Life Lessons From Film?

[Rev. Rye]

Funny that you mention a Clockwork Orange. That may be the only film, I really took something away with me. That bad doesn't always mean bad.

I've watched it first when I was far too young to watch it. But it taught me the shades of grey in life and that not everything is black and white.

Or, hell, that sometimes both sides in a conflict can both be irredeemable. But, of course, with Alex's reaction to the treatment, it's very questionable how well ACO fits with that statement.

The Battle of Algiers may fit better with this. It's the story of the Algerian war of Independence, with an unflinching portrayal of both sides: the FLN (at least at this stage) are terrorists who may very well be the missing link between the third-world revolutionaries of the Cold War era and Al-Qaeda (between their bombing campaigns and their rigid enforcement of Sharia), but the French forces are cold-blooded torturers with little to no regard for civilian casualties. Sound familiar?

Hell, there's two more lessons from that alone:
* For all the shit the French do in Algeria, when the FLN start to seem like the lesser evil to the people of Algeria, it becomes clear that the French forces do not have a prayer of stopping them. This is the way it has always been in guerrilla warfare, and, unless the occupying forces are willing to pull a Lidice, that's the way it will always go.
* The stereotype about the "Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys" is absolute horseshit. For real-world context, in The Great Big Book of Horrible Things, (aka Atrocities or Atrocitology) Matthew White chronicled the 100 deadliest conflicts in human history. France was a belligerent in 18 of them, more than any other nation in history, even inching out China, likely the longest-running civilization on Earth by a single atrocity.