WHY DO I WATCH WAR MOVIES WHEN I'M FEELING TRAUMATISED?

My Top Ten Healing War Watches

The graphic novel WORLD WAR TANK GIRL by Martin & Parson was greatly inspired by the HBO TV show BAND of BROTHERS

Recently, when I’ve felt myself falling into a deep stress-hole, I’ve noticed that one of my unconscious responses is to reach for an old favourite war movie or TV show, and immerse myself in the heat of virtual combat. This might seem like a crazy thing to do to yourself when you’re already feeling stressed or traumatised, but I do it every time - and the worse I feel, the more raw, graphic, and believable the movies and shows have to be. I had a vague notion that there was a pattern emerging, but now I’ve caught myself doing it, I know that it is definitely a THING.

I wanted to dig a little deeper into it here as some of you may find it useful. Some of you may also find it ludicrous, hilarious, or slightly bullshitty, and that’s all fine with me too; this is my own particular kink.

A lot of you may be familiar with the techniques of Cold Therapy - immersing yourself into ice-cold water or taking a cold shower. This controlled hit of chill triggers a benign stress response in the nervous system, a small amount of stress that you can then walk away from, and your system is tempered against any greater stresses for the day. I do the cold shower thing, and I regularly hurl myself into the sea (I live right next to one of the coldest stretches of the North Sea). I think my War Movie watching is the same thing - I’m looking for a short term, benign, controllable stress response. I get very involved with war movies; I have a vivid imagination, and I spent my whole childhood shooting and being shot by imaginary bullets.

I guess a lot of people might use horror, thriller, suspense, and other scary movie types to achieve the same result. Scaring ourselves in our imaginations helps make real life trauma more bearable.

This is my current Top Ten List of movies and shows that trigger a stress response in me (by no means a definitive, fixed list, it changes from day to day, this is what hits the mark for me right now). Some of these entries are more hardcore than others, some are lighter, almost comical affairs. I hold the HBO series THE PACIFIC in reserve for a once-every-five-years purge.

10. MASTERS OF THE AIR

9. KELLY’S HEROES

8. FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS

7. HACKSAW RIDGE

6. ZERO DARK THIRTY

5. PLATOON

4. AMERICAN SNIPER

3. GENERATION KILL

2. A BRIDGE TOO FAR

1. BAND OF BROTHERS

Band of Brothers is one of my all-time favourite TV series, as it not only delivers the neurological-stress-trick perfectly every time, but re-watching is like meeting up with a bunch of old friends and hanging out in occupied Europe. Which is nice.

I love self-prescribed cures and remedies that make no sense in the “normal” world. What would we think if we went to the doctor and told them we were stressed, and their response was, “Here’s a prescription for Platoon and The Dirty Dozen, watch one after every meal and you should be feeling better in a week.”?

Anyway, it works for me. Let me know if you have any similarly quacky remedies!

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Meanwhile, in THE OFFICIAL TANK GIRL STORE our product of the week is the “Details” Jamie Hewlett giclee print pack, with a whopping 30% off its original price. AND we have an HALF PRICE SALE on the unisex sizes of four of our best selling t-shirts!

1990 Chaos T-Shirt, screen-printed on organic cotton, FairWear shirts - unisex sizes are half-price, before we restock with new a style shirt.

That’s all for now. I’ll be back in the warm, swollen, fullness of time.

Cheers and lovely, you beautiful people!

Alan XXX