Last week, fully in the throes of preparation for our Women in War show, this arrived in the mailbox. Never has a press copy anticipated an upcoming show so well.
Founding members of the Hot Zone Club [Rick Veitch and Gary Erskine]
The story is pretty straightforward: five years from now, a National Guard unit is fighting an interminable war in the only barely fictional Afbaghistan. Spirits are so low that the Department of Motviation and Morale arranges orgiastic “retreats” for the sex-starved recruits. Paging through, it would have been flat-out offensive had these issues not been coming up so much in Katherine’s pre-interviews. Though it’s practically impossible to find reliable statistics on sexual assault in the military, it’s safe to say the numbers rise significantly during wartime. War turns up the heat, guests keep telling Katherine. You’re away from your family, making decisions you’d never make back home. War exacerbates everything, they say.
In an author interview near the back of the comic, author Rick Veitch insists he’s writing satire.
Usually, when a country is forced to reevaluate something as catastrophic as a misconceived war, we creative types are trotted out to explore the tragic aspects of the situation metaphorically. We… are expected to offer stories about doomed, heroic characters caught in the insanity of war. As Lenny Bruce pointed out, in normal times, satire must wait until wounds heal.
But these aren’t normal times…. Army@Love collapses the old agreed-upon timeline, skipping the schmaltz and going straight to the satire.
Rick Veitch, On the Ledge, Army@Love, 2007.
“War exacerbates everything, they say.â€
Exacerbates everything?
I thought I heard the guy on the show say “masturbates everywhereâ€.
This ‘toon troubled me- a hippy lad of Puritan stock- until I had time to dwell on it a bit… and realized that it could be seen, from the perspective of Allied Signal, Raytheon, Lockheed, Boeing, DuPont, General Electric, GM, et al as the eqivalent to Marlboro’s “Cowboy.” As the Prime Directive of America can be found emanating from the Pentagon, ever since WWII “saved” us from the Great Depression (and thereby earned our “Undying thanks” as a nation beholden to Military Might), this does wonders in their eternal quest to sell the notion of “taking a chance on being sent to Hell for a while,” in return for a gov’t job- including room & board- and a chance for educational & social advancement. Hot… Sexy… & a little Naughty… but with none of the cultural disjunct of the “naughtiness” that, say, shooting someone from 400 yards away- someone with whom you have no personal beef- that you don’t even know (& don’t have to think about, because “you’re following orders, man”- eleven time zones from Home)- may bring to bear. Ahhh, Yes- “Why don’t we do it in the Road”- indeed… for God & Country, and The Folks Back Home, and A Paycheck, and a shot at College, and… because I’m young & horny & nervous… but feel immortal, right here, right now… So, “Be all you can be… with an erection, too” O existential warriors… ^..^
ps- anyone recall Vaughn Bode’s “Deadbone” (from around the time of our last major “conflict” among the leftovers of European Colonization)? ^..^
I’ve been wondering how much Jason collected on the bet to get ‘jack-shack’ spoken on air.
The Military and the Monetary,
get together whenever they think its necessary,
They turn our brothers and sisters into mercenaries,
they are turning the planet into a cemetery.
The Military and the Monetary,
use the media as intermediaries,
they are determined to keep the citizens secondary,
they make so many decisions that are arbitrary.
–Gil Scott Heron
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