was speechless after the first time watching “Platoon”, and continued to be when he watched it after that. I think it is important to have those horrors revealed to us so that we can get a glimpse of reality, however, this should no desensitize us to the terrible things happening around the war, and not being surprised by them would be a strong mark of desensitization. Rather, knowledge of these horrors should make the necessity for “anti-war novels” unnecessary.

My post is really long. I got “inspired” to write a related, but slightly off-topic piece and I wanted to post it as well. Because of the way the formatting is for this blog page, I think it’s best if it’s only posted on my own blog page. Anyone can view it by going here:

http://hyperfire123.learnerblogs.org/slaughterhouse5/

Feel free to leave me comments as you wish.

Mr. Kreinbring – if you still want me to go ahead and post it on here, I can, just tell me and I will.

After listening to Sontag and seeing the photographs from Goya and Jeff Wall, I feel that over the years i really have been desensitized to images of war and violence. Propagandists and the Media show violence on tv, movies, advertisements, it’s everywhere. After a while you get used to seeing it. Of course the photographs are disturbing, but violence really is inevitable. Billy Pilgrim detaches himself, he disassociates himself with the war. His life is mundane but Vonnegut interrupts the mundane with images of violence, this is repeated throughout the novel.

As far as the question of whether war is inevitable or not. I think that sadly war is inevitable, people believe that Americans have to fight to protect us. I don’t think that Americans were made to fight, but I do think that it’s nearly impossible to escape from violence and war. Not everyone agrees that war isn’t the best for this country, and we’ll never all agree. It’s inevitable!

Billy Pilgrim’s reaction to the inevitability of war is to follow orders. He loses his sense of self and is unable to think for himself. He was so used to accepting orders without question, that when he was told to put on the fur coat, he never even considered that it might be to humiliate him. Billy himself had become desensitized. Not to war, but to life itself. Through the novel, it was obvious that Billy stopped thinking what most would call rationally. Most of the events he told were as-if from an out-of-body experience. He realizes that as a prisoner of war, he really is mostly powerless in the decisions he makes. The saying “so it goes” seems to emphasize Billy’s outlook that he can’t change what happens, but will live through it anyway.

War is inevitable and a sad fact of life. It is my belief there will always be jealousy, power struggles, shortages of resources, greed and cruelty. It seems pessimistic to say that war is a fact of life, but no matter how far back in man’s history you look, you will always find war. Saying that Americans are made to fight seems to be to broad of a generalization. Yes, war pervades our movies, songs and media, but that does not mean all of us are rushing off to war. There are still many Americans who protest war and many others who will not go so far as to protest, but silently disapprove.

In Goya’s work, I could see the meaning behind the pictures, but they did not affect me. They seemed too fake. I will admit this one stuck in my mind though. Applying this work to World War II, the wolf symbolizes the Allies. The wolf is writing a new set of treaties, but in his own best interest. The wolf makes the good guy image of freedom fighters seem like a facade. Winners always write history the way they want. Seeing through this then, the good no longer seems so good. The photographs struck me much more harshly. I see the loss of life and something in me is moved. For me, it have to see the reality of the situation for it to affect me.

I would say that in this day, one MUST be desensitized to war. There is too much cruelty in the world to take in. Starvation, war, murders, genocide; one person can’t fix it all, and it is just too much. Even in the U.S. When hurricane Katrina hit, it was in the news for a few weeks, many sent down supplies to help the homeless, but eventually we all moved on. The area that was hit has still not recovered and people are still doing recovery efforts. How many of us can say that we thought about Katrina victims in the last week…last month? The same goes for 9/11. If mentioned, we all know what is being talked about, but on our own how many of us can say that we thought about it recently? People have moved on because that is how we survive. Our grandchildren will not understand how we felt about 9/11 because they did not experience the loss we felt. Our grandparents cannot understand why we do not grieve about Pearl Harbor and instead talk of how cool the dogfight scene was in the movie Pearl Harbor. I believe that one MUST become desensitized to war.

I finally wrote a response without getting sidetracked!

To me, war is inevitable simply because there will always be a few people on this earth who want it to be. The question is not whether or not human nature dictates that we should fall into war time and time again, but whether or not people will ever learn not to do exactly what we are told. It only takes one person to want war and it will eventually happen – perhaps not the way the original person felt it would, but it will. People as a whole will follow whoever steps up to lead them. Whether it is a political leader, the media, or a teacher at school, people blindly follow them if they seem to have a valid point. For example, when 9/11 happened, we were told war was good. So, people lined up at the recruiting centers and the country went to war. Now people are told by the media that war is bad, so people want to stop the war. It is often said that one person can make a difference. That is truer than more people realize, as any person can create a change, especially a war. Just look at Adolf Hitler. He was upset at the treatment he suffered in jail, blamed the Jews and allies from the First World War, and caused the death of millions in World War Two. He wanted war, he got war. Going back to Plato’s The Cave, people only respond to the shadows. When one finally does go into the light, they create their own shadows for others to respond to.
However, it also would not be so easy to make people follow one into war if they weren’t already desensitized by it. People are not so much desensitized by the violence seen in everyday life, as the conflicting opinions thrown at them everyday. The media tells them the war and violence needs to be stopped, and then politicians say that the war and violence needs to continue; one person tells people war is inevitable, and another tells people that we can stop it. People are told to do so many different things that, unless one power takes over every thing they are told (such as the case of what Hitler did in Germany), they just stop caring. They start to not take it seriously anymore. Games and movies which almost seem to ridicule war allow them to keep from forming any real opinions. They start to see war and violence as a game in itself, not a reality. Only those who actually experience the effects of such violence, and are forced to experience war, realize that war isn’t a game to take lightly.
We discuss war and try to understand it. We can’t. Only through experience can one ever really understand, and then sometimes it is too much, as in the case of Billy Pilgrim. We only know what we are told, and with all the information thrown at us, it is natural to want to hide. People want war to be inevitable. That way, they don’t feel that they have to deal with it. They just listen, follow orders, and get on with their everyday lives. Our world works by a few people influencing the rest to do their bidding – and people like it. Forming one’s own opinion is too much work. People look for someone to follow. So long as there is one person on this earth who wants war, and it is still within human nature to constantly play “Follow the leader”, war will be inevitable.

I find it interesting that, we invoke peace in other countries all around the world, for instance the conflict in Tibet with china. Not only this but we are absolutely surrounded by images of chaos and terror. Thus the phrase “war on terror” is only creating more terror. We see videos on this violence all the time, and the majority of us do nothing the only think we think about is when oil goes up, but when we see a still canvas of what actually goes on we are shocked? Why? You might say we are not there seeing it in real life, so we aren’t blown away when we see images. Nevertheless, the truth of the matter it is exists and no matter whether we want to admit it or not, it does exist!

Kurt Vonnegut is only a witness of these events, and can’t even image a word so valid for such a incident either can Susan Sontag. Can you because I can’t? Especially after reading/seeing the movie Heart of Darkness. “Maybe that’s a feeling that everybody has who was in a war, that if you hadn’t been there, if you hadn’t been in a war, in any war, you couldn’t really understand what it was like.” After listening to the interview with her, I have nothing but admiration on the moral position she has on pro life regards.

Billy Pilgrim was pro peace instead of anti war; he focused much of his efforts on teaching his children to never stain this conscious with blood by taking life from a another person in the use of war. Ironic, because Robert joins the green berets, which makes his parents so proud, why? He spent time teaching his kids that war is not a sport, after seeing the affect first hand on the cover up of Dresden. Another passage I heard on Vietnam on screen was “Americans love a winner, and will not tolerate a loser, that’s why Americans have never lost, and will not lose a war” I was almost shocked when I heard this statement, still I am. It is a statement you don’t hear very often only from irrational enemies of the United States, by no means I am one of those. But the quote forced me to reflect on what the image of war portrays to people all over the world.

Most people would believe that war is inevitable because of humans thirst for greed, power, and entertainment. War should never be made into some kind of movie because it forces us to be entertained by it. Maybe one day it won’t be impossible for Americans and people all over the world to admit there is enough for everyone to go around, we don’t have to fight over anything, we have power lets use it!

I think we, and most Americans, are very desensitized to violence. Unlike millions of others in the world today the most violence we expirience is usually somewhere between a small fight between two individuals to perhaps a mugging or a robbery. Most Americans have never had a weapon pulled on them, or even know somebody who has been a victim of a violent crime such as murder. Even though these instances are much more common in our society we still find ourselves desensitized to this idea of violence, rather we follow the idea that if it wasn’t us or someone we know then it isn’t our problem.

With that in mind it is hard to comprehend how we can even begin to understand what war is truly like without actually expiriencing it ourselves. We certainly cannot go to the media to find out, as while the media preaches that it distributes informacion freely as well as giving the public what it needs to know only an ignorant person would not believe that there is a filter put upon what we see. The atrocities of foreign enemies are crammed down our throats while the bombing of civilians by American planes are swept aside as “military targets”.

With this violence against civilians swept aside by those whose duty it is to report the news, the task of educating others about these instances falls to writers and artisits. One specific example of this is Goya, whose paintings helped show the atrocities of a brutal war. I do not think these sort of paintings desensitize us to violence, but rather give us our best chance to understand at least a little of the horror that occurs in war.

One can argue that the greatest desenstizer to the idea of war is not media nor our removal from war, but the fact that war in itself is inevitible. This is hard to dispute as humans have been involved in wars for as long as history exists to indicate. These conflicts also find there ways into literature, from The Bible to the Illiad to Slaughterhouse Five. There are varying themes that can be found in war books, but they are all tied together by one fundamental idea. War will never stop. Slaughterhouse Five was not the first book to be written about a war and nor will it be the last. That doesn’t take away from its literary merit but it does illustrate how war is ingrained in society.

Billy Pilgrim found the way to escape war’s inevitability. Some may call it cowardly or ignorant, but it is a solution all the same. One must take the Tralfamadorian perspective, which is to accept the existance but simply ignore it. Focus on the good moments rather than the horrifying ones. However, in the society we have created to do such a thing is condemned. However, if someday all of the human race becomes unstuck in time perhaps we can all join Billy Pilgrim in accepting the Tralfamadorian perspective of life.

Do you agree with the idea that war is inevitable? Are Americans made to fight? Is it impossible for us to escape this fate?

I believe that we are all at fault for looking the other way. Today, all America sees is images of violence and war, on the television, through songs on the radio, and especially on the internet. These violent images have become mundane, and common to a fault. It seems that no one takes the time to think about what is actually happening, the person just turns their cheek. Sontag was a hundred percent correct in her theory that until you are right there in the action, experiencing the violence and the horror firsthand, you truly can’t understand what is actually occurring. No one can experience the effect of war until it is you in the green uniform crawling through the bush, seeing your fellow statesmen dying before your eyes or even the sound of planes overhead. We all say that is horrible but fail to realize that the idea of war and the reaction to it has become a habit. Sontag made another excellent point in saying that we feel powerless. America feels that we cannot stop war, it is inevitable. America has always fought whether to try to be “on-top”, display or prove our strength or even trying to take care of another countries problem. We do feel destined to war much like Billy Pilgrim. Death is a current thought or proven fact in his life making it mundane. He experiences death to a point that he just turns his head and shrugs his shoulders, much like America does today.

I also checked out the photos. Wall’s photography is very disturbing, especially where they are dangling the flesh in front of the man’s face (the fools I believe it is). It bothered me much more than the sketches. I just thought it is sad to see someone that twisted to produce such a series of photos. It made me queasy.

Are we desensitized to Violence? :

Sontag spoke about how images of violence can either stir emotion or completely have no effect on us and she was right. She said it all the way the artist/media portrays it and we need them to help us understand. But it all depends on the image.
As a person living in post 9/11 America I am exposed daily to violent subjects and images. Or at least what the media hypes them up to be. I can’t claim that I am desensitized to violent images because that is not what is shown in the media. Look at today’s images of war and violence. There are no gory images, bloody shots, and etc. You see pictures of happy times of the victim and the flag they died fighting for. Even when it us doing the killing you see images of soldiers dancing in the street and you cheer and don’t even bat an eye wondering how many people were slaughtered in victory.
The images I see contrast with that of Goya. Goya shows images of what truly happens during war and honestly the images stir true disgust. Their not even true pictures, just sketches of horrors we have heard of and they disturb me. I do not believed that people are desensitized to images of violence we see but if the news were to flash a picture like that then maybe people would react a little more strongly. Americans hear talk about people against our newest war and they say it can’t be stopped, it must run it’s course, we are powerless. I say yeah right! Flash images like Goya’s and see how much power you get behind the movement.
How Americans view violence now is similar to Jeff Wall images, everything is entertainment. Click on the TV and just watch it for an hour. Everyday on the news we hear about people dying or being abused and unless it’s a child or a helpless animal we don’t react. We just sit back, watch, then bunk down for a good episode of “CSI” or “Cops” or some other violent programming that’s ratings go higher as more violence and drama occur. We really need to pay attention and open our eyes to what is around us.
In a way I am, as are others, very similar to Billy Pilgrim. I/we feel trapped in the system around us. War and violence flashes before us and I/we feel nothing. Like him these are images of the past and present, always repeating in front us to shut us down and make us feel powerless. So I/we sit back and mutter “So it goes”.

Is war inevitable? :

I would love to believe that war is not inevitable but I would be filling myself with lies. The saying goes history repeats itself; unfortunately history is full of violence and wars. Not all wars are pointless though. Where would America be without the Revolutionary War against Britain or what would’ve happened to African Americans without the Civil War. As long as there is something to fight for their will be people fighting. Let’s face it we live in a male-run society where dominance is key. If someone has a point to make and fight for they will. It’s dog-eat-dog and biggest guns win. Unfortunately America has the biggest guns and as long as we have them we feel like we can fight with anybody over anything, and we do. It’s this whole patriotism meets superiority group-think mindset that has been input into us since day one. America thinks, being as we are the best according to us, that we have a service to but our guns into every problem/conflict of the world. I fear it’s how we’ll always be until the rest of the world joins up and destroys us (nervous laugh). As for escaping this fate it seems more possible. Maybe if we learned to just except each others difference or at least find more peaceful ways to come to a conclusion then maybe there is hope.

I agree with Susan Sontag about how art, media, and life has desensitized our society. The media with its broadcasting of the war although not in its entirity has exposed everyone to the atrocities of war. I believe war may be an inevitability and we feel powerless against it the same way we feel powerless against governments, and against global problems. We have convinced ourselves as a society that one person cannot do anything and that if anything is to get done, the government and the military will take care of it which eventually leads to war. Billy can’t cope with this and just doesn’t focus on it. He time travels and offers to die many times out of pity for himself and others. Billy believes that war is an inevitability much like American society today.

The Goya art was not as moving mainly because it is harder to relate to it. Although it is military on civilian deaths, that is what we are used to now in today’s society. But spears and bayonettes simply don’t have the effect they once did. Jeff Wall on the other hand makes his more modern. Although we do not see the actual attacks the fact that they are in moder military outfits moves me the most. Our society has grown up on movies like Pearl Harbor and Saving Private Ryan which shows the same things but in less detail and in less disgusting ways. Wall’s photographs move me more than Goya’s do mainly because I feel that i can relate to them better.

Yes i agree that war is inevitable, no matter what there will always be a conflict between someone. There is no such thing as a perfect world where everyone gets along, if there was then we wouldn’t have wars. Susan Sontag brings up a good point that we are bombarded with images of violence in our everyday lives. I don’t agree with her entirely because if we were desensitized we would not be horrified by beheadings or very graphic images of violence in the media. Im not saying that i think that we aren’t completely desensitzed by war but i think we are desensitized by certain aspects of war or violence. I think that we are desensitized to the idea of war because the majority of us have not have to face war ourselves. One example of how the media desisensitizes us and war is by rattling off information about the war and then talking about some scandal that happened in the entertainment industry in the same broadcast. The media constantly manipulates the viewers into thinking what they want them to think.

As for Ameicans and war, I think that American will always be in a state of conflict or war, where we feel strongly against something and feel as though we must act upon it. The Vietnamon Screen audio clip brought up a good point that the history of our nation was brought up upon war, and ever since we have always been in some form of war. It is inevitable in the sense that we will never agree with everyone because if we did then there would be world peace.

Yes i agree that war is inevitable, no matter what there will always be a conflict between someone. There is no such thing as a perfect world where everyone gets along, if there was then we wouldn’t have wars. Susan Sontag brings up a good point that we are bombarded with images of violence in our everyday lives. I don’t agree with her entirely because if we were desensitized we would not be horrified by beheadings or very graphic images of violence in the media. Im not saying that i think that we aren’t completely desensitzed by war but i think we are desensitized by certain aspects of war or violence. I think that we are desensitized to the idea of war because the majority of us have not have to face war ourselves. One example of how the media desisensitizes us and war is by rattling off information about the war and then talking about some scandal that happened in the entertainment industry in the same broadcast. The media constantly manipulates the viewers into thinking what they want them to think.

As for Ameicans and war, I think that American will always be in a state of conflict or war, where we feel strongly against something and feel as though we must act upon it. The Vietnamon Screen audio clip brought up a good point that the history of our nation was brought up upon war, and ever since we have always been in some form of war. It is inevitable in the sense that we will never agree with everyone because if we did then there would be world peace.

War is a hard topic for me to put into words. While listening to Susan Sontag, I wondered what it would be like to experience war. I came to the conclusion that I would never really know what it feels like to be in the middle of a war. I believe that this is anyone’s output on war if they haven’t really experienced it. One can either support the war or be against it but the average American is only impacted by war through means of television and the media. There are so many video games resembling to the war and images that make war seem like a game. When people watch the news and see all the suffering that is occurred because of war, they pity the idea of that suffering but they continue on with their lives. To most American war is a thing from a different world. Far from them, far from their families and far from their ordinary lives. This is not true for every one but generally speaking it is pretty accurate. I believe that war in the United State is inevitable. Looking back at our history, we can say that we are a country that has been involved in many wars. It even has been proven that our economy is better when our country is at war. I think it’s absurd how our country takes democracy as an excuse to take over other countries. Even though people don’t see it that way, I think that every time our country goes to war with another country it is just to expand territory and influence. Americans are made to fight because ever since we were young we say pictures of war. Violence on T.V is growing by the day. Kids play with toy guns and are raised to like violence. It is a shame for me to think this but I believe that it is impossible for us to escape war. We are a country that advertises and promotes war.

I have this book at my house now!! Can’t wait to read it!

I read the first few comments off of this and decided to take a look at Jeff Wall. Such creative photography (simultaneously disturbing and engaging) and paintings.

If anyone gets a chance to read this check out Chuck Connely. I watched a documentary on HBO on demand on him and his work. Very interesting stuff.

The image titled “Y son fieras” which in English means wild animals or beasts had an impact on me. The woman is spearing a man with one hand, and holding a child in the other. This shows the reality that it’s not just the soldiers who are attacked; it is the civilians as well. I agree with Sontag’s first thesis that unless you are really there it is impossible to understand and feel the full effect. I do not believe pictures desensitize it, but I also don’t think pictures do justice to how terrible a war is. As Kurt Vonnegut mentions in his book Slaughterhouse-Five, there are no words to describe and turn World War Two into reality for those who were not there to experience it themselves. Pictures can help us to understand the fear that war provokes, but to fully experience the horrors of war you must experience it first. My cousin is in the military, and was in Iraq, and even just hearing his stories after being there makes you realize how much worse it is than you could have ever imagined. One of the main reasons I believe we cannot understand war from a distance is because we are not reminded and haunted by its smells and sounds every minute of every day. The war is on the news, but even now it is not on nearly as much as it used to be, and if you don’t want to hear about it, simply change the channel. We have the option of acknowledging war or ignoring it, when you are in the middle of a war zone, that option is not there, you must face it every single day.

Susan Sontag: Art that Means War highlights Sontag’s original idea that unless an individual has been through a particular experience, they can never appreciate it. Although Sontag later changed her mind, I feel that her original idea is correct. Images, live videos, or written descriptions cannot place an individual into the emotional state or understanding of someone who was actually present. Mankind sees and hears of such mass amounts of war that individuals don’t react. We view inhuman acts as normal. Vonnegut made a spoof out of this alert the reader of the ruthless behavior that we in a way approve. Having no reaction demonstrates acceptance. Mass killings or even just taking a life in general should not be taken so lightly. It’s not that people don’t feel sadness, pity, or disgust, it’s because people can’t comprehend. When focusing on Slaughterhouse Five, I’m not sure if Vonnegut wants his reader to understand war but rather understand the disturbing reality to how mankind reacts to war. He expresses this by placing ordinary sentences next to unbearable tragedies and follows them with his catch phrase, so it goes. I view the phrase like “that’s life”.

Vietnam on Screen brings me to the topic of war movies. Most war movies usually serve the purpose of giving the inexperienced audience a feel for war. Including a main character, usually being some sort of war hero, eschews the audiences interpretation. Movies have audiences cheering on the main character’s slaughtering compared to appreciating the brutality taking place.

One of the most interesting aspects of this assignment was viewing the photographs from Goya and Jeff Wall. Jeff Wall’s pictures look more realistic but are staged and therefore fake. Goya’s photographs look fake but are of real instances he saw firsthand. Vonnegut’s literature seems to parallel Goya’s photographs. Although Jeff Wall has more of an influence on me, I can appreciate Goya and Vonnegut’s style. If Vonnegut described the slaughtering, it may have desensitized his reader when his intension is just the opposite. Vonnegut incorporates satire in order to express how the cruel details are indescribable.

So, I’ve been mulling this over in my head for a while.

I decided that the photo is not personally the stronger medium for me – at least not normally. I see it as more truthful than art, but art relies on passion, which can be more overwhelming than truth.

For instance, I thought about a war painting that I absolutely adore. It’s called “La liberté guidant le peuple” and even though it is a positive portrayal of war and violence [Liberty, portrayed as a goddess-like figure, literally stands on bodies which serve as her pedestal, showing that freedom is built on the death of many], I feel like the detail, the work and the stylistic elements of it all make me understand it more because I can feel it.

Even the photos by Wall are art. Personally, I’m not a huge Goya fan – his paintings and sketches always remind me of textbook images – and I believe that is why Wall’s photos were so much more intense.

A photo from the Iraq war might not strike me quite as much unless it was something completely and utterly horrific. However, a painting with a style I enjoyed and a significance I appreciated would better capture my attention.I love art because it shows that people care about something. It’s not JUST a photo being taken, but it’s someone who believes in what they are portraying and who is putting themselves into the work.

Anyways, that’s how I feel about various mediums and their depictions.

In terms of powerlessness in the face of war – I share the same view as Billy. Something so violent and so huge because of the result of so many people coming together to fight each other feels completely uncontrollable, no matter how many branches and divisions one has. From the very little I am able to understand about war, it dehumanizes many who are involved because of the awful things experienced. So, not only is the group of people involved technically agreeing upon the fact that they need to use force, but they have also lost their humanity, which is horrific.
Something that negative and strong is very powerful.

I do think war is inevitable. Even in the various things around school I am involved with, there are conflicts and there are social hierarchies. With that, war is bred. I once read somewhere that humans like to compartmentalize things because it’s easier to comprehend. Our brain naturally does that because of the efficiency.
I think this is a huge part of the conflict. We see these hierarchies and need more power within them.

My thoughts, anyway.

When I was younger my mom wouldn’t let me watch certain types of movies, these included movies with swearing, violence, risky behavior of any kind, crude humor, dark images, horror movies, or movies that were rated R for anything else; in short I wasn’t allowed to watch anything good. Included in this long list of forbidden movies were war movies, she told me that it was the combination of the violence, language, and the theme behind the movies that as my mother it was her duty to forbid me to watch. Naturally of course, I was curious about what had been forbidden to me and I began to picture the horrible scenes one may find in a war movie. I thought of the most graphic images, after all I figured they would have to be pretty bad if my mom was that adamant about me not watching them. I built the whole idea up so much in my mind, that by the time I actually watched my first war movie it was no where near as violent and graphic as I had come to expect.

Before I looked at the photographs I had the opposite mentality, I didn’t expect them to be very vivid, graphic, or emotionally stirring- I figured I had already conjured up worse images in my mind. I was surprised therefore, that the images were able to evoke such a strong feeling for me about the brutal and inhumane acts being depicted. The simple use of words under the images dramatically enhanced the feelings I had toward them. Most images of war are put in juxtaposition with glory, honor, and fame; these images are among the few that I have seen that attempt to evoke something different from the viewer. The phrases used are not glorious ones; they are deep questions that evoke solely feelings of guilt, remorse, and confusion from the viewer. These images showed no glory, no spoils of war, there was no dramatic music playing in the background with a hero you know just has to make it out alive in the end. They were the cold, hard, and truthful. Unlike so many images of war these pictures did not attempt to convey the idea that war is a natural and inevitable fact of life, that war is a natural human activity. The people in the pictures look in fact most unnatural. Perhaps it is symbolic that Jeff Wall’s pictures are photoshopped, they are put together unnaturally to create a false image because war is unnatural; no man should ever look like that; no man is born to endure that. The images, despite the fact that neither were true photos of war, evoked much more feeling in me than any war movie I have ever seen. Perhaps it is the words as I have said before, or perhaps it is the personal feeling the sketch gives to the image. Somehow the pictures are just more striking, but in a way they are still as incomprehensible. Again, alluding to the unnaturalness of war, the images, just like war itself are hard to understand and fully grasp.

In Slaughter House Five, Kurt Vonnegut uses a different medium to convey the same fundamental truth, that war is not something that can ever be fully understood. He uses poems, refrains, irony, humor, and limericks to create a feeling of overall confusion for his reader. The story jumps around, it is fragmented and jumbled, much like thoughts would be about actual war. The novel is symbolic of war itself, it is confusing and hard to grasp, it is unconventional and unnatural. Vonnegut does not write the novel to enlighten his reader about all the details behind a war, or even to attempt to get his reader’s to understand war. His techniques are indirect, and he doesn’t attempt a straight forward plot line with an easy to follow story. He knows that war cannot be fully understood, and writes his novel in such a fashion. Vonnegut’s novel is a perfect example of how the viewer, or anyone, cannot fully grasp the meaning or purpose of war, but can understand the fact that it is incomprehensible and unnatural. This is what the reader is able to understand to the full extent, proven by the reader’s much confused state of mind after finishing Vonnegut’s novel. Slaughter House Five is an anti-war book in the sense that it shows the unnaturalness of war and our horrible lack of knowledge of the topic and ability to understand it. It is not full of graphic images and horrible scenes, Vonnegut is effectively evoking the same feelings in the reader that Goya does with his pictures, that is a moral dilemma, a lack of distinction between right and wrong and the consequences versus the honor of war. Neither portray war as a glorified act, and in that sense they are both anti-war, but at the same time they do not attempt to condemn war, they only show that war is something that man will never be able to fully understand, that war is never natural, that it is not a part of human life and activity, it is not a part of all mankind, not an engraved genetic imprint on the DNA of man. These two men succeed in evoking only moral questions and a feeling of confusion as opposed to the usual message of honor and glory, which set apart these two works and ultimately make them much more influential and touching than other images of war.

I am not a fan of blood and gore. I usually shudder at the sight of needles and the parts in horror movies where the blood and guts pour out of the victims. It is odd, however, that I was unchanged by these pictures of war, especially Jeff Walls, whose pictures were extremely graphic. I do believe it has a lot to do with Susan Sontag’s theory that we are desensitized to violence because we see it. I am in Forensics this semester, so it is the first time I have ever had to look at hundreds of pictures of violent crimes and dismembered bodies. I was a little disturbed at the idea that I am becoming desensitized to these types of photographs and getting used to all of the unjust crimes being committed, but I do believe, especially with CSI and television shows like that where it is questionable as to who in their right mind makes up all of the different ways to kill someone, play frequently. It all goes back to the conversations we had while reading those poems in AP about innocence. As we grow older, we naturally lose our innocence just by seeing certain things. We grow accustom to violence just by seeing it, the first time we are horrified, the next time a little less horrified, and so on. It does not mean that we are raised to be monsters, we just grow used to it.

Is war inevitable? Only because of how we were raised. We were raised learning about all of the wars that went on years ago, and while we also learn of the millions of casualties and the problem that didn’t ever really get solved from it, we still continue to look to a war when there is a problem. I know there is a better way to solve a problem than blow up someone’s country, but unfortunately not everyone thinks that. Fighting is the only thing we know how to do. It is the only way we know how to solve a problem. It began with the Indians fighting for their land, and it won’t end until someone realizes it isn’t getting us anywhere. It is as inevitable as a glacier because we are unaware of the real effects of war and think that pictures do it justice. It’s like a brother and a sister. (We’ll use Liz and her brother as an example.) Liz’s brother will slap her, and she will slap him back. They will both be hurt and angry and decide never to do that again. A couple of weeks later, Liz’s brother will get mad and instead of thinking about the last time this happened, he will go right ahead and slap her again. It is too late for our world to change its patterns because people grow used to wars and the violence it brings with it as they grow up. Right now, I couldn’t even began to tell you what is going on in Iraq. Every once in a while I hear of a dead soldier, or another bombing. All I know is, this war is going on, people are continuing to die, and nothing is changing.
I do in a way agree with Sontag’s phrase that in order to be morally adult we can no longer be surprised by the horror that we create. But I almost want to take out the word ‘morally’. I don’t believe that it has anything to do with being morally adult, rather just plain adult. It is sad and pathetic that in order to be a part of the world we need to grow used to images of soldiers getting blown to smithereens. It isn’t right, but it is the truth. Turning to violence and war may not be a part of our DNA makeup, but it is a part of our everyday lives, and will continue to be a part of it, even though it is slowly destroying mankind.

I also agree with Sontag’s first idea about the influence of images on reality. I feel that our culture has become so desensitized to horrific images and words that when we see pictures or descriptions of violence we cannot truly feel what that violence encompasses. This desensitization occurs through many means; radio, TV, newspaper, books, and pictures. With all of these avenues available to us throughout childhood, how can we be scared by anything other than the actual event? A great example of this is the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. Suicide bombs and attacks go on every day in the Middle East, but they go unnoticed by Americans until it occurs to us.

Connecting this to Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, I feel that Vonnegut understands that images and literature don’t influence the public as much as the actual event. That is why he writes the novel in a way that makes war impossible to understand. For him this is an easier and much more effective way to write about the horrors and perplexity of war. Vonnegut is trying to show the reader what he felt when he was at Dresden, not what he saw.

When I saw the pictures by Goya and Jeff Wall, the Jeff Wall pictures struck me as more violent and harsh. The sketches by Goya seem too much like cartoon and don’t carry as much weight as actual people. Even though the Goya are true and the Wall are false, Wall’s seem more lifelike and thus more believable.

Susan Sontag’s ideas how of images change a person’s sensitivity war has altered as she experienced different war scenes throughout her life. My thoughts on the topic are that we may think the images are desensitizing our thoughts of war, but in all actuality, they are really not. Initially looking at pictures of the grueling war scenes some feeling of disgust is aroused, but after seeing a certain amount of these scenes, a person can become comfortable with the image. I don’t think being comfortable seeing these images is being desensitized to the idea of war and mass murders. People are just used to seeing these images and are not phased by their content anymore. The only way a person can even attempt to desensitize themselves from the images of death is actually witnessing it numerous time. I still do not believe a person can completely desensitize them-self because there is most like a person in their life whose death would affect them.

In Slaughterhouse-5, Vonnegut shows us a person who is not affected by the death of the people around him. In the war, Billy Pilgrim is just another person. He sees the death and the torture but does not seem to feel remorse for any of it. Kurt Vonnegut’s ideas of this de-sensitivity towards war and death are given to us after the character has experienced the war experience over and over again. Pilgrim is not phased by the death in war because he has experienced the scene so many times.

I agree with the idea that war is inevitable. A conflict will always exist and talking out your problems is not always the answer. Talking something out is only so effective, then something else has to be done. Force is an effective solution. When changing something by force, there will always be disagreement. With this disagreement there will be others who will react with the same force, fighting for the opposite cause. Americans are not made for fighting. I don’t think any person is made for fighting. Americans, though, are very influential in the world and have expectations that they have to meet. When there is a conflict anywhere in the world, the United States of America is expected to include themselves and fix it. So, even though Americans are not meant to fight, they belong to a country that forces its citizens to assist in their countries obligations.

ARGH! I WROTE LOTS AND THEN I FORGOT TO ENTER THE ANTI SPAM WORD SO EVERYTHING WAS LOST!!!! I’ll try to rephrase most of what I initially wrote, but I am very frustrated right now.

I found the Goyas just as disturbing/stirring as the Walls. Both artists put a lot of methodical work into their projects. The photos might seem more real because it’s more modern, but really they are no less staged than strokes on paper, or a scene out of a war movie. Yeah, the Walls show gore and believable emotions on representations of real human beings’ faces, and that’s what we’re programmed to want to see, but the Goyas show disturbing scenes to. Like sticking bayonets up people’s crotches (Populacho)? Really? Is that necessary? If it weren’t necessary, we wouldn’t be attacking people and then hacking up their bodies afterward! But it’s what happened during the Crusades, a so-called glorious war, and it’s what happened during the Japanese invasion of China in the 1930’s-40’s. I think the way to get regular people to murder and mutilate and brutalize is to excite them with a “glorious” cause they can believe in, like the “religious” motive behind the Crusades and the “nationalist” self-righteousness that drove some people from Japan to do terrible things. But there is no glory in murdering and raping and torturing people. War is bizarre, it shouldn’t be natural. At least, that is what I would like to believe.

There are some people who would like to say that war is inevitable, that there are always people who are violent, it’s built in them, and we have to fight them back. There will always be conflicts. Yes, but how you deal with them defines whether there will be war or not. Of course war will be inevitable if you dig yourself into a hole. Like one guy I know, he says that Iraq war was inevitable because you can’t talk to terrorists, you just have to kill them. So apparently it was all his fault. But maybe you should have solved more of the smaller conflicts beforehand, like your country’s relations, communications, and standings with countries in the Middle East, instead of constantly pissing people off and expecting to walk away scot-free simply because you have money and power. You tie your hands behind your back and call it inevitability, while immaturely blaming the other side: “It wasn’t me, Papa! Iraq punched me first!” But Gavro Princip didn’t start World War I, he just ignited the tensions and alliances that were there beforehand. You can’t single-handedly start a war, because it takes at least two to start a war. And this cooperation to ruin each other’s lives is unnatural.

I think the U.S., as a superpower or international police or whatever title it would prefer, likes to claim responsibility and credit for solving world conflicts, but won’t accept the blame for setting at least some of them up. This is part of the problem. Until we realize what mistakes we have made and then try to work on them while they’re still small, we will continue to end up with a huge pile of tinder just waiting for that spark.

This ended up very different from what I originally wrote. I don’t think I covered as many points. Edublogs, you and your spam protection irritate me.

P.S. I would like to add that none of us really understand war, having our daily lives disrupted, until we have lived through it. I had an entire paragraph devoted to this point, but I lost it and can’t remember what other sub-points I had underneath it. Ah well.
So it goes.

A few days ago I had looked over the above links and comments from other students. Just yesterday, while I was at work ringing up a customer at A&W, I could tell there was something a little different about her right away. Her confidence and excessive eye contact threw me off at first, and then she gave me her “Military-use only” credit card and things started to make more sense. After she got her chili dog and left, I thought back to all I had read on this site, comments such as, “You can’t understand war unless you’ve been involved in it.” I couldn’t help but agree after thinking of all that my former customer may have possibly witnessed. I do realize that such things as eye contact are simply taught to all military personnel, but still, it just felt that there was more than confidence separating this young lady and myself. It’s hard to explain.

Anyway, I found Wall’s work interesting at first, but not exactly horrifying in any way. I’m not sure if this is because of his artistic choices to make certain elements exaggerated and unrealistic or if it is just my desensitization to war. Desensitization has me a little confused though. Is it just that Americans have been bombarded with too many images and stories of violence that we just don’t care for the stories anymore? Or rather is it that deep down we can’t stand to see one more picture of war without feeling sick, so we just put up a wall that ensures we don’t allow any one image to truly impact us? I feel like it is a combination of these, along with the issue that many people are too concerned with their own lives to spend the time seeing images which they assume are similar to all other violent images they have seen before. To be honest, I am guilty of this.

Moving on, Goya’s art was alright, but still had little emotional impact on me. I would say the thing I liked most about his works were the short Spanish captions below each painting. They are short, and rather unemotional about violence, which in a way reminded me of Vonnegut’s tone in portions of Slaughterhouse-Five. For me, Goya’s captions seemed even a little more thought provoking than the pictures themselves.

I think we are desensitized to war in the sense that we can see it in everyday items such as video games. People are subject to warlike violence on a regular basis and become numb to horrifying images of actual violence. We see it too often that we are not moved when we see pieces of real violence. Therefore I think that we cannot always perceive reality from images and literature. We do not always believe what we see and it is hard to take in the reality through images and literature. Goya’s artwork is more moving than Wall’s though because of his truthful captions with each picture. These captions lead us to understand that something real happened and what we see is true. He gives his artwork the feeling of truth rather than Wall’s staged photographs. I think we can only be moved by certain images and literature, but overall I believe that we do not truly understand unless we have experienced these situations in our own lives. There is no way I can say that I understand what it was like to fight in Vietnam, because I truly do not know what they went through. I can only imagine the hell it must have been from images I have seen or things I have read, but I will never be able to fathom the horrors of war that people have gone through.

Do you think Vonnegut is saying the same things as Goya?
Goya is saying things such as this shouldn’t happen, we should protest, and can you believe this. His overall message is that war is not good and should be avoided due to its devastating effects on numerous lives. Vonnegut addresses the belief of war as a part of life: it is inevitable. He uses satire to show us that it does not sound right when seen as a piece of everyday life. His saying “So it goes,” is his way to kind of say well that’s life. He uses this saying whenever writing of death and gives the reader his satirical twist on the ideas of war, death, and violence. He acts as if these things are just a regular, ordinary part of life and we must simply move on. He associates such graphic violence with pieces of everyday life and makes the reader realize that it is wrong to view such violence in this way. People say that war is a “regular part of human activity” but Vonnegut shows us that we cannot treat it as a part of everyday life. Therefore, I think that both Goya and Vonnegut are saying the same thing: war and violence are not good and cannot be seen as ordinary things that are ok.

Do you believe war is inevitable? Is it impossible to escape this fate?
I think war is not inevitable. I think we have the ability to reason without the use of violence worldwide. We definitely should be able to resolve conflicts without the greatly negative effects of war. We must change our mentality about how to deal with significant problems so that we can make decisions without losing the lives of too many innocent people.

I agree with Sonntag’s idea that the various types of media have desensitized our country’s ability to grasp the true horror of war, gore/bloodshed. I mean just look at the Saw series; not only are people watching them, many love them. If you had shown that in theaters thirty years ago people would faint and be freaking out all over the place. Now when we see pictures which would normally make us revolted it’s just another image of someone’s intestines ripped out or arms burned off. Don’t get me wrong the pictures by Jeff Wahl and Goya are bad but I just am not moved that much by them. If anything I know that there horrible images because that’s what society makes of them. If for example a three or four year old saw those images I think they would not know what to make of them. That is until their mother or father told them they were horrible and threatened punishment if they saw them again. With that said I also believe that you cannot understand the horrible reality of war until you have experienced it for yourself. Just look at the many young men coming home from Iraq who cannot seem to put their actions in the military in the past. These are kids who had the same exposure to gruesome movies and video games at our age that we have now. If images could teach the horrors of war like actual experiences then soldiers coming home from the front shouldn’t feel any different right now about war than they did before being shipped off.
Vonnegut understands this, as do many former soldier authors do like Remarque. It’s this realization that makes Vonnegut write the book the way he does. How do you explain to people the horrors of the front if they themselves have never been there and you yourself are not quite sure what to make of them? He gets his confusion across through his writing structure or lack of it. It was easier for him in this instance to explain his feelings (something we can understand) than his actual experiences (something we cannot fully comprehend).
For me the worse of the two photographers was Jeff Wahl. The graphic scenes depicting dead soldiers is just more realistic and therefore believable for me than Goya’s illustrations even if his are actual events. The worse of Wahl’s pictures is the one with the man with incinerated arms and half a head. That particular picture hits home the most because well it was the most gory of three pictures and even though it does not affect me that much right now what would I do if I actually saw that in real life? Would I not care and keep walking or would I throw up and be sick? I just don’t know.

I am quite ashamed in myself. I am desensitized to war. I was looking at the pictures by Goya and did not feel one bit of concern. Yes, the images are horrifying, but they are in black and white, and my interest was turned off because there wasn’t anything stimulating about them. I felt more compelled to comment on the artistry of the pictures rather than the extent of the brutality. When I see images on the news of the bombings and killings in Iraq and Afghanistan, I am concerned and ashamed for the soldiers for the two minutes that segment is on TV. After that, it evaporates from my mind, and I go back to eating a delicious dinner.

Susan Sontag’s comment about the man that asked her what Sarajevo was like seems to be a comment that I would say to someone that has just witnessed a war. Since I have not experienced a war, and I hope I never have to, I will never understand the meaning of war. The closest my family got to war was my grandpa being stationed in Alaska during the Korean War. He came home without a scratch.

The general from the “Green Berets” seems to be a foolish old man because he is hiding being the truth that murdering other humans is extremely terrible. He acts tough because of the facade that fighting a war is a proud and patriotic act. Billy Pilgrim has a difficult time finding the words to describe the brutality of the war because the actions are all justified. He could explain in detail about every gruesome battle and bombing that occured, but that would be too boring, and it has been heard before. Billy avoids the actual war in Slaughterhouse-Five. Aliens are more interesting. As the Tralfamadorian said, “We spend eternity looking at pleasant moments”, and war is not pleasant, so it is ignored in daily life. But it really needs someone’s attention. It is flat-out murder. OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE. Doesn’t anyone remember that? Well, whatever, I will go back to eating my delicious dinner now and forget that this ever happened.

P.S.- This is the second draft of my comment, for I am dumb and forgot to enter in my name the first time. It is significantly shorter this time around. So it goes.

I consider the Goya images much stronger than the Jeff Wall photos. The captions under the photos give them this strength. As an observer you can almost feel Goya’s pain/agony/confusion to the war that he was witnessing. For me, the Jeff Wall photos lack this emotional response because they relate back to Sontag’s comment that we are desensitized to war. They look like every other war movie or video game I’ve seen, despite how real they look. Instead of rendering my tears, they just make me think how well they were done and set-up. The horror of war is depicted, but not in a way that I experience that horror, as I do with the Goya images. Jeff Wall’s photos are fake; even if they were real I still believe I would not be as affected by them. In all of them the awfulness of war is emphasized, yet they do not go further. Goya’s photos go further since, in the images, more than repulsing injuries are shown. In the one image one of the torturers is actually smiling as he is dismembering a man and Goya is asking why. It is as if Goya is reaching through the photo to question that smiling man what he could be smiling about and why the world would view this as acceptable. Wall’s photos lack this connection to the viewer and seem to be only glorifying the horror. This connects to the war movies like Glory and Braveheart, which make war seem like a glorious feat, not a unimaginably, indescribable occurrence like Vonnegut is attempting to portray in Slaughterhouse Five.
When Vonnegut writes that he cannot find the words to accurately depict his encounter at Dresden, you feel more with these words than you would if he tried to illustrate it through describing every dead body or burned building. The simple one line comments about the horror do more than a whole book of tales of destruction and this is the same concept Goya uses. Both are short and done to make a point, whereas Wall and Hollywood’s messages are inflated and appear to overdone too make the message.

War is inevitable. In everyday life people always talk about working it out and talking your way through your problems, but it never happens. People don’t care about keeping peace. People only care about their pride and in situations of war they always think they are doing the right thing. This is something I’ve never been able to understand. My parents, administrators, and those who give me advice are always saying “don’t fight, you can work it out”. When it comes to our country, no one has any problem with going to war. It’s very hypocritical that our leaders will kill other men to solve a problem, but will put people in jail for killing a rapist. With this way of thinking war will always be a part of the world’s way of life. War has proved to be helpful. World War 2 helped America recover from a depression. It has proven to be useful therefore there is no incentive not to go to war. Also, as long as people have power, there will be war. Power makes people greedy, and as long as there are different levels of power, there will be fighting.
After looking at the photos, I must agree that I am desensitized to violence. In Jeff Walls pictures I can’t take them seriously because the characters are smiling. You can tell they aren’t real so I don’t see it as gruesome. In the photos of Goya, they look fake but are ironically real. These too have no affect on me. I see worse violence in movies, video games, and computer games, and I think nothing of it. There is a computer game where you choose how to mutilate a human body and you can watch it happen. People see violence as a big joke. I don’t think until I actually see something horrible will I understand what something horrible really is. I can’t relate with those who have been to war. Violence to me is almost unreal. I laugh at fights in the hallways; I find it entertaining. This is similar to slaughterhouse 5. Vonnegut agrees that real horrible violence is too difficult to explain, and to difficult to understand unless you’re actually there witnessing it. His whole novel is confusing just like the experience of war. He shows how it is indescribable and difficult to understand unless you are present. War will always keep occurring and people will continue to try and understand it.

After listening to Sontag’s interview, I agreed initially with her view that images of war have desensitized Americans to the violence and horror of war. Through my teenage years and submergence in popular culture has highlighted the glory of war and violence while minimizing its suffering. The introduction of violent and graphic video games, allow the reader to interact with the war landscape without the ramifications of actual combat. As an adolescent, killing and physical domination has been glorified throughout my upbringing and has been ingrained as part of my psyche. This is probably most obviously evident in my love for the game of American football, one of the most brutal of the major sports.
However, as a I viewed the pictures of John Wall, I realized that we are not completely desensitized. The graphic intensity of his pictures shook me a little… my immediate reaction was, “This s*** is f***** up”. However, I did recognize that the horror of the images did not have the effect they should have. Although they initially upset my conscience, they did not encourage me to act or speak out against war. I still am compelled to believe war is an inevitability of human interaction. Throughout our history, war has been an exercise of power, and I believe it will remain. However, I do believe, like Kurt Vonnegut, that massacres of innocent life are unnecessary and horrifying. Yet again, I find myself considering the existence of such massacres as inevitable. Greed and jealous desire for position that has ruled man since the days of Cain and Abel will never cease. In turn, our desire for the most powerful weapon has grown omnipotent and the consideration of the bloodshed such weapons could cause is often cast aside.

I have previously believed that Americans have become desensitized to war through images depicted by the media and as a result of the ubiquity of images of violence. After all, when my family sits down to watch the evening news we do not usually weep for all the tragedy playing on the screen. My mother and I used to have to fight back the tears when we watched Extreme Home Makeover, but when they talk about a war and report on the casualties we are less moved than when the family sees their brand new home. We may comment on the horror, but we do not cry for all the loss taking place. I think the human mind is incapable of comprehending the amount of death that occurs in war. When one person dies it can weigh heavily on us, if millions of people die I don’t think our minds can even process the tragedy to that magnitude. Instead, it appears we are affected less by the large number of people living through something horrid than we are by the one personal story that is easier for us to handle, empathize with, and try to bring resolution to. I agree with Susan Sontag’s thought- that it isn’t that we are simply desensitized but more so that we feel completely powerless when it comes to war. War seems inevitable, and therefore we refrain slightly from allowing our emotions to take hold of us when we hear of its tragic consequences.

Both Goya’s pictures and Jim Wall’s photographs have an emotional impact on me, so I must not be completely desensitized to horrid images. Personally, I find the drawings more impacting. Of course the photographs look more realistic, but the pictures have the artist’s emotions within them, and the captions add to his expression of the horror. The photographs are harder for me to look at, but the drawings give me more to contemplate and end up making a larger impact on me and my emotions.

When reading Slaughterhouse Five, it struck me that Kurt Vonnegut followed his mundane statements with severely tragic ones to satirize that the public has become so accustomed to tragedy that they see it as mundane. I do think that the war movies and the video games have changed the way we are impacted by images, but I do know that the photos of Jim Wall and Goya’s pictures still disturbed me. I think when something is created to bring light to the horror and not to glorify it, that people are still impacted.

There is no way to prevent or control war. The only thing in our control is our role in it. Whether this means protesting, supporting, or actually fighting in the war itself, we control only our own reaction.

We may talk about our desensitization of horrific images and war, however this tradition has been going on for centuries, and is not just a recent occurence. Throughout history war and violence has been glorified. In many of the Greek and Roman myths there are vengeful gods, that fight within each other and mortals. They resort to violence to punish and make their point.Heros also come from the same idea, there are rarely any heros in these myths and other stories in general that did not use violence in some way shape or form for the “greater good”. Yet we are taught from a young age to idiolize them.

American’s are especially prone to this idea. Our nation was built on a war and since then there has been one war after another. When children are taught history they rarely remember much else but the wars themselves. For the longest time I thought our history went from the revolutionary war directly to the french and Indian war, to the civil war, and so on with nothing important in between. We are taught as Americans to rise up and get to the top by any means neccessary and to stay there. We are taught that sometimes force and violence are good to use to maintain our status as the world power.

Even in society itself violence is prided. Boys are taught to fight and be tough. Whether they express this through the physical and structured wars that exist in sports and school rivalries, or just the pure brute fights, the idea of violence is glorified. Girls are taught to go for the tough guys under the pretense that they will “take care of you and protect you” when in all actuality in today’s time the smart ones that don’t rely on brute force are often the ones that succeed in life. With all the pressure from our culture towards violence is it any suprise that we jump to war to solve problems?

As far as the testimony and pictures I feel that you cannot truly know the horrors that are involved with war unless you experience them first hand. You cannot know what it feels like to look at a living person one second and kill them in the next unless you have done it. You cannot know what it is like to feel your knife plunging into someone else’s flesh or feel the kickback of a gun that was aimed at a living person unless you have experienced it first hand. This is why soldiers come back changed from war. My uncle Felice and Ollie refused until the day they died to talk about their experiences in World War II because they did not want anyone else to suffer what they had to deal with everyday, the knowledge of what they had to do, they fact that they had killed.

In the end… yes we are desensitized to war, but this is not a new cycle and because of this war is and will remain inevitable.

I agree that our society is desensitized to violence and war due to the fact that it is glorified. Soldiers are seen as heroes and are treated with respect and regarded with prestige. No one looks at the soldier returning from war and thinks about all the civilians he killed or all of the bodies he moved of the side of roads and battlefields. Another reason that we are desensitized to the violence is because war does no effect our usual lives. We go on in our daily routine and never once think of what our soldiers are doing at that very moment. Are they being gassed in trenches or missing limbs? No one knows and frankly no one really cares. We feel “powerless” because we do not have any power. The government with its propaganda convinces the country that war is the right path and the only time we challenge it is when the economy is bad enough that we do not want more money spent on defense. We never stop due to casualties or the damage abroad; we only try to voice our opinion when our lives are affected. The country has never been able to stop the war unless those few in Washington D.C. agree. Thus war is inevitable when the threat exists no matter the degree. This is the reason that Americans prepare to fight and have training schools and program. This training is not a lost cause. It is impossible for us to escape this fate ever since we took on the role as the World Police. Now it is mundane for us because it is our job. I think that Billy Pilgrim would agree, if he existed, because even he was desensitized by war due to its inevitability. He believes the events that occur to him and around him are mundane which portrays his desensitization.

Before I skimmed through the pictures, my original contemplation was that I would be disturbed and would see war differently. After doing so, I agreed with only half of my original view. The part I did not get correct initially was that I would be disturbed. To be honest, I was not truly shocked by Goya’s images. I flipped through them thinking, “Those are dead people. There are more dead people. Are they going to get shot? I suppose the dead don’t need their cloths.” There was a sophomore sitting next to me while I was looking at them in AC and he saw one and said, “Nice!” (most of you know him as ‘McGlovin’). The act of him giving a positive response to what would be generally viewed as disgusting allowed me to believe that we are used to seeing this horror. However, I do see war differently now. I now know that I truly have been conditioned to withstand the gruesomeness of war with the exception of not actually being in the situation. Billy Pilgrims’s reaction rivals close with mine with the fact that we view it as mundane.

As for whether or not war is inevitable, my view is as follows:

I believe war is inevitable as long as the main organizing principle of human society, above the level of family, was humanity’s division into groups that identified themselves by their cultural distinctiveness. We have seen how such groups naturally drifted into conflict with each other throughout human history over territory, religious difference, corrupt leaders, etc…thus leading to warfare. War will always be haunting the human race and even America. Even though we are an ocean away, we cannot stay excluded from external conflicts. Every country is woven within each other and those are joined with even more and many of those are of interest to the U.S., therefore it is impossible to escape the fate of external conflict/war.

The Goyas affected me the most. I was amazed at the realism he achieved, even though his pictures were black-and-white ink drawings. His medium is suitable for his subject- that is, it is free of embellishment: the pictures convey the raw, cruel truth of war. Three of the drawings summarized their purpose.

The first was one of a woman standing on no less than ten dead bodies to light the fuse of a cannon. To me, the picture symbolized humanity’s attitude towards war. They are willing to ignore the carnage as long as glory can be gained. The woman didn’t care that she was standing on human corpses; she cared only to light the cannon. Humans will always light that cannon, no matter how many bodies must be piled up to reach the fuse.

The second was a man holding his wife, cringing, as another man is about to stab him in the back with a knife. This drawing reveals what happens when one kills another person. One is not just gaining glory, he is taking the other man away from his wife and children, and anyone else who knew him. He is no longer just a casualty of war; his life, his desires, his dreams, his passions are all erased with a single movement no different than hitting the side of television set when the picture becomes fuzzy.

The last was a man impaled on a tree branch that extended into his rectum and out of his shoulder. I couldn’t help but think of how many times that probably happened, and what unlucky person pulled the mutilated corpse off of the branch. This drawing, more than the others, left a bad taste in my mouth; but not because of its graphic nature: the realism through which Goya presents it is what made me cringe.

The Jeff Wall images were gruesome, but I think Goya’s medium is what makes his superior. I couldn’t help thinking: is this what war really is? Then I remembered an epigram I read in a place that escapes my memory: never underestimate the cruelty of the human race.

I see war is a necessary evil, needed to create order in a chaotic world. It’s sad, but without war nothing could be centralized- government and the economy would stand still. I think humans glorify war because it is the primary means through which they advance technologically; and when history is examined this couldn’t be more true. An obvious example is the atom bomb- humans discovered nuclear fission, and a very efficient way to kill a lot of people. The irony is undeniable: the technology brought the Allies victory in WWII, but completely destroyed two cities and started the Cold War. It seems advancement will not lead to humanity’s salvation; it will lead to their destruction.

On a side not I thought of “The War Prayer” By: Mark Twain. Google it. It’s worth reading.

While looking at these pictures, I felt a variety of things. The Goya pictures did not really make me feel any sort of emotion, really, but the Jeff Wall photos made me cringe. They are true depictions of what war must be like, and yet, they are not enough. The experience of war cannot be explained or shown through pictures. If these pictures alone made me shudder, I can’t imagine what the actual experience would be like.

I think that America is desensitized to war, mainly because it is so common day now. Video games are sold left and right where you can blow heads and legs off opponents and the graphics are only getting more and more realistic. Teenage boys are attracted to these video games for the violence, the action, the drama. They get used to the idea of “killing” a human being. War and killing is so mundane in this country now that the American people cannot be anything but desensitized. While the pictures upset me, they did not in any way allow me to feel what the victims were feeling, and as I was glancing through, I didn’t even try to put myself in their shoes.

Because of this desensitization, war has become inevitable. No one realizes how horrible the experiences can truly be; therefore no one tries to stop it from happening. It is seen as an everyday, common necessity – along the same lines as brushing your teeth or taking a shower, with a little more pain involved. War has become a job for America, something that has to be done. So we have disconnected ourselves from the reality of what war actually is and does in order to continue doing our job the best that we can. The problem with this is that it results in a vicious circle of war that we can never truly escape from.

I believe it’s true when Slaughterhouse Five set out to “describe the indescribable.” All of these pictures are so gruesome that it’s difficult for anyone to view a series of them during when sitting. I saw myself wandering online because I couldn’t stand looking at all of them at the same time. It’s a terrible thing to see, but unfortunately, war is inevitable. To me, this inevitability holds especially true due to the new types of warfare that exists today. There might be actual wars still fought with people and basic weapons and ammunition, but wars are now fought more heavily now by technology and nuclear weapons. Technological databases is how most countries are run today, so competing nations will first attempt to destroy their opponents important documents, software, etc. This is the best way to harm a country at least in the last 20 years or so. Wars fought technologically are better for people, but does increase the chance of war between people. However, what really frightens me is how abundant powerful war devices are. All the most powerful countries possess multiple weapons of mass destruction as well as most second rate countries as well. It’s unfortunate that at any time Michigan could be a target for another country to demolish and that they have the necessary tools to do so. War has certainly changed over time, some for the better and the worse. What is definite though is that war has become more inevitable than it ever was before because it so much easier to initiate.

NOOOOOOO, Mr. Kreinbring I forgot to fill in my email address so I lost everything I just wrote. Lets try this again.

After listening to the interview of Susan Sontag I found that my opinion hasn’t changed. America has been desensitized to war since the end of Vietnam. This is due to the large amount of war films, news articles, photos, and even war video games that have been produced since then. As for the pictures I found that they had profound effect on me. Goya’s were much better then Wall’s even though they were drawn. The one that had a particularly strong effect was the one with the woman standing on the pile of bodies lighting the cannon fuse. It shows how war, especially when it effects us directly, can make anyone take another human’s life. Even though Jeff Wall’s photo wasn’t as good as Goya’s it was still very grusome and powerful in it’s own way. Although when I was looking at it I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was a big joke. I know it was staged but the the soldier with his guts spilling out riding the other soldier like a horse gave me a hint of satire. However, if a person saw this picture they would be horrified, but because it doesn’t directly affect them that feeling of horror would disapear after a few second and the person would continue with what they were doing. As Billy Pilgrim would say “and so it goes” as would the American public with thier lives even if we lost a thousand soldiers a day in Iraq

I agree with Sontag on the idea that society is being desensitized of images of war because we see it on a daily basis all around us. With new technology being used in movies and video games, the special effects are really quite remarkable and are about as close to seeming real as possible. With the television shows such as CSI, and first person war video games, gruesome images filled with blood and gore can become regular images very easily. Without a doubt it is a reality that we are being desensitized by all the images around us, and is horrifying to think that people can just look at these pictures and have little or no feeling of how repulsive war can be.
While I do understand that war is no good thing and can be absolutely devastating, I do agree that war is inevitable. War has become a very common aspect of human life, and in today’s world of video games that seem to get more and more realistic, at least among many teenage boys in America, blood and gore are becoming more and more common. Of course seeing war through the television could never compare to the real thing, Even if your television is putting out 1080i. Actually being in combat must be at the level of indescribable.
But today’s TV and video games that result in our sense of desensitization of war cannot be blamed for making war inevitable. War has been happening since before man kind had language or writing, let alone Saving Private Ryan to watch on the big screen. War as horrible as it really is, is an aspect of human life that has no end as far as I can see. How is it possible to stop nations from developing weapons, or fighting over land, without using force to stop them? In no way to I think war is a good thing and am not advocating it. But the reality is there is no way to stop war, it has been and will always be one of the negative aspects of man.

I also agree with Sontag’s first idea about the influence of images on reality. I feel like our culture has been so desensitized to the horrific images of war, that it is almost like an everyday thing to us, and we couldn’t possibly feel truly what the violence really holds. The desensitization is all from the media; through newspaper, TV, radio, etc. All of these outlets are available to children now because of how TV plays a pivotal role in our lives, which children just happen to see and pick up on some of these things. Unless a real thing happens to us, or to the American people, the war will usually go unnoticed by everyone.

Now talking about this is relation to Slaughterhouse Five, I now see that Vonnegut completely understands how this concept, where literature and media doesn’t affect the people, but rather only the actual event happening to them. This is why Vonnegut writes that war is impossible to understand by anybody, not even aliens. Vonnegut tries to portray his personal experiences in the war to try and help us understand through his satirical writing, but he tries to show the reader what he actually felt while he was at Dresden, not just what he saw.

When I took a look at the pictures by Goya and Jeff Wall, the pictures made by Jeff Wall just seem to be just like the media has shown us, very detailed and violent, adding the aspect of desensitizing. While Goya’s pictures just seem to be faded and hard to understand, showing how war really is. War just manages to pass us all by really unless we’ve actually been in a war ourselves; we pay no mind to those who have fought in it and served for our country. Goya’s pictures show exactly that, that how war and those who fought in it, fade away in time, just like the pictures.

I would agree that people do feel “powerless” in the face of war. People feel that because differences between individuals and groups are inevitable, that violent conflicts are inevitable too. Due to the selfish and arrogant nature of the human beast, I would agree with this. Every person or group of people think that they deserve to have everything, from land to money to power. In addition, every individual thinks that he is better than the others, therefore leading him not to back down from a challenge. These two inherit attitudes within humans as a whole are what cause wars, and because these viewpoints won’t change, wars will continue to mar human existence.

In relation to the photographs and pictures, the photographs staged by Jeff Wall strike me so much deeper than the artwork by Goya. This is because the people in Wall’s photograph look so much more realistic. They are actual people, who simply looked like they were wounded as a result of battle. In Goya’s photographs, the people almost look like cartoons. They are black and white, and their facial features do not strike me as representative of actual people, and therefore I do not connect them to actual events. In the same way, I struggle to identify with Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five because I see him as a character, not as an actual person. His struggles do not really strike me, but rather the exaggerated inattention paid to the severity of war by the novel’s characters. “So it goes” does accurately sum up how people, including myself, look at war. However, the journey that Billy Pilgrim takes is too twisted and strange for me to really identify with him and move me as a reader.

I don’t think images can fully evoke the realities of war, but only open up channels of memory to experiences that we’ve already had that we might associate with war. I think its that way with any kind of art. It opens up our wounds and our minds, giving us the illusion of experiencing something new when its just a mirror of our own lives.

Images do desensitize us to the realities of war, and thats why Vonnegut’s writing is so amazing. We can see a hundred thousand people die on a screen or before our very eyes, but what effects us most is those real moments we’re not so sensitized to, like the condemnation of the man in the novel to be executed (I can’t remember the character’s name). It’s living irony.

I don’t think that war is inevitable, but that people are so easily lead astray from the one truth we developed pretty early on and were able to agree with: Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you. I think if we’d be Reasonable with a capital R and try to get along, maybe one day even love one another without condition.

We as a culture really don’t have anyone to look up to. I feel completely lost most of the time. As a race I think we have a natural taste for destruction because its the easiest and most direct way of getting rid of whatever is frustrating us at the time. We have a brain but we’re not encouraged to use it for creative and productive ends.

Its in this age when we can destroy human civilization with the ease of pressing a few buttons that we find real living irony. Our survival mechanisms can’t be soley violent anymore; survival of the fittest is become survival of the most reasonable.

Americans are bred to fight, basically since day one. We’re brought up on stories of Cowboys killing Native Americans, Columbus taming the New World, and how our own ancestors spred Democracy to people by killing them, but how it was doing the victims a favor. We’re brought up by fathers who were brought up by fathers who were brought up by fathers to always dominate, get their way, no matter what. To be arrogant and childish. I think that’s the real problem, men are brought up to grow into children.

I don’t think the people in power have much to gain from a rational population, they’ll make more money if they keep us stupid. And so they do it.

Are we chained to this destiny? No, nothing’s certain, nothing’s ever certain. But it would take a lot of work to convince everyone that there are better things to do than kill each other.

I think the comparison between a glacier and war is an excellent metaphor to describe my personal view of war. Glaciers are very slow moving and their path is easily predictable if you know where to look. This is comparable to war because the signs of war are commonly visible and the because of this, they are easy to avoid. If you can’t move out of the way of a glacier that has an average speed of 15 m per a day, then you’re an idiot. War isn’t that difficult to avoid, but only if your true intention is to avoid confrontation. If you want to be aggressive, destroy cities, kill people (including civilians) then that’s exactly what you’re going to get.

I believe that tension between two parties is inevitable, but war is an illogical and unnecessary step. It is a mistake that we have been repeating since the dawn of humanity. Even though we have quite an extensive record of our history, we still manage to fall into that hole again and again. This is the most ironic part about learning history, because even after doing so, we are still stuck in time, where we continue to repeat our mistakes. It is a secret that only Billy Pilgrim has managed to discover.

I agree with Sontag’s opinion that we are desensitized to war. We see it too often in movies and television. People have become so good at faking it, that when we see the real thing, we simply aren’t fazed by it.

Billy Pilgrim was indifferent to the inevitability of war. Being unstuck in time is like when you realize and understand your history. Since you know your past, you are less likely to repeat mistakes. You might still not know the future, but you can at least predict it and have a choice in what path you take. You can go the way of destruction and more power, or you can choose a life in which you are content with what you have.

I think the comparison between a glacier and war is an excellent metaphor to describe my personal view of war. Glaciers are very slow moving and their path is easily predictable if you know where to look. This is comparable to war because the signs of war are commonly visible and the because of this, they are easy to avoid. If you can’t move out of the way of a glacier that has an average speed of 15 m per a day, then you’re an idiot. War isn’t that difficult to avoid, but only if your true intention is to avoid confrontation. If you want to be aggressive, destroy cities, kill people (including civilians) then that’s exactly what you’re going to get.

I believe that tension between two parties is inevitable, but war is an illogical and unnecessary step. It is a mistake that we have been repeating since the dawn of humanity. Even though we have quite an extensive record of our history, we still manage to fall into that hole again and again. This is the most ironic part about learning history, because even after doing so, we are still stuck in time, where we continue to repeat our mistakes. It is a secret that only Billy Pilgrim has managed to discover.

I agree with Sontag’s opinion that we are desensitized to war. We see it too often in movies and television. People have become so good at faking it, that when we see the real thing, we simply aren’t fazed by it.

Billy Pilgrim was indifferent to the inevitability of war. Being unstuck in time is like when you realize and understand your history. Since you know your past, you become less likely to repeat mistakes. You might still not know the future, but you can at least predict it and have a choice in what path you take. You can go the way of destruction and more power, or you can choose a life in which you are content with what you have.

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