HBO’s documentary “Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq,” which airs September 9, spotlightsyoung, well-intentioned Americans with body parts missing as a result of military service in Iraq. The program’s interviewer and executive producer, James Gandolfini, has said he wanted the stark reality of their suffering to be heard: “We need to pay attention to them. They’re not just disposable people.”

Even more suffering may be expected with the inevitable blitzkrieg of publicity for Ken Burns’s upcoming PBS documentary, “The War,” about WWII, which airs on September 23. Small wonder that by this autumn the arts consumer will inevitably turn to thoughts of war. Museum exhibits, off-Broadway shows, and films will embrace bellicose subjects, as if echoing the maxim of French statesman Georges Clemenceau: “War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military.” This fall, war will be securely in the hands of the arts world, with artistic interpretations sometimes serving as a relief from historical reality as conveyed by Messrs. Gandolfini and Burns.

One such example is already on view at the Metropolitan Museum’s exhibit at the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, “Coaxing the Spirits to Dance: Art of the Papuan Gulf,” which runs through December 2. Some 60 powerful objects made by the war-ready Papuans celebrate and, indeed, exult in war. Their totems include a Skull Hook (Agiba) made of wood, paint, and fiber by the Kerewa people of Papua New Guinea, which is dated to the 19th–early 20th century. As the Met Museum Web site puts it, this Agiba was “made to ensure success in local conflicts.” In fact, the skull hooks were used to attach the skulls of slaughtered enemies with rattan ropes. The resulting gory display was a source of power — both physical and supernatural, and as the skulls accumulated, they proved a family’s fighting skills. By leaving out the skulls, the Metropolitan Museum Agiba, a gift of Nelson Rockefeller, offers a pristine and oddly jubilant example of the art of war.

Onstage, there’s Charles L. Mee’s new play “Iphigenia 2.0,” directed by Tina Landau, to think about. The work, played by the Signature Theatre Company at the Peter Norton Space, is inspired by Euripides’s “Iphigenia at Aulis,” telling the story of King Agamemnon, perplexed when asked to sacrifice his daughter (Iphigenia) to show his involvement in a war on terror against Troy. As Mr. Mee’s King states: “To be sure, an empire cannot refuse to defend itself from absolute devastation, and so it will arrange to have the capacity for self defense.” Strenuously updated with clunky references to marijuana, pornography, and hip-hop music, “Iphigenia 2.0” denies historicity, seeming to endorse the view that all acts of war are equally iniquitous.

A more sophisticated conclusion can hardly be expected from the treacly TV soap opera “Army Wives,” which made its debut in June on the Lifetime channel and has already been renewed for another season, despite being trashed by Variety as a “stereotypical sudser that wants to be ‘From Here to Eternity’ but feels like ‘All My Children: Military Edition.'” Real drama surely exists in actual military lives, but when one Army wife gives birth to twins on a bar’s pool table while acting as a surrogate to earn money for her family, the viewer can only echo the oft-quoted words of Barbara Bush: “War is not nice.”

Comparable, if British-accented, fluff may be expected when New York Musical Theatre Festival presents “Back Home: the War Brides Musical,” due for a limited run between September 24 and 30 at Manhattan’s Sage Theater on Seventh Avenue. Set during World War II, the musical recounts the travails of Englishwomen who married American soldiers and strove to reunite with them after V-Day.

Hollywood, too, is grappling with the theme of war, although here too we probably should not expect too much illumination. In limited release, “Grace Is Gone” stars John Cusack as a war husband whose wife, Grace, is killed during military service in Iraq. Mr. Cusack explained to the Associated Press: “I feel that people will be interested in seeing the story of the human cost of this war.” His character takes his two young daughters on a road trip, rather than immediately telling them the bad news, but there is scarcely any actual discussion of war — let alone the Iraq war — in the film.

More overt pacifist drum–beating comes with “Lions for Lambs,” starring and directed by Robert Redford and co-starring Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise. Scheduled for theatrical release in November, “Lions for Lambs” is about two American soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and a senator played by Mr. Cruise who meddles in their destiny. New Line’s “Rendition,” also due in theaters in November, stars Reese Witherspoon as the pregnant American wife of an American resident Egyptian chemical engineer who is imprisoned and deported for interrogation as a security risk “in our post-9/11 world,” as New Line explains.

Whether or not such flicks make money will determine whether Hollywood’s current appetite for war themes will endure — and may offer some indication of the country’s attitude toward the subject.