Thursday, 23rd October, 2003 – War. Huh! What Is It Good For?

Boys like fighting. A playful game of rough and tumble. A good-natured arm-wrestle. The satisfying crunch, spurt, and fizz of another man’s nose exploding under your thrusting knee. All good clean fun.

Sometimes lots of people all fight at once. This is called war. War is an important issue, and one that many people have strong opinions on. I am against war. There, I’ve said it. My cards are on the table. But not everyone is like me. Some people love the stuff. These people are probably called warophiles.

It seems that TV producers are currently making an aggressive play for the warophile market, with more and more war-based programmes popping up all over the schedules. There was the SAS-related shout-fest starring Grant Mitchell on ITV recently, which had 40 year-olds who still live with their parents the country over dropping their copies of Guns and Ammo, and agonising over what porn to record over in their haste to commit the scenes of exploding limbs and blubbing widows to video. Even better was The Trench, a reality TV show that explored what life was really like as a World War I Tommy (except without the prospect of almost certain death from starvation, disease, or at the hands of a furious, wild-eyed, bayonet wielding German, hanging over you at all times).

Tonight, the BBC is screening two uninterrupted hours of gloriously dumb warophile TV, with Time Commanders on BBC2 from 8 until 9, and then a new series called Hunting Chris Ryan, on BBC1 until 10. Obviously, I’ve yet to see Hunting Chris Ryan, so it would be remiss of me to immediately assume that it is going to be a dreary, testosterone-heavy wank-fantasy for socially inadequate borderline-psychopaths everywhere. It might be amazing.

I have seen Time Commanders though, and I can confirm that it is very shit indeed. It involves four members of the general public taking command of a computer-generated army, and fighting a famous historical battle (usually something from ancient Rome or Carthage etc.), to see if they can change virtual history.

The week I tuned in, the Time Commanders in question were four Portillo-faced Tristams, who worked as headhunters in ‘the Siddee’, and were charged with taking control of Julius Caesar’s army against some dirty-looking barbarians. They did very badly indeed, the screen awash with their centurions’ lovingly-rendered CGI blood while the fin-headed boobs argued amongst themselves as to who was meant to be in charge, cos things were gedding, like, surrously, surrously oud of control, yeah?

And its not just on TV. Video games have long depended on the sheer visceral thrill of being responsible for the brutal demolition of another human body. Who hasn’t imagined dolling out some vicious E Honda-style thousand-hand slap punishment on some punk’s ass when they diss you on the street (Yes. Some punk’s ass. Diss. The street. Etc. That is how I talk in real life, because I am tough). But even video games seem to be ascending to a new level of hyper-real bloodlust. While more traditional titles continue to do well, there’s an increasing demand for war games based on actual, recent wars. A Gulf War-based game called Shock and Awe recently went on the shelves (whether there was a sequence that involved using a bulldozer to bury Iraqi troops alive in their trenches, I don’t know), while I recently saw an ad for a WWII-based game called Operation: Liberate Europe, or something similar. Again, I’ve not played the game, but I assume that it doesn’t end up with your character throwing open the gates of Belsen, as legions of hollow-eyed, skeletal POWs shamble toward the screen.

The fact is that kids have always played war games. But more and more, it seems to be that adults want in on the action too. Is it just that we are a generation who refuse to grow up? Is it that – unlike virtually all previous generations – we have never truly had a war to define us, now that death is delivered remotely by wire, or failing that, by thick-necked professionals, hardened by years of training, bizarre hazing rituals, and sexual congress with broom handles and digestive biscuits? Or is it that media coverage of those wars that do go on nowadays is so stylised and narrative-driven, and the reality of those wars so far from home, that it feels comfortable switching from fiction to reality, and back again?

Either way, war and conflict are fetishised now in a way that would have been unthinkable years ago. War is not seen as a horrific last resort anymore. In a world of pre-emptive conflicts, to many, it represents nothing more than a great commercial opportunity. The only question is where can the next fast buck be made.

I have a proposal for a video game. It is a first-person shoot- ‘n slash-em-up, with the player taking on the persona of an opiate-addled 11 year-old in Sierra Leone. You gain points according to the number of limbs you can machete off members of your own family within the time limit, and bonus points are awarded for thrusting the severed limb in the terrified, disbelieving face of that family member so that it is the last thing they see before they expire.

Sounds like fun, yes? Who do I write to?