the damaged male and the contemporary american war film

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dream of shattering and transmutation? This is especially pertinent since it is obvious that in many of the films under discussion in this thesis that they do not follow through on the radical promises of the masochistic subject position. Instead of promoting an ideological space free from the strictures of patriarchal power, they, in the main, feature supreme re-entrenchments and re-assertions of US military power (for example, the gun-blazing ending to Behind Enemy Lines). Most contemporary war films deploy masochistic aesthetics, but do not laud a masochistic subjectivity or utilise its transformative and subversive potential in order to critique or deconstruct US cultural authority and neo-imperial power. Instead, it is seemingly deployed in order to summon or hail a certain spectator position, one in which the pleasures of the immersive visual and auditory textures of the masochistic aesthetics in the films are revelled in. So another key focus is how the affective and sensational pleasures these films offer up in their radical and non-conventional masochistic aesthetics affect spectatorship of the film. An interpellation, therefore, occurs. Louis Althusser stated that ‘ideology interpellates individuals as subjects’, 92 and hence, film in establishing a certain dominant or consensual viewpoint, can enthral and seduce spectators to this viewpoint by forcing them to misrecognise themselves in the narratives and images offered up. However, the very fact that all the film can do is offer up these images and narratives (there is no manifest total control over the effect of these images and narratives), means that ideological power is incoherent and fragmentary. Nonetheless, the films consistently offer up a certain route of focalisation, or chief point of empathic contact, this spectator position being one of white middle class liberal subjectivity. This is not to say this is the films’ target demographic, but rather it is the subjectivity created in order to act as the chief focalising entry point into empathic and 92 Louis Althusser, Essays in Ideology (London: Verso, 1984), 44 30
emotional engagement with the narrative. Whether we chose to adopt this subjectivity or not, it is there for the taking and hence it is important to examine why this particular position is offered up. Many of the central characters in the films under discussion in this thesis are white, ostensibly middle class, and are marked as intellectual, liberal, or sometimes asserted as subjectivities in plain opposition to the notions of performative corporeal hyper- masculinity embodied in the Schawrzenegger/Stallone-style action movies of the 1980s and early 1990s. For example, in Chapter One we see skinny, pale-skinned, weak characters succumbing to their traumatic and physical anguishes, a theme that continues throughout other cycles of films discussed. However, crucially, Jacob in Jacob’s Ladder has a Master’s degree, Miller in Saving Private Ryan is a school teacher, Swofford in Jarhead reads works of existentialist literature and claims he should have gone to college, bourgeois suburban normativity seems to be the chief concern in the home front depicted in We Were Soldiers, and so on. Time and again, our route into empathising with the action and characters is structured courtesy of focalising agents who ostensibly are middle class, or narrative restitution and closure is sought courtesy of asserting the pre-eminence and incomparability of white domestic suburban (and more often than not bourgeois) normativity. This position also happens to be the very same as that sought by the white male in wishing to secure an authentic and privileged access to dominant myths of innocence and victimhood. Hence, in hailing white middle class spectatorial subjectivity, these films attempt to recruit the viewer to sanctifying these prevailing myths of US national identity. Through spectatorial empathy and emotional engagement, a co-opting of the victimhood of the genuinely disempowered and marginalised occurs. Instead, white US masculinity is posited as exceptionally victimised and damaged in fictional narratives (i.e. contemporary war films), and courtesy of these films’ interpellating strategies, this damage is crucially felt by the spectator position it calls into 31
Page 1 and 2: THE DAMAGED MALE AND THE CONTEMPORA
Page 3 and 4: ABSTRACT This thesis is about the d
Page 5 and 6: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you to my sup
Page 7 and 8: Three Kings: Reverse Colonisation a
Page 9 and 10: INTRODUCTION “What studied tormen
Page 11 and 12: ethics in film spectatorship studie
Page 13 and 14: Later on in my introduction, many o
Page 15 and 16: delineates a precise historical mom
Page 17 and 18: The product of this seems to be a n
Page 19 and 20: performance. Of course, the reverse
Page 21 and 22: film characters overtly performing
Page 23 and 24: Therefore, in this thesis, the dama
Page 25 and 26: to civil rights, women’s liberati
Page 27 and 28: war film. Part of this rendering in
Page 29 and 30: spectator an experience of suddenly
Page 31 and 32: elligerent US exceptionalism, the a
Page 33 and 34: developing around the fantasies att
Page 35 and 36: It is observed that the historical
Page 37: and exploring the victim/victimiser
Page 41 and 42: horror and pain) and the concurrent
Page 43 and 44: masochistic spectatorship of catast
Page 45 and 46: of traumatic events must mean there
Page 47 and 48: trauma and images of ruination, suc
Page 49 and 50: say that an ethical form of spectat
Page 51 and 52: the ethics of spectatorship in the
Page 53 and 54: Chapter One will principally consid
Page 55 and 56: equired for the perpetuation of the
Page 57 and 58: inactive contemporary spectator. I
Page 59 and 60: narration. There is, however, one c
Page 61 and 62: plausible diegetic realms, we have
Page 63 and 64: like ghostly video-game characters
Page 65 and 66: construction of the ‘reality’ o
Page 67 and 68: of the film, much like Jacob’s La
Page 69 and 70: statements is that ‘the spectator
Page 71 and 72: There is one scene in particular wh
Page 73 and 74: words, normative hegemonic masculin
Page 75 and 76: expressed as white male victimizati
Page 77 and 78: We Were Soldiers carefully establis
Page 79 and 80: ‘masochistic narrative’ in the
Page 81 and 82: outside of the normative arenas and
Page 83 and 84: privileged function gets handed ove
Page 85 and 86: The character of Jack Starks experi
Page 87 and 88: projection of culpability onto fema
Page 89 and 90:
conditions of masochism’s incepti
Page 91 and 92:
an ‘antidote’ to ‘the ladder
Page 93 and 94:
“assaulted” or even “damaged
Page 95 and 96:
pleasures from the stylistics of Sp
Page 97 and 98:
einforcement of self-same dominion
Page 99 and 100:
CHAPTER TWO: BLANKNESS AND BLACKNES
Page 101 and 102:
male victim trope in contemporary w
Page 103 and 104:
The notion of a mono-cultural US is
Page 105 and 106:
In most respects whiteness is const
Page 107 and 108:
‘Western’ world in general (chi
Page 109 and 110:
politics of ethnic and racial ident
Page 111 and 112:
damaged male, black masculinity is
Page 113 and 114:
anxiously searches for (and fails t
Page 115 and 116:
the successful visual fulfilment of
Page 117 and 118:
instigated the idea of mutiny, crac
Page 119 and 120:
mobile camera positions embodying c
Page 121 and 122:
esistant, all the things a discipli
Page 123 and 124:
consume Monfriez’s fantasies sugg
Page 125 and 126:
analysis of Monfriez in this sequen
Page 127 and 128:
as the central, factual, organising
Page 129 and 130:
although ending in a diegetic realm
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with Michael Jackson? […] A black
Page 133 and 134:
around his mouth and face. We also
Page 135 and 136:
airport), but also assists in lendi
Page 137 and 138:
fetishize the technological intimac
Page 139 and 140:
of destruction, and perhaps assists
Page 141 and 142:
So, we have seen in three Hollywood
Page 143 and 144:
depiction of the falsified events.
Page 145 and 146:
pain. In Three Kings this is the to
Page 147 and 148:
spectatorship only flourishes in th
Page 149 and 150:
point of explosion” shows that an
Page 151 and 152:
CHAPTER THREE: NEO-IMPERIALISM AND
Page 153 and 154:
In Chapter One I defined masochisti
Page 155 and 156:
destruction, and regeneration. Smit
Page 157 and 158:
occupation, and movement through sc
Page 159 and 160:
spectatorial pleasures in regarding
Page 161 and 162:
This serves to secure US military p
Page 163 and 164:
The heat seeking camera evacuates t
Page 165 and 166:
In Smith’s standard trajectory of
Page 167 and 168:
must be found. They saw everything,
Page 169 and 170:
Lines, we obviously have Burnett st
Page 171 and 172:
I have explained above the fact tha
Page 173 and 174:
throughout the film? The answer to
Page 175 and 176:
The displacements, including the tr
Page 177 and 178:
of the US characters, wheareas orga
Page 179 and 180:
mobile camera, informal framing) it
Page 181 and 182:
superficial affective level. The re
Page 183 and 184:
ounds of machine gun fire that are
Page 185 and 186:
As Savran points out, Shepard empha
Page 187 and 188:
threats to the white domestic, the
Page 189 and 190:
ather than exposition of military t
Page 191 and 192:
that exemplify this moral code bein
Page 193 and 194:
mountainous terrain therefore obscu
Page 195 and 196:
forget four enabling myths that the
Page 197 and 198:
access to, and obfuscation of, batt
Page 199 and 200:
image of victimhood. This allows th
Page 201 and 202:
CHAPTER FOUR: THE GUILT ZONE; LOOKI
Page 203 and 204:
aftermath of 9/11, ‘who Americans
Page 205 and 206:
case in so many films (and in visua
Page 207 and 208:
indulgence wrapped up in the positi
Page 209 and 210:
The narrative intention of this sce
Page 211 and 212:
that drive (through modernist techn
Page 213 and 214:
Stewart places contemporary war fil
Page 215 and 216:
The theme of surveillance, omniscie
Page 217 and 218:
omniscience and powerlessness, fore
Page 219 and 220:
egarding the new military strategy
Page 221 and 222:
consistently at the mercy of this i
Page 223 and 224:
the courageous, small underdog. As
Page 225 and 226:
We are, as spectators, impelled int
Page 227 and 228:
fuzz of black and grey. Through thi
Page 229 and 230:
impression one leaves this scene wi
Page 231 and 232:
unavailable on Region 2 DVD. Roger
Page 233 and 234:
film consists of pastiches of numer
Page 235 and 236:
designed to enable a multitude of i
Page 237 and 238:
scene then, that Salazar’s role a
Page 239 and 240:
aggressive sadistic regime is equat
Page 241 and 242:
altericide, a casting out of the
Page 243 and 244:
characters, and no attempt is made
Page 245 and 246:
Qasim Hamza al-Janabi. Libby Saxton
Page 247 and 248:
We can see that war on terror films
Page 249 and 250:
fantasies of omnipotence’, 315 an
Page 251 and 252:
asserts that ‘cinema and videogra
Page 253 and 254:
authoritarian films is also the spe
Page 255 and 256:
abject pleasures of witnessing suff
Page 257 and 258:
gaps, just unadulterated confrontat
Page 259 and 260:
in the veils of liberal moral hand-
Page 261 and 262:
CONCLUSION All the films in this th
Page 263 and 264:
More recent films, such as Redacted
Page 265 and 266:
“indiewood” films succeeding at
Page 267 and 268:
drawn into his emotive desire for v
Page 269 and 270:
with his subsequent victimhood figu
Page 271 and 272:
Kelly’s Heroes. Dir. Brian G. Hut
Page 273 and 274:
BIBLIOGRAPHY Aaron, Michele. Specta
Page 275 and 276:
Dixon, Wheeler Winston. “Twenty-f
Page 277 and 278:
Kaplan, Amy. The Anarchy of Empire
Page 279 and 280:
Pearl, Monica. “The City of Broth
Page 281 and 282:
Sturken, Marita. Tourists of Histor
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