My next movie will be "Velvet Goldmine" after I finish this experimental review of something bigger than any movie.

With so much hype over World War I's anniversary (1914-1918), I thought, why not review World War? It's not a gay film, nor is it practical to talk about entire conflicts with many plots and diverse characters unless you are an academic or are trying to say something big. However, as a war that reshaped Europe, changed the course of history through its subsequent and concurring revolutions, and ended the era of expanding empires (Not the end of the European Imperial age that would keep going until after World War II), it is a fascinating subject to review.

My view on history is different than what people are taught in school; I don't like orthodoxy, i.e. I don't buy into the romantic notion that America's founding fathers had high dreams and hopes, banded together to sign a document in one sitting, and were enlightened gods among men. In fact, they were slaveholders, pirates, and scoundrels, who screwed over their wives for the black slave girl in their house, while proclaiming that "all men" are created equal (US did not have universal suffrage until after World War I). The idealized type of history is taught to you in school to make you a "model" citizen or forced on you by politicians to inspire patriotic fervor for them. I am realist and don't care how ugly the truth is.

To be honest, Historians are no better than Catholic priests in certain respects, placing one version of history as the truth, while leaving out all the details that nullifies the heroic aspects of their version of history. For World War I, I hate how pundits and commentators gloss over reality.

I will try my best to do justice to World War One that had no real heroes, despite what certain European Historians like to portray.

Great Britain and France were racist unethical states that rose to power through millions of "indigenous" workers in their colonies (economic slavery by any other name). Germany was an ambitious aristocratic society that ran with nobles and a king. The US was an impudent teenager; screaming for attention, because it made some new shiny toys. Russia was still living in the middle ages, where serfdom prevailed.....I can go on to introduce more of these nations like characters in a movie, but you get my point. No one in this war was heroic.

With the stage set, let's begin the review:

We all have heard about the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austrian Empire. However, let me ask a simple question, why did they need to antagonize Serbia? From the politically fueled riots against Serbs to the open mobilization of forces, Austria intended to fight.

Russia responded the same way, so did Germany. Great Britain had been holding an arms race with Germany for the last 3 decades prior, so they jumped on the war band wagon, too.

Alliance or no alliance, this war was inevitable, because there were too many nations trying to measure their cocks with a yard stick to see who is going to be the new bottom boy (There's a gay imagery for you )

There were lots of battles, lots of dead bodies, offensives and defensive movements...however, they resulted in nothing Sure empires fell and nations rose, but the story of World War I was not written on the battlefield despite its massive losses. The war was written by its revolutionaries; the technologists that developed the modern world, the poor laborers that wanted a better life for themselves and their children, and the native peoples who wanted to believe in the dream of nationhood that this war fostered.

I am not a communist, not a patriot, and not an innovator, but in this review, I see this "Great War" as their stage to shine a light on human civilization. While the costs were great, what we gained as a people was far more than nations or ideologies or technologies; we gained modernity, we gained our individuality.

(To Zombie, who will likely criticize my point above, I will add an additional reminder that no great act or revolution of human beings in history is ever completed in one event. Communism was a house of cards that turned into totalitarian states, Republican principles fell into disarray in Germany, and many other nasty issues were awakened by this war as well. However none of those things mattered as much as what thoughts were created, the dream of fighting for yourself and the motivations behind modern thought came from this war, unless you want to doubt a century of history.)

On the other side of the world, China, my native country, had its own move away from Dynastic rule before the war in 1912 as a Republic, which at the time was divided and factional. In the far east, the only nation that gained during this war was Japan taking colonies from Germany and annexing parts of China that were under German influence. In China, World War I has a different meaning than in the west, because of the infamous Japanese "21 Demands" on China. Popular sentiment wanted a strong national government and national presence to counter naked imperialism.

There was change in the air by 1918, but here's the anti-climax. The leaders of Europe (US President Woodrow Wilson was there too, but he was relegated to second fiddle against the UK and France due to his lack of foreign policy experience) tried to roll back all the changes and ideals that had sprung up during the war. They forcibly redrew the map of Europe, Africa, and Asia without regards to what the native peoples of those places wanted. You can lay a lot of the blame for World War II on this treaty, which was rotten from the overindulgent reparations to the badly designed League of Nations.

By the way, President Wilson wasn't a saint either, despite what Democrats and his biographers try to revision, he had no inclination to give "Self-determination" to racial non-white groups. He was fine with segregation and his deeply settled southern views were not as enlightened as liberal apologist have tried to evoke. This was a southern Democrat, an idealistic man who won out of a populist swing.

In the end, with more than 9 million bodies, nothing seems to have changed in the world. Imperialism was still alive and kicking. Racism was still the law of the land.

However, beneath the placid surface of the old order, there was change in the air. The "Lost Generation" of Hemingway, T.s Elliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and famed editor Gertrude Stein among many others began a new movement toward defining themselves and the world. The outrage of the treaty of Versailles not only angered Germany, but it also resulted in the nationalist "May 4th Movement" in China, which many future leaders of the future communist party would be part (A reason why communism survives to this day in China was how it began under a nationalist movement).

As for all of us and World War I's impact, remember Magnus Hirschfield began the institute of Sex research in Germany in 1919 under the Weimar Republic of Germany, marking the beginnings of a movement that would bring us to GA itself. While many failures will occur, including the Paragraph 175 and the holocaust that affected many gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people in Europe; a step forward was made, because human society was beginning to challenge itself to redefine itself.

Victories and defeats ebb and flow with fortune and time, but the most enduring thing of human history is thought itself, what was created due to, by, and through the war has repercussions for all of us today.

So that's the story of World War I, I could've told you about Verdun or Somme, Armenia or Belgium atrocities, but I chose to focus this review on humanity's finer points of progress rather than a war without true gains to any side or heroes.

As a rating, I would give World War I as a war 0 out 10, there was no reason for it except human absurdity. There were no higher reasons for war, despite what revisionist historians want you to believe. In the end, despite knowing the world has been utterly changed, none of the nations stood up to lead mankind into the future.

However, as a catalyst for reflection, I give World War I 10 out of 10, because our modern world and modern gay rights' owe a lot to it.

Well, I will watch the gay themed movie "Velvet Goldmine" soon and review that movie