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No Time for Humor |
| Section: MODERN THOUGHT / ESSAYS |
| Author: Roger K. Miller |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 2/1/2004 |
| Size: 4,536 Words, 26,765 Characters |
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Why are there no funny military novels anymore? The war in Iraq will produce works of fiction and nonfiction, as the Gulf War did, but will any of them be funny? None from the Gulf War were. Let's back up. In the long-ago time of conscription, every healthy young male facedthe probability of two years' boring but mostly unhazardous military servitude, usually at some dusty and torpid fort in the wilderness of 1950s America (Sgt. Ernie Bilko's Fort Baxter comes to mind as the archetype of all such stations), or, at the worst, in the alternately hot and frozen wastes of South Korea.
Though the draft, for some reason, didn't seek you out until several years after you had left high school--even if you weren't in college--you could, if you wanted, do what was called "volunteer for the draft." That is, you could tell your local draft board to push your name ahead and draft you immediately. Otherwise, the only way you could complete your military obligation immediately was by enlisting in the Army or one of the other branches of the armed services, which involved three to four years' service rather than only two.
"Volunteer for the draft"--that's what I should have done. Why, it even has a noble ring to it. I should have done it for two reasons, neither of them noble. One, it would have got my military service out of the way when I was young and malleable and the republic was at relative peace and the risks of service were minimal. Two, I wouldn't have had to face my military obligation, as I did, when I was twenty-four and fashionably antimilitary and the republic was at war in Vietnam and the risks of service included the possibility of getting killed.
BE ALL THAT YOU CAN BE
This regret returned to mind after I watched a cable telecast of an old movie called Onionhead one evening. This viewing and rumination also led me to wonder why no Vietnam War novels are funny, which is the point of this essay, or one of the points.
I don't know how Onionhead, a god-awful World War II movie made in 1958 that surely must have imperiled the nascent film career of a young performer named Andy Griffith, turned my thoughts to the topic of the peacetime versus wartime draft. However, I can see how it led me to wonder why no Vietnam War novels are funny or even particularly lighthearted.
But wait a minute: Why should they be funny? you might ask. Especially if you came of age during the 1960s, like President Clinton, who found the Vietnam War--or at any rate his potential contribution to it--profoundly unfunny. Is war funny? Hell no, say those who wouldn't go.
I'm not so sure. The evidence of military fiction from other wartime and...
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...ericans, anyway),with the exception of Catch-22, is there any sustained hatred of or bitterness toward the military. The characters--that is, mainly the conscripts but sometimes even the careerists--may think it is stupid or silly or inefficient, but generally they buckle down or resign themselves to a shared burden. That attitude, too, may have something to do with the existence of the draft.
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
comprehensive academic resource that encompasses a broad range of
articles by scholars and experts in the areas of Global Studies,
Liberal Arts, Fine & Applied Arts, General Science, and Spanish.
Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
includes the complete contents since 1986 and continues to publish
a new issue online each month. |
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