Subject:
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Re: Factions (and violence)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 30 Jul 2001 06:55:11 GMT
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Viewed:
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1615 times
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In lugnet.castle, Leonard Hoffman writes:
> > In case it hasn't been thrown out, how would the Sopwith Camel play into the
> > Lego non-implicit violence scheme?
>
> ive recently read the book _Modernity and Warfare_ by pk lawrence, in it he
> describes air power as the apex of modern warfare, in being both aesthetic and
> horribly violent.
That's just swiping JFC Fuller! :) Read Fuller's treatises on
air power, written just after the horror of WWI, to see how much
they feared the bomber. ("The bomber will always get through",
all of that.)
> the war plane itself (be it biplane, divebomber, or stealth fighter) was built
> with the idea of being used to strategically bomb. the first bombing raid was
> done by Italy before ww1 while attacking the Turkish territory of libya. i dont
> know too much about the sopwith camel specifically, but im sure it either
> bombed enemy troops or fired on them.
It could theoretically fire machine guns at people--but trust
me on this, taking a biplane down anywhere near the trenches
raised the very real possibility that it wasn't ever coming
back up again. They were tossing a LOT of lead around down
there--and the only advantage to taking a plane's MGs down
to the trenches is a slightly better angle for a few seconds.
Better to stay in the sky, unless you're balloon-busting.
I don't think Camels were ever fitted with any serious
ordnance. (I know that various Spads got antipersonnel bombs--
little 20-lb ones--at some point, though.)
The romance of the Camel is that it was the weapon of the
"knights of the sky," not the mud-festooned tool of the ground
pounders. The air was the only place where any chivalry seemed
to exist during the war--it left the land after the Marne, and
when the _Emden_ was finally destroyed, there was no more at sea.
(Actually, if you want to get to this grand shift in thinking,
Modris Eksteins's _Rites of Spring_ is still one of the very
best--a good read. I have to lecture on WWI on Tuesday, in
fact, and he's been a big help yet again.)
> i think a big point to consider when talking about the Sopwith Camel in
> specific is the dual nature of the war plane as both aesthetic beauty and
> genocidal weapon of war.
Again, in WWI, the aircraft wasn't yet considered a "genocidal
weapon of war." The idea of true genocide from the air doesn't
float until 1918, after a few visits to London by the dreaded
Gotha bombers. I'd argue that the Camel is emblematic of the
nimble fighter, not the highly unsporting civilian-killing bomber.
> i can understand that lego doesn't glorify war, but, especially with the
> sopwith camel, it is glorifing the methods (or perhaps tools) of war. and the
> nature of lego system is continually shown as violence of some sort: almost all
> themes are of soldiers and warriors fighting eachother.
Uncompetitive life isn't that exciting, really. It's our nature
as violent beings. One could argue that sports are also "soldiers
or warriors fighting each other." We've just agreed as a group
on a proxy for death and destruction, given that our age makes
life and limb so cheap.
(By the way, _Gallipoli_ is a great, Australian-themed movie
about how useless athletic bodies really were in total war.)
Just a few thoughts.
best
LFB
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Factions (and violence)
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| (...) LFB After reading your above statement I must ask, where do you teach at? After spending 4 (long) years at West Point I must say that hearing your previous post brings me back to my days as a cadet in one of my military history classes. I was (...) (23 years ago, 30-Jul-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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