Although i see your point, i feel youre criticism is directed at the wrong thing. War is essential. It is how we negotiate territory, and (re)allocate recourses. It has been used throughout centuries. If you wish to revolutinze the way war is glamorized, perhaps we should attack the notion its a 'way out' of impoverished communities, lives and culture. If you look at the demographics of who signs up for the military, its mostly the 'minority.' African American, Hispanic, etc. The glamorizing effects has no impact on an individual with options. I believe refiguring little green men wouldnt do much.

Not as original an idea as you might think:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ANTIQUE-GREY-IRON-TOY-SOLDIER-MEDIC-TEAM-WOUNDED-/370510420920

http://cgi.ebay.com/Grey-Iron-Toy-Soldier-G105-Nurse-wounded-Doughboy-/230556292246

http://cgi.ebay.com/BARCLAY-LEAD-B119-SOLDIER-WOUNDED-W-CRUTCHES-98-/380334683332

http://cgi.ebay.com/BARCLAY-LEAD-TOY-SOLDIER-SITTING-WOUNDED-/390316242225

http://cgi.ebay.com/2-STRETCHER-BEARERS-CARRYING-WOUNDED-SOLDIER-/180669761114

http://cgi.ebay.com/3-VTG-Antique-Toy-Wounded-Injured-Soldiers-Elastolin-/230625920247

I think the artist succeeded in providing something that promotes thoughtful critique. However, I noticed that female soldiers were absent from Dorothy's art, and there are many women who serve in the military and suffer similar and other traumas.
Additionally, while many young boys play with army men, so do many young women. Yes the army men are gendered but that does not mean we should ignore the fact that both males and females have played with them and may have not seen the realities of war.

The war gets so much attention, and the returning vets so little. Putting a "support our troops" magnet on a car is negligible support, yet that's about the most the majority of people will ever do.

I think the artist's army men are thought-provoking, and even disturbing (particularly the suicide one).

Women shouldn't be allowed in the military

I have mixed feelings about these.

I think it's great to offset the "glamor" of plastic green Army men, and of course it's important for people to be aware of the negative after effects of combat.

OTOH, there are many veterans who are able to lead productive, healthy civilian lives and who would resent being (mis)represented by this collection of figures.

I would hate to see us return to the post-Vietnam years when "veteran" signified "nutcase who might snap."

War may or may not be essential. It does, however, seem to be universal, and wishing it away isn't going to make it so.

However, I find the revised little green men disturbing for a different reason: A large number of people serving in the military never see combat, never have problems, and generally just live their lives like the rest of us, absent a short stint where one gets up to the clashing of garbage cans. The artist is creating the problems she wishes to acquire sympathy for, by furthering the view that military service causes lifelong problems.

good point

i would like the discourse of war to include the perspectives of civilians -- women, children, and men who are non-combatants yet bear much of the brunt of war just the same. bet their stories aren't so glorious.

I've done research on veterans returning from Operation Iraqi Freedom (not sure what it's called now), and while the majority do move on with their lives after they are demobilized, these current conflicts reveal that a good number of them do struggle substantially afterwards. A study in JAMA in 2007 that looked at DoD data found that 1 in 4 veteran reported symptoms of PTSD/depression or chemical dependency during their post-deployment health screens six months after returning home. For reservists, who do not always serve in a "combat capacity" but nonetheless do very dangerous work, the statistic was nearly one in two. In fact because of the high use of IEDs against convoys in Iraq--supportive functions performed by NG unites--reservists were at times 30% more likely of getting killed than enlisted soldiers (according to one study).

After hearing some veterans talk about the romanticized visions they had about the war before going there, I did become disturbed by how much we infantilize war. Last week I was shopping for my nephew for his bday, and while I'm not opposed to buying him plastic soldiers like the ones I played with, I noticed that alot of war toys were exact miniature replicas of the actual tanks, plans and toys guns that are currently being used on ongoing conflicts. I found that distrubing

Having been a little boy...we would have loved to have these alternative army men for the hospital part of our forts. As it was, we had to blow them up ourselves with firecrackers. Which we probably still would have done.

I'm really shocked that no one has brought up what bothered me most about this project! In fact I am pretty miffed!
One of the figures has a little green army man yelling at a lady for breaking a dish it looks like? Domestic abuse?? Sure is a thing that people end up doing sometimes when they go through trauma... but wait, look at the description:
"...We hear little about the personal hell soldiers live through after returning home."
Oh, so it turns out it's actually the veteran in torment here! Not the woman he's yelling at....
FURTHERMORE, by framing the abuse as a "casualty of war", a miraculous shift occurs: the veteran didn't visit abuse upon his wife, war did! Apparently, if you have lived through the horror of combat, beating your wife is just a common, unfortunate outcome, as sure and uncontrollable as the weather, rather than a thing you actively chose to do and are responsible for.
It's casual glossing-over of this kind of thing that gives people permission to abuse, and I think we should quit it!

I'm not a fan of the new army men. I get her point that war is not glamorous, but it's incredibly offensive to the men and women of the service to portray them as suicidal, abusive, and homeless.

Yes, many veterans experience some level of depression or sleeplessness from PTSD. However, most of them also go on to live more productive lives than the average person. They have lower rates of suicide, lower rates of unemployment, better financial situations, and more likely to finish college.

So yes, for the vast majority of lower-income people being targeted by ads for the military, it is one of your best ways out of your situation.

Look at it this way. In 2008 the murder rate in Baltimore was 34 per 100,000. The "murder" rate (men killed by hostile action or murder) for active duty military personnel was 28 per 100,000. Yes, you are more likely to get shot in Baltimore than you are in the Marines.

We can celebrate the core defensive purpose of the military, and the men and women who risk their lives for that purpose, while still actively campaigning against specific uses of that power. There is a reason that the concepts of "just war" go back centuries. The military has always been necessary, but not all uses of it are justified.

But humanity has always, always glamorized warfare. Personally I'm going to bet that there is a good cultural reason for that, and it involves the fact that every culture that no longer exists was eventually invaded and subdued by someone stronger. Maybe we've reached some point of cultural advancement where that is no longer true, but somehow I doubt it.

Citations:
http://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2010/veterans/
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2009-06-03/news/0906020063_1_baltimore-decline-in-homicides-city-homicide-rate
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf

thank you for appreciating my sociological insights. i hope you'll join me in a boycott of the Sociological Images website for its oppression of the disabled and homeless, vis-a-vis today's post.

i might add, this art project discriminates against fat people, as there are no fat soldiers featured. also, why no midget soldiers? (very offensive.) also deeply problematic is the negative portrayal of PTSD, which is perhaps not an "ailment" to be treated, but a "difference" to be celebrated. and why no toy soldiers displaying outgrown facial hair of the sort typically worn be devout Muslim men? (The message I get from the artist is, 'you can't be both a Muslim and a patriot'.)

to sum up, this art piece is a deeply offensive cornucopia of oppression, as are all art, and all people, places, objects, and things. (why is that pencil on my desk so phallic?)

Actually Umlud, it's your conclusions which are faulty. Firstly, no one mentioned a link between primate genetics and violence (so there's a straw man argument) - but there is no need to find a genetic link, when there are reams and reams of evidence based on ape behaviour and the environmental factors which influence that behaviour.

You also state that Meera's point is faulty because Meera didn't provide evidence that bonobo behaviour evolved more recently. Seriously? Are you not capable of looking things up for yourself? Do you always demand evidence when someone mentions a fact that you are unfamiliar with? Sorry, but your own ignorance does not negate actual facts.

"However, bottom line is that we don’t (AFAIK) know whether primates are basically violent (save for one or the other species), so making any statement (throwaway or counter-throwaway) is fallacious."
Just because YOU don't know, doesn't mean WE don't know. Primate studies have come a long, long way in the last 50 years. We actually know a lot about these animals. At least, those of us working with them do. Maybe you assume the whole world shares your ignorance... or maybe, you should look things up before you make a fool of yourself trying to tear others down.

One of the things that I was reminded of when looking at this piece was Marwencol:
http://www.marwencol.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marwencol

Here, too, an artist is taking toys and war games and is using them to contrast the "real" world, although from a very personal nightmarish position.

In her depiction, was the artist criticizing the use of the little green army men for glamorizing war to children, or was she using the juxtaposition of a child's toy and the reality of war to highlight the negative impact of war?

As a representation of the impact of war, I honestly think these are brilliant. Seen through the medium of something as innocent as a toy, the horrors of war are demonstrated in a stark and vivid contrast.

As a criticism of the original toy though... maybe I'm missing the point. Is she saying that a career in the military is not heroic, noble or exciting? I don't think she is, but if so, I certainly disagree.

Is she saying that the toys should show the downside of this profession? Obviously not. No one would possibly think her reconfiguration of the toys would be appropriate for childrens' play.

Is she saying we should not allow toys that depict a profession so wrought with potential negative side affects? If so, our kids also couldn't play with toy firefighters, police officers, doctors, etc. In fact, for the sake of showing the reality of the profession, Dora the Explorer should really catch malaria, or lose a few toes to frostbite.

I remember playing with toy soldiers when I was a kid. I didn't like that they were permanently stuck in combat positions...I took a scissors and cut their guns away so they could have a break.

In college, I had a friend who cut the guns off of the army men, spray painted them all pink, and repainted the flag one of the figures was holding into a rainbow flag. She dubbed them The Gay Liberation Army and decorated her dorm room with them. I thought that was clever and cute.

militarism & toys to the max: http://www.minibluehelmets.com/

I'm gonna go on a limb here and say that this is ridiculous. All this type of sentiment does is weaken and over-sensitize the public to war, the fact is that war is necessary, always has been, always will be. That doesn't make it less horrible, but there is no point in weakening our ability to fight it. We are an empire, different in culture and nature from the likes of Rome and Persia, but an empire nonetheless, and history has a lesson for empires, as soon as they stop expanding outwards, they immediately begin collapsing inwards.

Toy soldiers have provided an immense amount of pleasure and creative inspiration to generations of children, admittedly especially boys but not exclusively so. They also have provided much entertainment and a stimulating hobby to many adults. They range from the cheap plastic 'army men' of various quality, to old hollow cast metal, contemporary metal production, collectible plastics from the 1960s and 70s and current plastic production for the hobby market. They range in value from a few cents each to hundreds of dollars each, They range in period from ancient to modern and non-hstorical. They range in cale from 5cmm to 60c and larger. The classic size is 54mm but the wargaming size (serious wargaming) is usually 15mm, 25mm or 28mm. others, like myself, play with the traditional 54mm to 60mm figures.

Children and adults may recreate real battles or play generic ones. They can also organize campaigns. For that matter they can create fictitious countries and uniforms.

Toy soldiers have been collected by famous people like Winston Churchill and the Bronte sisters. For the latter toy soldiers played a central role in their childhood emerging creative genius as the soldiers were given names and stories.

Toy soldiers and imaginative play opened up an interest in history for me. I played with them on floors, in gardens, sandpits and garage. I also visited the library and borrowed history books about the wars. (I became a history teacher), I kept them as an adult and bought many more than I could afford as a child. I never get bored because of my hobby, which has brought me immense happiness and a circle of friends. Many of the toy soldiers, mostly made in England, I had in the 60s are now very collectable. Sure it makes war sound exciting and no matter how gruesome and sad real war can be there is an exciting and colorful side to it with stories of heroism and the colorful uniforms.

In fact millions of adults and children play wargames either on computers or with model or toy soldiers, historical, fantasy and science fiction. The hobby involves historical research, artistry in painting figures and the art of strategy and tactics. Children who start with cheap army men and marbles may graduate to more complex rules with dice and measurements.

I have hundreds of thousands of toy soldiers and spend a great deal of time collecting them, painting them, researching them and wargamng with them - medieval, Western, ACW. ECW. ancient, WW1, WW2, modern, futuristic and sword and scorcery. I regularly buy very fine imitation sable brushes some at five 0 size so i can paint facial detail, buttons and so on. I use mostly acrylics and shade and highlight the details. I have painted maybe six thousand figures over the years and they are mostly in various glass cabinets but come out for wargames.

Playing with toy soldiers COULD make one into a warmonger but I'll add two other considerations: in some countries kids 'play' with real guns as they are taught to be recruits for terrorist organisations. Someone has to grow up to enter the military to defend the country from such a danger. The second possibility is that people through studying war, even through playing with toy soldiers become more cautious about entering into real wars.

How many people who are not part of this interest know that HG Wells didn't just write SF and about war with aliens? In 1913 he wrote a book called Little Wars. HG Wells played with metal toy soldiers on his lawn. He developed a set of rules and also used projectile firing toy cannons. (Usually today adult wargamers use dice and tables to work out casualties). He thought all the world leaders and generals should be put in a room with toy soldiers to fight it out with 'little wars' instead of big wars. (He hated the 'big war')

I wrote in detail about this topic because i can see that there are people who have knee jerk reactions to something they don't know a lot about or simplify into a notion of boys becoming warlike and aggressive. I feel sorry for any such children not given the option of playing with toy soldiers. And, as I pointed out, toy soldiers are not just for children. they are among the most important things in my life.

90% of casualties in modern warfare are civilians - described by war psychopaths as "collateral damage", tho it's weird if you think about it that such monsters would care about coming up with a more palatable word for mechanized human slaughter. But maybe that's just part of their sociopathic manipulation of war-tax paying sheeple, and they really couldn't care less. More likely to hear their real opinion of civilians in their private counsels - which you will never attend.
The 1% most evil do 99% of the damage in the world, so it isn't humanity as a whole that knowingly perpetrates and perpetuates warfare, rather it is a tiny defective minority of war-heads. Yes, war exists and we are forced to defend ourselves. In order to end it, we would all have to quit at once, all nations and factions around the world - no easy trick. But even so, deeply disturbing that war mongering posters even within this forum proclam war as some sort of necessity. It is nothing of the sort. There is some evidence that total mass warfare was unknown throughout most of humanity's 200,000 year existence. As St. Expury, a wartime pilot said, war is not an adventure, but a disease. If perhaps we could lock up the 1% most hazardous warmongers on the planet in comfortable padded rooms, such quarantine would lead to a cure. Treat them like the radioactive nuclear waste that they love. But what are the chances that 99 sheep can corral and contain even one wolf? We have no choice but to try. Now with a global network of hair trigger NBC WMDs, we must end all war, before it ends all of us.