The film Inglourious Basterds, directed and written by Quentin Tarantino, is a film that uses the theme of comedy to lessen the harsh reality of what happens during war. Despite Tarantino’s gruesome cinematography, the overall tone of the film is more fantastical than serious. The impossibility of war, that can be seen in other types of war movies, is ignored in Tarantino’s film. Another film that shares similarities to Inglourious Basterds is Dr. Strangelove, directed by Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick’s film based on war has the similar idea of taking war Both of these films seem to romanticize war. The romanticization of war can be seen within the media for current events such as the Russo-Ukrainian War. The de-emphasization of war in the media is something that has been around since the very first world war. With propaganda representing a lesser realistic side of war itself. In film the same concepts are applied and drawn out to give a more entertaining performance. This allows war to be perceived as something entirely different than any preconceived notions of the topic. The film of Dr. Strangelove is based around the hypothetical of what would happen, this is a major contrast to any typical or generic war movie that is seen to be based on real events. Since the basis of the film is based on something that cannot be proven, the idea that the film has to be serious is looked over. The same can be said about Inglourious Basterds, the movie is based on fictional people and events. As fiction or hypotheticals are added into something like war, the perception and reality of the actual event has a tendency to change.
The connection between film/media of war in the past and media of war in the present, is that they both share the same lack of a serious tone. Compared to the time around when Dr. Strangelove was made, there are many more media platforms that are used to spread or share news. One group of media that generally covers the actualities of current events is mainly news sources. Reliable and accurate news sources are the only outlier that does not apply to the idea of romanticizing war. Social media tends to be the main culprit of this topic. With social media, comparisons between satirical film and present day media can be made. Although, just to restate, the news may be the most reliable source for information, that doesn’t necessarily imply that it is either the most used source or only source that is being used for information. Social media is a key player in the spreading of information. What can be questioned is how reliable and trustworthy that information is. What I am trying to compare here is the idea that the modern day social media has a similar amount of reliability as that of satirical war films in regards to providing factual, trustworthy information.
To return to the Russo-Ukrainian War, social media gives many different scopes of perspectives. The progression of the war may not be consistently broadcasted, in comparison with the frequency of a news source, and it may not be fully represented. Different platforms of social media can range from giving factual information of the war, to making jokes about the war. The social media that is widely seen and used by many today has very similar impacts as satirical films. It gives a broad inconclusive amount of information on the topics of the Ukrainian war, at the same time social media treats the war as something that is not entirely serious.
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