Trapped Between Thrill and Shame: The Soldiers Addicted to War

War is not always hell. One of its sharpest paradoxes is its allure, the way it traps men in its siren song, a chorus of myth-making qualities it often does possess. History teems with variations on this leitmotif: The ancient Greeks adopted the Homeric concept of aristeia, or martial excellence, from The Iliad, going as far as to order much of their culture around it. Centuries later, Confederate soldiers wrote of charging Union lines with a “wild, unexplainable enthusiasm,” feelings echoed in the memoirs of many Vietnam veterans.

Hollywood has promulgated this idea, too. In the summer of 2009, the American war action thriller The Hurt Locker played in more than 500 theaters across the country. Based on the account of freelance journalist Mark Boal, the film follows an American bomb squad deployed during the Iraq war and takes at face value the compensatory pleasures some of its men take in combat. Guy Westwell, writing for Sight & Sound, cautioned that the film’s “unapologetic celebration of a testosterone-fueled lust for war may gall,” but averred, “There is something original and distinctive about [its] willingness to admit that for some men (and many moviegoers) war carries an intrinsic dramatic charge.”