While perusing — cautiously, like sifting for landmines — the milblog Blackfive, I was fortunate enough to come across a link to the Center for Media Literacy's (Our motto: Empowerment through Education!) "How to Evaluate War Movies."

Reading the contents on the webpage reminded me of the "Bug in An Edgar Suit," from Men In Black, played in Oscar-worthy fashion by the plastic Vincent D'Onofrio. He has to act like an alien pretending to be human while encased in a decaying skin:

Here are some people, thoroughly alienated from any understanding of what a war film might mean, trying to examine the genre. The hilarity starts with the selection of films used as examples (juxtaposing the "pro-war" Top Gun and Star Wars with the "anti-war" Das Boot and Full Metal Jacket). Hmm, I wonder if comparing the relative drivel of one class with the best, top-flight film-making of the other would possibly introduce a "bias" in our theoretically neutral students... hmmmm. And it only gets better from there!:

The following questions can be a starting point for analysis of such films as Rambo: First Blood Part 2, Top Gun, The Star Wars Trilogy, Red Dawn, An Officer and a Gentleman (pro-war) and Das Boot, Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Casualties of War (anti-war), or add your own ideas.

1. Is high-tech equipment the star of the show? How do the characters who operate it relate to it?
2. How is the enemy represented? Do filmmakers make use of stereotypes and demonization?
3. Does the film present violence and aggression as the only way to solve problems or are other solutions portrayed?
4. What are the main characters fighting for? Does the film affirm the dominant system and status quo or does it question it? Does it have a point of view on current social issues?
5. What does the film say about what it means to be a male person? a female person? Are women foils for the male characters or real people?
6. Is there a system of beliefs (myths) that characterize a particular class or group, such as men?
   

I think they actually put those example questions in almost the best humorous order. I've been toying around, and I can't get them to build comedically much better than they've got it.

SO: please imbibe 6 shots of whiskey, or the equivalent, and discuss.

I'd like to think that I made this up, but the good people behind the motto, "Empowerment through Education" have me beat by a country mile.