Are All Men Warriors Inside?

As Mrs Lobster and I sat on the couch this evening, watching the closing credits of the last episode of Band of Brothers roll up the screen through tear-brimmed eyes, she turned to me and asked: “Why is it that men like war films so much?”

I have certainly always liked war films.  As a kid, I would lie on the living room floor in front of the TV on a Saturday night, absorbed John Wayne swaggering up some Pacific beach through a maelstrom of Japanese bullets.  For my tenth birthday, my parents took me with two friends to sit through all three arse-deadening hours of A Bridge Too Far.  My brother and I still open with “Broadsword calling Danny Boy!” when answering each other’s calls.

And I don’t think I’m alone.  There are still war films being made every year and they do as well as ever – Saving Private Ryan upped the ante with its terrifying battle scenes (the beaches of Wexford were apparently doused with forty barrels of fake blood for the Normandy landings), and The Hurt Locker won the Best Film Oscar last year for its pant-knotting bomb-disposal tension.  And you can bet there were far more men than women in the audiences for these.  So why are these films still so popular with men?

Well, I can’t imagine it’s because we actually want to go to war.  John Wayne notwithstanding, most depictions of war are pretty bloody affairs – lots of explosions, general petrifying confusion and a fairly high likelihood of losing whatever body part you’re daft enough to leave outside your foxhole.  Who would want to get involved in that?  Well then, is it about some sort of ancient urge for survival, with the group being threatened by predatory forces, fighting its way back to life?  Possibly, but that doesn’t really account for the admiration attached to the individuals concerned.  Yes, we’re glad the group survives, but why are we bothered about the merits of the chaps fighting?

I think it’s about looking for competence.  In our featherbedded late-20^th / early-21^st century lives, where you can email for pizza and under-floor heating is a basic human right, men long for the chance to show that they’re still capable of taking care of themselves – that they can still find their way over a mountain, knock up a bivouac and carpaccio a buffalo for dinner.  And the ultimate display of that kind of competence is defeating an enemy in mortal combat, remaining clear-headed, calm and above all brave in the face of such competence-testing havoc and danger.

So we’re drawn to displays of resourcefulness, perseverance, strength, cunning and even just running about and shooting, because the chaps doing it are either good at it or make sure they at least emerge alive – and that’s what we all want to be able to do.  And so, in this post-industrial, postmodern, post-feminist, post-Post Office society, where you can make your fortune in online trading without leaving your heated toilet seat and go to jail for virtual winking, men long to believe they can still make things happen in real, 3-D space, with their own hands, no matter how hostile the surrounding conditions.  And what better way to get that belief than by watching some tough bloke give a faceless enemy a punch in the chops and blow up his tank with a bomb made from a tub of lard lighter and a sockful of dynamite?  It certainly beats putting up a shelf.

Contact the author here: thewhy@morningquickie.com