Context: conflicting reports!
You may well be asking, “How can my little (relatively) conflict-free existence posssibly offer anything that might generate something of worth (academic or anyotherwise) by comparison with the experiences of Arch Flanagan? Or of people in Vietnam? Or Bali? Or of those people who shopped in Omagh’s main street in 1998?”
Good question! The “short answer” is that, one way or the otehr, you have to! But it’s more productive to remember that, as Dave Edmunds (the “Welsh guitar wizard”) sang: “From small things, mama, big things one day come!” (Great song!) Means you don’t need to have fought in a gun battle to have some insights about how conflict occurs, is dealt with and is (sometimes!) resolved.
Anyway, I’d be tempted to place a quiet bet that, since the dawn of time, (almost) more people have been caught up in “terminal” conflicts from petty arguments over a place in a queue, or the replacement of the toilet seat than in wars!
I did say “almost”! So our “trivial” personal observations and experiences can still offer productive ideas to explore more explosive or calamitous conflicts! Apart from anything else, you can use scale to emphasise your point: a quarrel between two kids over something (say, a ‘weapon’) one claims is buried in a sandpit might be analogous to a conflict, say, in a place like, for instance, Iraq!
But it is the “big impact” conflicts that occupy much of our attention, one way or the other. For many of us, perhaps the greatest amount of exposure comes through movies: sounds, sights, the frequency with whhich conflict arises in new release films … Many films – particularly those focussing on war – offer a window on (these grand) conflicts that we do not experience directly. Full Metal Jacket, Saving Private Ryan, The Odd Angry Shot, Gallipoli, and All Quiet on the Western Front convey ideas about war that are intended to be confronting and concerning. But what about the war movie as action-fest? Does this experience alter the way we perceive “war” (as a form of conflict)? Does film tend to glorify or romanticise war and soldiers? Or do we know these are less “real” than a story where ”encounter” is more personal (like Attonement, for example, or, recently, Gran Torino). Do we dare generalise that war movies (where the primary focus was on the war) is more attractive for men than women (for whom movies in which war was a focus, rather than the focus were more interesting)? Yep, we dare!
Many of our indirect impressions of conflict come through the many arms of media imagery. Many of these are fancified or simplified: cartoon versions of a reality where good and evil are easily distinguished opposities, or softened by humour. What do these stylized or fanciful images offer to our impressions of or understanding of conflict?
News reports can result in a sense of sequenced entanglement: a report that displays images of an event which we watch with small percentage attentiveness … can be followed by a far more intent and fraught reaction if we should realise that someone we know is involved. (The Bali and London bombings, as well as the welter of emotional reports on the recent bushfires are good examples here). We know that news media organisations try to enhance this “hook”: incidents involving Australians emphasise prominently that link, for example.
In creating your own written reactions, it’s interesting to start by considering what impact this barrage of images and experiences of conflict have on our ability to judge it, deal with it – or even recognise it?
