This is the educational column, dedicated to fighting the culture war while you sit back and read about it. Carnage! Blood! Today we will discuss art derived from the battlefield.

I would like to remind everyone that you can make a difference in the culture war. That's right, the educational columnist wants YOU! There are no civilians in this struggle, and many casualties are unfortunately among us.

Take the average war film. Most of the time it is semi-propagandic, semi-Hollywood formulaic trash. Learning about fathers and sons dying has long been a storytelling favorite, from Homer's "Iliad" and even the Old Testament. Now the danger is often that war films become exciting destruction fantasies that breed hate rather than peace. Don't believe me? Get down and give me 50, you filthy piece of maggot loins!

"Black Hawk Down" used images of petulant Somalians, mobs and mobs of them like ants coming for your picnic basket, to create a sense of fear. Thus, the Americans were shooting all these blacks unsympathetically, the same way Brendan Fraser kills bad demonic dudes in "The Mummy." We never take a glimpse into the pain of the families or friends of the 1,000 Somalians who died. They've become video game targets.

Indeed, now war films are shoe-ins for the video game treatment. "Top Gun" became a flight simulation game, giving you the chance to shoot down Russians as coolly as the Cold War itself. "Star Wars" – doesn't the title just say it all? – has the player shooting Imperial enemies in space. "Pearl Harbor: The Virtual Simulation" and "Saving Private Ryan: The Video Game" – relive the first half-hour of carnage! – can't be too far away.

In retrograde fashion, many films now come from video games. It's very simple: people want to see blood baths, and video games are abundant with blood bath scenarios. The logic is impeccable, because coming up with new reasons to have people shooting outrageously big guns in the chaos of combat is undoubtedly pretty difficult. Even "Black Hawk Down" seems to be an elaborate "Counterstrike" bout – the American terrorists did not win.

The alternatives are plentiful. Many anti-war films have been made, even by Hollywood, such as "The Best Years of Our Lives," "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Schindler's List" – all winners of the Best Picture Oscar. I believe "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," while not being about war per se, was a good anti-violence film, which any anti-war film must be. Sure, the film glorifies martial arts, but only the bad characters actually hurt people – as in, lodged a big blade into someone's head. Martial arts are a form of self-defense, with the usually trigger-happy Chow Yun Fat espousing a kind of Buddhist nihilism. Don't know what that means? Give me another 50, you frog-licking roach worm!

Those "boring" first 20 minutes has Chow Yun Fat's character give up his sword, the equivalent of Stephen King giving up his pen or Bob Dylan giving up his guitar. He wants to settle down as a "civilian" with his woman. Yet he must later take back the sword to avenge his master in the name of honor. When this comes at the price of his life, he renounces his warrior code and tells Michelle Yeoh's character that she was what he wanted out of life. Of course, Yeoh must avenge her lover, as the cycle of violence continues. But she doesn't, stopping a few inches away from beheading Zhang Ziyi's beautiful head. The vicious cycle of vengeance has ended with peace. Thus the film shows the roots of violence, the results of violence and the solution to ending violence.

The real danger of war films, and indeed war itself, is that history is retold, reshaped and sometimes completely erased.

The Nazi propaganda film "Triumph of the Will" still encounters much hostility, even after most agree on its watershed role in documentary filmmaking. "Pearl Harbor" tells the history of an infamous date through the compelling point of view of shiny bombs being dropped.

"Braveheart" makes medieval war seem fun and a form of male initiation. At that point, war becomes the extension of sport, being a kind of extreme sport where you can die.

Unfortunately, as bombed Canadian soldiers will attest to, there is no reset button in reality.

.