Mediated Terrorism in the 21st Century [1 ed.] 3030735109, 9783030735104

Table of contents :
Dedications
Foreword: Will I Dream of Terror Tonight?
Contents
1 Introduction • Elena Caoduro, Karen Randell, and Karen A. Ritzenhoff
2 The Body as Weapon: Paradise Now and the Allure of Enchanted Violence • Robert Burgoyne
3 Spielberg and Terrorisms: Munich and Warof the Worlds 37Frederick Wasser
4 Spinning Terror on TV: How The Grid Taught Us What to Fear • Dahlia Schweitzer
5 “God, I Miss the Cold War”: The Imagination of Terrorism on Post 9/11 American Serial Drama • Ariel Avissar
6 Battling It Out with Memes: Contesting Islamic ‘Radicalism’ on Indonesian Social Media • Leonie Schmidt
7 1984 and the Anti-Sikh Pogroms: Gauri Gill’s Photo Narrativization of the (Continuing) “Horrors of Those Weeks” • Harveen Sachdeva Mann
8 The Pencil is Mightier Than the Kalashnikov: What Cartoons Can Tell Us About Our (Mis)understanding of Terrorist Acts in the Wake of the Charlie Hebdo Massacre • Matthew Leggatt
9 Return to Entebbe: CineTerrorism as Contested Memory • Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann
10 In the Fade: Motherhood, Grief and Neo-Nazi Terrorism in Contemporary Germany • Elena Caoduro
11 Tales of Chaos and Order: Exploring Terrorism’s Melodramatic Use in The Dark Knight (2008) and Skyfall (2012) • Charles-Antoine Courcoux
12 Terrorism and Gender in Eye in the Sky and Zero Dark Thirty: Women and Girls on the War Front in Contemporary Cinema • Karen A. Ritzenhoff
13 Afterword: Will I Dream of Terror, Again? • Stacy Takacs
Index

Citation preview

Mediated Terrorism in the 21st Century Edited by Elena Caoduro · Karen Randell Karen A. Ritzenhoff

Mediated Terrorism in the 21st Century “Mediated Terrorism in the 21st Century presents provocative analyses of the way terrorism influences our lives through its depictions in popular culture. The chapter authors have written sophisticated examinations of varied media approaches to terrorism, and the variety of their offerings reinforces our understanding of how terrorism has become a nearly ubiquitous presence in the ways we live our lives.” —Philip Seib, University of Southern California, USA “The mediation of terror and violence involves narration, sensationalism and invention. This intriguing collection explores these processes from multiple perspectives, encompassing different national and transnational narrations of terror that contextualise and work to dislodge the prominence of the USA and its military/political/mediatized constructions of American vulnerability and strength. The collection spans diverse media (film, television, cartoons, photography, social media) and distinct modes of production, drawing out nuances of what is at stake in narration, remembering and representation. What emerges forcefully is not only a sense of the generic, familiar character of the mediatization of terrorism and political violence, but the importance of memory and creativity in responding both to the traumatic legacies of terror and to its insistent mediatized presence in contemporary cultures.” —Yvonne Tasker, Professor of Media and Communication, University of Leeds “Across its eleven scholarly yet accessible chapters Mediated Terrorism in the 21st Century offers fascinating engagements with a range of topics in both depth and breadth, marking it out as a lively, dynamic and original contribution to the field.” —Dr Terence McSweeney, Senior Lecturer in Film and Television, School of Film and Television Faculty of Business, Law and Digital Technologies, Solent University Southampton, UK

Elena Caoduro · Karen Randell · Karen A. Ritzenhoff Editors

Mediated Terrorism in the 21st Century

Editors Elena Caoduro School of Arts, English and Languages Queen’s University Belfast Belfast, UK

Karen Randell Research Institute of Media and Performance University of Bedfordshire Luton, UK

Karen A. Ritzenhoff Department of Communication Central Connecticut State University New Britain, CT, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-73510-4 ISBN 978-3-030-73511-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73511-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Everett Collection Historical/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Athena —Elena Caoduro For John —Karen Randell For my kids. May they live in a peaceful world —Karen A. Ritzenhoff

Foreword: Will I Dream of Terror Tonight?

One of my earliest night-terror dreams was when I was aged six, sick with a mild fever. I was sleeping between my parents as warplanes began to fly over me. Their engines purred and roared as their wings and bombs descended. As terror dreams often do, these warplanes were near and far, inescapably close and yet, high, high in the blazing red sky. Perspective shifts in night-terror dreams: objects, lines of sight, time and space mutate, merge and converge, so that all of you is caught in an impossible, somatic, psychic dread. This terror of planes falling out of the sky has followed me throughout my life, so much so that the mediated images of bombers and drones found in terror texts immediately fill me with a shattering sense of loss. To see so many planes now grounded, parked in hangers or in massive holding parks, because of restricted air travel and the fear of transmitting COVID-19, does nothing to lessen these fears. My nightterror dream imagines these planes taking to the sky all at once, dropping not bombs but disease. Terror, for me, is bio-molecular and a nightmarish haunting. This aviophobia is not a unique or singular perspective, of course. At school, during the Troubles in the 1980s, children in Northern Ireland painted and drew army helicopters into their local community or neighbourhood scenes. Alongside drawings of green trees, a smiling sun and blue skies, there would appear grey, metallic birds hovering over playgrounds and gardens. These terror birds were real—they took up positions in these Irish communities—but they were also dreamed by news

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bulletins, documentaries and screen fictions that attempted to capture these conflicts. The relationship between the social world and the world of representation is inherently entangled. Cultural mediation is not separate from “reality” but a constitutive of it. As the French sociologist Jean Baudrillard powerfully suggested, we dreamed the fall of the twin towers in countless Hollywood blockbuster movies that preceded 9/11.1 And since this dreaming was actualised—we witnessed in real time planes crash into the towers—we have filled our cultural world with new images, narratives and heroes that re-play, re-animate these terror texts.2 Terror is not equitable but contextual: it is not an even ripple across society but implicated in the circulation of power and control. Similarly, representations of terror operate from centres of cultural power and ensure that certain subjects, groups, religions and nations are either identified as the transmitters of terror or its recipient. The very definition of terror is elastic precisely because it is used to other the Other, who are signified as a constantly shifting enemy “shadow”, and to justify increased techniques of the self that survey and monitor those who are perceived to be a threat. The concept of terror is also fluid because of the way it encapsulates night terrors like mine, resting in the sour belly of the individual, and in large-scale events and catastrophes, where millions of people will be subject to the iron fist of terror.

Pause Think for a moment of the overfilled migrant boat capsized on the rough seas, its children, women and men drowning. Think of the war drone, silently gliding above a Syrian city, its guided bombonly noticed a few seconds before its collateral impact. Think of villagers sleeping, slowly waking to the sound of machine gunfire. Think of these not simply as mediated scenes, dreadful dreams, or as an academic exercise, but as the searing call of terror as it is felt within each individual as they face its reckoning. Think then of the power structures and processes of difference that produce the bio-political forces of terror. In all that we do, we should always remember what the felt consequences of terror are. As the British sociologist Stuart Hallpowerfully reminds us: Against the urgency of people dying in the streets, what in God’s name is the point of cultural studies?... At that point, I think anybody who is

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into cultural studies seriously as an intellectual practice, must feel, on their pulse, its ephemerality, its insubstantiality, how little it registers, how little we’ve been able to change anything or get anybody to do anything. If you don’t feel that as one tension in the work that you are doing, theory has let you off the hook.3

Play Terror shifts because of political circumstances: terror once came from outside, from the hands of an external enemy—Russia during the Cold War, Saddam Hussein, China and the Wuhan virus. Then, terror was let in, the enemy was within, was among us and needed to be outed, expunged and defeated. War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg 2005) offers us such a cleansing as Ray (Tom Cruise) not only saves and protects his family from the diabolical enemy who had been lying dormant as sleeper cells beneath New York City, but helps bring them down. Then, terror was us, all of us, as the power-saturated binaries that once held us apart, seemingly disintegrated. Terror moved from the night to the day, and from the day to the night, a red blanket of fear and dread infecting all of social life. Joker (Todd Phillips 2019) powerfully captures this envelope of dread, where menace haunts every street corner, rides on every train and bus, shapes its anomic inhabitants and laisses-faire political and civic leaders. Arthur (Joaquin Phoenix) carries this terror within him: his otherness a mark he seeks to hide, his loneliness forged out of a New York that is brutal and cold. Joker brings terror to the world: he stalks his neighbour, murders the bankers who sought to terrify him and unleashes a city-wide riot that brings terror to the boil. Joker dreamed of the collapse of New York, of America, before it happened. Taken up by Left and Right protesters across the USA in 2020, Joker masks were worn as the cities burned. Joker dreamed the collapse of democracy before it happened on Capitol Hill (January 6th, 2021). Stoked by a fascist, popularist President, the mob entered Congress, sacking it as they did so. Members of congress hid under tables, phoned loved ones, so terrified “they feared for their lives”. Captured on hundreds of mobile phones, and news cameras, the sacking was recorded live, so that the seismic shock to the foundation of democracy played out in real time, as it did with the fall of the twin towers, as it did in Joker.

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This terror text had been fermenting for months: claims made by Trump that the election had been fraudulent, and that he had “won”, fuelled conspiracy theories and a sense of injustice by those on the Right. As a consequence, they lived in a state of imagined terror, as did those on the Left, fearful that democracy would be upended. Terror fuels opposition, pitches one against the other and reduces each to a “bare life”. It empties the Agora of public discourse and fills it with hate and bile. As the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben observes, “the thought of security bears within it an essential risk. A state which has security as its sole task and source of legitimacy is a fragile organism; it can always be provoked by terrorism to become itself terroristic”.4 And yet such terror texts also draw attention to its machinery and gears, obliquely reminding us that liberal democracy is only ever truly demotic: it carries on its gilded wings power inequalities and fails to truly empower those on the margins of society, to truly leave the Other’s imaginary shadow behind. The cause of the sack on the Capitol is not “Trump” and he is not the sole architect of terror: terror emerges because of a capitalist system that turns the world into markets and territories and with it inequalities and inequities, and because of religious conviction that has rendered faith a tool of direct and symbolic violence. To understand terror is to understand the operations of capitalism and religion.5

Will I Dream of Terror Tonight? Not by choice. What energises me, what mobilises my political beliefs is a steadfast belief in humankind: in their—our—agency. For every terror text, there is a blanket of love. Migrants rescued and given new lives. Syrians rebuilding their community, sharing their art and culture. Villagers uniting across ethnic and religious differences to plant crops and seed futures. If we could—and we can—mobilise these energies across the world, take on the forces of capitalism and religion together, I may never again dream of planes falling out of the sky…. This wonderful collection dreams of this dread but also of the possibilities that understanding terror texts offer us. Taking us across a range of screen and media case studies, the collection shines the most perceptive and critical light on the way war and conflict have been represented and communicated. The chapters historicise and contemporise terror texts, so that its long arm and wounding history manifest across the book’s pages. Here, we bear witness to Hollywood genre cinema, Palestinian

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film, conflict memes that contest Islamic Radicalism on Indonesiansocial media, the Charlie Hebdo cartoons and the terrorist acts that followed its publication, and the way that photographs can narrativise religious and ethnic difference. The collection’s architecture, its meeting points, is beautifully curated, so that a revelatory journey, terrifying as it may be, is undertaken, as we cross cultures, contexts and power relations. It is a moving, haunting collection that nonetheless refuses to let terror have the last word. It begins to do what Stuart Hall has asked of us, to insert our theory into cultural life, in the hope, with the expectation of, changing the world for the better. January 2021

Sean Redmond Professor of Screen and Design in the Faculty of Arts and Education Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia

Notes 1. Jean Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism and other Essays (New York: Verso, 2013). 2. Jeff Birkenstein, Anna Froula, and Karen Randell (eds.), Reframing 9/11: film, popular culture and the “war on terror” (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010). 3. Stuart Hall, “Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies” in Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson and Paula Treichler (eds.), Cultural Studies (New York: Routledge, 1992), 272. 4. Giorgio Agamben, “Heimliche Komplizen. Über Sicherheit und Terror” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, No 219, (20 September, 2001), 45. 5. Noam Chomsky, “Terror and Just Response” in Milan Rai (ed.), War Plan Iraq: Ten Reasons Against War On Iraq (New York: Verso, 2002).

Works Cited Agamben, Giorgio. “Heimliche Komplizen. Über Sicherheit und Terror,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, No 219, (20 September, 2001). Baudrillard, Jean. The Spirit of Terrorism and Other Essays. New York: Verso, 2013.

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Birkenstein, Jeff, Anna Froula, and Karen Randell (eds.). Reframing 9/11: Film, Popular Culture and the “War on Terror”. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010. Chomsky, Noam. “Terror and Just Response”. In Milan Rai (ed.), War Plan Iraq: Ten Reasons Against War on Iraq. New York: Verso, 2002. Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies”. In Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson and Paula Treichler (eds.), Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge, 1992, 277–294.

Films Joker. Directed by Todd Phillips. USA, 2019. War of the Worlds. Directed by Steven Spielberg. USA, 2005.

Sean Redmond is Professor of Screen and Design in the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University in Australia. He researches in the areas of stardom and celebrity; genre studies and science fiction cinema in particular; film authorship; film sound; film and affect; Asian Cinema; and whiteness studies. Redmond edits the journal Celebrity Studies, short-listed for the best new academic journal 2011. He has chaired the Inaugural Celebrity Studies Conference in December 2012 and was on the organisation committee for the 2014, 2016 and 2018 conferences, the last one held at the University of Sapienza in Rome.

Contents

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1

Introduction Elena Caoduro, Karen Randell, and Karen A. Ritzenhoff

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The Body as Weapon: Paradise Now and the Allure of Enchanted Violence Robert Burgoyne

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Spielberg and Terrorisms: Munich and War of the Worlds Frederick Wasser

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Spinning Terror on TV: How The Grid Taught Us What to Fear Dahlia Schweitzer

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“God, I Miss the Cold War”: The Imagination of Terrorism on Post 9/11 American Serial Drama Ariel Avissar

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Battling It Out with Memes: Contesting Islamic ‘Radicalism’ on Indonesian Social Media Leonie Schmidt

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CONTENTS

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1984 and the Anti-Sikh Pogroms: Gauri Gill’s Photo Narrativization of the (Continuing) “Horrors of Those Weeks” Harveen Sachdeva Mann

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The Pencil is Mightier Than the Kalashnikov: What Cartoons Can Tell Us About Our (Mis)understanding of Terrorist Acts in the Wake of the Charlie Hebdo Massacre Matthew Leggatt

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Return to Entebbe: CineTerrorism as Contested Memory Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann

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In the Fade: Motherhood, Grief and Neo-Nazi Terrorism in Contemporary Germany Elena Caoduro

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Tales of Chaos and Order: Exploring Terrorism’s Melodramatic Use in The Dark Knight (2008) and Skyfall (2012) Charles-Antoine Courcoux Terrorism and Gender in Eye in the Sky and Zero Dark Thirty: Women and Girls on the War Front in Contemporary Cinema Karen A. Ritzenhoff Afterword: Will I Dream of Terror, Again? Stacy Takacs

Index

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Notes on Contributors

Ariel Avissar is a Media Scholar at the Steve Tisch School of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University, Israel. His main areas of scholarly interest are television studies, American popular culture and videographic criticism. His contribution to this collection is based on his Master’s dissertation on catastrophic narratives on post-9/11 American television. Robert Burgoyne is a Writer and Lecturer whose work centres on the theory and representation of history in film. The author of five books and numerous essays, his work has been translated into nine languages. He has lectured in thirteen countries. He was formerly Chair in Film Studies at the University of St Andrews, and Professor of English and Film Studies at Wayne State University. He is currently working on a book-length project on post-9/11 American war films, provisionally entitled The Body at Risk: War Cinema in the 21st Century. Elena Caoduro is Lecturer in Media Analysis at Queen’s University Belfast, UK. Her research on contemporary European cinema, analogue nostalgia and the trauma and memory of terrorism has been published in edited collections and journals, including Networking Knowledge, Alphaville Journal of Film and Screen Media and NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies. She is currently writing a monograph about 1970s left-wing terrorism and contemporary Italian and German cinema, and co-editing a volume dedicated to fashion and non-fiction media.

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Charles-Antoine Courcoux is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Film History and Aesthetics at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Charles-Antoine’s key research interests include issues related to the representations of masculinity and femininity, feminist, queer and film theory, the social history of cinema, as well as questions surrounding the reception of technologies. He is the author of Des machines et des hommes. Masculinité et technologie dans le cinéma américain contemporain [Of Machines and Men. Masculinity and Technology in Contemporary American Cinema] (Georg, 2017), and he has co-edited with Gwénaëlle Le Gras and Raphaëlle Moine L’Âge des stars: des images à l’épreuve du vieillissement [The Age of Stars: Aging-proof Images ] (L’Âge d’homme, 2017). Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann is a Lecturer in the Department of Communication and Journalism and the DAAD Center for German Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has written Images of History in Media Memory: Cinematic Narrations of the Holocaust (2011, in German) and is co-editor of Docudrama on European Television: A Selective Survey (2016, with Derek Paget). He has published widely on cinematic memories of the Holocaust and political violence. Currently, he is a consortium member of the Horizon 2020 project “Visual History of the Holocaust: Rethinking Curation in the Digital Age” (2019– 2022) and Co-PI of the research project “(Con)sequential Images—An archaeology of iconic film footage from the Nazi era” (2021–2029). Matthew Leggatt is Senior Lecturer in English and American Literature at the University of Winchester. He is author of the monograph Cultural and Political Nostalgia in the Age of Terror: The Melancholic Sublime (2017) and editor of Was it Yesterday? Nostalgia in Contemporary Film and Television (2021). Other recent publications include the journal articles “Deflecting Absence: 9/11 Fiction and the Memorialization of Change” (Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, 2016), “You’ve Gotta Keep the Faith: Making Sense of Disaster in Post-9/11 Apocalyptic Cinema” (Journal of Religion and Film, 2015) and “Another World Just Out of Sight: Remembering or Imagining Utopia in Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven” (Open Library of Humanities, 2018). Harveen Sachdeva Mann is an Associate Professor of English at Loyola University, Chicago. She has published and presented extensively on topics ranging from third world feminism to postcolonial pedagogy, and

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from South Asian fiction to Bollywood films. Her two current projects focus on the Sikh-American diaspora in a resurgent, white Christian nationalist America and the teaching of terror(ism) in the US academy. Karen Randell is an Honorary Research Fellow of the Research Institute of Media and Performance at the University of Bedfordshire where she is a Professor of Film and Culture. Randell is coeditor of six books including The War Body on Screen and Screening the Dark Side of Love: From EuroHorror to American Cinema. Her most recent book is The Cinema of Terry Gilliam: It’s a Mad World. She has also been published in Screen and Cinema Journal. She is currently working on a British Academy project entitled, “Horror and Romance in the Technologizing of the body: Lon Chaney and Elinor Glyn ‘suffering for their art’ in five films of the 1920s” with Professor Alexis Weedon. Karen A. Ritzenhoff is a Professor in the Department of Communication at Central Connecticut State University (USA). She is affiliated with the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program and cinema studies. In 2019, her co-edited book (with Clémentine Tholas and Janis Goldie) on New Perspectives on the War Film was published by Palgrave. Also, in 2019, a co-edited collection of essays on The Handmaid’s Tale: Teaching Dystopia, Feminism, and Resistance Across Disciplines and Borders came out. In 2015, she coedited The Apocalypse in Film with Angela Krewani (Germany); Selling Sex on Screen: From Weimar Cinema to Zombie Porn with Catriona McAvoy (UK); and Humor, Entertainment, and Popular Culture During World War I with Clémentine Tholas-Disset (France). Ritzenhoff is also co-editor of Heroism and Gender in War Films (2014) with Jakub Kazecki; Border Visions: Diaspora and Identity in Film (2013) with Jakub Kazecki and Cynthia J. Miller; and Screening the Dark Side of Love: From Euro-Horror to American Cinema (2012) with Karen Randell. Leonie Schmidt is Associate Professor in Media Studies in the Media Studies Department at the University of Amsterdam. She is the author of Islamic Modernities in Southeast Asia: Exploring Indonesian Popular and Visual Culture (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). Currently, she is working on a postdoctoral project titled: “Pop Preachers and Counterterror culture: contesting Violent Extremism through Social Media and Popular Culture in Indonesia”. Dahlia Schweitzer is an Associate Professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Her latest book, Haunted Homes (2021), examines the

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haunted house as it appears in American film and television and the ways it signifies the anxieties, traumas and terrors of suburban American life. Her previous works include L.A. Private Eyes (2019), Going Viral: Zombies, Viruses, and the End of the World (2018), Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer: Another Kind of Monster (2014), as well as essays in publications including Journal of Popular Film and Television, Jump Cut and Journal of Popular Culture. Stacy Takacs is Professor of American Studies and Screen Studies at Oklahoma State University. She is the author of Terrorism TV: Popular Entertainment in Post-9/11 America (U of Kansas Press, 2012), Interrogating Popular Culture (Routledge, 2014), and numerous essays on the intersections of popular culture and politics. She co-edited the collection American Militarism on the Small Screen (Routledge, 2016) and serves as chief editor of the U of Kansas Press book series “War on Screen”. She is currently at work on a cultural history of the American Forces Network. Frederick Wasser is a Professor in the Department of Television, Radio and Emerging Media at Brooklyn College CUNY and Chair of the Department. His most recent book is a century-long history of Twentieth Century Fox. He has written a book and several articles on Steven Spielberg as well as a foundational monograph on home video and Hollywood. His field is American media history. He has taught at the University of Helsinki, Philipps Universität in Marburg, Tufts University, Central Connecticut State University and elsewhere. He spent much of the 1980s working in Hollywood.

List of Figures

Fig. 3.1

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Fig. 3.3

Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 7.1

Television coverage of the terrorists holding Olympic athletes from Israel hostage in Munich (2005) is watched by the perpetrators, members of “Black September.” One of the terrorists is outside on the balcony as broadcast news footage shows his movements Former Mossad agent Avner (Eric Bana) is meeting with his superior Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush) on the East River Waterfront in Manhattan but refuses to disclose any of his contacts from the mission As Avner (Eric Bana) returns from his final meeting with his Mossad contact, the skyline of Manhattan and the Twin Towers is prominently depicted, as an ominous portent of the future escalation of international terrorism Maren Jackson (Julianna Marguiles) on The Grid Still from the videotape Hamid Samoudi finds while looking for his brother on The Grid Another still from the videotape Hamid Samoudi finds while looking for his brother on The Grid Diagram of all players in the Global Blackout “We will keep fighting, our children will fight our battle. We’ll never forget,” Gauri Gill, 1984 (Photograph/digital image copyright Gauri Gill, 2019. Courtesy of Gauri Gill, http://gaurigill.com/works.html)

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 7.2

Fig. 7.3

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Fig. 8.1

Fig. 10.1 Fig. 10.2 Fig. 10.3 Fig. 11.1

Fig. 11.2

Fig. 12.1

“‘Jis tann lãgé soee jãné’…Only she whose body is hurt, knows,” Gauri Gill, 1984 (Photograph/digital image copyright Gauri Gill, 2019. Courtesy of Gauri Gill, http://gaurigill.com/works.html) “Postmemory—that messy archive of trauma and its transference.” Gauri Gill, 1984 (Photograph/digital image copyright Gauri Gill, 2019. Courtesy of Gauri Gill, http://gaurigill.com/works.html) Taranjeet’s living quarters, Gauri Gill, 1984 (Photograph/digital image copyright Gauri Gill, 2019. Courtesy of Gauri Gill, http://gaurigill.com/works.html) “’84 De Shaheedan Nu Samarpit” (“Dedicated to the Martyrs of ’84”), Gauri Gill, 1984 (Photograph/digital image copyright Gauri Gill, 2019. Courtesy of Gauri Gill, http://gaurigill.com/works.html) The wall of truth, Gauri Gill, 1984 (Photograph/digital image copyright Gauri Gill, 2019. Courtesy of Gauri Gill, http://gaurigill.com/works.html) “What’s this little weapon which hurt us so much?” Reproduced with the permission of the artist Satish Acharya Katja (Diane Kruger) is strapped down to the ground as she breaks the cordon line after the terrorist attack Katja waits to bleed out, following the violent death of her family The campervan, parked by a tranquil Greek beach, explodes with Katja and the neo- Nazi couple inside The Joker (Heath Ledger) is seen from the back in The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008), waiting with a clown mask in his left hand at a crossroads in downtown Gotham James Bond (Daniel Craig) stands, similar to the Batman character in the super hero franchise, in a dominating position on the rooftops of the city of London in Skyfall (directed by Sam Mendes) British Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren) is working in a home office close to her kitchen to visualize her manhunt of international Al-Shabaab terrorists in Eye in the Sky (Gavin Hood, 2015). She uses old-fashioned threads to connect the dots as well as cutting edge digital technology

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LIST OF FIGURES

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Fig. 12.4

A surveillance drone in Eye in the Sky (Gavin Hood, 2015) has only the size of a bug. Its signal can be beamed to military headquarters and labs all over the world. It supposedly helps to rule out ambiguities about terrorist targets in Kenya Special CIA Operative Agent Maya (Jessica Chastain) is tracking military intelligence by diligently working on reviewing recordings online to find Osama Bin Laden in Kathryn Bigelow’s Award winning war film Zero Dark Thirty (2012) CIA Agent Maya (Jessica Chastain) identifies the dead body of Al-Quaeda leader Osama Bin Laden by unzipping a body bag after his capture in Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012)

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction Elena Caoduro, Karen Randell, and Karen A. Ritzenhoff

On 6th January 2021 when the Capitol Building in Washington DC was stormed by a marauding mob of Trump supporters the images that beamed onto the screens of the world were interpreted as something out of a movie. Twitter was inundated with tweets about the ease of the entry to the building and many social media sites and memes asked why it had been so problematic for Nicolas Cage’s character, in National Treasure (2004) to get access to the National Archive; one tweeter declaring, “I am no longer impressed that Nicolas Cage managed to steal the Declaration of Independence.”1 Instagram, Twitter and Facebook feeds were alive with the images within minutes and threads were filled with comments

E. Caoduro (B) School of Arts, English and Languages, Queen’s University, Belfast, UK K. Randell Honorary Research Fellow, Research Institute of Media and Performance, University of Bedfordshire, Luton, UK K. A. Ritzenhoff Department of Communication, Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, CT, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 E. Caoduro et al. (eds.), Mediated Terrorism in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73511-1_1

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of disbelief, horror and eventually levity: as somebody on a Facebook feed said, “where the f*** is Gerard Butler or Channing Tatum????? Tell them that Olympus has fallen…”2 In a Facebook post on 8 January the BBC declared that from the inside of the Capitol building it “was like a zombie movie” as the protesters climbed through windows and stormed through the corridors.3 Like the mediated event of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre, the attack on the Capitol building played out on our screens and we couldn’t look away. The reason for the storming was a complex mix of disaffection and disappointment, anger at claims of a fraudulent election and ardent loyalty to an outgoing President who in a most grotesque display of win-atall-costs toxic masculinity called on his supporters to sack the seat of democracy in the United States. The stimulus for the anger that empowered the storming of the Capitol building had been growing louder throughout President Donald Trump’s presidency as an underbelly of masculine discontent. The rise of the white supremacist group, the Proud Boys, under its founder Gavin McInnes, is an indication of an eruption of masculine insecurity that wishes to reassert its white patriarchal control. It was a sign of an insurrection, not only of a disgruntled mob, but, as many Senators argued in the week-long impeachment hearings in the week of February 8, 2021, to launch a second impeachment of the former President: this was an act of Domestic Terrorism. The Inauguration of the 46th President of the United States of America, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. on January 20, 2021 went without disruption as it was broadcast live around the world. Washington DC itself was a fortress with 25,000 National Guard members in camouflage standing beside police, fire engines, and heavily armed troops. Once Biden was sworn in, a global sigh of relief could be imagined as tensions had been running high concerning the potential for violence. The idea that a democratically elected President could have been hurt or assassinated in front of running cameras was a haunting nightmare for all decent people, whatever their political affiliation. We can all imagine what this would look like: we have seen it on our screens in fiction films and television shows before.4 The threat was real. Two weeks earlier, Trump, his family members and his followers had summoned the so-called base to Washington to overturn ratification of the democratic election. The following insurgence and the sacking of the Capitol building on January 6, 2021 broadcast on live television across the world provided disturbing images of a democracy under siege

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by Domestic Terrorists. President Trump had encouraged his followers, many of whom were affiliated with militia groups and neo-Nazi networks, to march to the Capitol, a gallows and noose were mounted in front of the symbolic building to indicate that violence was part of the attempt to overturn the certification of the Presidential election. Although five people died during the events of the insurgence on the Capitol Building, large blood shed was prevented but the images that were created of angry predominantly Caucasian men storming the building, attacking police, and even defecating on the walls of the Capitol left a traumatic legacy of dysfunction and violence. It was as if we were watching “The Capitol Has Fallen”. On 19 January, 2021 Fox5 News announced that 12 National Guards had been removed from duty, two of whom had been identified as having links to far-right extremist group, to prevent potential attacks from the inside.5 The threat on the life of the new President did not come from international terrorists but from within the United States. “Proud Boys” were threatening to lead an armed struggle on the American streets, ignited in their anger by the idea that the 2020 American Presidential Elections were rigged and “stolen.” Americans turn against Americans. Biden called it out in his inaugural speech when he stated that “we must confront” and “we will defeat” a rise in “political extremism, white supremacy [and] domestic terrorism.” In this celebrated moment where power is handed over from one President to another the biggest concern was that American insurgents would return to the Capitol to exert violence as they had done two weeks earlier, marking an historic turning point in US politics. Ever since the military invasion of Iraq in 2003 under the leadership of President George W. Bush, the United States has been at war. This has been the longest lasting war in American history. The so-called “war on terror” has shifted its focus in the past ten years, the faces of victims have changed, as has the way of image transmission. Instead of American casualties from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, initially hidden from view when body bags were not to be shown on US news media before the Obama Presidency, the international victims of war in the second decade of the 21st century are remaining undocumented and there are seemingly no more American dead bodies. Instead, we find ourselves writing this book in the middle of a global pandemic where to date 2.13 million have died, over 400,000 of those Americans, of COVID-19. In contrast, 2349 Americans died during the “Operation Enduring Freedom” from

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2001 to 2014. Since 2014 “Operation Freedom’s Sentinel” has caused 93 US fatalities. Technology such as drone warfare has facilitated a way where no American soldiers need to die. When Syrian cities are bombed into rubble no cameras send the images of destruction and civilian casualties back to US screens. These are remote wars in remote countries who seemingly do not affect Americans or their Allies. Syrian refugees are not reaching American borders. President Donald Trump pulled troops out of war zones, formerly associated with terrorism, during his Presidency, keeping one of his campaign promises, while further de-stabilizing the American status as a global peacekeeper. The end of the Trump administration produced a variation on the theme of mediated terrorism. The violence of an angry army encouraged via Twitter, Facebook and other social media forums. The sustained relationship between terrorism and media has never been more commonplace and thus our collection reignites the interest in this topic and validates the necessity to reexamine these issues in light of recent developments. To an extent we follow the path initiated by Tony Shaw in his monograph Cinematic Terror: A Global History of Terrorism on Film by confronting mediated memories of terrorism beyond the United States and the UK.6 But at the same time, we do not limit our investigation to the traditional screens of film and television, as the sole litmus test to capture current anxieties. Cartoons, still photography and social media are equally important to show how memories travel and connect with other stories. In recent years terrorists attacked their victims in touristic locations (hotels, museum, beaches, resorts, archaeological sites), urban connecting sites (stations, stadia, markets, promenades and bridges) transforming streets and landmarks into metaphors for the stage, but also a synecdoche for the threatened urban space. The Madrid train bombings, the frequent suicide missions in Bagdad, Kabul, the Breivik shooting in Norway and the attacks in touristic locations in London, Tunisia, Egypt and Bali are now part of the cultural imaginary associated with modern terror, not only because of the scale of the violence, but also because of the symbolic meaning of the sheer collection of images circulating. Mediated Terrorism investigates how the memory of terrorism can be inscribed in media texts (fiction films, photography, comics, television dramas and meme) in order to explore the relationship between mediated memories and different declinations of political violence in the new millennium. This collection is grounded in the necessity to expand

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the topography of international terrorism in screen media, and to evaluate how these mediated narratives have transformed, challenged and reworked beyond the paradigmatic 9/11 template. Given the emergence of new terrorist subjects, among others Boko Haram and ISIS, the repetition of terrorist attacks in European, Asian and South Pacific cities, this edited collection represents the beginning of a new wave of scholarly works which open up the discourse about new warfare in the age of global terror and global conflicts. The local and the national remain important paradigms, but terrorism and counter-terrorism ought to be regarded, now more than ever, through a diachronic and international lens. This is because the dialogue between distant contexts, both temporally and spatially, allow us to better grasp our interconnected world. Using a range of cities, regions and conflicts from Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle East, this collection offers a comparative survey of the complex and controversial encounters between the spectacle of terrorist violence, traumatic memory and commemoration, as well as an insight into the political and ethical issues of representation and the balancing of forgetting and remembering. This collection does not aim to provide a fully comprehensive view of mediated terrorism in the new millennium but aims to shift the focus beyond 9/11 and the USA, to capture more recent developments and begins considering international and domestic terrorism as a prism through which to understand our contemporary interconnected world. While the public imaginary associated with 9/11 might reverberate in the narrativization of other terrorist attacks, even episodes from previous decades, different scenarios and new emerging subjects call for a renewed investigation and contextualization. Building on the current literature on media and terrorism, this collection includes a consideration of the most recent technological developments which have impacted the way we experience terrorism: online videos, social media, and drones. It also acknowledges the new collective concerns, from bioterrorism to extreme right-wing violence and cyber-terror. The chapters offer new interpretations of figures emerging from the representation of terrorism and counterterrorism, the male hero, the female agent, religious leader, the victim/perpetrator, the survivor. Our collection of essays, by a broad array of international scholars, reflects this altered image-making process that has developed from George W. Bush’s “war on terror.” The title of our collection Mediated Terrorism in the 21 Century captures the idea that warfare is represented on a

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variety of global social media platforms, as well as television and film. We are drawing from research outside the realm of Western-centric media studies and have incorporated the analysis of cartoons, websites and media feeds. We are also addressing different time periods and different terrorist groups as well as the way, the filmmakers from the United States, Europe, South Africa, and the Middle East are choosing to document modern wars in popular culture. In Chapter 1, “The Body as Weapon: Paradise Now (2005) and the Allure of Enchanted Violence,” Robert Burgoyne argues that nowhere is the allure of enchanted violence more thoroughly demystified than in Paradise Now (2005), a Palestinian film that dramatizes the psychological and political pressures that shape the main character’s decision to become a human bomb. Depicting both the power and the dark reality of concepts of enchanted violence, Burgoyne argues that the film explores the charged symbolism of suicide bombing in the occupied territories, as well as the human costs of political self-sacrifice. In Paradise Now he suggests these themes are placed in relief—and shown to be inseparable. Both are highlighted in the internal struggle of the young protagonist as he weighs the decision to sacrifice himself in an act of suicide terror. Burgoyne sensitively argues that by placing us almost in the shoes of the main character, the film renders the martyr as a deeply human figure, situating the act in its historical and environmental context, while also illuminating the difficult alternatives that the character has been presented with. In Chapter 2, “Spielberg and Terrorisms: Munich and War of the Worlds,” Frederick Wasser examines Steven Spielberg’s two films and explores the notion that the director has taken on the role as the liberal conscience of Hollywood. Spielberg, he suggests tests himself as a filmmaker with the problem of terrorism. Munich (2005) was his most direct confrontation with the terrorist theme but it is also prominent in Minority Report (2002) and War of the Worlds (2005). Wasser’s analysis triangulates the three movies to identify Spielberg’s approaches. In each movie terror threatens democratic values, and in each movie Spielberg works with collaborators who force him out of his safe zone. In Minority Report the tension is between Spielberg and the paranoid determinism of the source, a short story written by Philip K. Dick; Munich written by Tony Kushner, a playwright with a greater willingness to provoke Israeli apologists than Spielberg and H. G. Wells who gave us allegorized imperialistic conquest as alien terrorism. Wasser explores whether Spielberg liberal conscience is adequate to imagine a moral response to terrorism.

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In Chapter 3, “Spinning Terror on TV: How The Grid Taught Us What To Fear” Dahlia Schweitzer discusses how Television narratives after 9/11 increasingly featured not only heroic saviors and violent redemption but also fantasies of national and subjective coherence and fantasies of international coherence. The central focus for her discussion is The Grid—a 2004 espionage miniseries co-produced by the BBC, Fox TV and Carnival Films that aired on TNT in the United States and the BBC in the UK—whose narrative followed agents who made global efforts to stop terrorism. Representatives of various anti-terrorist agencies, NSA, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the FBI, but also British agencies MI5 (the United Kingdom’s domestic counter-intelligence security agency) and MI6 (the United Kingdom’s foreign intelligence agency) are forced to work together as an international counter-terrorism team to disrupt a terrorist cell determined to attack the world’s economic foundations. The series she argues, troublingly reinforce the suspicion that much of America’s threat comes from the Middle East through the defined networking of heroes from different countries working together as a team. In Chapter 4, “God, I Miss the Cold War: The Imagination of Terrorism on post 9/11 American Serial Drama” Ariel Avissar examines televisual representations as a reflection of contemporary conceptions of global terrorism and the anxieties it provokes. He illustrates that terrorism is only one symptom of broader existential anxieties inherent in everyday life and suggests that contemporary television, with the increasingly complex and distributed nature of its narrative structures, is a fitting medium for the representation of complex, global terrorism. American television, he argues, has produced an abundance of serial dramas centered on catastrophic events. These events, whether they take the form of terrorist attacks, technological experiments gone awry or alien invasions, all evoke, explicitly or implicitly, the events of September 11, 2001. From real-world oriented series like Homeland and Rubicon, to fantasy and sci-fi oriented series like Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D or Flashforward, the series invariably feature deadly and infiltrative “terrorist” networks, who can strike unexpectedly anytime and anyplace. The protagonists thus find themselves plagued by helplessness and paranoia, often expressing a sense of Cold War nostalgia, and a yearning to return to what is seen as simpler times. In Chapter 5, “Battling it out with Memes: Contesting Islamic ‘Radicalism’ on Indonesian Social Media”, Leonie Schmidt considers a recent phenomenon which represents a creative counterpart of the online “jihadi

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cool” movement. She examines how cyberwarrior accounts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter creatively and digitally alter images to counter the threats of interreligious violence and radicalization. In Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, volunteers battle Islamic radicalism with memes, hashtags, comics and videos producing an Islamic counter-terror culture. Schmidt argues that the social media posts portray kyai (students of Islam in Indonesia) and ulama (Islamic scholars and interpreters) as authentic and inspirational stars, voices of reason in troubling times and antidotes to extremism. The cyberwarriors shield the country from radicalism by circulating posts about interreligious dialogue, critical thinking and better religious knowledge and reason. Schmidt maintains that the counternarratives produced by the cyberwarriors are implicated in a contradictory process with regard to religious authority. While their postings reclaim religious authority, generating new voices of piety, at the same time their narratives further corrode religious authority. The creative act of cutting, pasting and mixing quotations allows for the fragmentation of religious authority, since cyberwarriors are often self-trained and differ from the formally trained Islamic scholars. In Chapter 6, “1984 and the Anti-Sikh Pogroms: Gauri Gill’s Photo Narrativization of the (Continuing) ‘Horrors of Those Weeks’”, Harveen S. Mann analyzes the pamphlet titled 1984 by internationally renowned photographer Gauri Gill. 1984 puts into dialogue a series of photographs taken between 2005 and 2009 of survivors of the anti-Sikh pogrom that occurred in New Delhi in 1984, following the assassination of Indira Gandhi, and essays reacting to each image. In this chapter, Mann examines Gill’s artistic practice in the context of political silence, national amnesia and denied justice for the victims and survivors. She argues that Gill’s work becomes a counter discourse to the impossibility of making sense of those atrocities, and ultimately the photo notebook 1984 works as a civic discourse, at once an aesthetic, but also a profoundly political and public act that bears continuing witness for the dead and silenced survivors. In Chapter 7, “The Pencil is Mightier than the Kalashnikov: What Cartoons can tell us about our (Mis)Understanding of Terrorist Acts in the Wake of the Charlie Hebdo’s Massacre”, Matthew Leggatt explores how some cartoons, produced on the aftermath of the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, articulate common misconceptions about acts of terror, misconceptions which are in turn perpetuated by governments and mainstream media. By analyzing cartoons which provide more peaceful

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responses to violence as well as those that instead take a retaliatory perspective, Leggatt reflects on the dynamic reactions to the Hebdo killings, and how the general public and mass media make sense of such attacks. He argues that cartoons, because of their content and their method of distribution through viral circulation on social media, seem to suggest that terrorism can be fought and defeated through the power of images. But this hegemonic display of images, he notes, is what ignites terrorist violence in the first place and creates an environment that encourages further disillusionment. Leggatt concludes that the public reaction, as spoken through the mass demonstration and through the emergence of cartoons, can reveal more about the West’s response to terrorism as a whole than it does about Charlie Hebdo as a singular incident. In Chapter 8, Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann describes in “Return to Entebbe: CineTerrorism as Contested Memory” one of the key terrorist events in Israel’s history: in the night of July 4th 1976, an Israeli special military commando rescued more than 100 hostages from the old terminal building at Entebbe in Uganda. A week before, a terrorist commando consisting of two members from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and two members of the German left militant group Revolutionäre Zellen (Revolutionary Cells) had hijacked a French plane and forced it to Uganda. A few days later they separated from the hostages the Israeli and some non-Israeli Jewish passengers and kept them to free Palestinian and militant left prisoners held in Israeli, Swiss, German and Kenyan prisons. After the successful Israeli rescue mission, Entebbe turned into a synonym for combatting global terrorism of the 1970s, a mythic place where innocent victims, cruel terrorists and brave soldiers encounter each other. However, it also became the symbol for a recurring traumatic past and persisting Holocaust memories that blended into the actual experience of terrorist violence. The limited space of the airport building offered an excellent opportunity to visualize the traumatic situation of the entrapped hostages, and to intersect its narrowness with the political decision making process and the rescue preparations. In 2018, more than forty years after the actual events, Brazilian film director José Padilha adopted the terrorist attack into another film, this time proposing that it would equally interrelate the different perspectives entangled in this memory. However, as it is the case in most historical dramas, 7 Days in Entebbe was not a pure reconstruction of the historic events but offered a post-9/11 reading of 1970s terrorism by blending

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the historical situation with current conflicts in the Middle East, especially in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Padilha’s film establishes a cinematic space that intersects different times and places, experiences and memories that demonstrate the entangled character of terrorism as a contested memory. By focusing on Holocaust memory frames and the representation of the German terrorists in 7 Days in Entebbe and comparing it to earlier films, as well as by analyzing the interrelation of different spaces in these films, the chapter reviews Entebbe as a specific cinematic place and significant case of CineTerrorism, a cinematic imagination of terrorist violence and its repercussions with the past and the present. In Chapter 9, “In the Fade: Motherhood, Grief and Neo-Nazi Terrorism in contemporary Germany,” Elena Caoduro examines the representation of far-right terrorism in German cinema and specifically analyses Fatih Akin’s film, In the Fade (2017), focusing on the blurring of the conventions of the action film and melodrama. The film represents a reflection and reaction to the discovery of a network of far-right terrorists, the National Socialist Underground (NSU), and the presence of Akin’s name in the list of possible targets. Differently from contemporary films about terrorism which take the perspective of the perpetrators, investigating their motivations, or those fighting terrorism, Akin shifts the attention to the victims and survivors of terrorist violence proposing a visceral portrayal of grief and revenge. Caoduro explores Diane Kruger’s performance as Katja, a bereaved widow and mother whose family is assassinated in a xenophobic bomb attack. Following the tripartite subdivision of the film in chapters, In the Fade articulates how the environment of survival (the domestic space, the institutional space of the courthouse, and the landscape of Greece) produces a social space where motherhood, grief and violence are intertwined. Caoduro concludes that this consideration of spatial politics adds a productive perspective to the study of representation of traumatized survivors, since power and gender relations are often negotiated through space and embedded through setting. In Chapter 10, “Tales of Revenge and Chaos: Exploring Terrorism’s Melodramatic Use in The Dark Knight (2008) and Skyfall (2012)”, Charles-Antoine Courcoux describes how an enigmatic international terrorist creates a wave of chaos in a city whose complexity and multiple ramifications make control difficult. The criminal mastermind gets captured, but only for the hero to realize “too late” that getting caught was part of the terrorist’s plan from the very beginning.

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Indeed, after having foiled once again the hero and the authorities, the villain peruses his criminal endeavor, pushing thus the hero into his last entrenchments, until the latter finally finds the resources to neutralize him. Courcoux argues that this scenario, which stages the confrontation between an all-powerful terrorist figure and a disqualified masculine hero within a highly mediated urban space emblematic of the world’s great capitals, has structured the narrative stakes of two of the most criticallyacclaimed and commercially successful films in recent memory, namely The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008) and Skyfall (Sam Mendes, 2012). Yet, despite this and these two films’ ostensible usage of 9/11 iconography, none of them ever deals with or verbalizes the issue of modern terrorism and its political implications. Starting from this observation, Courcoux’s chapter investigates the nature of the discursive use these films make of the figure of the mastermind terrorist and the urban space in which he thrives (Gotham City, London). Primarily centered on issues of gender, age and sexuality, this comparative analysis shows that, despite their anchoring in different genres (the superhero film and the spy thriller), these two productions display a relatively common usage of terrorism (that is “queer” and technologically determined) in order to justify the actions of two types of masculine heroes who, in the end, are supposedly more adapted to the challenges of their/our globalized time. In Chapter 11, “Terrorism and Gender in Eye in the Sky and Zero Dark Thirty: Women and Girls on the War Front in Contemporary Cinema,” Karen A. Ritzenhoff analyzes the ways in which new technologies have entered the war film narrative. Terrorist attacks are commonly staged at crowded sites to provoke ample global media coverage that depicts amok among civilian populations: the recent bombings in European metropolitan areas targeted concert venues, subway stations, airports and shopping malls in Brussels, Paris and Munich. Ritzenhoff discusses two recent war films from the United States and Britain that depict women as leading decision makers in the fight against international terrorism. Several Hollywood and mainstream war films since 9/11 depict the fight against terrorists as a necessary and unavoidable task, even if it involves civilians. The question of modern warfare and “collateral damage” is heightened when children are involved. Eye in the Sky (2015), by the South African director Gavin Hood, focuses on a central dilemma concerning whether a little girl in Kenya should be sacrificed to prevent a terrorist suicide attack in a civilian mall that would kill even more

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people in Nairobi. The commanders from different countries decide— while monitoring the evolving situation from screens in their control rooms—whether media coverage about a child killed by an American drone would be a more damaging PR exercise than reports about yet another terrorist attack killing many civilians in a remote location. In the end, the Kenyan girl dies in the arms of her parents at a hospital. The targeted suicide bombers are being shredded by two drone assaults, launched from an American air base, from “the eye in the sky:” only body parts of them remain in the rubble. One female computer specialist at one of the agencies (all situated in different locations) confirms the identity of a dead terrorist by scanning an ear lobe. The second example of a war film with a prominent female lead is Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty (2012). The movie has been controversial, among other concerns, because it depicts suspected terrorists being tortured by the US military at so-called “Black Sites.” CIA Agent Maya (Jessica Chastain) uses her abilities to gather intelligence to hunt and eventually capture the Al-Quaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. Ritzenhoff argues that new technologies seamlessly used in this global war theatre add to the allure of the warzone action movie. In addition, she explains that these technologies render the hyper-masculinity of earlier war films redundant and that women can now assume a central role of masterminding counter terrorist attacks through the use of cyber-warfare. Acknowledgements We would like to thank our contributors for their steadfast commitment during the most unusual year any of us will have experienced: we became a community, a support group of sorts, working through the difficulties and coming up with the goods. We would also like to thank Sean Redmond and Stacy Takacs for believing in the book before it was ready and agreeing to write our Foreword and Afterword: you inspired us with your work and we are honored to have your contributions. We would like to thank our editor at Palgrave MacMillan, Camille Davies, her editorial assistant Jack Heeney and the project coordinator Supraja Ganesh for their patience and guidance. Elena Caoduro—This volume would not have been possible without the Research Institute for Media, Arts and Performance (RIMAP) at the University of Bedfordshire, which supported research and conference trips and facilitated initial discussion between the editors. A heartfelt thank you to Gianandrea Poesio, Alexis Weedon, Jane Carr and Luke Hockley for their encouragement, generous guidance and useful advice. I am thankful to my co-editors, Katti and Karen, the best partners in this adventure who kept me sane throughout the whole process.

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Finally, and especially, my thanks go to my mother, my brother and my husband for their endless patience, uplifting humor and astonishing support. My greatest dept of gratitude is for my daughter, Athena Giulia, who made the writing more difficult, but taught me that there is so much more to life! Katti—Karen A. Ritzenhoff would like to thank Sabrina Cofer who has done magic with the index. A recent graduate from Central Connecticut State University, she is an astute media scholar and writer in the making. I am thankful to Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann who delivered his work on the crisis in Entebbe just in the nick of time. His family is in flux while he and his wife are going to shift households from Israel to Berlin, Germany. Robert Burgoyne sent me his brilliant scholarly works-in-progress about the two films I discuss in my chapter for this volume. It is wonderful to learn from the leaders in the field as we add our voices to war and media studies. I am so grateful for the incredible international team of scholars we have assembled for this collection. Many of our authors have been patient with us as we re-envisioned this volume and added more voices. We had to move the deadline for submission of the manuscript to Palgrave twice…and some of our authors have changed universities, gotten promoted and have moved on in their academic careers. We are thankful for so much dedication to the project during house moves, retirement, University moves, and home-schooling. We all kept being committed to lead this project to fruition despite all the challenges of working with each other in a global pandemic. I would like to thank my immediate family: my husband Michael, my three kids Jan-Philipp, Dominik and Lea-Karoline, my mother Birgit in Germany, and my brother Burkhart in Copenhagen. My trusted girlfriend Chez Liley helped me, as always, to see the bigger picture. During the COVID pandemic these extended members of my American family kept me sane: Amy Dumschott, Bonnie Baldwin, Elizabeth Eden, Susan Yancy with our “Cup of Conversation” tribe, my allies at the University, our relentlessly supportive group of “women warriors” in academia, and the “Badass Female Filmmakers” (BFFs) in Connecticut: Jennifer Boyd, Karyl Evans, Ágnes Mócsy, Heather ElliottFamularo, Suzanne Colton and Tracy Heather Strain. A shout-out also to my biggest gift during the pandemic, my painting teacher Elizabeth Seewald Hill. My friend and colleague Renée White and I will continue on our editing journey. Another shout-out to Clémentine Tholas who is a fellow war film genre scholar, always in our minds and by our side. The brilliant and lovely Karen Randell and Elena Caoduro are also family. Karen and I have been a team for almost twenty years: managing conferences together, leading discussions, writing, editing, traveling and dreaming together. She and Elena help me believe in the value of research and academic scholarship, paired with international solidarity. As we expand our reach to include colleagues

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and friends across borders, we seem to contribute to the ideal that world peace is not beyond our reach despite the threats of international and domestic terrorism. Karen Randell—I would like to thank my ever-constant support team for always being in my corner. My family; Victoria Jane, Wills Brant, Alex Brant, Parker Lucas, Rick Randell, Lou Randell, Kev Randell, and Jane Chapman. Thank you to my besties and chosen family, Kim Furnish, Jill Langford, Alexis Weedon, Wendy Leeks and Amanda Oliver. Thank you to the Tap on Tour: Mark Margaretten, Keith Jebb and Lesley McKenna, still crazy after all these years! Thank you to Chris Holmlund for our virtual chats and sanity checks, you were there when I needed you most. Amy Chaps, thanks for the bants. Big love and thanks to my Rockies: we know that singing will solve anything; thank you, JoJo, Lesley, Jayne, Jan, Samantha, and Wendy for “standing by me” even if it was mostly virtual. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to one woman in particular; thank you, Rachel Challen. I would not have made it through 2020 without your constant support, loud laughter, lattes in the churchyard and unyielding belief in me. Te iubesc. And I have dedicated this book to John, who I thank for watching the films endlessly with me and for delivering coffee and tea, making the best food, and the best cakes, while I worked on this volume. You make everything we do together so joyful, thank you. I know that you would have preferred for me to work about Jason Bourne…maybe next time. Finally, we three have nurtured each other through this process, it has been quite a year, and what our process has revealed is that kindness and unconditional support go much further than panic and stress about deadlines and font size and referencing style. The book is testament to the drive of Karen (Katti), the dedication to the cause of Elena and the feel the fear and do it anyway resolve of Karen. It has been an honor.

Notes 1. Brian Marks, “Nicolas Cage’s 2004 Movie National Treasure Goes Viral on Twitter…After Users Compare the Film to the Capitol Hill Insurrection.” Daily Mail Online, 8 January 2021, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshow biz/article-9126493/Nicolas-Cages-National-Treasure-goes-viral-userscompare-Capitol-Hill-insurrection.html. 2. With thanks to Sumaira Wilson and Tim Highsted. 3. BBC News, “The Storming of the Capitol.” Facebook, 8 January 2021, https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews/videos/399443771120066. 4. For instance, In the Line of Fire (1993); Vantage Point (2008); White House Down (2013); Olympus has Fallen (2013); Designated Survivor (2016–19).

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5. Lindsay Watts, “12 National Guard Members Removed from DC Mission.” Fox 5 DC, 19 January 2021, https://www.fox5dc.com/news/12-nationalguard-members-removed-from-dc-mission. 6. Tony Shaw, Cinematic Terror: A Global History of Terrorism on Film (London: Bloomsbury, 2014).

Works Cited BBC News. “The Storming of the Capitol.” Facebook, 8 January 2021, https:// www.facebook.com/bbcnews/videos/399443771120066. Marks, Brian. “Nicolas Cage’s 2004 Movie National Treasure Goes Viral on Twitter…After Users Compare the Film to the Capitol Hill Insurrection.” Daily Mail Online, 8 January 2021, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshow biz/article-9126493/Nicolas-Cages-National-Treasure-goes-viral-users-com pare-Capitol-Hill-insurrection.html. Shaw, Tony. Cinematic Terror: A Global History of Terrorism on Film. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. Watts, Lindsay. “12 National Guard Members Removed from DC Mission.” Fox 5 DC, 19 January 2021, https://www.fox5dc.com/news/12-national-guardmembers-removed-from-dc-mission.

Films and Television The Dark Knight. Directed by Christopher Nolan, USA, UK, 2008. Designated Survivor. Created by David Guggenheim. Produced by Richard Klein, Ann Kindberg and Tommy Burns. Aired 2016–19 on ABC and Netflix. Eye in the Sky. Directed by Gavin Hood. UK, 2015. Flashforward. Created by Brannon Braga and David Goyer. Produced by HBO Entertainment and ABC Studios. Aired 2009–2010 on ABC. Homeland. Developed by Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa. Produced by Fox 21 Television Studios. Aired 2011–2020 on Showtime. In the Fade (Auf dem Nichts ). Directed by Fatih Akin. Germany, 2017. In the Line of Fire. Directed by Wolfgang Petersen. USA, 1993. Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Created by Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon, and Maurissa Tancharoen. Produced by ABC studios, Marvel Television, and Mutant Enemy Productions. Aired 2013–2020 on ABC. Minority Report. Directed by Steven Spielberg. USA, 2002. Munich. Directed by Steven Spielberg. USA, Canada, France, 2005. National Treasure. Directed by Jon Turteltaub. USA, 2004. Olympus has Fallen. Directed by Antoine Fuqua. USA, 2013. Paradise Now. Directed by Hany Abu-Hassad. Palestine, France, Germany, 2005.

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Rubicon. Created by Jason Horwitch. Produced by HBTV, Warner Horizon Television. Aired 2010 on AMC. Skyfall. Directed by Sam Mendes. UK, USA, Turkey, 2012. The Grid. Created by Tracey Alexander and Ken Friedman. Produced by Tracey Alexander, Joshua Brand, Patrick Sheane Duncan, Brian Eastman, Ken Friedman, and Gareth Neame. Aired July 19, 20, and 21, 2004 on TNT. Vantage Point. Directed by Pete Travis. USA, 2008. War of the Worlds. Directed by Steven Spielberg. USA, 2005. White House Down. Directed by Roland Emmerich. USA, 2013. Zero Dark Thirty. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. USA, 2012. 7 Days in September. Directed by José Padilha. UK, USA, 2018.

CHAPTER 2

The Body as Weapon: Paradise Now and the Allure of Enchanted Violence Robert Burgoyne

Nowhere is the allure of enchanted violence more thoroughly demystified than in Paradise Now, a 2005 Palestinian film by director Hany Abu-Hassad, winner of the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. As the literary scholar Sarah Cole has argued, violence, especially embodied violence, is often represented as either enchanted or disenchanted, as the “germinating core of rich symbolic structures,” or the “emblem of grotesque loss;” as a symbol of historical transformation and renewal, or as a sign of utter degeneration and waste: “[t]o enchant, in this sense, is to imbue the violent experience with symbolic and cultural potency; to disenchant is to refuse that structure, to insist on the bare, forked existence of the violated being, bereft of symbol”.1 Paradise Now renders the transformation of a shy young man, Said (Kais Nashif), living in the shadow of a complicated family history into a ritualized sacrificial subject and imagined agent of national redemption. Closely following the last three days of his life in the West Bank, the film details the psychological and political pressures that shape his decision to become a human

R. Burgoyne (B) University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 E. Caoduro et al. (eds.), Mediated Terrorism in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73511-1_2

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bomb, addressing both the ceremonial conversion of the character into a martyr—the enchantment of violence into a medium of renewal—as well as the existential drama of doubt and ambivalence that shadow Said’s final days. Paradise Now offers a nuanced treatment of what is perhaps the most extreme manifestation of the shifting character of war in the present: the use of the body as a weapon. In recent years, suicide as a tactic of war has become an emblematic and terrifying weapon of contemporary geopolitical conflict. At a point when technology had begun to seem ubiquitous and overwhelming, the power of bodies in war has suddenly returned in the form of an agency whose traumatizing impact reverberates throughout the contemporary world. Understood by classic theorists such as Niccolò Machiavelli and Carl von Clausewitz as the most important weapon of war, the body of the committed partisan has freakishly metamorphosed into the figure of the human bomb in some sectors, a figure who is celebrated—like the partisans of the past—in areas of the society in which he or she lived and demonized in the cultures under attack. Depicting both the allure and the dark reality of concepts of enchanted violence, the film explores the charged symbolism of suicide bombing in the occupied territories, as well as the human costs of political self-sacrifice, dramatizing the power of embodied violence to elicit a sense of magical social transformation and depicting, with close attention to ordinary life, the frightening reality of suicide bombing and its underlying social narrative of abjection and despair. The complex symbolic messages that cluster around the body of the main character in Paradise Now combine aspects of martyrdom, suicide, and terrorism in a way that speaks specifically to the geo-politics of the contemporary period. The political theorists Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri describe the suicide terrorist as the “dark opposite, the gory doppelgänger of the safe, bodiless soldier,” and emphasize the contradiction the suicide bomber poses to the strategy of the West, with its increasing moves to bodiless war: “Just when the body seems to have disappeared from the battlefield, it comes back in all its gruesome, tragic reality.”2 In Paradise Now, Said’s decision to become a human bomb is conditioned by a complex overlay of political, religious, and personal motivations, ranging from the promise of transformative agency through martyrdom to personal revenge and self-purification. Although the cultural potency of self-sacrifice is addressed in the film, it is the shaping

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influence of generational memory and the daily experience of humiliation that drive the main character to act, and that create the pressures that make self-sacrifice appear to be the only way of changing the rules of the game. Clothed in a suicide vest, the protagonist of Paradise Now is mapped into a symbolic system in which martyrdom, suicide, and the active destruction of others are braided together in a way that exposes both the symbolic power of embodied violence and the grotesque waste of suicide terror.

Transit into a War Zone The film begins with an incident of everyday, understated violence at an Israeli checkpoint. Opening with shots of a young woman, Suha (Lubna Azabal), crossing into Nablus, the camera pauses with her as she weighs the decision to cross into the occupied territories. The film renders her entry into the West Bank explicitly as a transit into a war zone. Required to pass through a roadside checkpoint, Suha, who will become a major figure in the film, is immediately confronted by a checkpoint guard who asserts control of her possessions, intimidating and dominating her with his gaze and manner. Silent and malevolent, the Israeli soldier makes a point of handing over and then withdrawing her passport, as if to underline the absolute control he has over her person. As she turns to walk into Nablus, we see that another soldier a few yards away has had an automatic weapon trained on her throughout. Without voice over, explanatory titles, or embedded media to provide context, the film opens on a world defined by tension and intimidation. Establishing in its first scene what the critical geographer Derek Gregory calls the “everyday exercise of the power to humiliate,” Paradise Now conveys a granular experience of life under occupation, concentrating on the way the ordinary textures of life are distorted by the psychological pressure of Israeli domination.3 One well-known commentator, the former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Meron Benveniste, says that the function of the checkpoints is to “send a message of force and authority, to inspire fear, and to symbolize the downtrodden nature and inferiority of those under the occupation.” As Gregory reports, Benveniste calls these the “checkpoints of arrogance,” and suggests that the occupation affects Israelis as well: “some conscientious objectors [within the Israeli military] came to see that humiliation saturates both

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sides of the barrier. For the checkpoint also degrades those who are enrolled in its operations: ‘You become a machine of the checkpoints.’”4 As the narrative of the film begins, Said and his friend Kahled (Ali Suliman) appear to lead ordinary lives of semi-skilled labor at a car repair shop, a life defined by quotidian regularity. Work, glasses of tea, family dinners unfold as usual, except for the occasional provocation like the reminder by an irascible customer that Said’s father was executed some years earlier for collaborating with the Israelis, an insult that Said accepts with seeming impassivity, while Khaled leaps to his defense. The monotony of daily life, the sense of a world that is without prospects or potential for positive change, comes through in small, dissonant details, and in particular in the flattened affect of Said, who seems to have stifled his emotional life under a blanket of low-level resentment. The Palestine of the film is portrayed as a nation that has been forcibly removed from history, stripped of a sense of its place in the movement of nations, intentionally cut off and moved back in time. The brute confusion of war is here reduced to the low buzz of the occupied territory, with all the tension that this condition implies. Rather than the spectacle of confrontation in a contested space, a trope that has been a defining feature in war films for a century, Paradise Now focuses on the inner feedback loop, the daily experience of guilt and shame and the way it forecloses both a positive connection to the historical past and to the possibility of a future. The film’s close dramatization of the psychology of political selfsacrifice, illustrated through the character of Said, attempts to shed light on the elusive, seemingly opaque subject of the emotional life and psychological motivations of the suicide bomber. At the beginning of the film, the act of suicide resistance is accorded a heightened, dramatic meaning, set forth as the amplified voice of Palestinian suffering: as theorist Gayatri Spivak says, “Suicidal resistance is a message inscribed in the body when no other means will get through.”5 As the narrative progresses, however, the film peels away the ceremonial trappings to underscore the isolation of the human bomber, suggesting that the act of human bombing now carries very little in the way of community sanction. Suha, the daughter of a famous Palestinian revolutionary and martyr who has lived most of her life outside Palestine, at one point argues heatedly with Khaled against the practice of human bombing, opposing it on both practical and moral grounds. In many ways, Suha serves as the film’s focalizer, and its moral compass, the prism through whom the audience reads the film. Sympathetic, worldly, responsive to Said, Suha draws the main character out, and

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directly challenges some of his positions. For all her insight and sophistication, however, Suha is an outsider; she has spent the majority of her years in comfortable settings in Morocco and France. Her emotional response to Said is marked by a kind of optimism and determination that is in marked contrast to the Palestinian characters we see. Abu-Karem (Ashraf Barham), the leader of the Palestinian terrorist group that recruits Said and his friend Khaled, serves as the counterweight to Suha, quietly and effectively playing on the frustration and emotional vulnerability of the two young men, seeming to offer an antidote to the sense of impotence that defines life in the Palestinian territories. His gravitas, his “legendary” status in the community, brings an almost mythic sense of martyrdom into view, recalling its traditional meaning and purpose as a means of bearing witness to a cause, of giving testimony. The quietly charismatic terrorist leader emphasizes the honor their deaths will bring, and the value of their sacrifice for the Palestinian cause. In his quiet demeanor and sense of old school revolutionary purpose, Abu-Karem embodies the potent appeal of violence as a mode of organic renewal, or perhaps more precisely, of sacrifice as a mode of political speech.

The Semiotics of “Political Self-Sacrifice” International Relations scholar K. M. Fierke has explored at length the connotations of the various terms applied to the human bomb in Palestine, each of which emphasize one or another aspect of the act, and each of which conveys a distinct political message.6 Martyrdom, for example, is a word that embeds the act in a community, and that implies a social mandate. As Fierke writes, “In the Palestinian context, ‘martyrdom’ was, at one and the same time, the ‘fastest way to immortalize themselves in Allah’s heaven and the surest way to achieve a balance of terror with Israel’s overwhelming military machine.’ It is the social significance of the act, the promise to address a social injustice … that provide[s] the social legitimacy for choosing to end one’s life.”7 The term “martyrdom,” however, is not straightforward. Fierke points out that Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims have very different understandings of the word, “while the concept of ‘martyrdom’ exists in both the Sunni and Shia traditions of Islam, it has a different meaning in each. In the Sunni tradition, martyrdom is closely linked to jihad and a conception of self-sacrifice as the noblest act of witness to the sovereignty of God. For Shiites,

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martyrdom is more closely linked to rituals of suffering, mourning and redemption.”8 The word “suicide,” on the other hand, and even more, “terror suicide,” are terms that emphasize the solitary and destructive nature of the act and carry a strong psychopathological taint. Suicide implies a withdrawal from community, a removal from the social world—a destructive act. For Fierke, the term “political self-sacrifice” is the most accurate verbal rendering of the act, one that is free of the evaluative connotations of either suicide or martyrdom: To sacrifice is a verb, which points to an agent, an act and outcome. The word suggests a relationship between the individual that is sacrificed and a community that is the beneficiary of that sacrifice … one cannot meaningfully sacrifice the self for the self’s own sake but only for others. The term only has meaning in a social world.9

“Political self-sacrifice,” however, brackets the violence of the act of terror suicide, and also mutes the damage to the native community caused by the suffering that will ensue. Another writer, Nouri Gana, offers the term “suicide resistance”, a description that attempts to split the difference between the community sanction implied by martyrdom and the withdrawal from community signified by the word suicide.10 “Suicide resistance,” however, which appears to capture certain nuances of suicide bombing without appearing to endorse it, nonetheless ignores the semiotic power of the act, its fundamental importance as a signifying, symbolic action. The complexity of the political and social conditions explored in Paradise Now, and the range of meanings the act of self-sacrifice conveys are illuminated in the differences among these contested terms. Although the extensive literature on the symbolism of martyrdom, sacrifice, and the human bomb in contemporary Palestine cannot be summarized here, the scholarly works on the subject describe a complex sociological phenomenon in which religious, political, and military ideas and purposes are combined in an act of spectacular violence. What emerges as central in these readings is that the act is deeply embedded in society. As political philosopher Ivan Strenski writes, “While these deaths seem to be calculated, utilitarian acts of individuals … they are motivated by a vengeance marked by a strong desire for ‘spectacular revenge.’ They are thus exemplary signs that are intended for certain audiences … Their success seems necessarily to rely upon the kind of communal recognition

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and subsequent ritual celebration of the operations by the community from which the bomber comes.”11 Further, the suicide bomber enacts a kind of symbolic performance of nation. Laden with explosives, the human bomber will be blown to pieces, thus reproducing the image of a land that has been divided by the settlements into fragments, each with a different status. As sociologist Fahrad Khosrohkavar writes, “Although his body will be shattered into thousands of pieces, his martyrdom will make it intact as is the idealized Palestine in his mind.”12 Film scholar Raya Morag discusses the shattered body of the human bomber being resurrected and reincarnated, restored to animate existence in the martyr videos and funerary celebrations that follow.13 Violent death, in this context, is seen as an organic part of national becoming, a generative act that summons a sense of national coherence—with the body itself understood as the vehicle of transformation.

The Symbolic Systems of the Martyr Ritual Several of these ideas emerge in the videotaping of the martyr speeches by the two main characters of Paradise Now, Said and Khaled, and in the ritual that surrounds the preparation for martyrdom. Combining the disparate iconographies of political resistance and religious sacrifice, the martyr ritual in Paradise Now centers on the body, editing it into different symbolic systems, transforming it into a figural expression of the history and imagined community of Palestine. The symbolic power of violence is emphasized here. As Fierke writes, The ritual surrounding the act, from videotapes recording a last will and testament, to headbands and banners, are symbols of the empowered individual making a free choice to self-sacrifice for the cause … these rituals turn the act ‘into performative traditions and redemptive actions through which the faithful express their devotion.’14

Combining the discourses of passive, religious martyrdom, where pain acts as a kind of spiritual therapy and symbolic capital, with the militant poses of violent agency, the martyr ritual in Paradise Now conveys a complex range of messages. Set in an abandoned tile factory, the spatial features of the setting, the pillars, bays and archways, reinforce the atmosphere of an ancient rite. With an automatic rifle propped against his hip, wrapped in a Palestinian headscarf, Khaled begins by reading a carefully

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scripted history of injustices committed by the Israeli state. As the camera slowly tracks in on Khaled’s face, he speaks in formal Arabic, and his words ring with conviction. Looking to Said for approval, he finishes with a dramatic flourish, and invokes God’s blessing. He asks the cameraman and his assembled audience if his performance was satisfactory. Yes, he is told, but he will have to do it again, for some reason the camera did not record. Although one writer has characterized this scene as a parody of the ritualized martyr speech, its chilling seriousness comes through strongly, despite the break in form caused by the camera that failed to work.15 Khaled and Said are both portrayed wielding rifles, dressed in fatigues, and wearing ammo belts and headbands, as the camera, framing them in a frontal, centered shot, slowly tracks into close-up. The visual grammar of the scene is significant. In striking contrast with the concealment and “passing” that is critical to the success of the human bomber, who must blend in with the social scene he or she is targeting and pass anonymously within the target society, the visibility of the performance is emphasized. Although the human bomber will be clothed in innocuous garb during the mission, and his or her weapon will be hidden from view, the martyr video celebrates and even exaggerates the visibility of the threat. The almost atavistic image of the resistance fighter depicted here transforms the anonymous, clandestine act of human bombing into its opposite, grafting the image of the revolutionary hero onto the impassive face of the martyr. French philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s description of modern terror is instructive: terrorist suicide, he writes, is personal, carried out in broad daylight: everything resides in the defiance and the duel, in a dual, personal relationship with the adverse power. Since it is the one that humiliates, it is the one that must be humiliated—and not simply exterminated. It must be made to lose face […] The other must be targeted and hurt in the full light of the adversarial struggle.16

The charged combination of religious and political imagery brings the complex claims of suicide terror into clear view. On the one hand, the visual rhetoric and symbolic language of the martyr ritual recalls the history of Christian martyrs, who were often depicted in frescos, paintings and narratives in ways that emphasized the utter annihilation of the body. The concentrated focus on physical torment in these representations

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was designed to produce an intensely affective, embodied response in a community of witnesses.17 As historian Christos D. Merantzas writes, the martyr’s fortitude in the face of appalling pain, depicted in the impassive facial expressions they wore and as described by contemporary writers, produced a somatic response in the viewers of icons and other representations, a “collectively constituted vital energy, contained in the martyr’s objectified body … capable of activating practices which aimed at religious, but also at political ends.”18 In a striking parallel to practices in Palestine, the collective memorial ceremonies celebrating the martyr’s holy death “rendered [the martyr] physically present.”19 Moreover, in some settings, the detailed depiction of the agonies of Christian martyrs was utilized as a weapon of political resistance, fulfilling the goals of preserving the tradition of martyrdom as well as recruiting fresh “faith fighters,” dedicated to weakening “the enemy of the Orthodox faith.”20

“The Voice of Dynamite” and Enchanted Violence The ritual in Paradise Now, however, also evokes a rich iconography of militant resistance. Terrorist violence in the 19th century, exemplified in the anarchist movement, provides a ready comparison. Although the actual damage caused by anarchist acts was minimal, the extraordinary impact of their pronouncements and deeds on public perception can be compared to the power of terrorist violence in the viral media of today. Terror by explosion in particular, aroused an intensive response. Described in manifestos and newspapers as “propaganda by deed,” the bomb was understood as the most meaningful form of speech, “the voice of dynamite,” as it was called. Sarah Cole writes: “Propaganda by deed became canonized as allowable violence […] its effective transposition into terrorist ideology makes it one of the critical links between this late Victorian chapter in history and the long era of terrorism that has not yet ended.”21 In contemporary culture, the idea that violence can be understood as a form of language, as action encoded into spectacular meaning, is pervasive, a dominant characteristic of contemporary political and media life. The old-fashioned term “propaganda by deed,” although perhaps archaic sounding to contemporary ears, in fact conveys a nuanced understanding of the economy of the violent act, emphasizing the speech act over the deed itself. Political scientist Kevin McDonald describes the role of images

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in contemporary terrorist violence in a way that is similar to the anarchists’ “propaganda by deed.” He states, “[T]he photographic image of the martyr does not simply tell a story, it is constitutive of the act of martyrdom as witness. Without the image there is no martyr.”22 Following the reading, and filming, of the martyr speech, the scene details the careful washing of the characters’ bodies, the shaving and the close haircut, all rendered in a slow, gliding series of lap dissolves accompanied by the sound of prayers. As if to drive home the ceremonial transformation of the body, the closing shot of this sequence depicts the two lead characters seated at a long table, framed in a way that recalls Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. The reference reminds us that the crucifixion and the resurrection are the ultimate story of magical transformation, a story in which violent death leads directly to a promised afterlife. The connotations of sacrifice and the body are emphasized here in a way that is almost poetic, condensing religious, national, and cross-cultural messages. As religion theorist Ivan Strenski writes, “if in Israel/Palestine one goal of these deaths is to attack others outright in jihad, then another, simultaneous one, is to create a Palestinian political entity by making a sacrificial offering to Allah and the umma.”23 The idea of violence as an enchanted act, an act that generates new life and transforms the real, is conveyed through the scene’s aesthetic power, the slow, gliding movement of the camera, the chanting that sounds like music, the sensual lighting. The magic of the ritual, however, is set against our awareness of the material off stage, out of frame, the carnage and pain of suicide bombing, as well as the larger context of Palestinian history in the 20th and 21st centuries. The world of real loss and suffering is here “enchanted into art,” in Cole’s pointed phrase, providing a crystallized expression of the way embodied violence can be conjured into an act of redemption and renewal.24 The actual misery and agony of war, however, the extreme violence of the act of suicide bombing, is set to one side in a social ritual whose transformative magic seems to ennoble the act. Avoiding almost any direct reference to the carnage that will be inflicted on the body, and on other bodies, the scene conveys a certain beauty. At the same time, however, Paradise Now threads a stark corporeal reminder into the texture of the sequence—the shot of the bomb maker whose hands have been blown off—serving as a subtle counterpoint to the aestheticizing martyr ritual. In the midst of the ceremonial transformation of the bodies of the two characters, the film presents a specific, brutal reminder of the body’s pain, crystallized in the shot of the stumps and

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hooks of the bomb-maker as he solders together the explosive leads on the suicide vests, a material testimony to the suffering that war entails.

Demystification of the Martyr While the film stops short of providing a fully articulated alternative to the concept of sacrificial violence, its second act stages several scenes that might be called local interventions, prosaic realities that accumulate outside the frame of the martyr ritual and the narrative of Palestinian resistance. Said becomes isolated in the second half of the film, separated from his friend Khaled after their first attempt to cross over into Israel fails, and unable to reconnect with the leaders of the resistance, who have gone to ground. As he wanders around Nablus, dressed in his dark suit with the explosive vest locked onto his body, he has a series of encounters, first with his mother (Hiam Abbass), who senses his presence in the garden but who he decides not to see, then with the proprietor of a video store, where he learns that martyr videos are less popular than collaborator confession videos, and finally with Suha, his would-be girlfriend, with whom he shares a first and last kiss. In these ordinary encounters, the body of the martyr becomes, once again, quotidian. Sweating profusely, aware that he is a menace to his own city and his friends, Said’s anxious transit through the alleys and passageways of his hometown recalls the strange worlds of isolated men who populate the works of painter René Magritte and neorealist director Vittorio de Sica. In the second act of the film, the personal, political, and religious histories that Said carries with him and that propel him toward self-sacrifice begin to be clarified, and his vocation as a martyr comes to be demystified. Here the film subtly subtracts the community sanction for martyrdom, illuminating Said’s place and purpose in a very different social narrative, one of ordinary life, where the martyr appears not as an agent of transformation but as a lone figure, a devotee of sacrifice without larger meaning, in other words, as a suicide. Several scenes underline the changed status of the act of suicide bombing in the film. At one point, Said is pictured lying down on his father’s grave, ready to pull the triggering mechanism on his vest, moments away from ending his life in a particularly abject fashion. Only the sudden appearance of his friends Khaled and Suha, who have intuited his intention, prevents him from blowing himself up. At another point, after asking to use the bathroom at a roadside stand in Nablus, Said tissues the sweat from his body and exposes the bomb wrapped around

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his waist. Grey-faced, he looks into the camera, and quietly says, “You cannot alter your fate. There is no other way. It’s God’s will.” He bends down to the sink, and looks back up, as a reverse shot reveals that he is looking into a mirror, a shot that might be read as him looking at the image of his father, whom, his mother says, he exactly resembles. As Said walks around Nablus and the border zones of the West Bank, his decision to extinguish himself begins to seem more and more like a misreading. He is asked several times, for example, if he is going to a wedding, a repeated question that becomes almost comical. In the heat of the day, his black suit is read as clothing appropriate only for a ceremonial occasion. Now much has been made of the symbolism of the Palestinian martyr as a bride or groom, a prominent motif in many martyr rituals and videos. The blood of the martyr is here imagined as a fertilizing force, inseminating the land, flowing into the soil and bringing the nation into being—an imagined nation that can only be achieved in this sanguinary form. The singular act of love enacted by the bride or groom thus makes them one with the land itself. As sociologist Fahrad Khosrokhavar describes it, the shedding of blood is imagined as “thamauturgical,” an act that ushers in a magical transformation, a word that blends the imagery of Christian miracles and wonders with the contemporary paradigm of enchanted violence: The theme of the blood of the martyrs is […] important. When it is spilled on the ground, it gives new life to the sacred cause of those who are fighting against the forces of Evil. Its thaumatological virtues can be seen when it spurts from the body: this releases the fighter’s energy and guarantees a victory over their oppressors.25

Rather than the symbolism of a sanguinary wedding, the blood of the martyr fertilizing the soil and bringing the nation into being, Paradise Now, in these middle scenes, stresses instead the incongruous figure that Said makes in his traverse through the urban setting of Nablus, emphasizing the oddity of his dress, his changed status as one who is “already dead,” his sudden unheimlich presence in the land of the living. Through a series of accidents and coincidences, Said encounters again almost all the characters we have come to know from the first half of the film, and is reminded, powerfully, by Suha, the daughter of a martyr, that self-sacrifice is not the answer.

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The scene with Suha is staged in a particularly telling manner. Knowing nothing of the suicide plan, Suha has pressed Said into making a quick repair to her car. In the process, his watch has been damaged, and she insists on taking it to the repair shop. Afterwards, they park on a road and talk, framed by what looks like a junkyard of automobiles behind them. Said confides in Suha about his father’s execution as a collaborator, an event that took place when he was ten. “It’s not as bad as people think,” he says. She touches his shoulder and asks if he would like to talk about it. He seems to stiffen, as if to keep her at arms length, telling her that talking about it “won’t end the occupation,” and that the whole world knows his father was a collaborator. Protesting that she didn’t know he responds that she knows very little, she comes from a different world. He then softly, tentatively, kisses her. Here the dialogue editing changes. The conversation had been rendered in a series of close, tightly composed reverse shots, framed by the interior of the car. As Said kisses her, however, the camera cuts to a position behind the characters, with a wide two shot of the protagonists revealing a beautiful, long shot vista through the windshield. Cast in silhouette, the almost-lovers are pictured, for just one moment, as a romantic couple in another type of movie, a poignant moment that alludes to ordinary happiness and the possibilities of a future together, emotions that up to this point appeared to be nearly alien to the world of the film. Here Said is offered an alternative. As in several previous scenes, the moment is staged as a pause point in the narrative, a hesitation in the narrative momentum similar to the opening scene in which Suha stands for a long minute before deciding to return to Nablus. And as Said leaves the car abruptly, he seems to be forcing himself away from Suha and back into another reality in which revenge, self-purification and self-immolation are somehow commingled.

Bloody History of Self-Sacrifice Cultural theorist Edward Said has famously written that terrorism cancels narrative, that it is the end of narrative. In Paradise Now, however, the violence that Said embodies brings an exceptionally concentrated narrative potential into view. On the one hand, the ordinary life of the protagonist, its possibilities as well as its monotony and diminished horizons, becomes charged suddenly with narrative meaning. With the explosives strapped to his chest, the psychic scars of Said’s past history, his father’s execution,

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his virtual captivity in Nablus, his dark experiences of humiliation, are charged with narrative potential; shame and frustration become the raw ingredients of a magical transformation. On the other hand, the act can be read as a gesture of self-erasure: Said cuts himself off from his mother, from his friend Khaled, and from Suha, and chooses to move in a lonely orbit of melancholy. Nouri Gana describes Paradise Now as a film that “brings the current mind-numbing, albeit mobilizing, credulity of the ‘grand narrative’ of terrorism into intimate collision with the micronarratives of Palestinian youths, their diurnal psychosocial, economic, and political micro-struggles for identity, for dignity, and for a life worthy of its name.”26 In the graveyard scene, the scripted performance that the body bomb demands and the personal, familial history that Said cannot escape, an intimate collision in every sense, are staged as a fatal collusion, the bloody history of self sacrifice and the bad history of the family past luring the character into a nihilistic act. As Said lays on the stone grave of his father, clutching the trigger mechanism, the camera frames him in a series of tight closeups, isolating his eyes and his hands, the trigger cord seemingly within a few millimeters of detonating the vest. Suddenly, Khaled and Suha burst on the scene, and with high emotion express their overwhelming sense of relief that they have found Said in time. But Said is resolute, “I’m going tomorrow,” he growls at Khaled, and rails against Khaled that he has brought Suha with him. Khaled and Suha try to restrain him but Said breaks away and runs off into the night. The scene crystallizes the emotional stakes the spectator has invested in Said’s survival. Almost unbearably tense, the graveyard scene brings Said’s frustration, his blocked desire, his inability to achieve his ambitions into sharp focus. Like Khaled and Suha, however, we somehow expect that the discovery of Said “in the nick of time” will function as a last-minute rescue, saving him from the theatre of death that he has been acting in, bringing home the power of friendship and love. In other words, the spectator, who has closely followed the sensitive, serious young man and has invested her or his hopes for an alternate future, is confronted with the fact that Said has rejected hope. Functioning almost as the voice of a chorus, protesting at his decisions, the film audience becomes a kind of extension of the community from which Said is removing himself. As Suha had exclaimed to Khaled, in the midst of their argument, about the point and purpose of suicide bombing, “And what about us, the one’s that remain? Don’t you see what you’re doing is destroying us?”

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A long, quiet sequence follows the graveyard scene, set in the crumbling, peeling rooms of a building where the resistance leaders have holed up. Khaled and Said must now decide “for themselves” if they are willing to continue the mission. The camera lingers on Khaled, in isolation, as he visibly anguishes over his decision. Confronting himself in a broken mirror, in a shot that echoes the earlier shot of Said in the mirror, Khaled decides that he must talk to Said first. Meanwhile, the resistance leader questions Said in a private room. In long take, Said provides a personal, heartfelt testimony of the life he has lived and his reasons for wanting to continue the mission. In this monologue, Said’s intelligence and understanding are foregrounded as the camera moves slowly, inexorably in, finally framing him in close up. Said talks of the execution of his father, and how for him the blame rests not with his father but with the occupiers, who forced his father to collaborate: “The worst crime of all is to exploit the people’s weakness and turn them into collaborators. By doing that, they not only kill the resistance they also ruin families, ruin their dignity, and ruin an entire people. My father was a good man, but he grew weak.” He then articulates the double bind of the Palestinians, where the occupier, the oppressor, paints themselves as the victims, as the whole world looks on. How can the oppressor also be the victim, he asks? For his part, he says, he has no choice then but to assume the role of victim himself, and murderer as well. The resistance leader then walks down the hall and is frozen in place by the sight of Suha, who has found her way into the hideout. Framed at opposite ends of a large room, the two figures silently confront one another, as if in a duel. After a long pause, Suha demands, “Where is he?” On their way back to Tel Aviv to resume their mission, dressed in their black suits, Said views the cornucopia of contemporary western life as if he were from another planet; high rise buildings, billboards featuring beautiful young men advertising cell phones, women walking on the beach, all seem extraordinary, but somehow not alluring. In some strange way, the film has converted the intimacy of Palestine, its pre-networked familial and working life, into a positive value, something to be treasured. Said then apologizes to Khaled, who thinks the apology is for the bloody nose Said gave him in the graveyard. Rather, Said appears to be apologizing for what he is about to do, which includes leaving Khaled behind. Khaled and Said leave the car and begin walking to their destination. Khaled pleads with Said to turn back, saying that there are other ways to fight and to resist. Said seems to accept Khaled’s argument, but then tricks Khaled

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into getting back into the car without him and demands that their Israeli contacts drive on so that Said can carry out the mission alone. The camera lingers on Khaled, who is watching Said through the rear window as the car departs, weeping over Said’s fate. The film then begins a series of crosscuts, a sequence of portraiture shots of the major characters of the film, each of whom directs his or her gaze towards the camera. The first shot is the photo Said had taken at the photography studio before the mission, in extreme close-up. The camera then cuts to a shot of Suha looking at the photo, then turning it over, and looking up toward the camera. A cut to Jamal (Amer Hlehel) follows, standing and ruminating, in the resistance hideout, then to Abu-Karem, and finally to Said’s mother sitting outside in her garden, anxious and knowing. We then return to Khaled, riding in the car, weeping. Throughout the film, the friendship between Khaled and Said has been a constant; the threads of affection have been visible throughout the film. Now Said has decided to go it alone. In this penultimate scene, there is a kind of palpable weighing up of the costs of suicide violence, rendered in an interlocutive montage that resonates on many levels, as if the film is asking us to weigh the decision for ourselves. In the last shot of the film, the camera finds Said on an Israeli bus, populated mainly with young soldiers, male and female, engaged in relaxed, friendly conversation. The camera begins a slow track into his face, finally settling on an extreme close-up of his eyes, a shot that is held for some 25 seconds. Throughout the film, the slow track into close-up has recurred several times, underlining the interior life of Said, rendering moments of intense introspection and self-scrutiny. Far from the stereotypes that suicide bombers usually evoke, the fanatic consumed by fantasies of carnal utopia and revolutionary jihad, seeking death in an impossible demand for “paradise now”, the tracking shot into close up at the end emphasizes the character’s subjectivity and intelligence. Kevin McDonald describes Palestinian martyr violence as “nihilistic violence,” shaped by the impossibility of a new world: the martyr knows that their death will not bring about the new world, instead, death is experienced as breaking free from a world experienced as corruption and lost hope. The paradigm of social transformation here is one where change cannot come through living, but only through dying.27

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The description, which the author compares to two other forms of terroristic violence, “rational violence” and “messianic violence”, has the virtue of placing the subjectivity of the martyr at the center of the analysis; left in the background are the external mechanisms of jihadist propaganda, the symbolism of the wedding feast or the transformative, magical power of death. Where Paradise Now both fulfills and extends this analysis of violence is in its portrayal of the role of shame and humiliation in forging the psychology of the martyr. Placing us almost in the shoes of the main character, the film renders the martyr as a deeply human figure, situating the act in its historical and environmental context, while also illuminating the alternatives that the character has been presented with. The allure of enchanted violence, so powerfully set forth during the martyr ritual with its explicit communal address, is deliberately demystified as the film unfolds. But the psychic costs accumulated over a lifetime, the feedback loop of frustration and shame, culminate in an act of despair that seems to extend into the world of the spectator, and to linger in the white, empty field of vision that follows the close-up to Said’s eyes.

Notes 1. Sarah Cole, At The Violet Hour. Modernism and Violence in England and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 43, 81. 2. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (London and New York: Penguin, 2005), 45. 3. Derek Gregory, The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq (London: Wiley, 2004), 119. 4. Gregory, The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, 119. 5. Nouri Gana, “Reel Violence: Paradise Now and the Collapse of the Spectacle,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 28(1) (2008), 26. 6. See K.M. Fierke, Political Self -Sacrifice: Agency, Body and Emotion in International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). See also K.M. Fierke, “Agents of Death: The Structural Logic of Suicide Terrorism and Martyrdom,” International Theory 1(01) (March 2009), 155–184. 7. Fierke, “Agents of Death: The Structural Logic of Suicide Terrorism and Martyrdom,” International Theory 1(01) (March 2009), 168. 8. Fierke, Political Self -Sacrifice: Agency, Body and Emotion in International Relations, 195–196. 9. Fierke, Political Self -Sacrifice: Agency, Body and Emotion in International Relations, 5.

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10. Gana, “Reel Violence: Paradise Now and the Collapse of the Spectacle,” 26. 11. Ivan Strenski, “Sacrifice, Gift and the Social Logic of Muslim ‘Human Bombers,’” Terrorism and Political Violence 15(3) (2010), 7. 12. Fahrad Khosrokhavar, Suicide Bombers: Allah’s New Martyrs (London and Ann Arbor: Pluto Press, 2005), 135. 13. Raya Morag, “The Living Body and the Corpse—Israeli Documentary Cinema and the Intifadah,” Journal of Film and Video 60(3–4) (2008), 5. 14. K. M. Fierke, “Agents of Death: The Structural Logic of Suicide Terrorism and Martyrdom,” International Theory 1(01) (March 2009), 168. 15. Shohini Chaudhuri, Cinema of the Dark Side (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 166. 16. Jean Baudrillard, “L’Esprit du Terrorism,” The South Atlantic Quarterly 101 (2002), 412. 17. Christos D. Merantzas, “Martyrdom as a Form of Embodiment in The Byzantine Culture,” Scientific Culture 15(1) (2015), 1. 18. Merantzas, “Martyrdom as a Form of Embodiment in the Byzantine Culture,” 2. 19. Merantzas, “Martyrdom as a Form of Embodiment in the Byzantine Culture,” 2. 20. Merantzas, “Martyrdom as a Form of Embodiment in the Byzantine Culture,” 8, 13. 21. Cole, At The Violet Hour. Modernism and Violence in England and Ireland, 91, 93. 22. Kevin McDonald, Our Violent World: Terrorism in Society (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 140. 23. Strenski, “Sacrifice, Gift and the Social Logic of Muslim ‘Human Bombers,’” 4. 24. Cole, Sarah. “Enchantment, Disenchantment, War, Literature,” PMLA 124(5), Special Topic: War (Oct, 2009), 1643. 25. Khosrokhavar, Suicide Bombers: Allah’s New Martyrs, 137. 26. Gana, “Reel Violence: Paradise Now and the Collapse of the Spectacle,” 26. 27. McDonald, Our Violent World: Terrorism in Society, 179.

Works Cited Baudrillard, Jean. “L’Esprit du Terrorism.” The South Atlantic Quarterly 101, 2002.

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Chaudhuri, Shohini. Cinema of the Dark Side. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014. Cole, Sarah. At the Violet Hour. Modernism and Violence in England and Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Cole, Sarah. “Enchantment, Disenchantment, War, Literature.” PMLA 124(5), Special Topic: War (Oct, 2009), 1632–1647. Fierke, K. M. “Agents of Death: The Structural Logic of Suicide Terrorism and Martyrdom.” International Theory 1(01) (March 2009), 155–184. Fierke, K. M. Political Self-Sacrifice: Agency, Body and Emotion in International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Gana, Nouri. “Reel Violence: Paradise Now and the Collapse of the Spectacle.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 28(1) (2008), 20–37. Gregory, Derek. The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq. London: Wiley, 2004. Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. London and New York: Penguin, 2005. Khosrokhavar, Fahrad. Suicide Bombers: Allah’s New Martyrs. London and Ann Arbor: Pluto Press, 2005. McDonald, Kevin. Our Violent World: Terrorism in Society. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Merantzas, Christos D. “Martyrdom as a Form of Embodiment in the Byzantine Culture.” Scientific Culture 15(1) (2015). Morag, Raya. “The Living Body and the Corpse—Israeli Documentary Cinema and the Intifadah.” Journal of Film and Video 60(3–4) (2008). Schudson, Michael. “How Culture Works: Perspectives From Media Studies.” Theory and Society 18(2) (March, 1989), 153–180. Strenski, Ivan. “Sacrifice, Gift and the Social Logic of Muslim ‘Human Bombers.’”‘ Terrorism and Political Violence 15(3) (2010).

Films Paradise Now. Directed by Hany Abu-Hassad. Palestine, France, Germany, 2005.

CHAPTER 3

Spielberg and Terrorisms: Munich and War of the Worlds Frederick Wasser

My analysis will follow how the master of cinematic terror tells the story of the reaction to terrorism in Munich (2005). It ought to be different than the reaction to terror. Steven Spielberg is of this writing 74 years old and is thus closing out a remarkable career where, in effect, he became Mr. Hollywood, the most famous active American film director. Three legs of his status are the unprecedented earnings of both individual films and the cumulative sums of his box office over the decades, his longevity, and his own self-image as Hollywood filmmaker moving adroitly from entertainment to serious themes and back again. It is this latter leg that gives his treatment of terrorism importance beyond the actual films themselves. I argue that classic Hollywood developed a consensual ideology during the great Depression of the 1930s and that Spielberg is the best example of an artist trying to extend that consensual ideology into the twenty-first century. This consensual ideology has large liberal elements,

F. Wasser (B) Department of Television, Radio and Emerging Media, Brooklyn College, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 E. Caoduro et al. (eds.), Mediated Terrorism in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73511-1_3

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the very same elements that in the political sphere are being attacked by terrorism. Thus, Spielberg’s relative incoherence in Munich becomes a cultural reflection of a corresponding decline in America’s political will power as compared to previous crisis periods. Spielberg began his career by successfully plunging his audience into terror, notoriously in Duel (1971) and Jaws (1975). This is of some relevance to his much latter foray into terrorism. While he was obviously imitative in his early films, he also innovates new representations of terror. He borrowed heavily from Alfred Hitchcock and others in such matters as giving greater visual importance to on screen reactions to the object of terror rather than the object itself.1 At the same time, he was insisting on enhanced marks of realism in particular shooting on location with real props. This insistence was risky since it upset his producers and crew.2 He was part of a New Wave movie school cohort who worked assiduously to enhance the dimensionality of film with camera movement and the creation of sound environments.3 In the early 1970s many older filmmakers worried that such movements and full sounds were distracting rather than enhancing the storytelling. However, under the influence of Spielberg, George Lucas and others the new style became the entrenched canon. The dimensionality facilitates the goal of the contemporary blockbuster filmmaker which is to immerse the viewer into the story world. Although Spielberg and Lucas helped pioneer the digital enhanced images of the twenty first century, Spielberg continues to insist on photo-realism as the touchstone of immersive storytelling. This becomes particularly relevant as he tries to meet the challenges of historical filmmaking when the history is controversial as in Munich. Acts of terrorism are always a function of human motivation while terror is or can be a reaction to an implacable force of nature.4 This distinction characterizes the moral irony of America’s response to the terrorism of September 11, 2001 which was to elide and ignore the human motive for the attack. Instead by declaring a metaphorical war “on terrorism,” Americans signalled that our response would be “regulations of affects rather than of causes,” a conclusion the Canadian philosopher Brian Massumi comes to in his illumination of a Foucauldian analysis of state power.5 The American political sphere reacted more in terror than to the terrorism. Spielberg reaction in the creative sphere ranged from ethical to conflicted vengeance to simple survival. His Minority Report (2003) skilfully placed a moral conclusion about the extremes of surveillance and pre-emptive policing on an immersive thriller. Munich was going to be his

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reflective film directly responding to 9/11 but I will argue that its attempt to find a rational narrative for dealing with terrorism floundered. War of the Worlds (2005) dropped legal reflection as it reduced the response to the terror of an alien invasion to the instinct to protect one’s own family and to endure. The last movie became Spielberg’s truest representation of the American government’s abandonment of law in favor of an emotional reaction to 9/11.

Spielberg and “Serious” Filmmaking Hollywood has always asserted the primacy of its entertainment function over political or social commentary and yet has often found political and social themes to be highly entertaining. It used to be axiomatic that in order to be popularly entertaining, films had to have broad appeal across partisan divides. Thus, various Hollywood films would negotiate ways to handle political and social themes within narrative frames that would allow various members of the public to enjoy the stories without unduly confronting them with hard choices or historic guilt. Indeed, one interpretation of the rise of Spielberg, his associate and sometime collaborator George Lucas and others was that they found a new way to rejuvenate the broad appeal of Hollywood after the divisive and somewhat confrontational New Hollywood films of the late 1960s and early 1970s. This is clearly illustrated in the vague rebelliousness of the Star Wars series that allows all members of the audience to identify with the heroes while the specific nature of the rebellion against the empire is never clarified enough to confirm any particular political interpretation. Spielberg’s Jaws also played with and yet ultimately soft-pedalled its condemnation of a corrupt political system that conspired to keep the beaches open after a deadly shark attack. The comic book adventures of Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) allowed even contemporary multi-cultural audiences to ignore the repetitions of unfortunate colonial attitudes (although there were murmurings against the clumsy update of the damsel-in-distress trope). The success of these films confirmed the general turn away from history and politics in American filmmaking during the Reagan years. But Spielberg, himself, while eager to continue making popular films, increasingly wanted to establish himself as a serious filmmaker. He was becoming aware of a filmmaker’s dual role as an artist and as an entrepreneur, even as most of his fellow directors downplayed their own artistic responsibilities.

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The Color Purple (1985) was his first self-conscious attempt at serious filmmaking, partially as a result of a growing friendship with Steven Ross the head of Warner Communications.6 The movie found a respectable reception despite the controversy of a white man using glamorous Hollywood techniques to film Alice Walker’s novel set in the turn of the last century’s Southern Black communities. His next serious film was Empire of the Sun (1987) and here Spielberg paid homage to David Lean’s historical epics of the 1960s that also took themes from the end of the imperial age. His great turn was when he finally decided to film Schindler’s List based on the 1982 fictionalized account of the real-life actions of Oskar Schindler in saving Jewish workers during the German occupation of Poland in World War Two. It has become a standard part of the Spielberg biography to explain this production as an embrace of his own Jewish identity but it is of equal interest that the timing of the 1993 production was triggered by the genocidal ethnic wars associated with the breakup of Yugoslavia. 1997s Amistad and 1998s Saving Private Ryan confirmed Spielberg in the first ranks of historical filmmaking. The critic Jake Bart writes that “Spielberg entered the 21st century yet again on top of the moviemaking world.”7 He goes on to group together Minority Report with War of the Worlds and Munich as a war on terror trilogy. Certainly, the filmmaker sought projects with an even closer relationship to current events, in the aftermath of George W. Bush’s election and the launch of the global war on terrorism. Pre-production of Minority Report began before the November 2000 election of George W. Bush.8 Nonetheless its release in the aftermath of the September 2001 terrorist attacks and subsequent passage in October of the PATRIOT Act allowed the audience to closely relate the themes of the movie to the real time assault on civil rights. However, it was in 2005 that Spielberg specifically addressed the 2001 attack in two separate interpretations. He had previously made back-toback movies using the enhanced mobility of digital technology to edit Jurassic Park while shooting Schindler’s List in Poland. He claims the financing provided by Universal Studios obliged him to make the movies together although another factor was the inherent distraction of finalizing a “popcorn” movie while engaging in an emotionally draining drama on location that still had the aura of the bloodletting of the actual events. With War of the Worlds and Munich Spielberg was once again finishing the more popular special effects laden spectacle while shooting the serious drama.

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Munich It was Spielberg’s desire to move his audience to reflection on 9/11 that led him to the Munich project. In 1972 eight members of Black September, a Palestinian terrorist group, took hostage eleven Israeli athletes during Munich Summer Olympic games. Two Israelis were killed in the initial takeover. After attempts at negotiation, the German security forces attacked and the remaining hostages were killed as well as six terrorists and one German policeman. Israel seems to have authorized a subsequent retaliatory manhunt although the government has never acknowledged this. The Canadian writer/reporter George Jonas’ unauthorized 1984 book Vengeance outlined the activities of Israeli agents hunting down and killing members of the Palestinian groups responsible for the terrorist action. The events narrated in the book continue to be disputed. There had been two previous television shows about this event ranging from the docudrama that also used Jonas’ book—Sword of Gideon (1986), to the journalistic One Day in September (1999). Why did Spielberg want to retell it? He had the power to renew attention to subject matters even when others have already dramatized such matters as the Holocaust and American slavery. His decision to tell this story on the big screen was related to the changed atmosphere in the United States after the World Trade Center attack and the subsequent invasion of Iraq. It is not certain that he made this decision after committing to directing War of the Worlds but it is clear that the science fiction project was not going to satisfy his laudable desire to actually ask the audience to think about responses to terrorism. Spielberg had positioned himself as a Jewish filmmaker with his direction of Schindler’s List and the subsequent activities in financing and facilitating the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education. He became aware that Barry Mendel, a prominent movie producer, had acquired big screen movie rights to Jones’ book. He, and his longtime partner, Kathleen Kennedy, joined forces with Mendel to commission a script from Eric Roth. They pushed back their shooting schedule when they recruited Tony Kushner, a well-known American playwright with an acknowledged Jewish background to work on the screenplay. This allowed Spielberg to complete War of the Worlds first.9 Kushner had received both Tony and Pulitzer prizes in 1993 for Millennium Approaches the first part of his two-part drama about the Aids epidemic entitled Angels in America. Kushner is a left-wing advocate for

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civil rights including gay issues and has professed an abiding allegiance to the existence of Israel albeit with critical comments on its policies regarding Palestinians. In the aftermath of the Munich film, his stance drew harsh criticism from right wing defenders of Israeli policy and there was at least one (unsuccessful) attempt to strip him of literary honors.10 The movie begins with the Black September team posing as Olympic athletes in order to gain entry over an undefended fence. They burst into the Israeli athlete quarters. Then the mode switches to various Israelis watching the takeover being reporting on world television news (cleverly weaving actual reports culled from TV archives and restaged coverage) and to Palestinians watching the same thing (see Fig. 3.1.). The mediation of the events using actual TV commentators present at the 1972 takeover continues through the false report that the hostages had been freed to the horrible news that in actuality they had all been killed. Spielberg finishes this sequence of people watching with Avner (Eric Bana) at home with his pregnant wife Daphna (Ayelet Zurer) watching the televised return of the victim’s bodies to Israel, with some anticipation that this might affect their lives. This is a masterful blending of cinematic realism and television’s actuality that reminds the audience of subsequent TV coverage of terrorism, notably the endless video repetition of the plane crashing into the World Trade Center during the entire

Fig. 3.1 Television coverage of the terrorists holding Olympic athletes from Israel hostage in Munich (2005) is watched by the perpetrators, members of “Black September.” One of the terrorists is outside on the balcony as broadcast news footage shows his movements

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day of September 11th 2001. Spielberg’s blending serves as prologue to the sustained cinematic mode of the rest of the film. Prime Minister Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen) holds a meeting with military and political associates which concludes with her decision to destroy “these people” referring to Black September. Avner is approached to come to meet the Prime Minister and he is asked to head a retaliatory operation. Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush) briefs him on the operation and becomes his only liaison with the government which otherwise has severed all contact with Avner and his team in order to maintain deniability. The team members do not know each other. Avner picks up a list of people to be killed. They begin their mission in Rome with a target who is distinctly unthreatening. Wael Zwaiter (Makram Khoury) is older and is living as a translator/poet. Avner and Robert (Mathieu Kassovitz) shoot him dead in the lobby of his building as he brings home the groceries. He dies in a pool of spilled milk. Both the audience and the assassins have no reason to believe he was involved with the Munich attack except that his name was on the list. In Paris, they detonate a bomb in the home of Mahmoud Hamshari (Igal Naor). He also is an overweight middle-aged family man, physically and mentally distant from the terrorists. The Israelis blow him up, after making sure in a suspenseful and extended sequence that his young daughter is out of harm’s way. Avner contacts a mysterious Frenchman Louis (Mathieu Amalric) who gives him information about the whereabouts of various terrorists on his hit list. Louis also sells him explosives and provides safe havens. Somehow this is preferable to the Israeli security forces providing Avner with such resources. The Israeli government’s action zig-zags between deniability and maximum publicity. For example, they insist that targets be blown up rather than quietly shot in order to guarantee media coverage. Avner is learning not to trust the government and instructs his wife to move to Brooklyn New York. Louis is playing his own games by selling information and safe havens to both sides. At one point the Israelis find themselves bunking with Palestinian agents since Louis has given both teams the same “safe” apartment in Athens. The Israelis masquerade as German Red Army members, a German terrorist group, in order to avoid confrontation. Under the cover of this masquerade Avner has a verbal debate with his Palestinian counterpart Ali (Omar Metwally) over the right to return to an ancestral homeland. Ali insists that this is fundamental to life while Avner downplays such attachments. Avner asks Ali; “You really miss your father’s olive trees? The crappy village he came

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from?” While this is an attempt to persuade the Palestinian to give up the right to return, it also reveals Avner’s growing weariness over his own allegiance to his own “homeland.” The movie winds down as the Israelis start to deal with assassins targeting their team and the frustrations of trying to take down the best-known plotter of the Munich attack, Ali Hassan Salameh (Mehdi Nebdou). Avner is brought to Louis’ family compound to meet the patriarch identified only as Papa (Michel Lonsdale). Papa, suspected of connections to every terrorist group, is surprisingly avuncular and instructs Avner in the finer art of preparing food. His own philosophy, in response to the World War Two atrocities he witnessed (and committed), is to shun ideologies and governments and to be loyal only to the family. Avner, in turn, develops his own loyalty to Papa. Even as he shuts down his mission, is debriefed and exiles himself to Brooklyn, he refuses to give Mossad any leads about Louis and Papa. The movie ends inconclusively with Avner trying to overcome his paranoia and post-traumatic syndrome. His final meeting is with Ephraim on the East River waterfront (see Fig. 3.2.). Ephraim tries to convince Avner that he has accomplished something but Avner cannot accept this and refuses to return to Israel. Ephraim in turn refuse a dinner invitation and the two men separate as the camera

Fig. 3.2 Former Mossad agent Avner (Eric Bana) is meeting with his superior Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush) on the East River Waterfront in Manhattan but refuses to disclose any of his contacts from the mission

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Fig. 3.3 As Avner (Eric Bana) returns from his final meeting with his Mossad contact, the skyline of Manhattan and the Twin Towers is prominently depicted, as an ominous portent of the future escalation of international terrorism

pans towards still extant Twin Towers of the World Trade Center as an ominous portent of the future escalation of terrorism (see Fig. 3.3.). Spielberg shows his usual mastery of film language in his direction. There are subtle details such as using a shaky handheld camera for the hostage taking in contrast to a steady (probably crane mounted) camera for the first assassination carefully planned and accomplished. Spielberg continues to alternate these two cameras to signal to the audience chaos versus planning. He also uses extreme angles but constantly justifies these angles in terms of diegesis such as a camera pull back to reveal an off-angle shot is the reflection of the action in the curvature of a car window. These orchestrated camera moves resonate with the special training in observing that undercover agents receive. The DVD commentary describes the painstaking use of authentic costumes to signify the time period and even Spielberg’s use of in camera zooming (a style prevalent in the 1970 filmmaking which has since gone out of fashion). However authentic locations were not used (a sign that the 1970s political tensions have not abated).

Munich and Realism Genres The production of Munich was shrouded in secrecy which many felt was an indication that Spielberg was likely to offend Israel; all his productions are rather secretive for reasons ranging from better bargaining positions

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for various production resources to maintaining audience suspense for upcoming movies. An early version of the script and the movie was shown to various members of the Jewish community and the American and Israeli governments.11 Upon the release of the movie Spielberg may have been astonished to be the subject of attack even from such mainstream opinion writers as David Brooks of The New York Times, Charles Krauthammer of Washington Post and Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic. All these were from the perspective that the movie made the error of portraying a moral equivalency between the Palestinian terrorists and the Israeli assassins. This allowed the audience to doubt the morality of the avengers and actually gave voice to the Palestinians. A less influential, pro-Palestinian critique came from a leading scholar on modern Arab politics, Joseph Massad. He lamented the movie’s use of the standard trope of Israelis who weep over the tragedy of having to seek revenge but still kill.12 The Brooks/Krauthammar/Wieseltier et alia attack motivated Spielberg to add a video statement to the DVD release of the movie where he directly addressed the camera, acknowledged the uncertain truth of some of the events depicted, reaffirmed his commitment to the rights of Israel and asked to be judged as a fictional filmmaker who wants us to consider our response to terrorism, so that we will not suffer from unintended consequences. It is at this point we should analyse the relationship with realism that the movie has. Every genre has its own convention of realism which is its implied contract with the audience. Spielberg’s video statement made the contract explicit but should he be judged as a fictional filmmaker? This movie began with several registers of realism. To reach judgement let us go through these registers. Since the movie begins with archival TV, we will first look at television’s relationship with history. But as the movie moves into scripted narrative it becomes important to review the expectations the audience has of docudrama and its more obscure variant; dramadoc (see Derek Paget’s definition below). The conclusion is that it is not a docudrama and that its claim to be a historical thriller is the strongest one. A thriller typically has a moral ending and its absence in Munich is where we uncover the incoherence that involuntarily reflects America’s actual incoherent response to 9/11. The opening of Munich mixes television modes of address with cinematic modes even to the point where the movie shows both a cinematic recreation of the masked terrorist on the balcony and the harrowing TV footage of the actual terrorist being televised at the time in the same

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frame. Munich’s television mode recalls media scholars Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz’s work on the theory of media events and history. They argue that certain extraordinary uses of television upend the standard representation of history on TV (i.e. the news report) and instead make television itself the site of history. Their original analysis applied this to functional events such as coronations and state funerals. Television broadcasting becomes the ritualized healing of the wounded nation and international communities. Media events are closely related to trauma but are not the trauma itself which belongs in the more ordinary flow of the news report. Dayan and Katz do not originally deal with terrorism on television. But Katz along with the late Israeli communication scholar Tamar Liebes follow up after the 1990s by noticing that there has been a decline in the number of proper media events, particularly in Israel during the Intifada. Instead of the healing, television promotes dysfunction. The terrorists have hijacked media attention and yet there is nothing to show, so invariably television fills up the terrorist time with interviews with people reacting to the attack, the voice of the people: Vox Pop. This in turn becomes history since it is this very voice that puts overwhelming pressure on the government to react as if the event was an existential threat. Interpreting Katz and Liebes, a negotiated media event tries to contain a trauma within known legal and political frames, while in contrast the endless repetition of television interviews demanding action pressures governments to respond as if to a natural disaster. The sequence featuring the telecast of the Munich hostage situation brings us through the media/history nexus. There is even reference to the healing aspect of a media event when Avner and his wife watch the bodies being brought home as a presumably military band plays the Israeli anthem. But Vox Pop seems to dominate the sequence of Golda Meir’s cabinet meeting. One aide attempts to posit an Israeli air force strike against a guerrilla training center as an adequate response: General Nadav (Sharon Alexander) presumably speaking for the Prime Minister says: “No one notices what happens in border camps…This is about fixing the world’s attention.” The cabinet wants the assassination campaign to be the response to show the world Israel’s will to live. However, the paradox is that they also want the assassination campaign to be unacknowledged. At this point the movie mostly drops further references to television and its influences on the narrative. British media theorist Nigel Morris in a masterful chapter on Munich, considers various TV conventions while examining the various permutations and relationships that

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drama can have with the actuality of the history. He reminds us of film scholar Derek Paget’s distinction between docudrama and dramadoc. The former is more typical of American television and is entertainment driven while the British have shifted the balance towards documentary values in dramadoc.13 Indeed, the dramadoc is factual journalism only resorted to because in the absence of actual footage there “is no other way to tell the story.”14 Morris states correctly that Munich does not adhere to dramadoc standards, although Spielberg suggests in his DVD prologue that there was no other way to tell the story. But contrary to dramadoc, Spielberg and his writers invent at will and indulge in many instances of subjective conjecture. In contrast, we notice that the movie uses many of the techniques of a fictional character study. We see everything through Avner’s eyes exclusively once the prologue of the hostage taking and the government reaction is out of the way. He continually flashes back to the Munich hostage situation as it plays out in his head. These flashbacks fill in for the audience the moments of great violence that were beyond the reach of the actual television cameras. The first occurs as Avner flies to Europe to begin the mission. The flashbacks culminate in the cross cutting between Avner having sex with his wife with a physical need for release and the shot-by-shot detail of how hostages were killed and/or blown up in the transport vehicle to which they were bound towards the final act of the movie. We are not used to this subjective union of eros and violent death from this kind of filmmaking or filmmaker, and audiences are invariably unnerved. This subjectivity raises another question of the docudrama’s relationship to truth. Avner has to be a fictional character since no real person has fully established that he or she did what Avner was supposed to have done. The Munich producers admit that Avner’s existence is disputable and presumably had no further access to any “Avner” than what was told in Jonas’ book. Historians dispute that any Israeli assassin went through the agonizing depicted in the film.15 Indeed, Munich omits the one occasion of real-life agonizing when in 1973 assassins killed an innocent Moroccan citizen in the Norwegian city of Lillehammer. At first glance this omission simply seems part of stacking the deck in Israel’s favour which the movie does do consistently. Morris defends Spielberg from the charge that this was a complete whitewash since the word Lillehammer appears in the opening title credit albeit briefly and without context.16 I speculate that the screenwriters avoid Lillehammer, because it distracts the audience from the goals of the movie. It is too easy to agree that the murder of the

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wrong man is a mistake. The more apparent goal is to keep the audience focused on the emotional self-doubt involved even when assassinations of the guilty are carried out. Thus, a fictionalized construction of “Avner” takes the movie away from a moral judgement of real events and towards a hypothetical relationship with actual events, solidifying its fictional distance from history. Munich’s producer Kathleen Kennedy stated that it was a thriller.17 Yet for a thriller the movie never settles down to a specific goal to generate audience suspense. The classic convention in various revenge movies is to define the targets and have the audience count down with the protagonist as each target is taken out. There is both the tension involved in watching the protagonist overcome risks and obstacles in order to pursue each successive target and in more thoughtful movies there is also the subtle narrative arc of the protagonist learning the price of revenge that reaches some sort of resolution with the final target. However, in Munich both tensions are present but are significantly downplayed. We are told that there are eleven names on the target list but this is too many for the audience to really follow the quest to take down all eleven. There is some hint that the most significant name is Ali Hassan Salameh but he escapes assassination in the movie. An end title tells the audience that nine of the eleven were killed including Salameh but this is literally an afterthought. At best we can ask the movie to adhere to the conventions of a character study. A study of a fictional character may not adhere to tests of truth, but it still has responsibilities. A classic fiction film has moral obligations. For example, old Hollywood, in order to assume its position in American culture, imposed upon itself a code of production. The code functioned as a guarantee issued to viewers that evil will be punished and social institutional values will be upheld. These strategies disappeared as the code was abandoned in 1968. Part of the appeal of Spielberg was his apparent retro-commitment to such guarantees in his crowd-pleasing work. Even in his latter more “serious” work he does not close a film without a distribution of rewards and punishments for the virtuous and the villains respectively. This placed him in the tradition which traces back to the liberal democratic trend of Hollywood during the New Deal and its aftermath. Director and film studies scholar Michael Walker has surveyed the entire Spielberg oeuvre for endings and confirms that they generally follow old fashioned Hollywood adherence to a moral distribution of rewards and punishments. However, Munich was an exception. “…this is

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another of Spielberg’s rare bleak endings, suggesting there will be no end to the cycle of violence.”18 I quibble with the qualifier “another,” since my survey indicates that Munich’s ending is unique in Spielberg’s work.19 One counter example to my claim is Morris’ argument that Minority Report has a bleak ending since the happy ending is actually the hallucinatory delusion of the imprisoned hero.20 My argument is agnostic on whether this interpretation is convincing but is supported by the fact that Spielberg felt obliged to tact on a happy ending (whether delusional or real) in his surveillance film. This is because he takes the artist’s responsibility to draw a moral conclusion and to ask the audience to evaluate that conclusion. In the terrorism film he cannot bring himself to give us a conclusion but merely lets the camera rest on the Twin Towers in the distant New York skyline. Why must he resort to an open ending in contrast to his usual aesthetic? The answer is that terrorism has become a unique challenge to liberal democracies. These democracies have the premise that only the State has a legal monopoly of the use of violence. The mechanisms for dealing with the exceptional conditions of crime and war are well known. But terrorists upset this equation since they do not act under the authority of an existing state and therefore cannot be contained by war or the threat of war. But operating as they do, the reach of criminal law is uncertain. American philosopher Andrew Fiala in trying to understand his colleague’s John Rawls’ philosophical concept of Law of Peoples in the aftermath of 9/11 writes of the following dilemma: “…if Osama bin Laden and the others thought to be responsible for the September 11th attacks are ‘criminals’ then we will have a difficult time apprehending and prosecuting them. If they are ‘enemies’ engaged in war, then our pursuit of them will require that we pay attention to the importance of preserving some idea of jus in bello.”21 It is interesting in this regard to a make a distinction between Osama Bin Laden and Black September. The Black September terrorists were trying to claim the status of a State agency fighting in the name of Palestinian people and their actions in taking the athletes hostage had a specific goal (in this case of forcing the Israeli government to release jailed political activists). The government refused to negotiate and this led to the specific tragedy of a botched German rescue effort. The terrorists obviously were willing to sacrifice themselves but still were not acting as suicide bombers such as the 9/11 attackers who did not offer terms to negotiate to forestall their immediate decision to kill as many as possible including themselves.

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Of course, the Black September and other demands based on hostage taking are illegitimate in any rational system of global justice. Therefore it is typical not to treat Black September as enemies in war. This leaves the criminal pursuit of the terrorists and here it is telling that in the movie it is shown that Golda Meir decided that such pursuit would make the State of Israel look weak. The screenwriters give her character the line “What law protects people like these?” as she authorizes the extralegal assassinations. Thus Israeli retaliation becomes a forerunner of the United States’ decision not to use the regular judicial system to respond to the surviving 9/11 attackers,22 except through the immoral combination of an undeclared war in Afghanistan and Iraq and the legal absurdity of permanent imprisonment without establishing guilt or innocence of suspects in Guantanamo Bay, a territory that is itself an absurdity since it is a US military base located on the island of a hostile state (Cuba) and therefore is neither US soil nor its own country. Therefore, Massumi’s conclusion that contemporary governments have decided to treat terrorism as an environmental threat is convincing and as he notes has consequences for liberal society: “In a crisis prone environment, threat is endemic, uncertainty is everywhere, a negative that can never be proven. Positive military response must be ever at the ready. The on-all-the-time, everywhere-at-the-ready of military response operatively annexes the civilian sphere to the conduct of war.”23

War of the Worlds as a Natural Threat It would be a mistake to dismiss War of the Worlds as “popcorn” special effects entertainment the same as Independence Day (Roland Emmerich, 1995) and other triumphalist science fiction. Spielberg’s artistic instinct leads him to treat the alien invasion as the terrorist environmental threat described by Massumi. In his direction it becomes a representation of America’s response to 9/11 as a natural challenge rather than a criminal one. The story as first written as a novel in 1897 by H. G. Wells, is briefly told. The narrator observes objects crashed on the ground, near his home. They turn out to be alien space ships and the aliens (Martians) emerge. Human attempts to communicate with them fail when the aliens use their weapons to incinerate the humans. Army units are mobilized to counter attack but their efforts are useless against the superior weaponry and transport machines of the aliens. Everyone is fleeing and in the course of

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his flight the narrator sees that the aliens are not only killing humans but also harvesting them. Further observations show that they are consuming human blood. There are further misadventures and the narrator in final and insane despair approaches a Martian war machine. But instead of being killed he discovers the Martians within are themselves dead. All the aliens had succumbed to earthly bacteria, to which humans have long been immune. The several movie and other adaptations (such as the notorious 1938 radio broadcast) have all kept the main outline: aliens coming here, humans are frustrated in any attempts to negotiate and suffer huge losses as conventional means prove inadequate only to find at the last minute that a germ has saved the day. A previous high-profile adaption was a 1953 science fiction movie starring Gene Barry and Ann Robinson.24 It was a meditation on the Cold War. Independence Day in its turn more than forty years later, was a meditation on the end of the Cold War. It was full of fun bombast and triumphalism. A united world gratefully follows the American leadership. The US forces plant a computer virus and force back the alien invaders. But ten years later the attitude was the exact opposite and it became obvious that Spielberg was addressing an audience in a decidedly different mood and in a heightened sense of vulnerability. Spielberg, ever the attuned filmmaker gave direct references in War of the Worlds to 9/11 such as situating Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) the protagonist’s work place on the Brooklyn water front almost opposite Ground Zero in Manhattan and his home nearby on Staten Island. After the initial alien assault Robbie (Justin Chatwin) his son, wonders if they are terrorists. Perhaps most chilling is when Ferrier emerges from a harrowing night in the cellar of his ex wife’s house to find a crashed jetliner strewed across the block. Spielberg’s instinct for topicality leads to several environment catastrophe references. He reversed the usual invasion from above to have the alien war machines emerge from beneath the earth, thus representing the earth itself as a hostile zone. The use of Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) is a distinguishing hallmark of 21st century blockbuster aesthetics. Spielberg took advantage of its astonishing verisimilitude to compose long vista shots of destruction and of the alien red weed covering the landscape. These images have their own resonance with disappearing forests and flooded plains of today’s world of extreme storms and weather events. It was an extremely upsetting mise-en-scene

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throughout the movie, relieved only by Ray Ferrier’s resourcefulness in staying alive and the final ending of the diseased aliens. Because of its darkness, it became a solid contributor to the cycle of apocalyptic disasters that finally wound down in 2009, ceding ground to more comic book type disasters such as from the Marvel universe. War of the Worlds sold $234 million in tickets in North America and another $357 million overseas against a budget of $132 million.25 Its seriousness did not undermine its appeal to the disaster audience. In terms of storytelling the movie delivered the expected pleasures and did not unduly force the audience to think about moral choices. Ferrier’s family has survived. This too has become a standard trope for the 1995–2009 cycle.

Conclusion Restoration of family is a typical happy ending of a Spielberg movie. In Minority Report ’s happy ending, the pre-cogs now form a commune while the protagonist is reunited with his wife and is expecting a baby. This is a moral distribution of rewards to the virtuous. In War of the Worlds, Ray Ferrier starts off as a bad father. In the course of the movie he makes sacrificial efforts to save his children as the world falls apart and is redeemed when his family is restored. Spielberg even borrows from John Ford’s renowned western The Searchers (1956) to show the hero excluded from the family in the last shot. Perhaps this is because Ferrier had to murder Harlan Ogilvy (Tim Robbins) ostensibly to protect his daughter (Dakota Fanning). This is an even more refined moral distribution of rewards. But Munich cannot have such a moral distribution. To be sure, in the end Avner is allowed to be with his wife and child. But he has broken off from his mother (Gila Almagor), his absent father and his country. Every other ersatz family: the Israeli athletes, the various Palestinian groups and the team of avengers have been torn apart. Only the death dealing extended family of Papa and his son Louis is still intact. This is not a moral conclusion. Spielberg and Kushner tried to mount a reasoned answer to terrorism but failed.26 This failure in the creative realm is an expression of the liberal failure to find a political answer. There is a direct line from Spielberg’s movie to President Obama’s extra-legal ordering of the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. Even for proponents of the rule of

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law, terrorism can only be framed as an environmental threat, not as an opportunity for moral action. Acknowledgements I wish to thank Professor Karen A. Ritzenhoff for suggesting this topic and for her provision of resources. I also benefited greatly from discussions with Prof. Sandra Braman regarding terrorism and the State.

Notes 1. Warren Buckland, Directed by Steven Spielberg; Poetics of the Contemporary Hollywood Blockbuster (New York: Continuum Press, 2006), 99. 2. Joseph McBride, Steven Spielberg: A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), 205. 3. Marco Cucco, “The Promise Is Great: The Blockbuster and the Hollywood Economy,” Media, Culture and Society 31(2) (March 2009), 218. 4. In Duel the terror comes from the threatening action of the truck driver but since the driver is never revealed it is easier to explain the truck as a natural threat rather than a human attack. 5. Marco Cucco, (March 2009), 155. 6. Joseph McBride, Steven Spielberg, 382. 7. Jake T. Bart, “Moral Anxiety, Mortal Terror: Considering Spielberg, Post9/11,” Cinesthesia, Article 2, 4(1) (2014), 2. 8. One cannot resist relating the title word “minority” to Bush. He won the election despite receiving less votes than his opponent. This was the first time that had happened in the USA in over a century. 9. David Halbfinger, “Next: Spielberg’s Biggest Gamble,” New York Times (July 1, 2005), E1. 10. John Jay College (CUNY) faculty voted to give Tony Kushner an honorary degree. The Board of Trustees at first tried to rescind the offer citing his work as anti-Israel, but relented after a public outcry cf. Goldsmith, (May 7, 2011). 11. David Halbfinger, “Next: Spielberg’s Biggest Gamble,” E1. 12. Frederick Wasser, Steven Spielberg’s America (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2010), 211. 13. Nigel Morris, The Cinema of Steven Spielberg: Empire of Light (London: Wallflower Press, 2007), 364. Cf. Derek Paget, No Other Way to Tell It: Dramadoc/Docudrama on Television (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 1–3. 14. Morris, The Cinema of Steven Spielberg: Empire of Light, 365. 15. David Halbfinger, “Next: Spielberg’s Biggest Gamble,” E1. 16. David Halbfinger, “Next: Spielberg’s Biggest Gamble,” 373.

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17. Nigel Morris, The Cinema of Steven Spielberg: Empire of Light, 363. 18. Michael Walker, “Steven Spielberg and the Rhetoric of an Ending,” 137– 158 in N. Morris (Ed.), A Companion to Steven Spielberg, 156. Malden, MA: Wiley, 2017. 19. I will accept that The Sugarland Express (1974) has a down ending but a moral order is maintained by the restoration of law and order. However, the movie portrays the hapless kidnapper in a sympathetic manner. 20. Nigel Morris, The Cinema of Steven Spielberg, 328. 21. Andrew Fiala, “Terrorism and the Philosophy of History: Liberalism, Realism, and the Supreme Emergency Exemption,” Essays in Philosophy 3–4 (April 2002). 22. This decision came despite successful ordinary legal prosecutions of previous “jihadist” terrorists in American courts as well as of terrorists of other causes such as white supremacy. 23. Brian Massumi, “National Enterprise Emerging: Steps Towards an Evolution of Power,” Theory, Culture and Society 26(6) (2009), 158. 24. Spielberg recruited both stars of the 1953 movie to reappear in cameos at the end of his War of the Worlds. 25. In contrast Munich cost $70 million to make and had a worldwide box office of $131 million (Boxofficemojo). This would be a relative disappointment for a Spielberg movie. 26. Spielberg and Kushner had a much more successful resolution in their collaboration on Lincoln (2011). Here there was tension between Lincoln’s desire to eliminate slavery and his inability or unwillingness to fight for racial equality that was neatly played out in the tension between Spielberg’s visualization and Kushner’s dialogue cf. Wasser (2013).

Works Cited Bart, Jake T. “Moral Anxiety, Mortal Terror: Considering Spielberg, Post-9/11.” Cinesthesia, Article 2, 4(1) (2014). Available at http://scholarworks.gvsu. edu/cine/vol4/iss1/2 (accessed July 23, 2019). Buckland, Warren. Directed by Steven Spielberg; Poetics of the Contemporary Hollywood Blockbuster. New York: Continuum Press, 2006. Cucco, Marco. “The Promise is Great: The Blockbuster and the Hollywood Economy.” Media, Culture and Society 31(2) (March 2009), 215–230. Dayan, Daniel, and Elihu Katz. Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. Fiala, Andrew. “Terrorism and the Philosophy of History: Liberalism, Realism, and the Supreme Emergency Exemption.” Essays in Philosophy 3, Special Issue (April 2002). Available at https://commons.pacificu.edu/eip (accessed July 28, 2019).

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Goldsmith, Samuel. “Playwright Tony Kushner’s Honorary Degree from John Jay College to Be Reconsidered by CUNY.” New York Daily News (May 7, 2011), 5. Halbfinger, David. “Next: Spielberg’s Biggest Gamble.” New York Times (July 1, 2005), E1. Katz, Elihu, and Tamar Liebes. “‘No More Peace!’: How Disaster, Terror and War Have Upstaged Media Events.” International Journal of Communication 1 (2007),157–166. Krämer, Peter, and Yannis Tzioumakis (eds.). The Hollywood Renaissance: Revisting America’s Cinema’s Most Celebrated Era. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Kushner, Tony, and Eric Roth. Munich. Screenplay, 2005. www.scriptdelivery.net. Massumi, Brian. “National Enterprise Emerging: Steps Towards an Evolution of Power.” Theory, Culture and Society 26(6) (2009), 153–185. McBride, Joseph. Steven Spielberg: A Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. Morris, Nigel. The Cinema of Steven Spielberg: Empire of Light. London: Wallflower Press, 2007. Paget, Derek. No Other Way to Tell It: Dramadoc/Docudrama on Television. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998. Walker, Michael. “Steven Spielberg and the Rhetoric of an Ending.” In N. Morris (Ed.), A Companion to Steven Spielberg, 137–158. Malden, MA: Wiley, 2017. Wasser, Frederick. Steven Spielberg’s America. Cambridge UK: Polity Press, 2010. Wasser, Frederick. “Lincoln: Shared Myths in a Revisionist Age.” EJump Cut, November 2013. Issue 55. www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc55.2013/WasserLin coln/index.html.

Films and Television Amistad. Directed by Steven Spielberg, United States, 1997. Color Purple, The. Directed by Steven Spielberg, United States, 1985. Duel. Directed by Steven Spielberg, United States, 1971. Empire of the Sun. Directed by Steven Spielberg, United States, 1987. Independence Day. Directed by Roland Emmerich, United States, 1996. Jaws. Directed by Steven Spielberg, United States, 1975. Jurassic Park. Directed by Steven Spielberg, United States, 1993. Lincoln. Directed by Steven Spielberg, United States, 2011. Minority Report. Directed by Steven Spielberg, United States, 2003. Munich. Directed by Steven Spielberg, United States, 2005. Munich. DVD Two Disc Collector’s Edition. Universal Studios. Directed by Steven Spielberg, USA, 2006. One Day in September. Directed by Kevin Macdonald, United Kingdom, 1999.

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Raiders of the Lost Ark. Directed by Steven Spielberg, United States, 1981. Saving Private Ryan. Directed by Steven Spielberg, United States, 1998. Schindler’s List. Directed by Steven Spielberg, United States, 1993. Searchers, The. Directed by John Ford, United States 1956. Sugarland Express, The. Directed by Steven Spielberg, USA, 1974. Sword of Gideon. Directed by Michael Anderson, Canada, 1986. Aired November 29, 1986, on HBO. War of the Worlds. Directed by Steven Spielberg, United States, 2005. War of the Worlds. Directed by Byron Haskin, United States, 1953.

CHAPTER 4

Spinning Terror on TV: How The Grid Taught Us What to Fear Dahlia Schweitzer

In an act of unforgettable horror and tragedy, nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists simultaneously hijacked four passenger planes on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. The sequence of events unfolded in front of the eyes of the world as two of the planes were flown into the World Trade Center in New York City, one into the North Tower and the other into the South Tower. Shortly thereafter, hijackers flew the third plane into the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia. When passengers attempted to seize back control of the fourth plane, the hijackers intentionally crashed that plane into a field in Pennsylvania. Everyone on all four planes died, as well as more than 100 military and civilian personnel in the Pentagon, and staggeringly, 2,753 at the World Trade Center. In total, almost 3,000 people were killed. The financial, emotional, and social costs were immense, including property and infrastructure damages of ten to thirteen billion dollars and ancillary costs to the city of New York (due to lost jobs, lost taxes, damage to infrastructure, etc.) of ninety-five billion dollars.1 In many ways, for Americans, the trauma of 9/11 would define

D. Schweitzer (B) Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, NY, United States © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 E. Caoduro et al. (eds.), Mediated Terrorism in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73511-1_4

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the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. This trauma would have profound impacts on both real-world policies as well as on Hollywood entertainment. In this chapter, I will use the television show The Grid—a 2004 miniseries co-produced by the BBC, Fox TV, and Carnival Films that aired on TNT in the United States and on BBC2 in the UK—to demonstrate how Hollywood entertainment was— and could be—used to communicate specific arguments and buzzwords to shape American public opinion in favor of those real-world policies. The events of 9/11 were seen as acts of war, and at first, President George W. Bush was seen as America’s great defender. Public approval for Bush skyrocketed by as much as forty percentage points, reaching a remarkable 90 percent in late September 2001 and lingering around the high eighties in the months that followed. Sweeping measures against terrorism were initially justified—and even actively encouraged—by many politicians and American citizens alike as necessary in order to restore a semblance of safety and security. For example, a week after the attack, Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF), which allowed the President “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.”2 My emphasis on the word “he” indicates that congressional authority would no longer be required for the President to commit the country to armed conflict, which it had been since the War Powers Resolution of 1973. President Bush could act unencumbered by such things as bureaucracy and protocol, which were seen as sluggish, at best, and fatal, at worst. Four years of a Donald Trump presidency only served to further erode remaining guardrails still protecting democracy, demonstrating just how futile “checks and balances” can be against shameless power grabs and authoritarian policies. A few weeks later, on October 26, 2001, President Bush signed the USA PATRIOT Act into law (the name is an acronym that spells out “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism”). The PATRIOT Act was meant to strengthen the government’s ability to combat terrorism by allowing, among other things, the indefinite detention of immigrants; searches of private property without the owner’s or the occupant’s consent or knowledge; and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to search telephone, e-mail, and financial records without a court order. This

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also was initially justified—and even (in some corners) actively encouraged—by many politicians and American citizens alike as necessary in order to restore a semblance of safety and security. As I outline in my book Going Viral: Zombies, Viruses, and the End of the World, one of the reasons that Americans were so willing to comply with this chipping away at due process and the Constitution was because, following the attacks of 9/11, America felt trapped in a state of helplessness and vulnerability exacerbated by the confusion of a new kind of warfare, where enemies were unclear and geographical boundaries irrelevant. Traditional rules did not apply, and, clearly, neither did traditional methods. In order to make sure Americans stayed focused on the appropriate issues and remained willing to comply with an erosion of their rights in the interests of safety, both Hollywood and the American government worked together to paint the Middle East as, according to television scholar Lynn Spigel, “the antithesis of Western humanity and progress,” 3 an adversary not only worth conquering but necessary to conquer for the good of humanity. Fueled by Bush’s “War on Terror,” television narratives, journalistic articles, and news programs aimed to make sense of the complex political situation, imposing a clarifying binary and patriotic simplicity to the situation. In order to compensate for the confusion that followed 9/11 about who America’s enemy was and why America had been attacked, the emphasis was often on uncomplicated narratives of American “good” versus foreign (usually Middle Eastern) “evil.” These stories also made it quite clear that the threat came from without rather than within. Even if the threat was on American soil—which it almost always was—it came from a terrorist who had slipped over the border. This fits with the criteria associated with patriotism according to Silvio Waisbord, professor of Media and Public Affairs: “Patriotism establishes that only external forces pose threats to the nation. It excludes the possibility of internal actors interested in disrupting a seemingly unified community.”4 Even if the threat looks American, it never actually is. Unless, of course, an external terrorist force is manipulating that American, in which case that American is a proxy for the terrorist group. Television narratives, in particular, also aimed to restore faith in government institutions, like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or the National Security Agency (NSA), which had failed to prevent the attacks on September 11, 2001, as well as to promote newly formed agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The narratives

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did this not only by depicting these agencies succeeding in episode after episode, but also by making it very clear that the American agencies were doing good work, and that they were doing it well, as opposed to the dastardly terrorists, with their nefarious agendas and incompetent plans. Certain tropes and buzzwords were heavily featured, such as images of Osama Bin Laden preaching to his converts, often juxtaposed with images of the World Trade Center collapsing, along with emotional narratives of loved ones lost during the attack. Over and over again, in both fact and fiction, evil germinated in the Middle East, the threat was most likely Jihadi radicals, and the American government—the CIA, the NSA, the DHS—had tools and tricks that would allow them to remain one step ahead. However, unlike the black-and-white clarity of the Cold War, this new kind of warfare remained confusing and complex, despite rhetorical efforts to simplify the situation. American historian and political commentator Walter Laqueur, in his 1996 essay on “postmodern terrorism,” writes that, in the past, “terrorism was almost always the province of groups of militants that had the backing of political forces like the Irish and Russian social revolutionary movements of 1900,” which made it much easier to understand allegiances and agendas. Now, however, terrorists are individuals or like-minded people working in very small groups, often with varying allegiances and agendas.5 Laqueur also describes the “bewildering multiplicity of terrorist and potentially terrorist groups and sects . . . espousing varieties of nationalism, religious fundamentalism, fascism, and apocalyptic millenarianism” who defy geographic, as well as ideological, containment.6 Al-Qaeda, for instance, is “devoid of organizational boundaries,” penetrating many levels of Islamic society around the world. Al-Qaeda, much like many contemporary terrorist organizations, is a network; “highly decentralized and dispersed,” it has “diffuse structure, indirect connections, and nontraditional modes of communication.”7 This would be a new kind of war for a new kind of world, and this intensified the challenge for television narratives: how to simplify complex world issues into a simple good and evil binary that Americans would not only understand but support.

Defeating Global Networks of Modern Terrorism In many ways, the 9/11 attacks could be described as a blow by cellular, networked, modular, nimble terrorists against a centralized tower, an

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icon, a pillar, demonstrating the global shift from centralized hierarchical powers to distributed, horizontal networks.8 This evolution mirrors that of many brick-and-mortar institutions, sovereign power structures, and central bureaucracies, all of which have been increasingly eroded or even replaced with the flatness of interconnected networks. However, it is not merely that the terrorist organizations are networks but that terrorist organizations use networks. Professor Nick B. King, in his 2002 article “Dangerous Fragments,” writes that contemporary terrorist attacks are facilitated by the “ability to navigate and manipulate networks.” Global networks of transportation, trade, and information, as well as the acceleration of international trade and commerce, allow the terrorist to secretly acquire or construct, and rapidly and efficiently disseminate, weapons of mass destruction to American cities.9 A global network would be necessary to combat the other global network, a new kind of warrior for a new kind of war, and Hollywood was all too happy to supply the necessary visuals. Rather than offering the “rogue hero” common to television shows like 24 (Fox, 2001– 2010), The Grid specifically portrays an ensemble cast coordinating global efforts to stop terrorism, reflecting not only efforts by the NSA, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the FBI, but also British agencies MI5 (the United Kingdom’s domestic counter-intelligence security agency) and MI6 (the United Kingdom’s foreign intelligence agency). Responding to the complexities of intelligence work in a globalized world, representatives of these various antiterrorist agencies work together as an international counterterrorism team in order to disrupt a terrorist cell determined to attack the world’s economic foundations. As NSA agent and director of this new global antiterrorism council Maren Jackson (Julianna Marguiles) puts it, “our team is the best way to do the job, cell versus cell” (see Fig. 4.1). Maren’s new team is radical in two ways: one, for the apparent disregard for hierarchy and protocol, and two, for the level of international cooperation and collaboration it supposedly facilitates as a result of this disregard. When Maren suggests to Emily Tuthill (Jemma Redgrave), Chief of Counterterrorism Operations of MI6, that their respective agencies need to form a partnership, Emily is against it. Maren responds, starting to explain that she is aware “things have been fractious” between their respective agencies post-Iraq,” but Emily cuts her off. “Post and pre-Iraq,” she tells Maren angrily. “Your boss’s cowboy tactics didn’t turn up much on Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction so as the service with

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Fig. 4.1 Maren Jackson (Julianna Marguiles) on The Grid

the deeper understanding of the region, we were enlisted to find what wasn’t there and take the blame for not finding it.” Maren acknowledges that the United States made mistakes, but that this new partnership is specifically intended “to prevent these kinds of problems.” After all, as Maren explains to Emily, “we share the same interests, the same threats. Whether you like it or not, we need each other.” Whether Emily likes it or not, the only way to defeat a network is with a stronger network. Not only would narratives like those on The Grid reinforce the strength and appeal of clearly defined heroes from different countries working together—as a network and/or a team—in order to combat a global threat, as well as reinforce the suspicion that much of America’s threat comes from the Middle East, but, most troublingly, The Grid reinforces government policy and public opinion that the only way to restore safety is by defying traditional protocol. In times of war, the show emphasizes, expedience should always take precedence over due process. The themes emphasized by The Grid and similar shows, such as The Agency (CBS, 2001–2003), Threat Matrix (ABC, 2003–2004), Sleeper Cell (Showtime, 2005–2006), and 24, should not be dismissed as innocent entertainment. As the Centers for Disease Control and other health-related agencies have long known, mass media is an incredibly effective tool for shaping people’s ideas and behaviors. Dr. Phyllis Tilson

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Pietrow, an expert in population science at Johns Hopkins who helps create health-related programming for developing countries, argues that the notion that television could be used to change health behavior is now irrefutable: “Many health ministries, with a bit of prodding from people like us, have come to recognize that if you want to get health messages to people on anything from immunization to tuberculosis, clean water, washing hands, you need to go via the mass media.”10 Even in the US, with its seemingly infinite options for entertainment, the power of television for conveying information is immense.11 Entertainment-education remains a powerful tool, and one that can be used by government agencies to draw attention to whatever issues they see fit. Therefore, it is crucial to understand how fictional entertainment can shape real world policies. As the first episode of The Grid, which originally aired on TNT July 19, 2004, begins, Sarin gas is accidentally released by a group of incompetent terrorists—a network including a former al-Qaeda commander—without authorization from any terrorist council. This reflects the new kind of warfare common to the twenty-first century, with its decentralized and nontraditional terrorist organizations. Even though the accidental release occurs in London, an informant tells FBI Agent and Terrorism Task Force Special Agent in Charge Max Canary (Dylan McDermott) that other extremists are bringing Sarin gas across the Mexican border to Los Angeles, bringing the threat close to home for American audiences. The Mexican border remains a repeated plot point to this day, both in fictional narratives and contemporary politics, due to its supposedly porous nature and proximity to the United States, as well as the way the skin color of those living south of it plays into racist agendas. A major element of Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign was his repeated promise to “build a wall” along the American/Mexican border, a promise that would never be fulfilled due to a host of political, environmental, and financial reasons. Trump would also repeatedly (when convenient, such as just before the 2018 elections) use threats of a fictitious caravan of criminals descending upon the United States through that very same border, a porous border that could interchangeably allow Ebola, Covid, or Isis to destroy American lives. There are other repeated tropes in The Grid, seemingly generated from a government bulletin of buzzwords and talking points. For instance, the show engages directly with the deep-seated fear many Americans feel about Muslims, using CIA agent and Middle East analyst Raza Michaels

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(Piter Marek) to demonstrate the racism that many Muslims experience in the United States and elsewhere, as well as to give them a voice, before ultimately negating Raza’s argument. As Maren recruits Raza for her new global team, she tells him, “You write that Islam is the religion of the oppressed. I say it appeals to oppressed men because it sanctions the oppression of women. To me, Islam is one thing: fear. And until the clerics can stand up and say that killing people is the work of the devil, and that it is a woman’s god given right to eat, sleep, walk, do, say, whatever she wants, I am dumb, deaf, and blind to what they are selling.” Raza hits back that she is judging an entire religion based on a fundamentalist faction, but Maren has already made her point, and it will linger in the minds of the audience. To further weaken Raza’s argument, Max then interjects, launching into a story about 9/11 and the World Trade Center. He recounts how he lost his best friend that day, and all they could find to bury was his leg. As emotional music builds in the background, and Max unsuccessfully struggles to hold back tears, Max tells Raza and Maren (and, by proxy, the audience) about his friend’s wife, their new baby, how he “was just a guy going to work” who “took the elevator up and never took it down.” It is clear that whatever Raza believes about Islam, in the eyes of Maren, it oppresses women, and in the eyes of Max, it killed his best friend.

Strategy of Disempowered Middle Eastern Women on The Grid Maren’s argument that Islam suppresses women plays a key role on a show that aims to contrast the supposedly “oppressed women of Islam” with the empowered women of the West, both implicitly and explicitly. With a true ensemble cast, The Grid offers several strong female characters, almost an excessive amount by Hollywood standards. In a study of the 2017–2018 television season by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, 68% of television programs featured casts that were male-dominated, while only 21% had casts with more female than male characters, and a mere 11% had an equally distributed ensemble cast.12 In contrast, The Grid features quite a few leading female characters. Not only are Maren Jackson and Emily Tuthill strong female characters, but Catherine Cross (Chapelle Jaffe), as the National Security Advisor, is also a power player on the show.

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The use of these strong women provides a visible contrast to the supposed oppression of women under Islam, a fact that is verbally emphasized throughout the series by numerous characters, as well as depicted visually. For instance, in an early scene, male Middle Eastern doctor Raghib Mutar (Silas Carson) complains to his sister Nazira (Houda Echouafni) that a female colleague does not wear a hijab to work. His sister explains that the female colleague is a “modern woman” who does not share her brother’s understanding of Sharia law,13 and, moreover, tells her brother that the more time he spends with extremists, the less tolerant he becomes. However, Raghib, with self-righteous indignation, couches his strict views as part of his faith, insisting that he cannot abandon it “for political convenience.” As the show unfolds, he spends more and more time with these extremists, becoming increasingly involved in their activities. The implicit message is that Raghib’s chauvinistic attitude predisposes him to sympathize with the terrorists…or is it that his sympathy for the terrorists predisposes him to have a chauvinistic attitude? This crudely simplistic contrast (Western women are empowered! Middle Eastern women are oppressed!) is only one of several “talking points” integrated into a script that reeks heavily of political agenda. Other topics that are repeatedly emphasized are the importance and expedience of international collaboration, often coinciding with warnings about the danger of plodding bureaucracy in contrast with the benefits of decisive action. For instance, in the first episode, Maren disagrees with her colleagues’ consensus that “there is no immediate threat to our citizens and interests.” Instead, she argues that “the attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction indicates a new level of desperation.” This recent incident, she continues, requires them to “quit the usual squabbling and turf wars, no more lip service to cooperation between us. This Sarin is serious business. So, the game of databases being off limits or information being hoarded has got to stop. I am proposing a new interagency team…This team will coordinate all intelligence relating to the Sarin threat. What’s radical is that this team will bypass their own agency hierarchy, and report directly to you, Madame Advisor. It’s just more efficient.” While, yes, bypassing hierarchies and departmental regulations may speed up action and response time, “turf wars” do not exist because government agents are petty and backstabbing. If a database is off limits, it is usually for reasons of security rather than to fuel competitive egos. Protocol is (ideally) in place for a reason and, unlike Maren’s implication, not there merely as a tool in the game of intelligence collection.

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Later in the same episode, Maren similarly argues that they need to “screw bureaucracy” and “go directly from analysis to action” because bureaucracy is to blame when intelligence agencies fail to prevent terrorist attacks. In a later scene, Maren talks with Jay Aldrich (Robert Forster), former Assistant Secretary of State. Aldrich describes bureaucracies as aircraft carriers: “big, powerful, slow to turn.” Bureaucratic waters have “always been treacherous,” he tells her, and she should be careful not to be distracted by politics. Similarly, as Emily explains to Raza in episode three, “The best intelligence work is always done outside the official parameters.” The message is clear: hierarchy is bad and inefficient. Even though bureaucracy is there for a reason, traditional methods, much like traditional bureaucracy, are frequently affiliated not only with sluggishness but also with failure, and when fighting terrorism, failure means lives lost. If the Constitution and traditional American government policies must be ignored or revised, that is a small price to pay for allowing Maren to do her job efficiently. Max echoes a similar statement later that same episode when Maren tells him not to take interagency politics personally. Max responds by telling her that he appreciates her “highly informed perspective,” but that she is wrong. “This is personal. It’s very personal. When some thug says he wants to kill me, kill the people I love, maybe it’s hyperbole, maybe it’s just talk, but after what went down on 9/11, I give him the benefit of the doubt.” Clearly, 9/11 changed if not the Constitution, then the rules of the game. In the case of The Grid, we are repeatedly reminded of the dangers of faulty analysis and intelligence gathering that result from following traditional protocol. For instance, Raza Michaels, the Middle East Analyst for the CIA, falsely believes that the first terrorist attack—occurring at the end of episode one—was “a standalone incident,” “perpetrated by members of a fringe terrorist cell” who were “acting independently without the authorization of any standing terrorist council.” He argues that there is “no immediate collateral threat to U.S. assets.” At the end of episode three, Maren states that the mistake that led to another terrorist attack, this time in Nigeria, was not with the intel but rather with the analysis. The problem is not with the ability to gather information. The problem is what is done after that information is gathered, with the limitations of traditional protocol. Similarly, Max admits after the attack, “We had nothing on the radar screen. We didn’t see this coming.” These words will resonate for anyone who lived through 9/11, and, airing just

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a few years after the attacks, the connection will not be lost to audience members. Near the end of episode two, which aired on TNT the same night as episode one, Hamid Samoudi (Parvez Qadir), a Middle Eastern man looking for his brother Akil Samoudi (Emil Marwa), finds a videotape inscribed with an Arabic word that is not translated into English for the benefit of non-Arabic speakers (see Figs. 4.2 and 4.3). When he puts the tape into the VCR, he sees an al-Qaeda propaganda video, complete with Osama Bin Laden speaking in Arabic (also not translated for our benefit) and terrorists conducting physical and written training. Those scenes fade into a shot of the World Trade Center collapsing, with Bin Laden superimposed on top, microphone in hand, preaching in Arabic as the World Trade Center explodes and collapses. Hamid goes to the British police to notify them that this brother might be involved with a terrorist group, but the police seem more interested in gathering information on Hamid, so he leaves. Once again, we see the failure of “business as usual,” the literal dangers of stereotyping Middle Eastern men as terrorists. Similarly, the show makes the case several times that traditional profiling is also often ineffective. For instance, Kaz Moore (Barna

Fig. 4.2 Still from the videotape Hamid Samoudi finds while looking for his brother on The Grid

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Fig. 4.3 Another still from the videotape Hamid Samoudi finds while looking for his brother on The Grid

Moricz), who is affiliated with the Middle Eastern terrorist group at the heart of the show, looks like an everyday American college student, especially as he drives an SUV decorated with a “Never Again” bumper sticker as he heads off to commit a terrorist attack. He stays completely under the radar, and, ironically, in episode three, Muhammad (Alki David), the primary terrorist in the series, tells Kaz that “growing up in America has uniquely prepared [him] to strike back.” In contrast, Arab intelligence analyst Raza Michaels is subjected to frequent lie detector tests, “which disrupt his labor and undermine his credibility with the other agents.”14 Clearly traditional profiling, much like traditional protocol, is fraught with error.

Parameters of American Legal Jurisdiction Another way in which the show criticizes the sluggishness of protocol and bureaucracy is with an emphasis on the delays caused by due process. In the third episode, which aired on TNT on July 26, 2004, the FBI takes terrorist Foukara (Sevag Sagherain) into custody. Upon arriving on the scene, Lois Avery (Rosemary Dunsmore), his lawyer, declares she is there “to protect Mr. Foukara’s rights.” Max responds, “Mr. Foukara tried to

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kill me,” as if that fact invalidates those rights. The lawyer replies that, so far, this accusation is just alleged, and Mr. Foukara has not yet been charged, meaning that he is being held illegally. “Believe what you will, this is still a free country,” she tells Max. Max’s FBI colleague interjects that Foukara could be involved with a terrorist plot that would threaten thousands of American lives, as if that was justification for bending the rules, but the lawyer does not budge. Even though the argument in this episode applies to Foukara, the argument between the lawyer and the FBI agents could just as easily have been about the Guantanamo Bay military prison. The detention facility in Cuba, also referred to as Gitmo, was created after the attacks of 9/11 specifically to hold enemy combatants deemed especially dangerous. Significantly, it is not a prison to which people are sentenced following trial. As Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld explained in a Defense Department briefing on January 22, 2002, “To stop future terrorist attacks, we have detained these people, and we have and will be questioning them to gather additional intelligence information.”15 The goal, as Rumsfeld states it, is merely to hold people who might have useful information, not to punish them for convicted actions with legally appropriate prison sentences. One of the specific issues with the Gitmo prison is the fact that it was originally considered to be outside the parameters of American legal jurisdiction, meaning that the right of habeas corpus could be suspended, allowing detainees to be held indefinitely without charge and without due process. Although the same AUMF that allowed Bush “to use all necessary and appropriate force” did not explicitly discuss detention power, “courts have repeatedly held that the statute authorizes the detention of members of al-Qaeda and associated forces for the duration of hostilities as a fundamental incident of waging war.”16 And since the AUMF launched a war that will seemingly never end, the hostilities also continue indefinitely, giving the American government permission to create a status of permanent legal exception and indefinite detention for those seen as affiliated with al-Qaeda. Significantly, of course, those held at Gitmo are “alleged” members, as they have not yet gone to trial or even been charged with a crime. Also significant is the use of the term “enemy combatants” to describe these prisoners, meaning that they do not qualify for prisoner-of-war status, which would entail them to certain protections under the Geneva Convention. In a filing with the Supreme Court as recently as April 2019, lawyers for the Justice Department declared even

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U.S. citizens could be considered “enemy combatants” and could therefore also be held indefinitely without charge. In times of war (which now is all the time), due process is an apparently necessary sacrifice. In a move that appears prescient of the political climate in 2019, Foukara’s lawyer also insists that possible involvement in a terrorist plot does not give the FBI “the right to summarily dismiss Mr. Foukara’s rights,” before sarcastically asking why the FBI would stop there. “Deport all the Muslims in America to win your war,” she scoffs, as if she could see the future Executive Order 13769, officially entitled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States” and unofficially referred to as President Donald Trump’s “Muslim ban.” This order blocked entry to the United States from numerous Muslim majority countries, including Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Eventually dismissed by the courts, the order reminded many of Trump’s earlier call for a ban on Muslims in America following the terrorist attack in San Bernardino in 2015, as well as following the shooting in an Orlando nightclub a few months later. However, still unfazed by her arguments, Max tells Foukara’s lawyer that he believes “some rights stop at mass murder.” The lawyer shakes her head and says no, they do not, at least not according to the Constitution. “And until there is an amendment to the Constitution to that effect, I will protect Mr. Foukara’s rights. Charge him with attempted murder, try to have him extradited, but he will receive due process,” she says to Max, refusing to budge. Max shakes his head at her with disgust. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” he tells her. “The problem America is having in the world right now, Agent Cannery,” she replies, “is not because of what I’m doing.” With that last line of the scene, the show ever so lightly touches upon the fact that the conflict between the United States and al-Qaeda might be more complex than “evil Islam versus capitalism and freedom.” However, there is no elaboration. This resistance to tackle the complexity of conflict in the Middle East is not singular to The Grid. However, The Grid does an excellent job of emphasizing the apparent simplicity of the conflict. For instance, in episode two, Emily tells Raza that “It can’t be easy being an American Muslim working for the CIA.” Raza replies, “Easy? No. But I’m a better Muslim and a better American for it. I have to think about who I am and what I believe. Most people take those things for granted.” So, he is a better Muslim for being an American, and a better American for being a Muslim, whatever that means. When Emily asks him what he believes

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is the motivation for the conflict in the Middle East, Raza explains that he thinks “the battle is between globalists and remnants of third world tribes resisting the push into the twenty-first century.” In other words, those who embrace the future are feuding with those who would like to keep us in the past. Apparently, that explanation is still too complex, so Emily summarizes her point of view by saying: “Oil. That’s what the battle is about. It’s what the tribes have, it’s what we need, it’s what the terrorists want to stop us from having.” And so the scene ends, point made. In a separate scene, the al-Qaeda Senior Council echoes Emily’s perspective. While terrorist Muhammad has a plan to collapse the Western economy, the council initially resists, saying that this plan is too complex. However, Muhammad insists that just killing people will not advance their cause. “Take away their cheap oil and collapse their almighty economy,” he tells the council. “Then they will lay in ruins and retreat from our land.” Again, the conflict is apparently only about oil. While oil—and who gets it—is a contentious topic, the Middle Eastern conflict is far more complicated, but by delving into deeper issues, audiences might lose sight of the intended focus on dangerous al-Qaeda, weapons of mass destruction, and evil bin Laden.

Complicity Between Hollywood and the American Government As film historian Stacy Takacs points out in her book Terrorism TV: Popular Entertainment in Post 9/11 America, “the thematic coherence” between shows like The Grid and the “new political climate was not entirely accidental.”17 Shortly after 9/11, Karl Rove, senior advisor and deputy chief of staff in the George W. Bush administration, met with film producers, directors, screenwriters, and media executives in Hollywood in order to strategize how best to make patriotic films that portrayed the government in a positive light. However, as media studies professors Justin Lewis, Richard Maxwell, and Toby Miller conclude, the meeting was really “an intelligence briefing designed to bring the Hollywood power elite up to date on the White House’s war aims.”18 To further the government’s public relations initiative, many television programs also “received assistance, both before and after 9/11, from U.S. security agencies, the Department of Defense, and/or the State Department.”19 Producers of The Grid “toured the NSA, the Pentagon, the CIA, and

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the State Department and received script advice from Pentagon security analyst and former naval commander Larry Seaquist,” Takacs points out, adding that the producers even asked Seaquist “to speculate about how Al Qaeda would adapt to U.S. strategy and to concoct plot scenarios that would make the story seem ‘up-to-date’ when it aired.”20 However, this was only part of the assistance the show received. She goes on to add that actor Dylan McDermott “shadowed FBI agents assigned to the Los Angeles Joint Terrorism Task Force” while actor Julianna Margulies “consulted regularly with Seaquist about NSA protocols.21 Even when they state that fear of all Muslims is not the answer, or even make an effort to provide a positive pro-American Muslim character, overall, shows like The Grid reinforce the suspicion that much of America’s threat comes from the Middle East. They target, exacerbate, and manipulate viewers’ instincts, encouraging them to see the world in good versus evil binaries. Perhaps even more troubling, they encourage aggressive action unencumbered by the checks and balances of bureaucracy. In a time when traditional distinctions between private and public, home and battlefield, safe and dangerous have become blurred, if not meaningless, replaced by a constant war that knows no geographic or temporal limitations, this kind of messaging is nothing less than the worst kind of political propaganda precisely because it is viewed as innocent entertainment.

Notes 1. “How Much Did the September 11 Terrorist Attack Cost America?”, The Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, http://www.iags.org/costof 911.html (Accessed May 19, 2017). 2. Public Law 107–40 (2001), http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-107 publ40/html/PLAW-107publ40.htm (emphasis added). 3. Lynn Spigel, “Entertainment Wars: Television Culture after 9/11,” American Quarterly 56(2) (June 2004), 244. 4. Silvio Waisbord, “Journalism, Risk, and Patriotism,” in Barbie Zelizer and Stuart Allen (eds.), Journalism after September 11 (New York: Routledge, 2002), 213. 5. Walter Laqueur, “Postmodern Terrorism,” Foreign Affairs 75(5) (September–October 1996), 34. 6. Walter Laqueur, “Postmodern Terrorism,” Foreign Affairs 75(5) (September–October 1996), 33, 28. 7. Boaz Ganor, “Terrorism Networks: It Takes a Network to Beat a Network,” in Paul R. Kleindorfer, Yoram (Jerry) Wind and Robert E. Gunther (eds.), The Network Challenge: Strategy, Profit, and Risk in an

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8. 9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

14. 15.

16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

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Interlinked World (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Wharton School Publishing, 2009), 454. Alexander Galloway, Protocol (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 201, 204. Nick B. King, “Dangerous Fragments,” Grey Room 7 (Spring 2002), 75. Phyllis Tilson Pietrow quoted in Stolberg, Sheryl Gay. “CDC Plays Script Doctor to Spread Its Message.” New York Times, 26 June 2001, www.nytimes.com/2001/06/26/science/cdc-plays-script-doctorto-spread-its-message.html. Dahlia Schweitzer, “Pushing Contagion: How Government Agencies Shape Portrayals of Disease,” Journal of Popular Culture 50(3) (2017), 447. Martha M. Lauzen, “Boxed in 2017–2018: Women on Screen and Behind the Scenes in Television,” Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, San Diego State University, September 2018, https://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/ 2017-18_Boxed_In_Report.pdf. Derived primarily from the Koran, Sharia refers to Islamic law as it is transposed to every day life. There is much variation in how it is understood and implemented but the underlying intent is to guide Muslims in how to live according to God’s wishes. Stacy Takacs, Terrorism TV: Popular Entertainment in Post-9/11 America (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012), 77. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, DoD News Briefing, January 22, 2002, U.S. Department of Defense, https://archive.defense.gov/transc ripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=2254. Oona Hathaway, Samuel Adelsberg, Spencer Amdur, Philip Levitz, Freya Pitts, and Sirine Shebaya, “The Power to Detain: Detention of Terrorism Suspects After 9/11,” Yale Journal of International Law 38(1) (2013), 125. Takacs, Terrorism TV , 62. Justin Lewis, Richard Maxwell, and Toby Miller, “9-11,” Television and New Media 3(2) (2002): 126. Takacs, Terrorism TV , 62. Takacs, Terrorism TV , 62. Takacs, Terrorism TV , 62.

Works Cited Galloway, Alexander. Protocol. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004. Ganor, Boaz. “Terrorism Networks: It Takes a Network to Beat a Network.” In Paul R. Kleindorfer, Yoram (Jerry) Wind, and Robert E. Gunther (eds.), The

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Network Challenge: Strategy, Profit, and Risk in an Interlinked World. NJ: Wharton School Publishing, 2009, 453–470. Hathaway, Oona, Samuel Adelsberg, Spencer Amdur, Philip Levitz, Freya Pitts, and Sirine Shebaya. “The Power to Detain: Detention of Terrorism Suspects After 9/11.” Yale Journal of International Law 38(1) (2013), 124–177. “How Much Did the September 11 Terrorist Attack Cost America?”, The Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, http://www.iags.org/costof911.html (Accessed May 19, 2017). King, Nick B. “Dangerous Fragments.” Grey Room 7 (Spring 2002), 72–81. Lauzen, Martha M. “Boxed in 2017–2018: Women on Screen and Behind the Scenes in Television.” Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, San Diego State University, September 2018. https://womenintvfilm.sdsu. edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/2017-18_Boxed_In_Report.pdf. Lewis, Justin, Richard Maxwell, and Toby Miller. “9–11,” Television and New Media 3(2) (2002), 125–131. Public Law 107–40 (2001), http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-107pub l40/html/PLAW-107publ40.htm. Rumsfeld, Donald. Secretary of Defense. U.S. Department of Defense News Briefing, January 22, 2002, https://archive.defense.gov/transcripts/transc ript.aspx?transcriptid=2254. Schweitzer, Dahlia. Going Viral: Zombies, Viruses, and the End of the World. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2018. Schweitzer, Dahlia. “Pushing Contagion: How Government Agencies Shape Portrayals of Disease.” Journal of Popular Culture 50(3) (July 2017), 445–465. Spigel, Lynn. “Entertainment Wars: Television Culture after 9/11.” American Quarterly 56(2) (June 2004), 235–270. Stolberg, Sheryl Gay. “CDC Plays Script Doctor to Spread Its Message.” New York Times, 26 June 2001, www.nytimes.com/2001/06/26/science/cdcplays-script-doctor-to-spread-its-message.html. Takacs, Stacy. Terrorism TV: Popular Entertainment in Post-9/11 America. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012. Waisbord, Silvio. “Journalism, Risk, and Patriotism.” In Barbie Zelizer and Stuart Allen (eds.), Journalism after September 11. New York: Routledge, 2002, 201– 219.

Film and Television 24. Created by Robert Cochran and Joel Surnow. Produced by Brian Grazer. Aired 2001–2010 on Fox. The Agency. Created by Michael Frost Beckner. Produced by Shaun Cassidy and Gail Katz. Aired 2001–2003 on CBS.

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The Grid. Created by Tracey Alexander and Ken Friedman. Produced by Tracey Alexander, Joshua Brand, Patrick Sheane Duncan, Brian Eastman, Ken Friedman, and Gareth Neame. Aired July 19, 20, and 21, 2004 on TNT. Sleeper Cell. Created by Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris. Produced by Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris. Aired 2005–2006 on Showtime. Threat Matrix. Created by Daniel Voll. Produced by Michael Edelstein, Emile B. Levisetti, John Shiban, and Daniel Voll, Aired 2003–2004 on ABC.

CHAPTER 5

“God, I Miss the Cold War”: The Imagination of Terrorism on Post 9/11 American Serial Drama Ariel Avissar

In this chapter I will examine just what it is that makes the terrorist threat, and the new world (dis)order it represents, so structurally complex and incomprehensible, as portrayed in many American television series from the past two decades. Drawing comparisons between the nature of terrorism as depicted in critical and popular discourse, and the contemporary properties of the medium of television, I will illustrate how both are characterized by rhizomatic complexity, emblematic products of contemporary, networked society. I will thus argue that these characteristics of the medium of television are well-suited for the portrayal of global terrorism, as an emblem of broader existential anxieties inherent within contemporary life.

A. Avissar (B) Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 E. Caoduro et al. (eds.), Mediated Terrorism in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73511-1_5

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Post-9/11 Realities and Cold War Nostalgia During a public address held on November of 2003, President George W. Bush claimed that “the world is changed after September the 11th .”1 Ten years later, on the pilot episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013– 2020, ABC), Agent Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders), an agent of the fictional counter-terrorism agency known as S.H.I.E.L.D.,2 stated that “the Battle of New York was the end of the world. This, now is the new world.” This latter quote, while echoing the sentiments of the former, does not refer to the real-life events of 9/11, but rather to a devastating fictional alien invasion that wreaked havoc in New York City, as depicted in The Avengers (directed by Joss Whedon in 2012). “The Battle of New York,” the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s thinly-disguised equivalent of the 9/11 attacks,3 had a significant impact on that universe, leaving many characters, such as the titular Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. of the television series, to deal with the aftermath, protecting a world that would never be the same again. On the short-lived Flashforward (2009–2010, ABC), FBI agents Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes) and Demetri Noh (John Cho) similarly discuss the aftermath of the “Global Blackout,” another fictional catastrophe that served as an in-universe 9/11 stand-in4 : Mark: Demetri:

Things have changed for everybody. It’s a new world. Yeah? I miss the old one then. (episode 1.07)

These are but two examples of a broader trend on American television of the past two decades, which has featured many dozens of serial dramas, of various genres, that focus on large-scale catastrophic events, a trend that some have dubbed a veritable “crisis fetish.”5 These catastrophes invariably evoke, explicitly or implicitly, the events of 9/11, whether in the context of real-world acts of terrorism on American soil or of various fantastic or otherworldly forms of “terrorism.” In these examples and many others, “a new world” has suddenly and unexpectedly been ushered in by the catastrophic event, a world more complex and challenging, triggering nostalgia for “simpler times.”6 The connection to 9/11 and to the war on terror is made explicit in many cases. In an episode of Homeland (2011–2020, Showtime), a conversation between CIA officers Dar Adal (F. Murray Abraham) and Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin) includes the following lines (episode 2.20):

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Christ, I miss the Cold War. Prefer the daily threat of nuclear annihilation? No, I miss the rules. The Soviets didn’t shoot us; we didn’t shoot them. Boy, this bunch…

These sentiments are expressed again two seasons later, in a conversation between Saul and a Pakistani General named Latif (Art Malik; episode 4.04): Latif : Saul:

It’s not like when we were fighting the Cold War. No, the Russians were tough, but… They didn’t saw our heads off on the internet. Blow up innocent people. Fly airplanes into the Twin Towers.

These examples and others7 illustrate a trend of “nostalgia for the good old days of the Cold War,”8 for “the familiar contours of that bygone conflict, which has been replaced by a much more murky, elusive and confusing age.”9 While similar sentiments had been expressed before the events of 9/11, in recent years the trend of “Cold War nostalgia” has become more prominent by far, both on-screen and in political discourse.10 As stated by then Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, in a 2007 conference on security policy: “As an old cold warrior, one of yesterday’s speeches almost filled me with nostalgia for a less complex time.”11 James Inhofe, a Republican senator, similarly stated in a 2014 interview: I look back wistfully at the Cold War […] There were two superpowers, they knew what we had, we knew what they had, mutually assured destruction meant something. It doesn’t mean anything anymore. Now we have these people who are not rational, not logical, they’re nuts.12

As these examples illustrate, the Cold War is seen by many today as an inherently stable, predictable, bipolar era, in which a perpetual state of peace, albeit a strained one, was maintained, held in check by the “Balance of Terror” between the opposing superpowers.13 Back then, it is argued, simpler rules used to apply—but the terrorists no longer play by the rules, certainly not by “our” rules.14 While stability is associated with the Cold War, change and uncertainty are seen as closely related to terrorism and perceived as threats to

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national security.15 In another Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D episode, U.S. Air Force Colonel Glenn Talbot (Adrian Pasdar), referring to recent terrorist attacks, states his conviction that “the American people are looking for a simple enemy […] It’s what makes them feel safe” (episode 2.06). Similarly, on The Blacklist (2013–present, NBC), senior members of government conspire to “reignite” the Cold War, believing that “there are too many players on the board” and that “a bipolar world is inherently more stable” (episode 2.20). While this conception of the Cold War era as “simpler times” errs in simplification—if not straight-out distortion—of reality, Cold War nostalgia is nonetheless an illuminating trope, capturing something of the cultural and political zeitgeist of the contemporary era and its conception of the terrorist threat.16

Terrorist Networks and the Network Society First, a brief introduction to “the Network Society,” as Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells has named the contemporary era, with its prominence of network formations and of networked thinking. While network logic has existed before, the contemporary era and prevailing information technologies have resulted in the network becoming the most pervasive mode of configuration in almost every sphere of social life, so that most “dominant functions and processes […] are increasingly organized around networks.”17 As Castells has stated, the Network Society is largely the result of several decades-long developments that culminated in the 1990s, such as the information technology revolution, the restructuring of international politics following the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the accelerated process of globalization enabled by increased avenues for international mobility, trade, and communications.18 The widespread use of the Internet, in particular, was a key component of the information technology revolution, enabling free and instantly available global communication without the need for centralized control or supervisory authority.19 Philosophers Alexander R. Galloway and Eugene Thacker similarly describe the increased processes of globalization over recent decades as having transformed dominant power structures—political, economic and cultural—“from a system of control housed in a relatively small number of power hubs to a system of control infused into the material fabric of distributed networks.”20 Thus, for example, in the economic logic of the Network Society, “productivity is generated through and

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competition is played out in a global network of interaction between business networks.”21 In this networked economic environment, decentralized multinational conglomerates coordinate through an interconnected global network of communication, with various industries forming “an increasingly complex web of alliances, agreements, and joint ventures in which most large corporations are interlinked,” allowing for increased mobility and fluidity in the management of resources and personnel.22 Network logic should be contrasted with simpler, more linear formations, emblematic of what French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari have termed “arborescent culture.” Arborescent—“tree-like”— models are hierarchical systems with clearly defined centers of “command,” where information flows only in pre-established paths, much like a tree, in which all branches and roots stem from the trunk to which they are subordinated.23 Following on the ideas of French mathematicians Pierre Rosenstiehl and Jean Petitot, Deleuze and Guattari contrast these centered and hierarchical systems to “rhizomatic” models: acentered, non-hierarchical systems, in which communication runs from any neighbor to any other, the stems or channels do not preexist, and all individuals are interchangeable, defined only by their state at a given moment—such that the local operations are coordinated and the final, global result synchronized without a central agency.24

If the vertical tree is the symbol of linear, centered configurations, Deleuze and Guattari offer the rhizome, with its multiplicity of autonomous horizontal offshoots, as a symbol of complex, non-linear configurations consisting of multiple interconnected nodal points that function collectively as part of the larger structure.25 The rhizome, then, provides an apt metaphor with which to conceptualize the network: a non-centralized, non-hierarchical configuration of interconnected elements. The open-ended and non-hierarchical nature of the network makes it far more flexible and adaptable to variation than centralized—and therefore more rigid—structures.26 The flexible and adaptable nature of networking logic proves “well adapted to increasing complexity of interaction and to unpredictable patterns of development” that characterize the contemporary era, marked by “constant change and organizational fluidity” in various spheres of life.27 Therefore, it is not surprising that

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the increasingly rapid changes and instability of recent decades have been met with—and accelerated by—the adoption of network logic in many aspects of contemporary life within the Network Society. Significantly, in the context of this analysis, network logic has also informed the narrative structures of much of recent American television serial drama, as will be discussed later in this chapter. But what does this have to do with Al-Qaeda? In an episode of Rubicon, Will Travers (James Badge Dale), an intelligence analyst for the fictional American Policy Institute (API) tasked with monitoring terrorist threats, is having dinner with his supervisor, Kale Ingram (Arliss Howard). The following conversation takes place (episode 1.06): Will:

Kale: Will:

Kale:

A slime mold is really thousands of independent single-cell units. But you put them under favorable conditions, and they come together as a much larger organism working towards a common purpose. There is no boss, yet they work in concert. Now, you can’t eliminate the units. You can only make the conditions less favorable for them to form a network. And what does this have to do with Al-Qaeda? Our enemies, they used to be hierarchical. You could identify a controller and neutralize it. Now it’s, it’s… it’s a web. A self-organized network, a collection of hubs that form a much larger whole that wasn’t predetermined and remains ungoverned; like slime mold. God, I miss the Cold War.

Once again expressing Cold War nostalgia, these lines sum up quite succinctly just what it is about the conception of the terrorist threat that contrasts it from earlier enemies: its rhizomatic, networked structure. The war on terror saw a break with the equilibrium and centralized, localized power structures that characterized earlier instances of war—the World Wars and the Cold War. Terrorism’s fluid, interconnected nature and global reach make it a threat to national security, and a challenge for the intelligence community.28 As stated in National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, an official White House publication released in February 2003: The terrorist threat is a flexible, transnational network structure, enabled by modern technology and characterized by loose interconnectivity both

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within and between groups […] The terrorist threat today is both resilient and diffuse because of this mutually reinforcing, dynamic network structure.29

As further stated in the document, terrorist networks “have adopted a more decentralized organization with largely autonomous cells” that are able, though highly dispersed, to coordinate efforts globally with ease, making use of modern global communications networks.30 The terrorist network, then, represents a “new type of enemy, at once diffuse, unpredictable, multiple, and infiltrative.”31 A product—and symptom—of the Network Society, making use of its modern tools of communication and organization, and adopting its distributed logic, it is the terrorist network’s rhizomatic structure that significantly distinguishes it from previous enemy formations, as a complex, adaptable, and infiltrative power.32 Imagined as a complex, rhizomatic configuration, rather than the simpler, linear dichotomous structures associated with previous enemies, terrorist networks are perceived as threatening not only because of their violent acts and ruthless nature but also, and primarily, due to their elusiveness and constant state of variation, which make them difficult to define and comprehend fully.33 As political philosophers Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have pointed out: If the traditional army is like a single armed body, with organic and centralized relations among its units […] then the distributed network might be imagined like a swarm of ants or bees—a seemingly amorphous multiplicity that can strike at a single point from all sides or disperse in the environment so as to become almost invisible. It is very difficult to hunt down a swarm.34

The war on terror, then, according to French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, “is a fractal, cellular war” against “a phantasmatic enemy [that] surges forward, permeating the whole planet, filtering through like a virus” and defying previous conceptions of warfare.35 Defining terrorist networks, as they are depicted on many series, is further complicated by their ability to infiltrate government agencies, planting moles and subverting from within, always lurking at “the shadow of any system of domination, everywhere ready to awaken as a double agent,” making borders fluid and demarcation elusive.36 The elusive and

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diffuse structure of terrorism hardly makes it an ideal target for American intelligence and military operations; after all, “if it has no center and no stable boundaries, where can we strike?”37 Unlike previous, more “traditional” forms of warfare, identifying a specific target in the war on terror can be extremely complicated. But even when this is successfully accomplished, the decentralized structure of the network makes it resilient, able to compensate for the loss of any node, and exceedingly difficult—if not impossible—to eliminate: “A rhizome may be broken, shattered at a given spot, but it will start up again […] You can never get rid of ants because they form an animal rhizome that can rebound time and again after most of it has been destroyed.”38 Consequently, the “decapitation model” applied in traditional warfare—under the assumption that “if the head is cut off […] then the body will wither and die”—proves ineffective against a distributed enemy formation, as each time a head is cut off, “another head springs up in its place like a monstrous Hydra.”39 At the start of the second season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, after the antagonistic, and aptly named, “Hydra” organization40 had seemingly been defeated, the above-mentioned Colonel Talbot, apparently not proficient in rhizomatic thinking, triumphantly declares: “We cut down the tree, we pulled up the roots” (episode 2.01). However, as Hydra agent Dr. Werner Reinhardt (Reed Diamond) reminds us, later that very same episode: “Cut off one head, two more shall grow in its place.” Hydra is not a tree but a rhizomatic, networked entity; indeed, as is subsequently made clear, many additional Hydra cells still remain operational. When Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boon), protagonist of The Blacklist, threatens to shoot Tom Connolly (Reed Birney), a prominent member of a nefarious shadow organization known as “The Cabal,” Connolly replies along similar lines: “I am nothing. I am a cog in a very large wheel. Shoot me, and somebody at least as powerful will take my place” (episode 2.22). As President George W. Bush declared, in his address to the nation following the events of 9/11, the war on global terrorism was not to be “swift” and “decisive” as previous wars had (presumably) been, and would not be won in a single, defining moment; it would involve “far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen.”41 Indeed, swift “surgical” victories and “instant wars” do not exist in the war on terror.42 Moreover, any attempt at branding a single individual as ultimately “responsible” for terrorist attacks—as Osama Bin Laden was

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branded in the wake of 9/11—and their capture or elimination as a “solution” to the problem, is ultimately a misconception, a simplification of a much more complex reality.43 As we’ve seen, terrorism, as a product of the Network Society, is perceived to be threatening largely due to its distributed, interconnected, and rhizomatic nature, rendering it ultimately incomprehensible and therefore uncontrollable.44 In this sense, terrorism is only one symptomatic example of the various threats that proliferate within the Network Society: multinational drug-trafficking rings, global terrorist networks, worldwide computer viruses, and others are all rendered more threatening because they are “networks beyond one’s capacity to control them, or even to comprehend them.”45 Networks, it seems, “have a dark side.”46 Perceived as inherently unstable and volatile, susceptible to sudden and unexpected structural fluctuation, they are the markers of change, uncertainty, and chaos.47 These networks are liable to strike at any given time and place, their “uncontrollable connectedness”48 conceived as positing “a growing crisis in Western sovereignty at the hands of various networked forces that seem to threaten it.”49 Networked connectivity itself is perceived as a threat.50

Narrative Complexity and the Contemporary Television Landscape The networked nature of global terrorism might help explain its appeal for twenty-first century television dramas; indeed, as we shall now see, contemporary television, marked by various strategies of narrative complexity, is a prime candidate for the portrayal of terrorism. In its most basic form, complex television, as television scholar Jason Mittell has defined it, “employs a range of serial techniques, with the underlying assumption that a series is a cumulative narrative that builds over time,” balancing episodic and serial narrative properties, and, unlike traditional episodic forms, not offering full narrative closure each week.51 Though by no means unique to recent decades, as the soap opera narrative had been constructed along serialized storylines since the early days of the medium,52 the incorporation of ongoing story arcs is emblematic of a broader trend in American television series toward serial rather than purely episodic structures, a trend accelerated since the 1980s.53 This basic aspect of narrative complexity seems tailored to the nature of contemporary terrorism. As no “quick and easy” solutions can be

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found for real-life terrorism, it seems only fitting that fictional terrorist plots would be depicted as serial and ongoing, narrative resolution typically only arriving after a season-long, or several seasons-long, arc (rather than the more immediate resolution offered by stand-alone, 40 minuteslong television episodes, or by self-contained, 90–120 minutes-long film narratives, for that matter). The growing complexity of the contemporary era and of its emergent threats might offer a partial explanation for the tendency in recent American television toward serial rather than episodic narratives. Kojak or Columbo might have dependably gotten their man in just under an hour each week, but nowadays even Jack Bauer needs 24 hours to get anything done. The interplay between serial and episodic is made evident in several shows that seem to initially follow the traditional “procedural” formula, each episode dealing with a particular case in what appears to be a distinct, self-contained episodic narrative. The narrative balance, however, gradually shifts toward more serialized form, with seemingly unrelated events and plots ultimately revealed to be part of a larger pattern (as happens, for example, on Fringe, The 4400 or The Blacklist ).54 In fact, characters are often frustrated by the “serial” nature of their challenges, sometimes insisting on finding “episodic” solutions, and baffled as this strategy inevitably fails them.55 Beyond this basic definition of seriality, narrative complexity employs various other formal strategies that prove beneficial for the portrayal of terrorism. These include the interweaving of multiple narrative threads within an increasingly fragmented narrative structure56 ; the tendency toward increasingly expansive casts of characters interacting with each other within complex, ever-changing social configurations57 ; the liberal application of various forms of temporal manipulation and non-linear storytelling58 ; and the adoption of transmedia strategies, extending the narrative onto multiple media platforms.59 These strategies are ideal for the portrayal of complex, layered plots involving multiple networked agents, and offer—to some extent—an alternative to traditional, linear narrative configuration. Let’s take a look at Flashforward, as an emblematic example of narrative complexity employed in the depiction of a terrorist network. The inciting event of the series is an act of global terrorism that causes every single person on Earth to simultaneously and inexplicably lose consciousness for two minutes and seventeen seconds, resulting in dozens of millions of fatalities worldwide. During this event, which would come to

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be known as the Global Blackout, everyone sees a vision—or a “flashforward”—of their lives at a specific point in time, several months into the future. The FBI investigation of the attack, code-named “Mosaic” and led by agent Mark Benford, is the principal storyline of the series. Over its 22 episodes, many suspects emerge, each one leading to several others, with many individuals and organizations implicated in the conspiracy, including several double agents embedded within the ranks of the FBI and other government agencies; some of the conspirators seem to have participated unwillingly or unknowingly, others turn out to be “red herrings” (leading to narrative “dead ends”), while some internal factions appear to have conflicting agendas. On several instances, an individual previously believed to be the mastermind orchestrating the conspiracy is killed off, implied to have been merely a pawn within a larger scheme. The ultimate endgame and the identities of all persons involved in the orchestration of the Global Blackout were never fully revealed (and the series was cancelled abruptly after its first and only season). A comprehensive visual representation of all players involved, as depicted throughout the season, can be found on the following page (Fig. 5.1). As this visualization illustrates, the Global Blackout was the work of a complex network of interconnected individuals, operating independently in many cases, under no clearly defined leadership, yet managing to successfully carry out their elaborate plot. This plot is revealed to the audience in a non-chronological fashion, with frequent narrative flashbacks providing information of relevant events that occurred months, years or even decades prior to the Global Blackout. This is further complicated through the use of the “flashforwards”—the visions of the future experienced by the characters—which are themselves revealed gradually throughout the season, and which provide the characters, and the audience, with information of events that have not yet taken place (then complicated yet again when conflicting visions of future events are featured, rendering that knowledge of the future uncertain). This example from Flashforward is illustrative of the depiction of terrorist networks on many contemporary series dealing with either realworld terrorism or various forms of “other-worldly” terrorism. Terrorist networks are invariably depicted as complex, non-centralized structures consisting of multiple agents, interconnected through various nodal points, coordinating efforts with no clearly recognizable central authority. As illustrated in the above example, this depiction results in a complex narrative structure, weaving together multiple characters and narrative

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Fig. 5.1 Diagram of all players in the Global Blackout

threads over the course of a series, employing complex temporal construction and complicating the notion of a definitive narrative resolution. The complex rhizomatic nature of the terrorist threat is thus mirrored in the narrative structures offered by contemporary television. Moreover, as a product of the Network Society, and informed by its various transformations, television as a medium has itself become increasingly “networked” and complex over the past few decades. Replacing the previous, centralized model of broadcast television in America (in which the “Big Three” major commercial networks—ABC, CBS, and NBC—reigned supreme, dominating the market well into the 1980s), production companies and television channels have proliferated, and the logics of narrowcasting and niche programming have largely replaced that of broadcasting, leaving networks to compete over ever-diminishing segments of the viewing public.60 The industry, and its audience, had become increasingly fragmented, in continuation of the historic trend toward fragmentation in television, moving from “scarcity” to “plenty.”61

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What was once a simple, hierarchical, centralized, hegemonic market, had now become complex, fragmented, multiple, and distributed; television, in what is sometimes referred to as its “post-network” era,62 had in fact become more “networked,” in logic as well as in institutional structure.63 Media convergence, in particular, is essential for understanding the current media landscape, as television companies have branched out, or rather, like a rhizome, sent out offshoots, to other media, creating “a horizontally integrated entertainment industry.”64 The pervasiveness of new media technologies in the Network Society,65 and the non-hierarchical and decentralized nature of the internet, in particular, meant that content could now spread freely and uncontrollably.66 Reluctantly at first, and with gradual enthusiasm as their economic potential was realized, media producers and distributors have gradually come to embrace new media, to some degree or other, making content available through a variety of platforms and devices, aiming to connect with audiences in multiple ways.67 The result is a diverse and interconnected media environment where content is free “to flow through many different channels and assume many different forms,”68 as all cultural products are linked and subsumed into an all-inclusive digital “hypertext,”69 blurring the distinctions between media platforms and types of content. The traditional notion of televisual “flow”70 has thus been supplanted by alternative metaphors that are in a sense the adaptation of “flow” to the age of convergence, its more complex and networked extension onto multiple media.71 In place of the experience of centralized, linear broadcast “flow,” media content is now experienced more as a sort of “hyperflow,”72 not necessarily proceeding along pre-determined paths but rather, like a rhizome, in all directions, potentially providing multiple entry points.73 Thus, a highly fragmented industry of interconnected multimedia companies now offers an increasingly decentralized and customizable viewing experience of increasingly diverse content accessible on many different platforms and devices. The medium’s growing complexity, of industry structure, of technological functioning and of audience interface, is perhaps the key driving force behind the tendency toward narrative complexity.74 As American media scholar Henry Jenkins has postulated, the modern age of convergence has seen “the emergence of new story structures, which create complexity by expanding the range of narrative possibility rather than pursuing a single path with a beginning,

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middle, and end.”75 Film historian Thomas Elsaesser, in the context of “mind-game” films, has similarly described the potential of new media technologies for enabling alternative narrative configurations: [N]ew technologies […] will in due course engender and enable new forms of “narrative,” which is to say, other ways of sequencing and “linking” data than that of the story, centered on single characters, and with a beginning, a middle, and an ending […] The hotspots and network nodes that now link the web are clearly breaks with narrative linearity.76

New digital technologies, in other words, have enabled the creation of a form of “rhizomatic narratology.”77 This new form of complex, “networked” narrative configuration, which in recent decades has found noticeable popularity in Hollywood cinema,78 has been more widely and enthusiastically embraced by the medium of television. The networked challenges facing the intelligence community in the war on terror are thus similar in nature to those confronted by the viewers of contemporary television series, both terrorist networks and complex television narratives each in its own way an emblematic product of the Network Society, impeding complete comprehension. Indeed, just as the networked structure of terrorism is perceived as threatening, so the very structure of complex, “networked” narratives can in its own way be seen as a threat, disrupting normative conceptions of linearity and coherence and forestalling a comprehensive reading.79 As the viewing experience becomes ever more complex, certain viewers find themselves baffled and overwhelmed in the face of an unprecedented wealth of choice in content, delivery platforms, and technologies of viewing.80 As one media buyer describes it: “Television isn’t what it used to be […] Gone are the days of little or no choice of what to watch […] Gone are the days of three channels.”81 And while this has its advantages for consumers, the “good old days” of television are sometimes regarded by viewers with a wistful nostalgia, a yearning for “simpler times” when television was less demanding, both technologically and cognitively. As New York Times columnist David Carr put it: “I have fond memories of the days when there were only three networks and I could let my mind go slack as I half-watched Diane and Sam circle each other on ‘Cheers,’ because that was pretty much the only thing on […] gone now is the guilty pleasure of simply staring at something mildly entertaining.”82

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However, while some viewers might nostalgically yearn for “simpler times,” frustrated and confused by narrative complexity, the increased abundance and popularity of complex series would suggest that for a significant portion of the audience, who do not share these sentiments, “simpler” might not always be “better”; embracing complexity, they rise to the challenge, engaging with the texts and actively striving for narrative comprehension. For these viewers, the “networked” structural logic of the medium and of its serial narratives not only poses challenges, but also provides tools and strategies for coping with those challenges, adopting more diverse practices of viewing and active engagement made possible and encouraged by the transformations in the medium (such as the increased control over content and viewing experience afforded to the audience, as was discussed above).83 This chapter began by addressing the sense of “cold war nostalgia” at times evoked by the complexities of the terrorist threat; this nostalgia, it seems, is mirrored in the sense of yearning for the “good old days” at times triggered by the complexities and challenges of contemporary television. In its current form, the medium represents a potential departure from previous, “simpler” conceptions of television, offering fragmentation in place of unity, decentralization in place of hierarchy and complexity in place of linearity. The result is a more networked, rhizomatic logic of narrative structure, of its delivery channels and of its modes of address, making contemporary television particularly fitting for the portrayal of global terrorism and its challenges.

Notes 1. George W. Bush, “Remarks by the President in Minnesota Welcome,” The White House, November 3, 2002. 2. An acronym for “Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.” 3. Cf. Alex McLevy, “Infinity War Could Finally Tear Marvel Film and TV Apart,” A.V. Club, May 5, 2018. 4. Cf. Marisa Lascala, “FlashForward Series Premiere,” PopMatters, October 1, 2009. 5. Cf. Christine Muller, “Enduring Impact: The Crisis Fetish in PostSeptember 11 American Television,” Reconstruction, 11,22 (2011). 6. “This job isn’t what it was 10 years ago,” says Fringe’s Charlie Francis (Kirk Acevedo), an agent of Fringe Division on Fringe (2008–2013, Fox), referring to the recent wave of peculiar terrorist events (episode 2.23,

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7.

8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18.

which aired, significantly, in 2010, nearly 10 years after the events of 9/11). The line “Christ, I Miss the Cold War” has also appeared verbatim in Casino Royale (directed by Martin Campbell in 2006), spoken by M, head of MI6 (Judi Dench); “God, I miss the Cold War” is spoken by characters in Rubicon (2010, AMC) and The Peacemaker (directed by Mimi Leder in 1997). Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker, The Exploit: A Theory of Networks (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 6. Paul Kennedy, “The Good Old Days of the Cold War,” Los Angeles Times, February 18, 2007. Cf. Simon Tisdall, “Mitt Romney’s Cold War Nostalgia Owes Much to the ‘Reagan Revolution’,” The Guardian, November 4, 2012; Jussi M. Hanhimäki, “The (Really) Good War? Cold War Nostalgia and American Foreign Policy,” Cold War History, 14,4 (2014), 673–683; Michael Auslin, “PBS’s Cold War Nostalgia,” National Review, November 18, 2014; Matthew Leggatt, Cultural and Political Nostalgia in the Age of Terror: The Melancholic Sublime (New York: Routledge, 2017). Robert M. Gates, quoted. in Thom Shanker, “Gates Counters Putin’s Words on U.S. Power,” The New York Times, February 11, 2007. James Inhofe, quoted. in Josh Rogin, “Top Republicans Call for Return to Cold War,” The Daily Beast, February 27, 2014. Cf. Kennedy, “The Good Old Days of the Cold War,” and Auslin, “PBS’s Cold War Nostalgia.” Jean Baudrillard, “L’Esprit du Terrorisme,” Michel Valentin (trans.). The South Atlantic Quarterly, 101,2 (2002), 406–411. Toni Pape, Figures of Time: Preemptive Narratives in Recent Television Series (dissertation, Université de Montréal, July 2013), 115–116. Cold War nostalgia might also help account for the evident aesthetic influences of 1970s Cold War-era thrillers on the design and tone of series such as Homeland (Cf. Willa Paskin, “The Creators of ‘Homeland’ Exorcise the Ghost of ‘24’,” The New York Times Magazine, September 26, 2012) or Rubicon (Cf. Adam Kirsch, “Why ‘Rubicon’ Is the Perfect Spy Show for the Obama Era,” New Republic, October 27, 2010), as well as the recent resurgence in the depiction of Russian agents and sleeper cells embedded within the United States, in series like Agent Carter (2015–2016, ABC), set in the 1950s, The Americans (2013–2018, FX), set in the 1980s, or The Blacklist, Blindspot (2015–2020, NBC), Alias (2001–2006, ABC), Allegiance (2015, NBC), and the more recent seasons of Homeland, set in present day. Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society: The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture. Vol. 1 (Oxford: Wiley, 2011), 500. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, 1–27.

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19. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, 45–51; cf. Kevin Kelly, Out of Control: The Rise of Neo-biological Civilization (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 25–27. 20. Galloway and Thacker, The Exploit, 3. 21. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, 77. 22. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, 175. 23. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 16. 24. Ibid., 17. 25. Ibid. 26. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, 69–77; cf. Patrick Jagoda, Network Aesthetics: American Fictions in the Culture of Interconnection (dissertation, Duke University, 2010), 82–96; Jeff Vail, A Theory of Power (Bloomington: iUniverse, 2004), 45–47; Kelly, Out of Control, 22–26. 27. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, 70–71. 28. Baudrillard, “L’Esprit du Terrorisme,” 406–409; Glenn Peter Hastedt (ed.), Wiretaps, and Secret Operations: An Encyclopedia of American Espionage (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2010), 759–762. 29. George W. Bush, National Strategy for Combating Terrorism (Executive Office of the President, Washington, DC, February 2003), 8. 30. Ibid., 7–8. 31. Jagoda, Network Aesthetics, 61. 32. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: The Penguin Press, 2004), 51–93; cf. Galloway and Thacker, The Exploit, 11–22; Patrick Jagoda, Network Aesthetics, 57– 116. 33. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 12–15; Galloway and Thacker, The Exploit, 4–5; Jagoda, Network Aesthetics, 41–43. 34. Hardt and Negri, Multitude, 57. 35. Baudrillard, “L’Esprit du Terrorisme,” 406–408. In many ways, the terrorist threat is perceived along similar lines to the threat of global epidemics, another recurring subject in many contemporary series. Both are depicted as lethal, global-reaching, and uncontrollable products of modernized, networked society (the epidemic sometimes brought about by a terrorist attack); “Terrorism, like viruses, is everywhere” (Baudrillard, “L’Esprit du Terrorisme,” 406). Cf. Dahlia Schweitzer’s discussion of “Outbreak Narratives” on contemporary American film and television: Dahlia Schweitzer, Going Viral: Zombies, Viruses, and the End of the World (Rutgers University Press, 2018). 36. Baudrillard, “L’Esprit du Terrorisme,” 406. Examples of narratives involving sleeper cells, double agents, infiltrators and impostors in the context of (explicit or allegorical) terrorism can be found on countless contemporary series, among them: 24 (2001–2010, Fox), Lost

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37. 38. 39.

40.

41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

47.

48. 49.

(2004–2010, ABC), Battlestar Galactica (2003–2009, Sci-Fi), Homeland, Rubicon, Flashforward, Dollhouse (2009–2010, Fox), The Blacklist, The Event (2010–2011, NBC), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008–2009, Fox), Odyssey 5 (2002–2004, Showtime), The 4400 (2004–2007, USA Network), The Following (2013–2015, Fox), Intelligence (2014, CBS), Quantico (2015–2018, ABC), and many others. Hardt and Negri, Multitude, 55; cf. Jagoda, Network Aesthetics, 16–30; Vail, A Theory of Power, 40–51. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 9. Hardt and Negri, Multitude, 56–57. The “Many-Headed Hydra” is often used in news coverage as a symbol of terrorist networks, referring to either Al Qaeda—cf. Sean N. Kalic, Combating a Modern Hydra: Al Qaeda and the Global War on Terrorism (Darby: Diane Publishing, 2005)—ISIS—cf. J. M. Berger, “Fighting the Many-Headed Hydra of ISIS,” The Boston Globe, June 26, 2015—or other terrorist organizations; cf. “Terrorism: Fighting the Hydra,” The Telegraph (editorial view), April 11, 2011. The main antagonist of the early seasons of the series, “Hydra” had started out as a branch of the Third Reich; having seemingly been defeated in the second World War—as depicted on Captain America: The First Avenger (directed by Joe Johnston in 2011)—it had in fact gone on to infiltrate S.H.I.E.L.D, decades later activating numerous sleeper agents in an attempt to take control of America—as depicted on Captain America: The Winter Soldier (directed by Anthony and Joe Russo in 2014). George W. Bush, “Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People,” Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, 25,2 (2001), xviii–xxv. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, 491. Hastedt, Wiretaps, and Secret Operations, 760. Cf. Jagoda, Network Aesthetics, 17–18; Kelly, Out of Control, 27. Galloway and Thacker, The Exploit, 6. Paul R. Kleindorfer and Yoram (Jerry) Wind, The Network Challenge: Strategy, Profit, and Risk in an Interlinked World (Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009). Cf. Jagoda, Network Aesthetics, 59–61; Robert Hassan, “Network Time and the New Knowledge Epoch,” Time & Society, 12,2–3 (2003), 225–241. Castells similarly describes the interconnected global economic network as an unstable structure, each node prone to unforeseen effects caused by other nodal events—cf. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, 466–467—leading to diminishing job stability in the networked, post-Fordist working conditions; ibid., 281–296. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, 23. Galloway and Thacker, The Exploit, 2.

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50. This notion is illustrated, among others, in the contemporary cinematic “Network Narrative” cf. David Bordwell, “Subjective Stories and Network Narratives,” The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies (Berkley: University of California Press, 2006), 72–103, in films such as Babel (directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu in 2006), Traffic (directed by Steven Soderbergh in 2000), and Syriana (directed by Stephen Gaghan in 2005), in which Western protagonists invariably find themselves—typically following a central violent and traumatic incident (Neil Narine, “Global Trauma and the Cinematic Network Society,” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 27,3 [2010], 213–214)—pitted against globally networked entities, “enmeshed in a clandestine web of relations,” so that “the network itself is a threatening formation” (ibid., 222). In this sense, the “Network Narrative” is very similar in theme (as well as in narrative structure) to contemporary television series concerned with global terrorism. 51. Jason Mittell, Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 18. The term “cumulative narrative” was first coined by Horace Newcomb, who defined it as “a ‘new’ television form that stands between the traditional self-contained episodic forms and the open-ended serials” cf. Horace Newcomb, “Other People’s Fictions: Cultural Appropriation, Cultural Integrity, and International Media Strategies,” Emile G. McAnany and Kenton T. Wilkinson (eds.), Mass Media and Free Trade: NAFTA and the Cultural Industries (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), 103. This type of narrative is also sometimes referred to as a “flexi-narrative,” a term coined by Robin Nelson, who defined it as a “hybrid mixture” of “the series and the serial form, involving the closure of one story arc within an episode (like a series) but with other, ongoing story arcs involving the regular characters (like a serial)” cf. Robin Nelson, “Analysing TV Fiction: How to Study Television Drama,” Glen Creeber (ed.), Tele-Visions: An Introduction to Studying Television (London: British Film Institute, 2006), 82. 52. Cf. Robert Clyde Allen, Speaking of Soap Operas (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985). 53. Cf. John Fiske, Television Culture (London: Methuen, 1987), 219; Robert J. Thompson, Television’s Second Golden Age: From Hill Street Blues to ER (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1997); Janet McCabe and Kim Akass (eds.), Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007), xvii–xx. 54. A mixture of episodic and ongoing narrative arcs can be traced back to the early 1990s, The X -Files (1993–2002, Fox) being one of the most prominent and influential examples. However, episodes of The X -Files regularly fell under two distinct narrative categories: the “myth-arc”—the ongoing

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56. 57.

58.

59.

60.

serial mystery storyline spanning the show’s run, and the “monster-ofthe-week,” stand-alone episodic stories that were largely inconsequential to the continuity of the ongoing mystery; cf. Jeffrey Sconce, “What If? Charting Television’s New Textual Boundaries,” Lynn Spigel and Jan Olsson (eds.), Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 107–109. In later series, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2001, The WB; 2001–2003, UPN) to the more contemporary series mentioned above, this mixture has grown more complex, blurring the lines between episodic and serial arcs. See for example the police captains of The Wire (HBO, 2002–2008), always pushing for quick and easy arrests instead of lengthy investigative operations; or the protagonists of series like 12 Monkeys (2015–2018, Syfy) or Daredevil (2015–2018, Netflix), who learn early on that “getting their man” is only the first, rather than last, step towards achieving their goals. These would all like to believe they are characters in a traditional “procedural,” and are repeatedly frustrated to realize they are in fact operating within a complex serial narrative. Cf. Steven Johnson, Everything Bad Is Good for You (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005). Cf. Thompson, Television’s Second Golden Age; Paul Booth, “The Television Social Network: Exploring TV Characters,” Communication Studies, 63,3 (2012), 309–327. Cf. Paul Booth, “Memories, Temporalities, Fictions: Temporal Displacement in Contemporary Television,” TV & New Media, 12,4 (2011), 370–388; Melissa Ames, “The Fear of the Future and the Pain of the Past,” Melissa Ames (ed.), Time in Television Narrative: Exploring Temporality in Twenty-First-Century Programming (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012), 110–124; Aris Mousoutzanis, “Temporality and Trauma in American Sci-Fi Television,” Melissa Ames (ed.), Time in Television Narrative: Exploring Temporality in Twenty-First-Century Programming (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012), 97–109. Cf. Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press, 2006); Mittell, Complex TV ; Elizabeth Evans, Transmedia Television: Audiences, New Media, and Daily Life (New York: Routledge, 2011); Matt Hills, “Defining Cult TV: Texts, Inter-texts, and Fan Audiences,” Robert C. Allen and Annette Hill (eds.), The Television Studies Reader (London: Routledge, 2004), 509–523. Cf. Lynn Spigel, “Introduction,” Lynn Spigel and Jan Olsson (eds.), Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 1–6; John Caldwell, “Convergence Television: Aggregating Form and Repurposing Content in the Culture of Conglomeration,” Lynn Spigel and Jan Olsson (eds.), Television After TV: Essays on

5

61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

67.

68. 69. 70. 71.

72.

73.

74.

75. 76.

77.

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a Medium in Transition (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 43–45; Kyle Nicholas, “Post TV? The Future of Television,” Glen Creeber (ed.), Tele-Visions: An Introduction to Studying Television (London: British Film Institute, 2006), 153–155. Cf. John Ellis, Seeing Things: Television in the Age of Uncertainty (London: I.B. Tauris, 2000). Cf. Spigel, “Introduction”; Caldwell, “Convergence Television.” Caldwell, “Convergence Television,” 66–71. Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 96. Galloway and Thacker, The Exploit, 10. Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 13–16; cf. Anna Everett and John T. Caldwell (eds.), New Media: Theories and Practices of Digitextuality (New York: Routledge, 2015); Dan Harries (ed.), The New Media Book (London: British Film Institute, 2002). Cf. Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 1–24; Caldwell, “Convergence Television,” 47–66; Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, 365–371; Nicholas, “Post TV?,” 157–159. Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 11. Cf. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, 394–403. Cf. Raymond Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form (London: Routledge, 1974). Ethan Thompson, “Onion News Network: Flow,” Ethan Thompson and Jason Mittell (eds.), How to Watch Television (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 287. Nicholas, “Post TV?,” 159–160. Or, alternately, “overflow”; cf. Will Brooker, “Living on Dawson’s Creek: Teen Viewers, Cultural Convergence, and Television Overflow,” Robert C. Allen and Annette Hill (eds.), The Television Studies Reader (Abingdon: Routledge, 2004), 569–580. Potentially, as it’s important to remember that a significant majority of the audience still consumes television content “the old-fashioned way,” as traditional broadcast “flow”; cf. A. J. Frutkin, “Going with the Flow,” MediaWeek, 17,29 (2007), 6. Cf. Mittell, Complex TV , 31–33; Caldwell, “Convergence Television,” 41–43; Amanda D. Lotz, The Television Will Be Revolutionized (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 233–262. Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 118–119. Thomas Elsaesser, “The Mind-Game Film,” Warren Buckland (ed.), Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 22–23. Gavin Wilson and Steve Nash, “Rhizomatic Narratology: Towards a Philosophy of the Global Digital Village” (paper presented at the FilmPhilosophy Conference, Liverpool John Moores University, 7 July 2011). Elsaesser, “The Mind-Game Film,” 19–22.

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79. Jagoda, Network Aesthetics, 334–338. 80. Mark Prigg, “Are Smart TV’s Too Clever for Their Own Good? Researchers Find We Simply Want to Watch Our Favourite Shows,” Mail Online, December 28, 2012. 81. Melissa Coleman, “Television Isn’t What It Used to Be,” Tipping Point Communications (accessed on October 30, 2015). 82. David Carr, “The Glut of Shows Unwatched,” The New York Times, September 5, 2010. 83. Cf. Mittell, Complex TV ; Sconce, “What If?”; Jenkins, Convergence Culture.

Works Cited Allen, Robert Clyde. Speaking of Soap Operas. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985. Ames, Melissa. “The Fear of the Future and the Pain of the Past,” Melissa Ames (ed.). Time in Television Narrative: Exploring Temporality in Twenty-FirstCentury Programming. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012, 110– 124. Auslin, Michael. “PBS’s Cold War Nostalgia,” National Review, November 18, 2014. http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/392890/pbss-cold-war-nostal gia-michael-auslin. Baudrillard, Jean. “L’Esprit du Terrorisme,” Michel Valentin (trans.). The South Atlantic Quarterly, 101,2 (2002), 403–415. Berger, J. M. “Fighting the Many-Headed Hydra of ISIS,” The Boston Globe, June 26, 2015. https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2015/ 06/26/fighting-many-headed-hydra-isis/abeHAlBCRIEK1wycNlxWdM/ story.html. Booth, Paul. “Memories, Temporalities, Fictions: Temporal Displacement in Contemporary Television,” TV & New Media, 12,4 (2011), 370–388. Booth, Paul. “The Television Social Network: Exploring TV Characters,” Communication Studies, 63,3 (2012), 309–327. Bordwell, David. “Subjective Stories and Network Narratives,” The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies. Berkley: University of California Press, 2006, 72–103. Brooker, Will. “Living on Dawson’s Creek: Teen Viewers, Cultural Convergence, and Television Overflow,” Robert C. Allen and Annette Hill (eds.). The Television Studies Reader. Abingdon: Routledge, 2004, 569–580. Bush, George W. “Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People,” Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, 25,2 (2001), xviii–xxv. Bush, George W. National Strategy for Combating Terrorism. Executive Office of the President, Washington, DC, February 2003.

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Bush, George W. “Remarks by the President in Minnesota Welcome,” The White House, November 3, 2002. https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/ news/releases/2002/11/20021103-2.html. Caldwell, John. “Convergence Television: Aggregating Form and Repurposing Content in the Culture of Conglomeration,” Lynn Spigel and Jan Olsson (eds.). Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004, 41–74. Carr, David. “The Glut of Shows Unwatched,” The New York Times, September 5, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/business/media/06carr. html. Castells, Manuel. The Rise of the Network Society: The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture. Vol. 1. Oxford: Wiley, 2011. Coleman, Melissa. “Television Isn’t What It Used to Be,” Tipping Point Communications. Accessed on October 30, 2015. http://tippingpointcomm.com/ media/tv/television-isnt-what-it-used-to-be. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Brian Massumi (trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Ellis, John. Seeing Things: Television in the Age of Uncertainty. London: I.B. Tauris, 2000. Elsaesser, Thomas. “The Mind-Game Film,” Warren Buckland (ed.). Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema. Oxford: WileyBlackwell, 2009, 13–41. Evans, Elizabeth. Transmedia Television: Audiences, New Media, and Daily Life. New York: Routledge, 2011. Everett, Anna, and John T. Caldwell (eds.). New Media: Theories and Practices of Digitextuality. New York: Routledge, 2015. Fiske, John. Television Culture. London: Methuen, 1987. FlashForward Wiki. Accessed on 23 January 2021. http://flashforward.wikia. com/wiki/FlashForward_Wiki. Frutkin, A. J. “Going with the Flow,” MediaWeek, 17,29 (2007), 6. Galloway, Alexander, and Eugene Thacker. The Exploit: A Theory of Networks. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. Hanhimäki, Jussi M. “The (Really) Good War? Cold War Nostalgia and American Foreign Policy,” Cold War History, 14,4 (2014), 673–683. Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: The Penguin Press, 2004. Harries, Dan (ed.). The New Media Book. London: British Film Institute, 2002. Hassan, Robert. “Network Time and the New Knowledge Epoch,” Time & Society, 12,2–3 (2003), 225–241. Hastedt, Glenn Peter (ed.). Wiretaps, and Secret Operations: An Encyclopedia of American Espionage. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2010.

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Hills, Matt. “Defining Cult TV: Texts, Inter-texts, and Fan Audiences,” Robert C. Allen and Annette Hill (eds.). The Television Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 2004, 509–523. Jagoda, Patrick. Network Aesthetics: American Fictions in the Culture of Interconnection. Dissertation, Duke University, 2010. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006. Johnson, Steven. Everything Bad Is Good for You. New York: Riverhead Books, 2005. Kalic, Sean N. Combating a Modern Hydra: Al Qaeda and the Global War on Terrorism. Darby: Diane Publishing, 2005. Kelly, Kevin. Out of Control: The Rise of Neo-biological Civilization. New York: Basic Books, 1995. Kennedy, Paul. “The Good Old Days of the Cold War,” Los Angeles Times, February 18, 2007. http://www.latimes.com/news/la-op-kennedy18feb18story.html. Kirsch, Adam. “Why ‘Rubicon’ Is the Perfect Spy Show for the Obama Era,” New Republic, October 27, 2010. http://www.newrepublic.com/blog/for eign-policy/78695/rubicon-perfect-spy-show-the-obama-era. Kleindorfer, Paul R., and Yoram (Jerry) Wind. The Network Challenge: Strategy, Profit, and Risk in an Interlinked World. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009. Lascala, Marisa. “FlashForward Series Premiere,” PopMatters, October 1, 2009. http://www.popmatters.com/review/112412-flashforward/. Leggatt, Matthew. Cultural and Political Nostalgia in the Age of Terror: The Melancholic Sublime. New York: Routledge, 2017. Lotz, Amanda D. The Television Will Be Revolutionized. New York: New York University Press, 2014. McCabe, Janet, and Kim Akass (eds.). Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond. London: I.B. Tauris, 2007. McLevy, Alex. “Infinity War Could Finally Tear Marvel Film and TV Apart,” A.V. Club, May 5, 2018. https://tv.avclub.com/infinity-war-could-finallytear-marvel-film-and-tv-apar-1825760143. Mittell, Jason. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: New York University Press, 2015. Mousoutzanis, Aris. “Temporality and Trauma in American Sci-Fi Television,” Melissa Ames (ed.). Time in Television Narrative: Exploring Temporality in Twenty-First-Century Programming. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012, 97–109. Muller, Christine. “Enduring Impact: The Crisis Fetish in Post-September 11 American Television,” Reconstruction, 11,22 (2011). http://reconstruction. eserver.org/Issues/112/Muller_Christine.shtml.

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Narine, Neil. “Global Trauma and the Cinematic Network Society,” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 27, 3 (2010), 209–234. Nelson, Robin. “Analysing TV Fiction: How to Study Television Drama,” Glen Creeber (ed.). Tele-Visions: An Introduction to Studying Television. London: British Film Institute, 2006, 74–86. Newcomb, Horace. “Other People’s Fictions: Cultural Appropriation, Cultural Integrity, and International Media Strategies,” Emile G. McAnany and Kenton T. Wilkinson (eds.). Mass Media and Free Trade: NAFTA and the Cultural Industries. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996, 92–109. Nicholas, Kyle. “Post TV? The Future of Television,” Glen Creeber (ed.). TeleVisions: An Introduction to Studying Television. London: British Film Institute, 2006, 153–168. Pape, Toni. Figures of Time: Preemptive Narratives in Recent Television Series. Dissertation, Université de Montréal, July 2013. Paskin, Willa. “The Creators of ‘Homeland’ Exorcise the Ghost of ‘24’,” The New York Times Magazine, September 26, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/ 2012/09/30/magazine/the-creators-of-homeland-exorcise-the-ghost-of-24. html. Prigg, Mark. “Are Smart TV’s Too Clever for Their Own Good? Researchers Find We Simply Want to Watch Our Favourite Shows,” Mail Online, December 28, 2012. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-225 4301/Are-smart-TVs-clever-good-Research-finds-simply-want-watch-favour ite-shows.html. “Remarks by the President in Minnesota Welcome,” PRNewswire, November 3, 2002. http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/remarks-by-the-presidentin-minnesota-welcome-76604167.html. Rogin, Josh. “Top Republicans Call for Return to Cold War,” The Daily Beast, February 27, 2014. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/27/ top-republicans-call-for-return-to-cold-war.html. Schweitzer, Dahlia. Going Viral: Zombies, Viruses, and the End of the World. Rutgers University Press, 2018. Sconce, Jeffrey. “What If? Charting Television’s New Textual Boundaries,” Lynn Spigel and Jan Olsson (eds.). Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004, 93–112. Shanker, Thom. “Gates Counters Putin’s Words on U.S. Power,” The New York Times, February 11, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/ us/11cnd-gates.html. Spigel, Lynn. “Introduction,” Lynn Spigel and Jan Olsson (eds.). Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004, 1–34.

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“Terrorism: Fighting the Hydra,” The Telegraph (editorial view), April 11, 2011. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/107 57608/Terrorism-fighting-the-hydra.html. Thompson, Ethan. “Onion News Network: Flow,” Ethan Thompson and Jason Mittell (eds.). How to Watch Television. New York: New York University Press, 2013, 281–289. Thompson, Robert J. Television’s Second Golden Age: From Hill Street Blues to ER. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1997. Tisdall, Simon. “Mitt Romney’s Cold War Nostalgia Owes Much to the ‘Reagan Revolution’,” The Guardian, November 4, 2012. http://www.theguardian. com/commentisfree/2012/nov/04/mitt-romney-cold-war-nostalgia. Vail, Jeff. A Theory of Power. Bloomington: iUniverse, 2004. Williams, Raymond. Television: Technology and Cultural Form. London: Routledge, 1974. Wilson, Gavin, and Steve Nash. “Rhizomatic Narratology: Towards a Philosophy of the Global Digital Village,” Paper presented at the Film-Philosophy Conference, Liverpool John Moores University, July 7, 2011.

Television 12 Monkeys. 2015–2018, Syfy. 24. 2001–2010, Fox. 4400, The. 2004–2007, USA Network. Agent Carter. 2015–2016, ABC. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 2013–2020, ABC. Alias. 2001–2006, ABC. Allegiance. 2015, NBC. Americans, The. 2013–2018, FX. Battlestar Galactica. 2003–2009, Sci-Fi. The Blacklist. 2013–Present, NBC. Blindspot. 2015–2020, NBC. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 1997–2001, The WB; 2001–2003, UPN. Daredevil. 2015–2018, Netflix. Dollhouse. 2009–2010, Fox. The Event. 2010–2011, NBC. Flashforward. 2009–2010, ABC. The Following. 2013–2015, Fox. Fringe. 2008–2013, Fox. Homeland. 2011–2020, Showtime. Intelligence. 2014, CBS. Lost. 2004–2010, ABC. Odyssey 5. 2002–2004, Showtime.

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Quantico. 2015–2018, ABC. Rubicon. 2010, AMC. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. 2008–2009, Fox. The Wire. 2002–2008, HBO. The X-Files. 1993–2002, Fox.

Films The Avengers. Directed by Joss Whedon, USA, 2012. Babel. Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, USA, Mexico and France, 2006. Captain America: The First Avenger. Directed by Joe Johnston, USA, 2011. Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, USA, 2014. Casino Royale. Directed by Martin Campbell, UK, 2006. The Peacemaker. Directed by Mimi Leder, USA, 1997. Syriana. Directed by Stephen Gaghan, USA, 2005. Traffic. Directed by Steven Soderbergh, USA, 2000.

CHAPTER 6

Battling It Out with Memes: Contesting Islamic ‘Radicalism’ on Indonesian Social Media Leonie Schmidt

Cyberwarriors and Islamic ‘Radicalism’ In a small bedroom in the city of Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 16-year-old teenager Sumini is digitally altering a picture of Mustofa Bisri, a prominent Indonesian Islamic scholar (kyai) who is commonly known as Gus Mus. She is adding a picture of Gus Mus to a green background, the color of Islam. Meanwhile she tells me: “Gus Mus is my absolute favorite scholar. He is so humble and wise. Did you know that he comes from a family of wise Islamic scholars? Yet he tries to deepen his knowledge of Islam every single day. Very inspiring. He is like a role model for me.”1 As we chat, Sumini continues to edit the image, and adds one of her favorite Gus Mus quotes to the image. It reads: “Let us try to bring the beauty of our religion. If you cannot do that, at least do not tarnish it.” Sumini tells

L. Schmidt (B) Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 E. Caoduro et al. (eds.), Mediated Terrorism in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73511-1_6

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me she will post the image on her inspirational Twitter account, which has 291,000 followers, as the quote of the day. When I ask her why this is one of her Gus Mus quotes, she tells me: “Because Gus reminds us that Islam is a beautiful and peaceful religion, which today is ruined by radicals, not only in Syria or Saudi Arabia, but also in Indonesia. I want to show my followers that side of Islam, and to reject radical Islam.”2 In this chapter I consider a recent phenomenon which represents a creative counterpart of the online “jihadi cool” movement. I will examine how cyberwarrior accounts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter creatively and digitally alter images to counter the threats of interreligious violence and radicalization. In Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, volunteers battle Islamic radicalism with memes, hashtags, comics and videos producing an Islamic counter-terror culture. I will argue that the social media posts portray kyai (students of Islam in Indonesia) and ulama (Islamic scholars and interpreters) as authentic and inspirational stars, voices of reason in troubling times and antidotes to extremism. The cyberwarriors shield the country from radicalism by circulating posts about interreligious dialogue, critical thinking and better religious knowledge and reason. The counternarratives produced by the cyberwarriors are implicated in a contradictory process with regard to religious authority. Although only a small part of Indonesia’s Muslim population supports ‘radical’ organisations, religious studies scholar Hasan as well as terrorism scholars Idris and Taufiqurrohman have recently observed that Indonesian ‘radical’ groups that claim to work under the banner of Islam are gaining ground. Particularly after 1998, in the aftermath of the fall of Indonesian President Suharto (who repressed violent radical groups), the uprooting of communities due to rural-to-urban migration, the global imagery of radicalism, and the widening gap between the rich and poor are fuelling the recruitment of people for terrorist groups.3 Regarding international groups, the number of Indonesians who have joined ISIS is contested. Although government reports in 2015 indicated 159 recruits, other reports state that “this number can be much higher, making this country the biggest ISIS fighters’ supplier in Southeast Asia.”4 Yet others stress that the numbers pale in comparison with the number of recruits from Europe and Australia.5 Nevertheless, the recent violent attacks that took place in Jakarta in January 2016 and May 2017 as well as Solo in July 2011 and 2016, and the attacks on churches in Medan (2016), Aceh

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(2015) and Surabaya (2018) show why the threat of Islamic radicalism and religious-inspired violence in Indonesia is perceived as serious.6 Sumini is not the only one who uses social media to promote a peaceful practice of religion and counter radical thought. To challenge Islamic radicalism, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU; Revival/Awakening of Ulama), one of the country’s largest Muslim organizations, has embraced media and popular culture. In a bid to counter radicalism online, an “army of cyberwarriors”,7 of which Sumini is a part, is currently being trained by NU. Cyberwarriors are volunteers who are trained to “battle terrorist organizations online with memes, comics, and videos as their weapons of choice.”8 These (often young) Indonesians spend hours a day fighting against the public expression of violent thought, working from coffee bars, university campuses, homes, and offices—often stealthily and anonymously.9 As I explain elsewhere10 in more detail, most of their posts address a young pious audience that also likes shareable cool content. Cyberwarriors could thus counter what Laura Huey calls “jihadi-cool”, that is, “the rebranding of jihadist forms of terrorism into an appealingly ‘hip’ subculture through the use of social media, rap videos, counterculture magazines, clothing, and other forms of propaganda.”11 Cultural critics have praised the cyberwarrior initiative for its potential to challenge the public expression of radical thought12 by constructing counter-narratives.13 But how do these cultural practices precisely counter and negotiate the public expression of radical thought? What kinds of tactics and narratives can be distinguished? And what politics do these narratives practice? This chapter explores these questions by conducting a visual and content analysis of the cyberwarrior initiative. I propose that the cyberwarriors form a counter-narrative in which kyai and ulama, figures of religious authority, are constructed as inspirational “stars”,14 to which one needs to listen in troubling times as they become an antidote to extremist thought.

Challenging Radical Discourse Through Counter-Narratives The NU cyberwarrior initiative is part of a larger trend, both in Indonesia and globally, in which media are used to circulate “counter-narratives,” stories and discourses that counter the public expression of extremist thought. The interest in counter-narratives stems from the idea that

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(counter)terrorism also takes place beyond material dimensions, in the realm of discourse, perception, and interpretation.15 The qualitative approach used in this chapter differs from most studies on counter-narratives, which use a quantitative approach and mainly draw from mass communication theories.16 The problem is that these studies often assume a linear model of communication comparable to the 1940s “hypodermic needle” model, which suggests that messages are injected into the minds of a passive audience.17 The remnants of these theories are still visible when researchers speak of people being “infected” by narratives.18 Indonesia offers an excellent case study for examining counternarratives for two reasons. First, as a Muslim-majority country, Indonesia is part of intra-Muslim debates about interpretations of Islam and countering radical Islam. Terrorism researchers, such as Cristina Archetti (2013) and David Betz (2008), have criticized the strategy of counternarratives on the grounds that it is a “Western strategy” and lacks credibility in the Muslim world. Betz for instance points out that the debate over the interpretation of the meaning of jihad is mostly an intra-Muslim debate, “not one which … outsiders can contribute to in a sophisticated and convincing way.”19 Second, NU’s cultural counterterror campaign is not specifically aimed at “radicals” but, rather, at the larger moderate Muslim audience. These counter-narratives are thus not aimed at de-radicalisation, but at promoting discussion and strengthening societal resilience. Indonesian counter-narratives thereby answer to the critique of terrorism researchers such as Christina Nemr and Cristina Archetti who claim that “attempting to target already radicalised individuals with the ‘right’ message is a waste of time since such messages are filtered through a very different personal narrative.”20 Posts by cyberwarriors are not targeted at radicals, but are for a wider audience to contemplate, enjoy or argue with. Countering radical discourses with counter-narratives is however never a guarantee of a reduced risk of violence. A study of how these counter-narratives are constructed does shed light on how specific actors, in this case NU, are negotiating radicalism and which solutions they envision.21

Cyber Warriors: Kyai and Ulama as Counter Stars The cyberwarriors trained by NU are taught photo and video-editing skills, and how to optimise posts for social media. They can consult NU

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theologians,22 but are free to create their own images—in terms of what they convey or show. Cyberwarrior volunteers mostly share their content on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts, which have between 10,000 and 720,000 followers. Some social media accounts publicly state their NU affiliation on their profile, while others do not claim any formal affiliation, but their content often explicitly promotes NU. Their cyberwarriors do not only create content, they also train new volunteers at local religious schools, so-called madrassas, thereby expanding the total number of cyberwarriors. These young new volunteers are not officially appointed nor do they have to show that they master the skills. For their part, these volunteers themselves may invite others to participate in producing content. New participants do not necessarily have to take a course but can just start posting. In the following analysis, I explore the three most active (most posts and responses per day) and most followed cyberwarrior social media accounts: • IslamRahmah (@ikwanrembang with 53,900 followers)23 • AlaNU (@ala_nu with 721,000 followers)24 • CYBER Ansor Media (@ansor_jatim with 12,400 followers).25 All three accounts state in their profile description that they are members of the so-called “Cyber Troop” network, the network of cyberwarriors. Over a five-month period from September 1, 2016 to March 1, 2017, data was scraped from these three accounts, for a total of 1814 posts.26 What is striking is that more than half (1309 posts) of all the posts (1814) on cyberwarrior accounts consists of memes and (digitally altered) images of kyai (religious teachers, mostly in Islamic boarding schools) and ulama (honorary religious scholars widely respected for their knowledge of Islam). I propose that the social media accounts of cyberwarriors function as platforms where “star texts”27 of kyai and ulama are constructed. According to media scholar Richard Dyer, the star does not consist only of the person but of the entire star text, that is, “what people say or write about him or her, as critics or commentators, the way the image is used in other contexts such as advertisements, novels, pop songs [….].28 A star text can be read, as a representation, to explore how the star embodies certain ideologies, reflects a specific social reality, and articulates aspects of living in society.”29

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I propose that on the cyberwarrior accounts, the kyai/ulama star text is constructed through the workings of three types of intertwining politics. Elsewhere, I have called these (1) the politics of threat, (2) the politics of exceptional authority, and (3) the politics of inspiration.30 Here, I show that by practicing these politics and by negotiating “radical” Islam, the social media posts, portray kyai/ulama as authentic and inspirational “stars,” to which one needs to listen in troubling times.

Politics of Threat The ground for the star text construction of kyai/ulama is laid through the “politics of threat.” On the accounts, the politics of threat construct the idea that Indonesia is under threat and finds itself in a state of vulnerability, disorder, and danger. Two presumed threats are specifically singled out on the accounts of cyberwarriors: ISIS and interreligious tensions or violence. A post on the Instagram-account @ansor_jatim posted on October 20, 2016 provides an example of how the accounts construct the idea that ISIS presents a threat to Indonesia. The post shows kyai Marzuqi Mustamar whose portrait is digitally superimposed on a red-hued image that shows ISIS fighters dressed in black pointing their riffles in the air. The Indonesian national emblem of the garuda, a bird with a heraldic shield on its chest, is also superimposed, while a quote by Mustamar is added to the image, which reads: “If there is no fight yet, does this mean there is no jihad yet??.” The accompanying text added by the account moderator reads (@ansor_jatim, 20 October 2016): ISIS is moving to Southeast Asia. Malaysia, the Philippines, but also Indonesia. The fact that this destructive kind of jihad is barely visible in the streets, does not mean that ISIS is not targeting the minds of Indonesians. Remember that the jihad, which Allah has ordained, will never force people to believe. Because coercion does not provide any benefit on the Day of Judgment. Please, if you see anyone behaving differently or showing interest in forceful jihad, you need to talk to them or the authorities about it. Together we can shield Indonesia from ISIS’ terrors.31

The post not only suggests that ISIS is on its way to Indonesia but also places the responsibility for the safety of the nation on the shoulders of people by asking them to talk to people who might be showing interest in ISIS’ ideology.

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Another Instagram post uploaded on @ikhwanrembang on November 6, 2016 addresses how interreligious tensions are framed as a threat to a peaceful public order in the archipelago. The post depicts a drawing of the late Abdurrahman Wahid (commonly known as Gus Dur), the former Indonesian president (1999–2001) and former chairman of NU. The following text, a quote by Gus Dus, is added to the drawing: “Glorifying humanity means glorifying its creator. Dehumanizing and humiliating humanity means degrading its creator” (@ikhwanrembang, November 6, 2016). The text that the moderator has added reads: “Radical Islam is degrading fellow Indonesians, honest Christians with whom we share this beautiful country. It would have made Gus so sad to see Indonesia in this state.”32 The drawing was posted on November 6, 2016 and can be seen as referring to the Ahok demonstrations in Jakarta two days earlier, which in public discourse were understood as a dispute between Chinese/Christians and Muslims. The post represents a larger trend on cyberwarrior accounts in which the present is cast as a period in which tensions between different religious and ethnic groups are intensifying and are leading to fear and sadness among Indonesians. These two posts thus suggest that Indonesia is under threat from several forces, most notably radicalism and interreligious tensions. The “politics of threat” practiced by such posts not only legitimate the existence of the cyberwarrior accounts, but also lay the ground for the “politics of exceptional authority,” which construct kyai/ulama as the only true sources of religious authority in dangerous times and as “saviours” of a divided Indonesia under threat.

Politics of Exceptional Authority The notion that kyai/ulama are the only true sources of Islamic authority is a familiar NU discourse. But what makes it significant here is that this notion is constructed through the image of them having passed away. On the accounts of cyberwarriors, the “politics of exceptional authority” simultaneously construct ulama as a rarity and as possessing a unique talent, which, for Dyer are elements of discursively producing stars.33 Two posts provide examples of how the idea of kyai/ulama as the only true religious sources of Islamic authority is produced on the social media accounts of cyberwarriors. The first post, uploaded on @ikhwanrembang on October 31, 2016, shows a digitally altered picture in which five ulama who have died,

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are placed on a cloud that is drifting in a starry universe. This visual construction underlines that the ulama are no longer among us and suggests that they are in paradise. The deceased ulama that are digitally altered in the picture are all well-known figures in Indonesia: from left to right, As-Sayyid Muhammad bin Alawi Al-Maliki (1946–2003), Muhammad Zaini Abdul Ghani (1942–2005), Hasyim Asy’ari (1875– 1947), Muhammad Said Ramadhan al-Buthi (1929–2013), and Munzir Al-Musawa (1973–2013). Above their heads, the words “Inheritors of the Prophet” are written, and below a quotation from the hadith interpreted by Imam Bukhari (a well-known hadith expert)34 is added, which reads (@ikhwanrembang, October 31, 2016): Allah does not leave his followers without ilmu [an all-embracing term covering Islamic theory, action, and education], but calls upon ulama to convey His knowledge. Thus, if there are no longer ulama left, people will find their leader among the dumb people. They will be led without ilmu, will get lost and will be misled. HR35 Bukhari.

This quotation not only establishes ulama as the conveyers of Allah’s vision but also constructs them as a “dying breed.” This is suggested by literally showing five deceased ulama and placing them in paradise as well as by referring to them as possibly no longer being around (“if there are no longer ulama left”). The text that the moderator of the Instagram account has added to the post further strengthens this framing of ulama as a “dying breed” (@ikhwanrembang, October 31, 2016): The death of ulama is a big disaster, because along with their departure, knowledge [ilmu] disappears from the earth. Without it, mankind will behave like animals. The stack of books will no longer bring us any benefit, because books cannot replace the function of the clergy. […] Books will not help us if people themselves are fools. […] May Allah always bless us to give long life to ulama and give us a successor when they pass away.

The statement by the moderator addresses the death of ulama as a ‘disaster’. Their succession is constructed as a possibility, but not as a given. By underlining their exceptionality and rarity, the post thereby stresses the value of ulama and encourages admiration for them as unique religious authorities. Whereas the first post still sees possibilities for succession, and thus for more ulama to join the ranks, the second post offers a more dystopian

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view. The post which was uploaded on the Facebook and Instagram accounts of @ikhwanrembang on October 22, 2016, shows Gus Dur on a durian (a Southeast Asian type of fruit, often regarded “the king of fruits” because of its size). He is in the clouds, emphasizing that he is longer among us. The following text appears in the photo: “WE MISS GUS. Death of ulama, the loss of ilmu from the earth” (@ikhwanrembang, October 22, 2016, emphasis in original). The moderator has added the following text to the post (@ikhwanrembang, 22 October 2016): The death of ulama is a disastrous fact that cannot be changed, leaving a leak/hole [kebocoran] that cannot be repaired [ditambal ]. As Imam alThabrani has stated: The death of a scholar is like a star that goes out. ‘The death of a loved one is easier for me, than the death of an ulama’. The death of ulama has a big impact, it leads to the emergence of new leaders who do not understand about religion, and can thus mislead the people.

Like the first post, this post constructs the death of ulama as a “disaster,” but, unlike the first post it views their deaths as an “irreparable hole”—thereby ascribing even more value to the now-living ulama. The moderator’s comments stress that ulama are the conveyers of Allah’s vision and draws a line between the figure of the ulama and other religious figures. By setting ulama apart from other religious leaders, the politics of exceptional authority thus produces the idea that kyai and ulama are the only true sources of Islamic authority while helping to depict them as “stars.”

Politics of Inspiration The politics of exceptional authority construct kyai/ulama as “stars” and as the only true sources of religious authority—thereby making them into figures to admire. But what does the online star text of kyai/ulama comprise in terms of (ideological) values? And how can this construction be read as a counter-narrative? I suggest that specific governmental politics36 make use of what French philosopher Michel Foucault has coined “technologies of the self”37 to motivate people to counter intolerance. For Foucault, “technologies of the self” allow individuals to affect by their own means a certain number of operations on their bodies, minds, and lifestyles, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a

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certain quality of life. Technologies involve “modes of training of individuals, not only in the obvious sense of acquiring certain skills, but also in the sense of acquiring certain attitudes.”38 These technologies operate not so much through negative restriction but through productive application: the subject is encouraged and skilled in his/her own subjection.39 Technologies of the self-assist citizens “who do not need to be governed by others, but will govern themselves, master themselves, care for themselves”40 while simultaneously contributing to the maintenance and progress of the nation-state. I propose that, in the case of cyberwarriors, technologies-of-the-self help define the star image of kyai/ulama and portray them as “antidote” to the alleged problems that are identified by the politics of threat. These technologies-of-the-self do so by stimulating the creation of selfconfident, tolerant, and open-minded Muslim subjects, who learn from interactions with fellow Indonesians of different religions. I call these politics the “politics of inspiration.” The politics of inspiration operate in three ways. First, they ascribe assumed personality traits to kyai/ulama. Second, by doing so, they make them agents of tolerance, diversity, and moderation—aspects for which is often praised. They do so in a way that responds to the problems that were identified by the politics of threat. Third, they drive users to model themselves after kyai/ulama by offering followers governmental “technologies of the self.” In what follows, I discuss several examples of this pattern. The first example is a post that was uploaded on the Instagram account @ikhwanrembang on November 27, 2016. It shows a drawing of a Gus Dur as a “cool guy” or rapper, wearing gold chains, one with a star pendant and the other with a pendant that states that he is “THE GUS.” He is recognizable dressed as an Indonesian Muslim, wearing a green hoodie and a peci, a Muslim cap, which in Indonesia also has secular nationalist connotations. The text in the image is a quote by Gus Dur and reads: “It doesn’t matter what your background is, if you can do something good for other people, people will not ask what your religion is, what your ethnicity is, what your background is.” The caption that accompanies this image reads (@ikhwanrembang, November 27, 2016): In this moment, when different groups in society seem to clash, we need to remember what Gus once said: “Pluralism must be accepted without differences”. Gus always accepted people of other religions; he embraced them as if they were his family. He often stressed that religion, ethnicity,

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and class do not matter. What matters is whether one is a good person, who helps others, embraces others, and has an open mind towards others. Sadly, Gus is no longer among us. But we can carry on in his spirit. Invite people of other backgrounds and religions into your house, share a meal, get to know them, offer a helping hand. Your life will be better for it.41

The post first describes the presumed inspirational character of the late Gus Dur, then transforms it into a solution to conflict, and finally places responsibility for the resolution of conflict in the hands of followers. It does so by offering people concrete technologies of the self (i.e. tools or tasks) to “carry on in his spirit.” These “technologies of openness and interreligious dialogue” are not just cast as beneficial to the individuals (“life will be better for it”), but can also intervene in a moment in which “different groups in society seem to clash.” In addition to tolerance, religious moderation becomes part of Gus Dur’s online star text. Here, religious moderation is specifically framed as a solution to extremist Islam, and to those who want to establish an Islamic state in Indonesia. The second example, posted on the Twitter account @ansor_jatim on December 7, 2016, also shows a colorful portrait of Gus Dur superimposed on a red and white surface in the colors of the Indonesian flag. It is signifying diversity. This time a quotation is added that reads: “Indonesia is not a religious state, but a religious country. There are six recognized religions in Indonesia. So, respect five other religions.” The post is accompanied by the following text, in which, followers are offered “technologies of correction” to counter radical thought (@ansor_jatim, December 7, 2016): We should never let the radicals turn Indonesia into an Islamic state. This will pose a threat to our fellow Indonesians of different religions. Do not let yourself and your loved ones be fooled by wrong interpretations of Islam. Moderate Islam, the Islam that Gus practiced and promoted, will always respect all of us. It is key to peaceful life in the archipelago for all. As Gus said: “The more knowledge one has, the greater one’s sense of tolerance.” Learn about the right moderate practice of religion and never hesitate to correct friends, classmates, colleagues, family members if they start flirting with the wrong ideas.42

Two things can be observed here. First, responsibility is placed in the hands of ordinary people, specifically those of moderate Muslims, as

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the post relates “moderate interpretation of Islam” to a “correct” interpretation. Second, creating a divide between different interpretations of Islam, and accusing the “other” side of being radical and violent, reflects an inner-Islamic ideological conflict, which has existed in Indonesia at least since the late nineteenth century, when reformist/modernist interpretations of Islam became influential. The third example, posted on the Facebook account @ikhwanrembang on 29 October 2016, uses a similar tactic. The image shows ulama Habib Luthfi bin Yahya with his fist in the air. The aesthetics further portray him as a strong, powerful, and confident figure: because of the low-angle perspective, one looks up to him, and he literally shines bright. In the topright corner is the logo of Banser (Barisan Ansor Serbaguna Nahdlatul Ulama), the autonomous NU body that is engaged in humanitarian and security missions across the archipelago. The accompanying text reads: Do not be proud if you are part of those who call for jihad. People who do jihad could lose rank in the sight of God. Thus take advice from Habib Luthfi bin Yahya, who said: ‘If the jihad is being led by a sense of revenge, it is not Jihad li i’la’i kalimatillah [elevate the word of Allah], but nothing more than just hate. He knows the difference. Make sure you know what you are talking about, make sure you understand the meaning of the Islamic concepts, ask a respected teacher, so that you can be confident in your convictions too. When you feel angry, never engage in hate, make yourself useful, for instance by keeping the country safe.43

This post depicts Luhfhi Habib bin Yahya as a confident scholar, while pointing to one of his qualities, namely religious knowledge, as prevention for hate. To followers, the post promotes “technologies of religious knowledge” so that they can achieve his confidence themselves. Again, followers are told to be wary of other sources of authority, other interpretations of Islam. The post also plays into frustrations that followers might have and can be read as directing people to Banser to use their anger in a good way. Kyai/ulama on cyberwarrior accounts are also transformed into witty comedic characters that confront radicalism and violence in short stories. An example here is the Sketsa Islam Kita (Our Islam Sketches) social media comic series. The series is created by independent cartoonist Kamal Fihril, whose comics are shared on the social media accounts of cyberwarriors. In the first series from June 18, 2016 to February 1, 2017,

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Maimun Zubair, a well-known ulama, is a main character. The cartoonist states on his personal Facebook page,44 where he released the series, that he created the social media comic series to counter Islamic social media content. The self-contained narrative does not need a further explanation by the moderator and thereby makes the comics easy to share. For the sample that was selected for this paper the cartoons were consistently among the most liked and shared: the comics were shared an average of 1200 times. In the Sketsa Islam Kita comics, Maimun Zubair becomes a witty character who fights terrorists with reason and humour. An example is a post which shows a conversation between a terrorist wearing a bomb vest on the left-hand side and Maimun Zubair on the right-hand side. Their meeting is depicted in a dialogue: Terrorist: Maimun Zubair:

Terrorist: Maimun Zubair: Terrorist: Maimun Zubair:

Step aside! Do not block someone who wants to wage jihad! I want to bomb immoral people! Perhaps yes, wait a minute. Now I want to ask you. The immoral people who die in the place you bomb, do they go to heaven or hell? That is already clear, they go to hell! And rightly so, immoral people go to hell! Now I want to ask you again, for what goal do you think Satan tempts people? The goal of Satan is to have sinful people go to hell!! Right. Exactly the right answer. Now I want to ask: What’s the difference between you and Satan?45

By parodying terrorist discourse, Maimun Zubair is here constructed as the calm voice of reason. In the comics, critical questioning and rational reasoning are character traits of Maimun Zubair and are coined as key tactics, as technologies of the self to dismantle and counter terrorist discourse. Hence, through memes, comics, and digitally altered images of kyai and ulama, cyberwarriors create a kyai/ulama “star text” that functions as a counternarrative to Islamic radicalism.

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Concluding Thoughts: Counter-Narratives and Religious Authority The cyberwarriors construct a counter-narrative in which kyai and ulama are constructed as inspirational “stars,” to which one needs to listen in troubling times, and who become an antidote to extremist thought. By promoting a series of technologies of the self through, for example, interreligious dialogue, correction, religious knowledge, reason, and critical thinking, followers are encouraged to model themselves after the kyai/ulama and counter the assumed threats of radicalism and interreligious violence. They are encouraged and taught to be self-confident, tolerant, social, and open-minded Muslim subjects, who enjoy and learn from interactions with fellow Indonesians of different religions. At the same time, by subjecting themselves to this logic, these subjects become governable and serve the nation-state. Dutch media scholar Ingrid Hoofd has observed that well-meaning activists are often co-opted by neoliberal institutions.46 Here the undoubtedly well-intended posts of cyberwarriors also follow a neoliberal logic. Responsibility for the protection and functioning of the nation is placed on the shoulders of the people themselves, driving the emergence of a self-governing citizenry. This counter-narrative of the cyberwarriors is also implicated in a contradictory process with regard to religious authority. The narrative (re)claims religious authority in an era of new voices of piety but, at the same time, further corrodes religious authority. Several anthropologists and media scholars such as James B. Hoesterey and Bryan S. Turner have shown that modern information technology, global Islamization, mass education, and growing literacy resulted in the fragmentation of religious authority.47 In comparison to the end of the nineteenth century, religious authority is no longer the sole domain of the ulama.48 In Indonesia, new voices have entered religious debates, and they often differ from the formally trained religious authorities.49 These new figures of piety are largely self-trained, independent, and charismatic.50 Critics often argue that new figures of piety are dumbing down the religious message of Islam. It is in this context that the counter-narrative constructed by the cyberwarriors (re)claims religious authority and restores the saints, kyai, and ulama as the most important sources of knowledge.51 In the process of restoring authority, saints, kyai and ulama similarly and somewhat ironically become cool, cute, hip, confident, admirable, while their thoughts are summarized in a single—shareable—social media post.

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The characteristics of social media in the case of the cyberwarriors however also allow for further corrosion of religious authority. The cyberwarrior accounts are not managed by kyai and ulama or by identifiable new voices of public piety but, instead, by (often anonymous) volunteers. The cyberwarrior volunteers creatively and digitally alter images (similar to the teenage woman Sumini who was mentioned at the outset of this chapter). They cut and paste (assumed) quotations and thoughts of kyai and ulama (often without attribution), capture their (complex) ideas in short shareable messages, freely interpret their legacy to inspire followers, and engage in all these creative practices for their own purposes—that is, to counter Islamic radicalism.52 In this process, religious authority is corroded, up to the point that it is not even clear who is speaking (and for whom) and what was said by the kyai and ulama. The anonymous authority on social media here corrodes religious authority and risks that individual interpretations of presumed sayings of kyai and ulama become widespread. The creative acts of cutting, pasting, and interpreting quotations without attribution and assigning them to a source of religious authority (a kyai or ulama) may even create “fake” messages. At the same time, the presumed safety of anonymity of social media might also help to expand the cyberwarrior initiative and further establish it as a creative counterpart of the online “jihadi cool” movement. While their postings reclaim religious authority, generating new voices of piety, at the same time their narratives further corrode religious authority. The creative act of cutting, pasting and mixing quotations allows for the fragmentation of religious authority. Acknowledgements This research is funded by a Veni grant from the NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research).

Notes 1. Interview with the author, August 13, 2017. 2. Interview with the author, August 13, 2017. 3. Noorhaidi Hasan, “Violent Activism, Islamist Ideology, and the Conquest of Public Space Among Youth in Indonesia,” in Youth Identities and Social Transformations in Modern Indonesia, Kathryn Robinson (ed.) (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 200–215. 4. Francisco Galamas, “Terrorism in Indonesia: An Overview,” IEEE Research Papers 4 (2015), 9.

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5. Joseph Chinyong Liow, “ISIS Reaches Indonesia: The Terrorist Group’s Prospects in Southeast Asia,” Brookings Institution (February 8, 2016). 6. Leonie Schmidt, “Cyber Warriors and Counter-Stars: Contesting Religious Radicalism and Violence on Indonesian Social Media,” Asiascape: Digital Asia 5 (2018), 32–67. 7. Krithika Varagur, “Indonesia’s Cyber Warriors Battle ISIS with Memes, Tweets, and Whatsapp,” The Huffington Post (September 6, 2016). 8. Varagur, Huffington Post. 9. Varagur, Huffington Post. 10. Schmidt, “Cyber Warriors and Counter-Stars: Contesting Religious Radicalism and Violence on Indonesian Social Media,” 32–67. 11. Laura Huey, “This Is Not Your Mother’s Terrorism: Social Media, Online Radicalization and the Practice of Political Jamming,” Journal of Terrorism Research 6(2) (2015), 1. 12. Varagur, Huffington Post. 13. Cristina Archetti, “Narrative Wars: Understanding Terrorism in the Era of Global Interconnectedness,” in Forging the World: Strategic Narratives and International Relations, Alistair Miskimmon, Ben O’Loughlin, & Laura Roselle (eds.) (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013), 219. 14. Dyer 1979; 2004. 15. Archetti, “Narrative Wars: Understanding Terrorism in the Era of Global Interconnectedness,” 219. 16. Archetti, ibid., 229. 17. Jeffery L Bineham, “A Historical Account of the Hypodermic Model in Mass Communication,” Communications Monographs 55(3) (1988), 230– 246. 18. Hasan, “Violent Activism, Islamist Ideology, and the Conquest of Public Space Among Youth in Indonesia,” 5. 19. David Betz, “The Virtual Dimension of Contemporary Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency,” Small Wars and Insurgencies 19(4) (2008), 511. 20. Archetti, “Narrative Wars: Understanding Terrorism in the Era of Global Interconnectedness,” 231. 21. Schmidt, “Cyber Warriors and Counter-Stars: Contesting Religious Radicalism and Violence on Indonesian Social Media,” 32–67. 22. Joe Cochrane, “From Indonesia, a Muslim Challenge to the Ideology of the Islamic State,” The New York Times (November 25, 2015). 23. See https://www.instagram.com/ikhwanrembang/. 24. See https://www.instagram.com/ala_nu/. 25. See https://www.instagram.com/ala_nu/ansor_jatim/. 26. Data was scraped using the Instagram Hashtag Explorer, Twitter Capture, and Netvizz tools developed by the Digital Methods Initiative: https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/ToolDatabase?cat=DeviceCen tric&subcat=Instagram/.

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27. Richard Dyer, Stars (London: BFI, 1979); Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (New York: Routledge, 2004). 28. Dyer, Stars, 3. 29. Ibid., 15. 30. Schmidt, “Cyber Warriors and Counter-Stars: Contesting Religious Radicalism and Violence on Indonesian Social Media,” 32–67. 31. @ansor_jatim, October 20, 2016. 32. @ikhwanrembang, November 6, 2016. 33. Dyer, Stars, 42. 34. Hadith are reports describing the life, words, actions, or habits of the Prophet Muhammad. 35. HR ‘Hadits Riwayat’ means the hadith translated or interpreted by an imam, in this case Imam Bukhari. 36. Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, Michel Senellart, François Ewald, Alessandro Fontana, & Arnold I. Davidson (trans.) (New York: Palgrave Macmillan Fox), 2007, xix. 37. Michel Foucault, Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, & Patrick H. Hutton (eds.) (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 6. 38. Foucault, Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, 225. 39. Heidi Marie Rimke, “Governing Citizens Through Self-Help Literature,” Cultural Studies 14(1) (2010), 63. 40. Nikolas Rose, Inventing Ourselves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 45. 41. @ikhwanrembang, November 27, 2016. 42. @ansor_jatim, December 7, 2016. 43. @ikhwan_ rembang, October 29, 2016. 44. https://www.facebook.com/fihril (accessed August 9, 2018). 45. @ikhwan_ rembang, January 16, 2017. 46. Hoofd, Ingrid M. Hoofd, Ambiguities of Activism: Alter-Globalism and the Imperatives of Speed (New York: Routledge, 2012), 1. 47. James B Hoesterey, “The Rise, Fall, and Re-branding of a Celebrity Preacher,” Inside Indonesia 90 (October–December 2007); “Prophetic Cosmopolitanism: Islam, Pop Psychology, and Civic Virtue in Indonesia,” City & Society 24(1) (2012), 38–61. 48. Nico J. Kaptein, “The Voice of the Ulamâ: Fatwas and Religious Authority in Indonesia,” Archives de sciences sociales des religions (2004), 128. 49. Leonie Schmidt, Islamic Modernities in Southeast Asia: Exploring Indonesian Popular and Visual Culture (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), 78. 50. Bryan S. Turner, “Religious Authority and the New Media,” Theory, Culture & Society 24(2) (2007), 128.

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51. Leonie Schmidt, “Aesthetics of Authority: ‘Islam Nusantara’ and Islamic ‘Radicalism’ in Indonesian Film and Social Media,” Religion (2021), 3. 52. Schmidt, “Cyber Warriors and Counter-Stars: Contesting Religious Radicalism and Violence on Indonesian Social Media,” 3.

Works Cited Archetti, Cristina. “Narrative Wars: Understanding Terrorism in the Era of Global Interconnectedness,” Alistair Miskimmon, Ben O’Loughlin, & Laura Roselle (eds.), Forging the World: Strategic Narratives and International Relations. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013, 218–245. Betz, David. “The Virtual Dimension of Contemporary Insurgency and CounterInsurgency,” Small Wars and Insurgencies 19(4) (2008), 510–540. Bineham, Jeffery L. “A Historical Account of the Hypodermic Model in Mass Communication,” Communications Monographs 55(3) (1988), 230–246. Cochrane, Joe. “From Indonesia, a Muslim Challenge to the Ideology of The Islamic State,” The New York Times, November 25, 2015. https://www.nyt imes.com/2015/11/27/world/asia/indonesia-islam-nahdlatul-ulama.html (accessed January 15, 2021). Dyer, Richard. Stars. London: BFI, 1979. ———. Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society. New York: Routledge, 2004. Foucault, Michel. Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, & Patrick H. Hutton (eds.). Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988. ———. Security, Territory, Population. Michel Senellart, François Ewald, Alessandro Fontana, & Arnold I. Davidson (trans.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Fox, 2007. Galamas, Francisco. “Terrorism in Indonesia: An Overview,” IEEE Research Papers 4 (2015). Hasan, Noorhaidi. “Violent Activism, Islamist Ideology, and the Conquest of Public Space Among Youth in Indonesia,” Kathryn Robinson (ed.), Youth Identities and Social Transformations in Modern Indonesia. Leiden: Brill, 2015, 200–215. Hoesterey, James B. “The Rise, Fall, and Re-branding of a Celebrity Preacher,” Inside Indonesia 90 (October—December 2007). https://www.insideind onesia.org/weekly-articles-90-oct-dec-2007/aa-gym-02121580/ (accessed January 15, 2021). ———. “Prophetic Cosmopolitanism: Islam, Pop Psychology, and Civic Virtue in Indonesia,” City & Society 24(1) (2012), 38–61. Hoofd, Ingrid M. Ambiguities of Activism: Alter-Globalism and the Imperatives of Speed. New York: Routledge, 2012.

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Huey, Laura. “This Is Not Your Mother’s Terrorism: Social Media, Online Radicalization and the Practice of Political Jamming,” Journal of Terrorism Research 6(2) (2015), 1–16. Idris, Irfan & Taufiqurrohman, Muh. “Current State of Indonesia’s Deradicalisation and Rehabilitation Programme,” Rohan Gunaratna & Mohamed Bin Ali (eds.), Terrorist Rehabilitation: A New Frontier in Counter-terrorism. Hackensack, NJ: Imperial College Press, 2015, 71–102. Kaptein, Nico J. “The Voice of the Ulamâ: Fatwas and Religious Authority in Indonesia,” Archives de sciences sociales des religions 125 (2004), 115–130. Liow, Joseph Chinyong. “ISIS Reaches Indonesia: The Terrorist Group’s Prospects in Southeast Asia,” Brookings Institution, February 8, 2016. https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/isis-reaches-indonesia-the-terroristgroups-prospects-in-southeast-asia/. Nemr, Christina. “Strategies to Counter-Terrorist Narratives Are More Confused Than Ever,” War on the Rocks, March 15, 2016. https://warontherocks. com/2016/03/strategies-to-counter-terrorist-narratives-are-more-confusedthan-ever/ (accessed January 15, 2021). Rimke, Heidi Marie. “Governing Citizens Through Self-Help Literature,” Cultural Studies 14(1) (2010), 61–78. Rose, Nikolas. Inventing Ourselves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Schmidt, Leonie. Islamic Modernities in Southeast Asia: Exploring Indonesian Popular and Visual Culture. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. ———. “Cyber Warriors and Counter-Stars: Contesting Religious Radicalism and Violence on Indonesian Social Media,” Asiascape: Digital Asia 5 (2018), 32– 67. ———. “Aesthetics of Authority: ‘Islam Nusantara’ and Islamic ‘Radicalism’ in Indonesian Film and Social Media,” Religion (2021), 1–22. Turner, Bryan S. “Religious Authority and the New Media,” Theory, Culture & Society 24(2) (2007), 117–134. Varagur, Krithika. “World’s Largest Islamic Organisation Tells ISIS to Get Lost,” The Huffington Post, December 2, 2015. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ entry/indonesian-muslims-counter-isis_us_565c737ae4b072e9d1c26bda?guc counter=1 (accessed January 15, 2021). ———. “Indonesia’s Cyber Warriors Battle ISIS with Memes, Tweets, and Whatsapp,” The Huffington Post, September 6, 2016. https://www.huffingto npost.com/entry/Indonesia-isis-cyber-warriors_us_5750779ae4b0eb20fa0d2 684/ (accessed January 15, 2021). Way, Maria. “Pope as Media Star: A Long Career Full of Reinvention.” Paper presented at IAMCR Conference, Barcelona, July 22–26, 2002.

CHAPTER 7

1984 and the Anti-Sikh Pogroms: Gauri Gill’s Photo Narrativization of the (Continuing) “Horrors of Those Weeks” Harveen Sachdeva Mann

1984: India’s Orwellian Moment In his 1995 essay entitled “The Ghosts of Mrs. Gandhi,” novelist Amitav Ghosh writes somewhat belatedly about the November 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom following Indira Gandhi’s assassination by her Sikh bodyguards that he was witness to in Delhi. Noting that “nowhere else in the world did 1984 fulfill its apocalyptic portents as it did in India,” Ghosh points to the violence of the decades long Khalistan-based, separatist movement in Punjab; the resultant military attack on the Harmandir Sahib (the Golden Temple) in Amritsar; Indira Gandhi’s “revenge” assassination by her two Sikh bodyguards; and the widespread retaliatory violence against Sikhs, as well as the Union Carbide Bhopal gas disaster, as evidence of the heinousness of that year.1 Little wonder, then, that the governmentled military assault on the Harmandir Sahib, the Sikhs’ holiest shrine,

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in June 1984, codenamed Operation Blue Star, has been described as the third Sikh ghallughara (or holocaust) by some commentators, when more than 5,000 Sikhs, both Khalistani militants and innocent civilian pilgrims, were killed.2 More recently, the November 1984 pogrom, when over 15,000 Sikhs were systematically murdered, has been dubbed the Sikhs’ “Kristallnacht” by Parvinder Singh of the UK-based National Union of Journalists’ 1984 Truth and Justice Campaign, among others.3 So much so that in 2013, in the face of the contemporary continuing “conspiracy of silence”4 among creative writers, political commentators, and the general citizenry alike, regarding the Sikh extrajudicial killings,5 photographer Gauri Gill revived the metaphor of Orwell’s 1984 to underscore yet again the lingering trauma among the Sikh community. Faced as they were— and still are—with the perennial disavowal of complicity in the massacres by the Central Government, the victim-survivors of the Sikh ghallughara have lived for decades with the forever-receding hope of commensurate justice for their families.6 To assess what she describes as the “ongoing impact of the 1984 antiSikh pogrom in New Delhi” and to “trigger a conversation” to offset the enduring silence around the events, Gill in 2013–2014, 2017, and 2019 published her photo-narrative “notebook” simply entitled 1984 with Kafila, a collaborative team blog of “radical political and media critique.”7 Like Amitav Ghosh, Gill too, in her epilogic frame essay entitled “Jis tann lage soee jane” (“Only she whose body is hurt, knows”), likens the deeply dystopian politics of India in 1984 to its Orwellian counterpart. Commenting on the relative limitations of public and digital media in the year 1984, Gill links the reality of thousands of “missing stories” and “absent justice” to the lack of “24-hour television channels, [the]internet [and] social media,” with “only eyewitness accounts, notes and sparse photographs” to fill in the lacunae. But even here dangers abounded for, as in Orwell’s totalitarian state, photographers who documented the actual massacre and its aftermath that fateful November were “terrified that their photographs would be made to disappear” from photo-labs by the “all-powerful State, which was itself implicated” in the pogroms,8 just as witnesses were silenced through threats or hush money. And as Gill notes chillingly, “Images did disappear—and have never since been located. Those that survived may now be used as evidence; or to relive the emotion. At a street exhibition of photographs organized in 2012 by the activist H.S. Phoolka, many of the visitors were weeping involuntarily

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even as they used their cell phone cameras to re-photograph the images on display.”9 A teenager herself in 1984, and born into a Sikh family, Gill, now a prominent Delhi-based photographer, underscores the necessity of resistance against the continued suppression and silencing of the narrative of anti-Sikh atrocities,10 for she believes deeply that “it is also for those of us who were not direct victims to try and articulate the history of our city, and, beyond that even of our universe.”11 All this because, as she cautions, “[a] world without individual stories, accounts, interpretations, opinions, secrets and photographs is indeed 1984 in the Orwellian sense.”12 In this context, it is imperative to note that the Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress Party of the 1980s and the contemporary Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi enact what Achille Mbembe dubs a postcolonial “master fiction,” which creates its own world of “truth” and “authentic” meaning against which all other forms of social meaning are judged, surveilled, and curtailed as well as punished. Thus, the locus of terror shifts to the postcolonial Indian state, which becomes the apparatus of trauma and violence against minorities, chief among them Sikhs and Muslims. Nationalist politics and religion collude, as terror is mediated by the official press and Hindu supremacist new media outlets, while constitutional democracy, federalism, the larger independent and liberal media, civil society organizations, and even the Indian Parliament are undermined and eroded.13

“We Will Keep Fighting, Our Children Will Fight Our Battle. We’ll Never Forget”: Gauri Gill’s 1984 “We will keep fighting, our children will fight our battle. We’ll never forget.” These words by one of the survivors of the pogroms living in Delhi’s “Widow Colonies” serve as the prefatory quote on the handwritten cover page drawn from the accompanying reporter’s notebook in 2009, of the 2014, not un-coincidentally 84-page long iteration of Gill’s 1984 “notebook,” expanded in each subsequent version.14 Described as a “documentary text-photographic project” by Kafila, Gill’s work is one of those exceptional and rare attempts15 to re-present and re-memorialize the “memories of that dark time” and the festering wound of the tragic inheritance of the anti-Sikh atrocities of 1984 thirty years—and now in 2021, thirty seven years—on.16 It is in this context of relative silence, both political and artistic, of national amnesia, and of justice denied,

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Fig. 7.1 “We will keep fighting, our children will fight our battle. We’ll never forget,” Gauri Gill, 1984 (Photograph/digital image copyright Gauri Gill, 2019. Courtesy of Gauri Gill, http://gaurigill.com/works.html)

that I examine Gill’s work as the ethical counter to “the impossibility of the comprehension of the violence and the terrors of reliving it” which the artist rues.17 Bringing her work into conversation with Veena Das’ anthropological theorization of the “ordinary”/“everyday,” Marianne Hirsch’s postulation of the legacy of “postmemory” as a vehicle of “repair and redress,” and Ariella Azoulay’s proposition of spectatorship as “civic duty,” I read Gill’s photo notebook as such a civic discourse, at once an aesthetic as also profoundly political18 as well as public act19 that bears continuing witness for the silenced Sikh citizenry of 1984 (Fig. 7.1).

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Trauma: The “Grammar of the Ordinary,” Postmemory, and Public Culture In her 2007 text entitled Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary,” ethnographer-anthropologist Veena Das plumbs the farreaching effects of the brutality of both the Indian Partition of 1947 and the anti-Sikh pogroms of 1984, as each of these two defining events in modern Indian history inserts itself forcibly and interminably “into everyday life…and…into the recesses of the ordinary.”20 Combining meticulous fieldwork, the “words” of her interlocutors and informants, the urban Punjabi refugees of 1947 and the survivors of the Sikh massacres of 1984, respectively, with her critical acumen, and drawing on the philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein and Stanley Cavell in particular, Das diverges from more extensive anthropological inquiry. Instead, she asks the simple and focused but monumental question: “What is it to pick up the pieces to live in this very place of devastation,” to live an “everyday life” in the wake of cataclysmic events such as Partition and 1984 Punjab?21 Das rues in particular what she dubs “the failure of the grammar of the ordinary” in portrayals not of the actual “eventful” horror of 1984, but of “what happens to the subject and world when the memory of such events is folded into ongoing relations.” And she advocates the fashioning of a “shared language,” one without “secure [foundational] conventions,” out of “such fragile and intimate moments.”22 It is such a “grammar” and “language,” Das avers, that will enable the traumatized victims/survivors of Punjab 1984 to “hold hope for each other” in their “ordinary lives,” existence that evidences “not some kind of ascent into the transcendent but a descent into everyday life.”23 Elsewhere, Marianne Hirsch, a prominent Comparatist and leading scholar of memory studies and photography, writes about the concept of postmemory24 in what is perhaps the ultimate holocaust of the twentieth century, that of Hitler’s Nazi-era Europe. Focusing specifically on the function of narrative, including visual cultural reconstructions of these traumatic events, she uses the term “postmemory” to define the relationship that the “generation after” bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before and to experiences they “remember” only by means of the “stories, images, and behaviors among which they grew up.” But these memories, Hirsch continues, “were transmitted to them so deeply and affectively so as to seem to constitute

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memories in their own right.” Thus, postmemory25 is, according to her, a “structure of inter- and transgenerational return of traumatic knowledge and embodied experience…a consequence of traumatic recall…but at a generational remove.”26 Even as she admits the challenges of representing horrors that “exceed comprehension,” Hirsch considers the transmission of postmemory through visual media as an “activist and interventionist” cultural and political mode of transmission that offers a “form of repair and redress” as it “look[s] back at the past in order to move forward toward the future.”27 Writing about the invaluable role of photography, in particular, in the transmission of postmemory, Hirsch notes that “[m]ore than oral or written narratives, photographic images … enable us, in the present, not only to see and to touch [the] past, but also to try to reanimate it….[P]hotographs…diminish distance, bridge separation, and facilitate identification and affiliation.”28 Mediating in a sense between Das and Hirsch, visual theorist Ariella Azoulay evinces a deep interest in visual media generally and photography specifically, as Hirsch does. At the same time, she combines her interest in photography as both aesthetical and political art to focus, in Das-ian fashion, on the “political use of photography.” The latter, she holds, is undergirded by the “civic duty” of spectators toward the photographed persons, those “dispossessed citizens who, in turn, enable the rethinking of the concept and practice of citizenship.”29 Writing in the context of the Israeli Defense Force’s victimization of Palestinians during the Second Intifada of 2000–2005, and deeply indebted to German philosopher Walter Benjamin, Azoulay triangulates the relationship between the camera and photographer, the photographed, and the spectator, to argue for the responsibility of the viewers to bear witness through the photographs to both catastrophe and the quotidian, to macrocosmic events as well as the microcosmic lives of marginalized people. It is thus, Azoulay holds, that spectators can engage ethically with the oppressed and restore a measure of citizenship to them, much as Das would advocate.

The Civil Contract of the Photographer and Her Subjects Documenting the traumatic legacy of ’84 as it inserts itself into the “ordinary life” of the survivors in the Delhi slums where the worst violence took place during those fateful November days, tracing its

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“postmemorial” after-life as it were, Gill fulfills to the utmost the “civil contract” between her camera and photographer-self, the photographed subjects, and her audience/viewers. Thus it is that her images perform in understated but powerful, affective narratives the cultural work of re-membering, of establishing the “connection between familial and affiliative postmemory,” between the victims’ private and the Sikhs’ (though not, unfortunately, the entire nation’s) public archives to “reembody and to reindividualize [that] cultural/archival memory” that Hirsch theorizes.30 The 1984 “Notebooks,” as Gill dubs them, include a series of photographs taken in 2005 and 2009 for Tehelka and Outlook magazines (as well as in 2014 and most recently in 2019 expressly for the Notebooks), in 2005 after the release of the controversial Nanavati Commission Report, which acquitted or otherwise exonerated key politicians and officials of the ’84 massacre, and in 2009 to mark the 25th anniversary of the pogrom. But in 2013 and later, Gill also invited a host of other artists, among them writers, journalists, poets, painters, filmmakers, and artists, to provide comments and drawings to accompany her portraits and original captions, thus updating her texts, originally published in mainstream Indian political magazines, in multiple ways, generically, textually, and in terms of media and audience. In contrast to contemporaneous photographs and video clips of the genocide as it took place, comes Gill’s subsequent set of 45 haunting, black-and-white still images of survivors from the resettlement colonies of Trilokpuri, Tilak Vihar and Garhi in Delhi as well as of rallies to protest the Nanavati Commission Report. The accompanying drawings and texts, ranging from brief descriptive headers by the magazine editors to poetic, meditative, sometimes searing observations and essays by writer Arundhati Roy, novelist Jaspreet Singh, film director Anusha Rizvi, and lawyer and legal activist Lawrence Liang, among many others, remark upon the event and its aftermath, affectively, tellingly, and collaboratively but also contrastively in a multitude of genres.31 As art critic and curator Deeksha Nath notes astutely, whereas the non-photographic texts contain “stories of horrific murder and of official apathy and injustice,” Gill’s photographs “seem almost romantic in comparison.” Presenting “personal portraits” of their subjects in which there is “no violence on view,” the photos contrast dichotomously with the written narratives and drawings to “magnify[y] the tragedy: for survivors, life carries on and their wounds are

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often not visually present,” mimicking here the Das-ian “everyday,” the heart-rending “ordinary” that follows deep trauma and devastation.32

“Missing Stories,” “Absent Justice” The 45 photographs collated in Gill’s 1984 are clustered around the following four dates: August 2005, October 2009, September 2014, and August 2019, with the majority of them taken in 2005 and 2009. But the photographic texts are arranged non-chronologically, as if to signal the breakdown of clock time and quotidian order for the survivors, their lives forever fragmented, shattered, scattered, thereby underlining the deep and lingering trauma of this particular holocaust. Tellingly, one of the earlier iterations of the “Notebooks” opened in exhibition under the title “The 1984 Anti-Sikh Pogroms Remembered” in October 2014 at the Weiner Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide, in London. Dubbing the events in November 1984 “genocidal pogroms against the Sikh people in India,” the Weiner website notes that “[t]hirty years on …. the silence is slowly breaking. Not just about the damage caused to the justice system, memory and language in India, but also about the individual and collective trauma that exists within Sikh communities across the world.”33 But even as Gill’s photos can be read as testaments to the lingering horror of the ’84 Sikh pogroms, paradoxically, the images in their quietude also underline the necessity and return of what Das terms “the everyday,” “the ongoing,” the “ordinary,” as the survivors “pick up the pieces and live in this very place of devastation.”34 It is particularly in the images of women and girl children that we see the “gender-determined division of the work of mourning the results of violence,” as Das puts it, as they attend fatefully to “the details of everyday life…that allow life to knit itself back into some viable rhythm”35 (Fig. 7.2). The second of the October 2009 photographs in the series, the frame above—if it is regarded devoid of context—appears to be about Punjabi domesticity, lower-middle class existence, and the gendering of “home.” The intimate visual text of a young woman picking out vegetables from a vendor’s cart draws the spectator into the imagined, mundane life of the woman, as if through the darkened doorway. But the print narrative, both the frame reference of 1984 and Gill’s caption as well as brief accompanying essay, disturbs us as it is meant to do, and challenges us to link this “local,” “everyday” story of “the ordinary” to national history,

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Fig. 7.2 “‘Jis tann lãgé soee jãné’…Only she whose body is hurt, knows,” Gauri Gill, 1984 (Photograph/digital image copyright Gauri Gill, 2019. Courtesy of Gauri Gill, http://gaurigill.com/works.html)

and to interweave (post)memory into contemporary political thought and action. Gill’s caption succinctly tells Nirpreet Kaur’s story. On November 2, 1984, Kaur saw her father being burned alive … even as the same mob hit her with iron rods. Intent on revenge, she joined the Khalistan movement, and married a militant. Her husband was picked up twelve days after their marriage, never to return; her mother was arrested on charges of ‘sheltering a terrorist’; she herself was arrested in 1988 and released in 1996. She has testified repeatedly against Sajjan Kumar, whom she saw inciting a mob to violence.36

While the caption maintains a degree of objectivity, it is in her accompanying essay, “‘Jis tann lãgé soee jãné’…Only she whose body is hurt, knows,” appended near the end of 1984, that Gill evinces deep affect. Writing that when Nirpreet Kaur related her “devastating story to us, she had to have a psychologist present in the room,” Gill acknowledges her

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own emotional involvement: “I myself felt like leaving the room several times during the two hour-long narration. It was too much to absorb, and all I could do at the end of it was take a photograph. We urged her to write a book, I hope she does someday.”37 It is to fill in such gaps that Gill offers her own efforts, even as she confesses self-critically that her photographs “in themselves are now a kind of artifact, since they were mediated by the mainstream media and had a certain valence in that context. I wondered how they might be viewed removed from it.”38 And so she gives us 1984, a platform that has evolved over the years, its most recent version, that of 2020, currently archived and available free for distribution on her website gaurigill.com (Fig. 7.3). Of her photograph above, another one from October 2009, that the Indian-Canadian writer Jaspreet Singh has reproduced in his 2013 novel Helium, Gill’s caption reads: “Taranjeet Kaur’s grandfather Jeevan Singh was killed on Nov 1, 1984. ‘A mob of 400-500 people followed my husband and before he could reach a safe house in Pandav Nagar, they knifed him and left him to die on the rail tracks,’ recounts Taranjeet’s grandmother Surjit, crying uncontrollably. It hasn’t been easy since. ‘I have spent my life struggling, but I want my granddaughter to study hard,’ says Surjit.” And whereas Singh reproduces the image acontextually in his novel, in his collaborative inter-generic note to Gill’s 1984, he writes emotionally, autobiographically: Does she usually read this way? Always in the same room? […] Why exactly am I moved by this image?/…. Layers of cold ash. In 1984 the two cabinets in the room would have failed to hide the victims. The phone, too, would have been equally helpless (because the cops in Delhi were extremely busy facilitating acts of cruelty). She was not born yet. When I first saw the photograph I felt its silence. Silence filled the whole space. But, soon a detail broke the silence. Her ear. It made me pause, and I heard the hum of painful stories she must have heard over and over. The same ear, I felt, would have preserved the shape of her grandmother’s voice. Postmemory — that messy archive of trauma and its transference. Outside the house, ironically, the same ear must have detected ongoing shamelessness and injustice. Collective amnesia.…What book is she reading? Hope it is not a prescribed text of ‘history.’ “Why should young people know about an event best buried and forgotten”…But this is not the exact reason why the picture wounds me. Something within its space -and accumulated time -is broken and will always remain so.39

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Fig. 7.3 “Postmemory—that messy archive of trauma and its transference.” Gauri Gill, 1984 (Photograph/digital image copyright Gauri Gill, 2019. Courtesy of Gauri Gill, http://gaurigill.com/works.html)

Had Taranjeet Kaur been alive and a teenager in 1984, her kara (the steel bracelet on her wrist), her dress (the salwar kameez), and her long, braided hair would have marked her as an observant Sikh, made her vulnerable to assault and rape at the hands of those same murderous Hindu nationalist mobs who killed her grandfather. But now, the progeny in a sense of the pogroms, and the inheritor of the memory of 1984, she

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sits studying, head bent, acquiescent to her fate and the majoritarian politics of indifference (at best) and latent violence (at worst) swirling around her outside on the streets. Protected by her broken grandmother, but also hemmed in, bereft of real possibilities in her lower middle-class home, she epitomizes that harrowing, compulsory “descent into everyday life” that Das so emotively points out as the lot of the “refugees-in-place” of the Indian nation-state40 (Fig. 7.4).

Fig. 7.4 Taranjeet’s living quarters, Gauri Gill, 1984 (Photograph/digital image copyright Gauri Gill, 2019. Courtesy of Gauri Gill, http://gaurigill.com/ works.html)

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Pages later in 1984, we come upon another angle of Taranjeet’s living quarters in the image above, this time with a memorial photo of her grandfather placed on a raised beam among humble objects, hung clothes, a sewing machine (which her mother or grandmother works at to eke out a living for the family), the trappings, literally and symbolically, of unmourned, unremembered, “dispossessed citizen” lives, as Azoulay would describe them.41 It is through drawing our attention to such intimate details of fragile lives, by “localizing” the “eventful,” as Das would put it, by making visible “things that were invisible to us,” by articulating the “grammar of the ordinary” in her photographs that Gill offers that “second [essential] narrative” to the official story of 1984.42 In the concluding pages of her work, Gill writes of the chasm between the victims and perpetrators of the crime of 1984. “‘Jis tann lãgé soee jãné’…Only she whose body is hurt, knows.” And she ends on a note of hope but also of warning and terror: But perhaps it is also for those of us individuals who were not direct victims to try and articulate the history of our city – and universe. A world without personal interpretations, opinions, thoughts, secrets and photographs is indeed 1984 in the Orwellian sense. “We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness”; that place turned out to be a cell in a building where the lights were never turned off, one that was under surveillance both by day and night, and where imagination was outlawed.43

As she bears witness to the trauma of the survivors and creates photographic narrative testimonials of the “reinhabiting [of] the space of devastation,” both by the victims themselves and partially through her repeat visits to the “spaces” of the Widow Colonies over the years herself, Gill fulfills that “civil contract of photography” and that “civic duty towards the photographed person” that author and photographer Arielle Azoulay holds to be the mark of the ethically engaged participant citizen.44

Postmemory in/and the Sikh Diaspora In this segment of my essay, I focus on a more recent moment, from Vancouver, April 2008, as well as list several other sites of the transmission of 1984 memory to underline the postmemorial presentness and multimodal mediation of the horror-laden past.

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On April 28, 2008, 15 Sikh teenagers came to Princess Margaret Secondary School in Surrey, BC, a heavily South Asian city, where 25% of the population are Sikhs, wearing black t-shirts inscribed with a Republic of Khalistan seal, and a quote from Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the leader of the separatist group who was killed in the 1984 attack on the Golden Temple. Whereas school officials banned the students from wearing the shirts on school grounds, others “brushed off the T-shirts as youthful rebellion or dismissed the students as naïve and uninformed” about their history, noted The Canadian Press. But the students claimed that they “know the history” of Punjab ’84, of the Khalistan movement, of Sikh marginalization and trauma in dominant Indian politics, that they “wanted to make a statement that would be heard,” and that they were unambiguously “advocating for an independent Sikh state” and for “freedom in Punjab.”45 In her timely essay “Making Meaning of 1984 in Cyberspace: Youth answering back to reclaim Sikh identity and nationhood,” Professor of Education and human and immigrant rights and peace studies specialist, Rita Verma examines the role of collective political memory—or postmemory as I would dub it, following Marianne Hirsch—for diasporic Sikh youth in particular, who “experience an anger and sense of revolt within their lives and communities.” Since few opportunities exist for them to “explore their histories within the school settings,” whether in the US, Canada, or UK—the sites of the largest Sikh immigrant populations—or elsewhere, and since they remain marginalized within the host communities, these youngsters seek a “sense of collective identity…nurtured in cyberspace outlets” (44). That the Surrey incident is not an isolated one but exists within a larger diasporic, postmemorial Sikh context becomes clear very quickly if one looks at the plethora of websites, YouTube videos, blogs, Facebook pages, martyrology art in gurudwara halls, radio talk shows, and even international conferences either dedicated to or heavily focused on 1984 Punjab that have proliferated outside of India, especially around the 10th, 20th, 25th, and 30th anniversaries of the events.46 While some of the social media sites have been short-lived and become inactive over the years, although they continue to have a long half-life and spectral presence in cyberspace, others, many run professionally, have flourished and accomplished important activist and political work on behalf of the victims of 1984.47 Such sites have mobilized a sizable segment of the Sikh diaspora (estimated at 3.5 million, of 25–27 million Sikhs worldwide, including

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in India), collaborated with human rights organizations, raised funds, or otherwise educated their audiences about the history and culture as well as political demands of the Sikhs, whether in India or in their oftentimes fragile and fraught existence in diaspora.48 As a larger cognate to the invaluable work of individual artists like Gauri Gill are the efforts of a non-governmental organization like California-based Ensaaf (Justice), which has labored long and hard to “end impunity and achieve justice” for the victims and survivors of the 1984 Sikh pograms. Created in 2004 and registered as a 501©(3) outfit, Ensaaf has battled Indian national and even international amnesia about 1984 by “documenting abuses, bringing perpetrators to justice, and organizing survivors” as they claim in their Mission statement.49 Started by US-trained attorneys Jaskaran Kaur and Sukhman Dhami, Ensaaf has partnered with Supreme Court and High Court attorneys in India and with such prominent international organizations as Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, Harvard Law’s Human Rights Program, and the International Center for Transitional Justice. By authoring reports to international agencies, launching social media campaigns like the 2011 “Challenge the Darkness,” releasing documentaries and short films showcased globally, leading local marches like the annual Appear for the Disappeared, and most recently, creating a digital record entitled “Mapping Crimes Against Humanity: Enforced Disappearances & Extrajudicial Executions in Punjab, India,” based on data collected from primary source interviews, Ensaaf has endeavored to keep not just the memory of 1984 alive in the West as well as in the Indian social imaginary but also to bring very practical results to the survivors through their support for legal cases.

The Belatedness of Public Memorialization in Delhi Even as the memory of 1984 has increasingly been articulated and preserved by survivor-victims, activists, and artists alike, although sometimes also exploited by politicians for electoral and personal gains, it has become the basis of the socialization of an entire second generation of Sikhs in diaspora. But in India, the pressure to “forget and move on,” to repress, erase, and erode the remembrance and the memory of the tragedy has been overwhelming. Whereas one of Indira Gandhi’s Sikh assassins was shot dead in 1984 and the other as well as a co-conspirator hanged

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in 1989, the major architects of the Sikh pogroms—H. K. L. Bhagat, Jagdish Tytler, Lalit Maken, Dharam Lal Shastri, and others, Members of Parliament all, but also among them Rajiv Gandhi, who instigated and then turned a blind eye to the massacres, and subsequently went on to become the Prime Minister—have not been prosecuted 36 years on (Sajjan Kumar, finally convicted in December 2018, is the sole exception here). Instead, Bhagat, in whose constituency the largest number of Sikhs was killed, was rewarded with the Ministry for Information and Broadcasting in Rajiv Gandhi’s new cabinet; Jagdish Tytler was made Civil Aviation Minster; and both Kumar and Tytler were given party nominations to fight the 2004 and 2009 elections by Congress President, Sonia Gandhi. The feeble apology offered in 2005 by the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, himself a Sikh but a “Party man,” failed to acknowledge or confront the horror of the organized carnage and refused to concede that the Congress Party was involved. Unsurprisingly, then, there has been no public monument or memorial built in India to mark the horrific events, not, that is, until January 2017.50 Suffering many setbacks, exploited by politicians seeking office in Punjab, criticized for its potential to weaken the ostensibly “unified national fabric” of India, the current memorial faced resistance at the hands of the Congress Party as well as the Chief Minister of Delhi, Sheila Dikshit. It was only after Sajjan Kumar’s brazen acquittal, at first in 2013, of his role in the 1984 massacre that the building of the memorial got off the ground. Funded notably not by the Indian government—which in fact put up as many obstacles as it could, legal and otherwise—or even the Punjab state government, but by the Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Management Committee, the 1984 memorial, built on the grounds of Rakabgunj Gurudwara near Parliament House in Central Delhi in plain sight of the halls of power, was finally inaugurated by the widows of five of the victims in January 2017 (Fig. 7.5). The Sikh Genocide Memorial bears an official plaque of dedication first in Punjabi, then in English, entitled, “Navambar 1984 Sikh Katlayam Yaadgar” and “November 1984 Sikh Genocide Memorial,” respectively.51 Called the Wall of Truth, the site pays tribute not only to those Sikhs who died in that murderous year of 1984, both in June and again in October-November, but also to those non-Sikhs who lost their lives trying to protect their Sikh neighbors, friends, fellow citizens. There are four sculptures—dedicated to the Sikh values of humanity, equality, humility, and tolerance; a wall with the names of the dead etched in; another wall

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Fig. 7.5 “’84 De Shaheedan Nu Samarpit” (“Dedicated to the Martyrs of ’84”), Gauri Gill, 1984 (Photograph/digital image copyright Gauri Gill, 2019. Courtesy of Gauri Gill, http://gaurigill.com/works.html)

dedicated to those who died but remained unidentified, not just because of the gravity of their wounds and/or because their bodies were charred beyond recognition, but also out of fear of further violence to their families; and a fountain with laser lights rising skyward to mark the journey of their souls (Fig. 7.6).

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Fig. 7.6 The wall of truth, Gauri Gill, 1984 (Photograph/digital image copyright Gauri Gill, 2019. Courtesy of Gauri Gill, http://gaurigill.com/works. html)

But some of the victims’ families also asked for Indira Gandhi’s and Rajiv Gandhi’s names to be engraved as “killers” on another plaque alongside this one, so deep is their hurt and so keen their sense of justice denied and of their continued victimization. The plaque reads, in Punjabi and in English, as follows: Dastaan-E Indira Gandhi (“The Tale of Indira Gandhi”) Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India in a self-styled dictatorial manner ordered …Operation Blue Star thereby attacking Sri Harmandir Sahib, Sri Akal Takhat Sahib, Sri Amritsar Sahib, where [the] Sikh Sangat [worshippers] had gathered to commemorate [the] Martyrdom day of Sahib Sri Guru Arjun Dev Ji Maharaj, [the] fifth Sikh Guru. While executing this so-called Military Operation, [Indira Gandhi] killed thousands of innocent Sikhs, [and] committed [a] huge sin causing sacrilege to [the] sanctum sanctorum of Sri Darbar Sahib and razing Sri Akal Takhat Sahib to the ground. Hundreds of Sikh Military personnel falsely implicated in sedition cases, were brutally killed after dragging them

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out of their barracks. [The] Sikh Sangat coming from villages was tortured with virtual [siege] laid to prevent Sikhs [from reaching] Sri Darbar Sahib, Amritsar. —1984 Sikh Genocide Victims’ Families

To ensure justice for these traumatized legions, it is necessary to remember, to memorialize and, like the speaker in Sarah Kofman’s poem “Shoah” (Dis-grace) which Jaspreet Singh quotes in his Punjab 1984 related essay “Carbon,” to “not forget this Event.”52 It is such an ongoing unforgetting that Gauri Gill performed as she visited the Genocide Memorial in September 2019 and extended her text yet again to include these contemporary scripts of the “horrors of 1984.” In her attempt to honor the memory of the victims and survivors of the Sikh genocide, Gill continues to revisit the social and literal spaces occupied by what Veena Das and Arthur Kleinman call “scarred populations,” thereby “enabl[ing] stories to break through routine cultural codes to express counterdiscourse that assaults and perhaps undermines the taken-forgranted meaning of things as they are.” It is, Das and Kleinman maintain, “[o]ut of such desperate and defeated experiences [that] stories may emerge [which] call for and at times may bring about change that alters utterly the commonplace—both at the level of collective experience and at the level of individual subjectivity.”53 And like Marianne Hirsch, Veena Das, and Ariella Azoulay, Gill shares the anguished “postmemories” of “ordinary lives” through her open-ended “Notebook” and Bibliography of 1984, thereby creating a triadic, crucial relationship between the photographed, the photographer, and viewers/spectators that impels the latter to perform their essential “civic duty” toward “the photographed persons…[those] dispossessed citizens who enable the rethinking of the concept and practice of citizenship.”54

Coda I: 2020: “The Fourth Crisis of the Republic”55 It is the very concept of Indian citizenship that was, tragically, at stake once more in 2020. Writing on January 26, 2020, on the 72nd anniversary of the formation of the Republic of India and the adoption of the Indian Constitution, historian Ramachandra Guha enumerated four key moments of crisis that India has or is passing through, including the wars with China and Pakistan in the early 1960s; Indira Gandhi’s declaration of Emergency in the mid 1970s which threatened the very

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fabric of Indian democracy; the deadly Hindu-Muslim and caste conflicts of the early1990s; and the (then) current upheaval surrounding the Modi government’s passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA),56 while ignoring the major structural problems of rising unemployment, agricultural distress, public institutional stagnation, and environmental degradation.57 But even as he rues the self-destructive policies that (have) led to the four “dark phases” above, Guha notes pointedly that “the worst year in the history of the Republic,” standing apart from the eras above, “was, of course 1984, which saw (among other things) the Indian Army’s storming of the Golden Temple, the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the pogrom against the Sikhs, and the Bhopal tragedy.”58 As justice still remains elusive for the Sikhs whose lives were brutally interrupted, uprooted, or deeply affected in 1984, the Indian government mounted yet another brazen attack, once again on a minority group, this time the Muslims, by passing the CAA and instituting the National Register of Citizens (NRC) requirement.59 As if the recent Abolition of Article 370, with the resultant reduction of India’s only Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir to a Union Territory, governed directly by the Central Government, and the Supreme Court’s verdict allowing the building of a massive, new Hindu temple on the site of the demolished Muslim Babri Masjid was not discriminatory and repressive enough, the CAA and NRC combined threaten to disenfranchise large swathes of Muslims even further or, worse still, to render them entirely stateless. On the one hand, these draconian acts pit one set of minorities—this time displaced Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, and even Sikhs—against another set, the Muslims, in a classic case of “divide and rule” that encourages horizontal discrimination and violence against another vulnerable group. On the other hand, such acts further minoritize and demonize India’s largest minority group as they consolidate the untrammeled power of the Hindu nationalist BJP and the ruling Narendra Modi government, and decimate India’s record on human rights. Categorically dubbing the CAA “manifestly immoral, in that it singles out…Islam for particularly spiteful treatment,” and decrying “this wanton humiliation heaped upon [Indian Muslims] by their own government,” Guha wrote at the dawn of 2020 that the key reason for the hasty passage of the CAA through Parliament was “bigotry, the ideological compulsion to rub it in even further to the Muslim citizens of the Republic that they live here on the grace or mercy of the Hindu majority.” And yet hope remains for the future of Muslims as fully constitutional and equal citizens

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of India, lying not only with those millions of secularist Muslims, but also, and more importantly, with non-Muslim Indians who took to the streets of India in massive numbers in opposition to the Hindu nationalists, to unequivocally reject “the new Act for what it really is—a body blow to the founding ideals of the Republic.”60 Linking the contemporary horror of supremacist Hindutva policies to the murderous politics of anti-Sikh sentiment in 1984, Hemant Sareen writes perceptively and ominously that, even as “slowly and patchily the moral and ethical contours of that abyss,” that “holocaust-in-denial” of 1984, “are coming into relief in our collective consciousness,” the “lessons…gleaned…are [chillingly] those imbibed by its most diligent students who have not just surpassed the new normal of 1984 but have harvested it with impunity for political power.”61 Armed with the hubris born of 1984, of crimes against humanity not only unpunished but also rewarded with high political office, Hindu majoritarian ideology has once again stoked the fires of zealotry, a conflagration that can yet be tamped down by adopting the ethical principles contained in the following verse from the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book of the Sikhs: “Awal Allah noor upaya kudrat ke sab bande/Ek noor te sab jag upjeya kaun bhalo ko mande.” Or, “First, Allah created the light; then, by his Creative Power, he made all mortal beings/From the One Light, the entire universe welled up. So, who is good, and who is bad?” As the first Sikh guru, Guru Nanak, said on attaining enlightenment: “Na koi Hindu, na koi Musalman,” “There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim.” We are all one.62

Coda II: The 2020–2021 Farmers’ Protest Movement and “Terrorists”63 Since the writing of Coda I above in mid-2020, the hopes of any ethical action on the part of the Modi-led BJP government vis-à-vis minorities generally, and Sikhs in particular, has faded almost completely from view. In February 2021, the hegemonic proclivities of Hindutva nationalism have accelerated, with the government doubling down on its attempts to establish an authoritarian, one-party state, as the Economist points out.64 The most recent evidence of this is the autocratic manner in which three key ordinances relating to the deregulation and privatization of the agricultural sector were passed without parliamentary discussion by the Union Government in June 2020. These “reforms,” which would

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“break the backbone of the farm sector and give control to the corporates,” as Arundhati Roy notes (“New Laws”), impact about half of India’s workforce and about 15% of its economy, and disproportionately affect Sikh farmers, as Punjab remains a predominantly agrarian state. The massive farmer protests that have followed—with a peak of 250 million protesters joining the cause nationwide65 —and that are ongoing even today, have, however, had a very particular sort of fallout for the Sikh farmers of Punjab. Immediately dubbed “anti-national,” “seditious,” and “terrorist,” the Sikhs, many of whom are subsistence farmers and own 2– 3 acres of land apiece, have borne the brunt of the government’s brutal crackdown. The Haryana police, from the state abutting Delhi, directed by the BJP Chief Minister Majohar Lal Khattar and a Modi supporter, has attacked the protesters with tear gas and water cannons to prevent them from reaching Delhi; their water and food supplies have been cut off; they have suffered from inadequate facilities and medical care; and well over 100 farmers have died either by suicide, from excessive cold, or because some have “vanished,” in what are stark human rights violations by the Central and (some) State governments. And on Republic Day again this year, January 26, 2021, the horrors multiplied. Planting their own man, Deep Singh, among the legitimate, peaceful protestors, the government turned a blind eye while a group of “farmers” breached security at the Lal Qila, the site of the national celebrations. Once inside, they wielded weapons and raised the Nishan Sahib, a Sikh emblematic flag, in an attempt to discredit Sikhs as fundamentalists, Khalistani separatists, terrorists…shades of 1984 all over again, 40 years on. Prime Minister Modi went so far as to complain about this BJP-engineered charade that the Indian national flag had been “insulted” by these planted “protestors,” knowing full well that such a comment could ignite a murderous rampage by his followers. And in reporting these scenes, the largely complicit, government-controlled mainstream media, dubbed the “godi media” (a lap(godi)dog media), aided by the strategic shutdown and slowdown of internet servers to block private communications and activist sites, likewise brought Delhi to the brink of yet another ghallugara for Sikhs. As journalist and commentator Sunny Hundal notes in openDemocracy, Many Sikhs now worry that a second massacre is on the way. They have good reason. “Repeat 1984” has become the rallying cry of some Hindu nationalist social media users who support Modi’s government.

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[And] some …‘Hindutva’ [activists] … have already started holding menacing rallies outside Sikh places of worship…[with] implicit sanction from the top. (“Why Indian Farmers’ Protests have Sikhs Fearing Violent Attacks.”)66

Thus, as the 2021 BJP- and Hindutva-led government continues to use the rhetoric of “enemies within and without,” labeling peaceable Sikhs who dare to question governmental policies and legal mandates that would end their very (way of) being, “terrorists,” Khalistani separatists, and Pakistani agents, they brazenly sponsor the very acts of terrorism they claim to be battling. The discourse of terrorism emanating out of 1984 Punjab continues to be (ab)used by the contemporary Indian state in a demonstration of the “gross distortion in reality [that] completely obscure[s] what is much worse: the official…evil that has been visited so deliberately and so methodically”67 on Sikhs and other minorities, first in ’84 and now in only somewhat smaller measure in 2020–2021.

Notes 1. Amitav Ghosh, “The Ghosts of Mrs. Gandhi,” Incendiary Circumstances: A Chronicle of the Turmoil of Our Times (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), 187. For details about the Bhopal disaster, see, for example, Ingrid Eckerman, The Bhopal Saga: Causes and Consequences of the World’s Largest Industrial Disaster (Hyderabad, India: Universities Press, 2005). https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0FqO8XKy9NRZDNzTkZQ eVJQbE0/edit?pli=1. 2. For details about the first two ghallugharas, see Darshan Singh Tatla, “The Morning After: Trauma, Memory, and the Sikh Predicament Since 1984,” Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory 2, no. 1 (2006), 57– 88. https://doi.org/10.1080/17448720600779869. 3. Others too have used this term, as noted by Parvinder Singh in his 2009 pamphlet-cum-report published under the eponymous title “1984 Sikhs’ Kristallnacht” by Ensaaf, a nonprofit organization working to “end impunity and achieve justice for mass state crimes in India, with a focus on Punjab” (http://www.ensaaf.org/pdf/reports/kristallnacht.pdf). 4. Ashis Nandy, qtd. in Pranay Sharma, “Our Selective Archive,” Outlook India, October 17, 2011. 5. This is an issue I consider in some detail in my article, “Our Periodic Table of Hate’: The Archive of 1984 Punjab in Jaspreet Singh’s Helium,” Sikh Formations 14, no. 1 (2018), 26–54.

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6. Victims’ families and survivors were given limited monetary compensation by the Central Government. Most perpetrators of the pogroms still roam free, some of them in ministerial and other senior government appointments. Sajjan Kumar was the only one of them finally convicted for his crimes in December 2018, although a re-appeal of his prison sentence is in the works. 7. Gauri Gill, “Jis Tann Laage Soye Jaane—Delhi November 1984, 30 Years Later,” https://kafila.online/2014/11/01/jis-tann-lage-soee-janedelhi-november-1984-30-years-after-gauri-gill/. The most recent, fuller version of 1984, “re-released” in November 2019, and now comprising 116 pages, including 45 black and white photographs by Gill, is available on Gill’s website at http://gaurigill.com/works.html. Currently, the text/project of 1984 is dated in Gill’s accompanying 1984 Bibliography as “2014-ongoing.” The copyright note reads as below: 1984 This notebook about the anti-Sikh pogrom that occurred in New Delhi in 1984 contains photographs taken by Gill in 2005, 2009, 2014 and 2019 alongside captions from the Indian print media in which they first appeared and text responses by 41 artists - including writers, poets and film makers. The photographs from 2005 appeared in Tehelka (with Hartosh Bal); and from 2009 in Outlook (with Shreevatsa Nevatia). The corresponding captions are roughly as they were inscribed in the published reports. Text responses are by Amitabha Bagchi, Jeebesh Bagchi, Meenal Baghel, Sarnath Bannerjee, Hartosh Bal, Amarjit Chandan, Arpana Caur, Rana Dasgupta, Manmeet Devgun, Anita Dube, Mahmood Farouqui, Iram Ghufran, Ruchir Joshi, Rashmi Kaleka, Ranbir Kaleka, Sonia Khurana, Saleem Kidwai, Pradip Kishen, Subasri Krishnan, Lawrence Liang, Zarina Muhammed, Veer Munshi, Vivek Narayanan, Monica Narula, Teenaa Kaur Pasricha, Ajmer Rode, Arundhati Roy, Anusha Rizvi, Nilanjana Roy, Inder Salim, Hemant Sareen, Priya Sen, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh, Nilima Sheikh, Gurvinder Singh, Jaspreet Singh, Madan Gopal Singh, Paromita Vohra. Suite of drawings by Gagan Singh. Endpiece drawings by Venkat Singh Shyam. Released on Kafila.org in April 2013, re-released in November 2014, November 2017, November 2019; 22.86 × 17.78 cms; 116 pages, 45 black and white photographs; 24 drawings; free to download, print out, staple and distribute. 8. Gill “Jis Tann Laage.”

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9. Gill, “Jis Tann Laage.” 10. As Arundhati Roy recounts in her recent publication The End of Imagination (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2016), 10. “There have been pogroms in India before (the 2002 Gujarat massacre of Muslims), equally heinous, equally unpardonable…the massacre of Muslims in Nellie, Assam, in 1983, under a Congress state government,” “the massacre of…Sikhs following the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984, by Congress-led mobs in Delhi,” the “massacre, in 1993, of…Muslims by the Shiv Sena in Mumbai, following the demolition of the Babri Masjid. In these pogroms too, the killers were protected and given complete impunity”. In addition, she points to a chilling fact about the continuing and very real threats to Indian citizens by its own government: “soldiers are not just deployed on the Siachen Glacier or on the borders of India….there has not been a single day since Independence in 1947 when the Indian Army and other security forces have not been deployed within India’s borders against what are meant to be their ‘own’ people—in Kashmir, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Assam, Junagadh, Hyderabad, Goa, Punjab, Telengana, West Bengal, and now Chhattisgarh, Orissa, and Jharkhand” (28). 11. Gill “Jis Tann Laage.” 12. Gill “Jis Tann Laage.” 13. For additional information about the role of the official press in “mediating” Hindutva terror in India, see especially Rohit Chopra, The Virtual Hindu Rashtra: Saffron Nationalism and New Media (Harper Collins, 2019); Anustup Basu, Hindutva as Political Monotheism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2020); Cultural Entrenchment of Hindutva: Local Mediations and Forms of Convergence, eds. Daniela Berti et al. (Routledge, 2011); and Maya Mirchandani, “Digital Hatred, Real Violence: Majoritarian Radicalisation and Social Media in India” (Observer Research Foundation Occasional Paper 167, August 2018), among others. 14. The most recent version, consulted on February 8, 2021, runs 116 pages. 15. For a listing of works dealing with the 1984 Sikh pogroms, see Gauri Gill, “1984 Bibliography,” http://www.gaurigill.com/works.html. 16. Gill “Jis Tann Laage.” 17. Gill “Jis Tann Laage.” 18. Even though Gill denies that her work is politically motivated, she notes about another one of her photographic projects, the collaborative series in 2015 entitled Fields of Sight, that she attempted to convey the “terror” of the Worli, the Advisi, indigenous inhabitants of Ganjad village, by adopting a “monochromatic palette to make the encounter more intense and precise.” Further, she draws attention to the “histories, politics and world views embedded within the expression of…forms” and notes that her “own language” of camera and negative “reflect[s] what is apparent in

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20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

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[her] mind.” Quoted in Michael Collins, “Another Way of Seeing: Gauri Gill and Rajesh Vangad,” Granta, March 7, 2015. It is worth noting that the text of 1984 and the “1984 Bibliography” are available for free download, printing, and distribution at Gill’s website, http://gaurigill.com/works.html. Veena Das, Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 1. Das, 7. Das, 7–8. Das, 15. Hirsch first used the term in an article on Art Spiegelman’s Maus in 1992– 1993, entitled “Family Pictures: Maus, Memory, and Post-memory.” Since then, she has theorized and written about the experience of postmemory extensively, most recently in The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaus t (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). The concept of prosthetic memory, articulated by Alison Landsberg, has relevance here as well. Landsberg writes: “[M]odernity makes possible and necessary a new form of public cultural memory. This new form of memory, which I call prosthetic memory, emerges at the interface between a person and a historical narrative about the past, at an experiential site such as a movie theater or museum. In this moment of contact, an experience occurs through which the person sutures himself or herself into a larger history…. In the process that I am describing, the person does not simply apprehend a historical narrative but takes on a more personal, deeply felt memory of a past event through which he or she did not live. The resulting prosthetic memory has the ability to shape that person’s subjectivity and politics.” Prosthetic Memory (Columbia UP, 2010), 2. Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory, 5–6. Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory, 6. Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory, 215–216. Ariella Azoulay, The Civil Contract of Photography (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008), 20, 16–17. Marianne Hirsch, “The Generation of Postmemory,” reprinted in Liliane Weissberg and Karen Beckman (eds.), On Writing with Photography (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2013). Hirsch continues, “More than oral or written narratives, photographic images…range from the indexical to the symbolic…to diminish distance, bridge separation, and facilitate identification and affiliation. When we look at photographic images…we look not only for information or confirmation, but for an intimate material and affective connection. We look to be shocked (Benjamin), touched, wounded, and pricked (Barthes’s punctum) and torn apart (Didi-Huberman)….Small, two-dimensional,

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32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

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delimited by their frame, photographs minimize the disaster they depict and screen their viewers from it. But in seeming to open a window to the past, and materializing the viewer’s relationship to it, they also give a glimpse of its enormity and its powers. They can tell us about our own needs and desires (as readers and spectators) as they can about the past world they presumably depict,” 215–216. As with Jaspreet Singh’s novel Helium, Gill has over the years reconstructed her original photographs into a multi-generic “archive” of the horrors of 1984. What I have written elsewhere about Singh’s novel is applicable to Gill’s work as well: “Helium…articulates the lingering trauma of the Sikhs and challenges the image of a unified, multiculturalist, secular-humanist postcolonial Indian state….Helium is a hybrid of fiction, survivor and relief worker testimonials, photographs, drawings, documentary, thriller, and intertextual narrative—because the horror of 1984 cannot be recounted through a single medium or genre or voice.” Mann, “Our periodic table of hate,” 26. Deeksha Nath, “Violence and Resistance,” Frontline, March 19, 2014. “The 1984 Anti-Sikh Pogroms Remembered,” http://www.wienerlibrary. co.uk/Whats-On?item=154. Das, Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary, 6. Das, Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary, xiii–xiv. Gill, 1984. Whereas the comment here is taken from an earlier version of 1984, the most recent text is updated as follows: “For us, it was too much to fully absorb. I did not know what to do with the weight of her words.” Gill, 1984, re-released November 2019. Similarly, the detail that for a while, Nirpreet Kaur ran an NGO, Justice for Victims, is omitted from the latest version, probably because the NGO is now defunct and the hoped-for book by Kaur has not materialized. Gill, 1984. Gill, 1984. Das, Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary, 15. Azoulay, The Civil Contract of Photography, 17. Das, Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary, 12, 141, 142. As quoted in Gill, 1984. Azoulay, The Civil Contract of Photography, 17. Rita Verma, “Making Meaning of 1984 in Cyperspace,” 44. It is important to note here that even though such “terrorist” organizations as the International Sikh Youth Federation, the Babbar Khalsa, and the Council of Khalistan emerged in diaspora, only a minority of the diasporic new media sites are dedicated to the Khalistan separatist movement. For details about Sikh nationalism, identity, Khalistan, and the

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48.

49. 50.

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post-militancy era, see, for example, Harnik Deol, Religion and Nationalism in India: The Case of the Punjab, London: Routledge, 2000, and Gurharpal Singh, Ethnic Conflict in India: A Case-Study of Punjab (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000). Here is a brief selection of such sites: Ensaaf at https://ensaaf.org/ and https://data.ensaaf.org/; Witness84 at http://witness84.com/site/; and Sikhs for Justice at http://www.sikhsforjustice.org/, among others. Especially in post-9/11 and recently Trump-era USA, turbaned, observant Sikhs have borne the brunt of anti-Muslim sentiment at the hands of the uninformed, “ignorant” bigots, racists, racialists, ethno-nationalists, supremecists, lumpens, who equate a turban, any turban, and brown skin with Islam, whereas Eastern European or Turkish Muslims, for example, pass as “white” and therefore go unharmed. Not that any member of a collectivity should be harmed because of the violence of a few, of course, but tragically such race and religion-based discrimination and violence— whether in the workplace or at home, on the streets or in schools, at airport security checkpoints or in policy decisions—has only accelerated since the 2016 presidential election. A September 2018 Guardian report says that the Trump presidency is to blame for a 17% spike specifically in anti-Sikh violence, with at least one-fifth of the perpetrators mentioning Trump, or a Trump policy, or a Trump campaign slogan. Lawyer, civil rights activist, and faith leader Valarie Kaur concurs, pointing out that “[t]he current surge is the most dangerous we have seen, because it is fueled by an administration that has mainstreamed profiling and bigotry in words and actions….We [Sikh-Americans] are five times more likely today to be targets of hate than before 9/11.” As quoted in Andrew Gumbel, “The violence is always there.” Ensaaf, “Mission,” https://ensaaf.org/mission. The Tilak Vihar Sikh survivors, in what is infamously dubbed the “Widow Colony,” have had a very modest, privately maintained Shaheedi (Martyrs’) Memorial for some years, in which they have housed photographs and lists of the dead and disappeared. Gauri Gill photographed some of the Colony residents and the Memorial in 2014 and included these images in her text 1984. The work of Ann Rigney, a memory studies scholar, who has written widely about monuments and cultural memory, about the material(ized) presence of the past in the physical environment is of relevance here. Jaspreet Singh, “Carbon.” Here is the full quote from Kofman: “Shoah! this word full of tenderness,/Now terrible,/Compels us to silence/Scha, still,/one says in Yiddish,/Shh! shh! one says in French./Shoah makes all voices stop speaking,/Open mouth screaming in anguish…this mute cry that no word/Could soothe,/that bears

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54. 55. 56.

57. 58. 59.

60.

61. 62.

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witness, while suffocating,/To the unnamable, to the ignoble immensity/Of this even without precedent…/This happened…/It must be said….Dis-grace that the Nazis [or Hindu nationalists]/Believing themselves gods/In their insane will to power/Thought they had the power to grant:/Extermination…elimination without trace/Of these dregs, these lice…We will not pardon [faire grace] …for this crime,/Render it null, make it un-happened,/Nullify it in forgiveness and forgetting….So that those who died…May not be the last …/that their memory may not be murdered/Let us not forget this Event!” Sarah Kofman, Selected Writings, Translated by Georgia Albert (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 245–246. Veena Das and Arthur Kleinman, “Introduction,” Veena Das et al. (eds.), Remaking a World: Violence, Social Suffering, and Recovery (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2001), quoted in Das, Life and Words, 217. Azoulay, The Civil Contract of Photography, 16–17. Ramachandra Guha, “The Fourth Crisis of the Republic,” Hindustan Times, January 26, 2020. In brief, the CAA, passed by the Indian Parliament in December 2019 and marking the first time that religion has been used as a criterion for citizenship under the Indian nationality law, provides a path to legal citizenship for illegal Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, and Christian migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan, but Muslims are expressly excluded from eligibility. Guha, “The Fourth Crisis of the Republic.” Emphasis added. Guha, “The Fourth Crisis of the Republic.” The NRC, which ostensibly seeks to deport illegal migrants, demands complex legal documents as valid proofs of citizenship. Poor Muslims who have no access to such documents can be rendered stateless under these stringent requirements, whereas other religious groups in similar circumstances can then apply for expedited citizenship under the CAA. Ramachandra Guha, “Why the CAA Is Illogical.” For international coverage of the pitfalls of the CAA, see The Economist, “Intolerant India: Narendra Modi Stokes Division in the World’s Biggest Democracy,” January 23, 2020, https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/01/23/ narendra-modi-stokes-divisions-in-the-worlds-biggest-democracy. Gill, 1984. It is important to note that Nanak was born a Hindu, and that even though Sikhism, the new religion he preached, is quite distinct from both Hinduism and Islam, it incorporates beliefs and vocabulary from both these antecedent faiths. In fact, Sikh scriptures, in their respect for all world religions and faith traditions, sometimes even label the Universal Creator “Allah,” as in the verse quoted above, and include the teachings of two Sufi Muslim poets and thirteen Hindu sant (saint) poets.

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63. For background and details of the current farmer protests, see the following India-based publications: The Caravan, Wire, Scroll and The Indian Express. Since print media and the internet is controlled and/or censored by the Central government, liberal social media sites and Instagram hashtags like Kisan Ekta Morcha and Farmbill Protests are invaluable sources of information. 64. “India’s diminishing democracy: Narendra Modi threatens to turn India into a one-party state,” The Economist, November 28, 2020. 65. Iris Kim. “Opinion,” Business Insider, January 2, 2021, 2. 66. Gill herself likens the events of late 2020 to Punjab 1984 as well as Orwell’s 1984 in the latest update to the Notebooks: “Among the tragic events of recent days in India, 1984 has been invoked repeatedly in various contexts—state complicity against minorities; using violence to mobilise majoritarian populations electorally; breakdown of institutions including the police and administration; false equivalences that convert one-sided pogroms into two-sided riots; justice denied…. A world…in which the narrative is entirely subsumed and controlled by the all-powerful State and its willing henchmen, or by a dominant majority, would indeed form 1984 in the Orwellian sense” (“Jis tann lage”). 67. Here I am borrowing from and altering the references in Edward Said’s 2002 essay entitled “Punishment by Detail,” Al-Ahram Weekly, August 8–14, 2002.

Works Cited https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/6/indian-farmers-plan-nationwide3-hour-blockade-of-highways. Azoulay, Ariella. The Civil Contract of Photography. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008. Collins, Michael. “Another Way of Seeing: Gauri Gill and Rajesh Vangad.” Granta, March 7, 2015. https://granta.com/another-way-of-seeing/. Das, Veena. Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2021/02/05/why-areindian-farmers-protesting. https://www.economist.com/briefing/2020/11/28/narendra-modi-threatensto-turn-india-into-a-one-party-state. Ensaaf. “Mission.” https://ensaaf.org/mission. Ghosh, Amitav. “The Ghosts of Mrs. Gandhi.” Incendiary Circumstances: A Chronicle of the Turmoil of Our Times. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2005, 187–203.

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Gill, Gauri. 1984. http://www.gaurigill.com/works.html. Gill, Gauri. “1984 Bibliography.” http://www.gaurigill.com/works.html. Gill, Gauri. “Jis Tann Lage Soee Jane–Delhi November 1984, 30 Years Later.” Kafila, November 1, 2014. https://kafila.online/2014/11/01/jis-tann-lagesoee-jane-delhi-november-1984-30-years-after-gauri-gill/. Guha, Ramachandra. “The Fourth Crisis of the Republic.” Hindustan Times, January 26, 2020. https://www.ndtv.com/opinion/modi-governments-par anoia-on-full-display-courtesy-rihanna-2362800. Guha, Ramachandra. “Why the CAA Is Illogical, Immoral and Ill-Timed.” Hindustan Times, January 12, 2020. https://www.hindustantimes.com/col umns/why-the-caa-is-illogical-immoral-and-ill-timed-opinion/story-AwBFkN xmdQD4vPViar6iJJ.html. Gumbel, Andrew. “‘The Violence Is Always There’: Life as a Sikh in Trump’s America.” The Guardian, September 19, 2018. https://www.theguardian. com/world/2018/sep/19/sikh-in-america-hate-crime-surge-trump-religion. Hirsh, Marianne. “Family Pictures: Maus, Memory, and Post-memory.” Discourse 15, no. 2 (1992–1993), 3–29. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41389264. Hirsch, Marianne. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. Hirsch, Marianne. “The Generation of Postmemory.” Liliane Weissberg and Karen Beckman (eds.). On Writing with Photography. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2013. Kim, Iris. “Opinion.” Business Insider, January 2, 2021. https://www.busine ssinsider.com/indian-farmer-strike-largest-protest-history-us-world-pay-attent ion-2020-12. Hundal, Sunny. “Why Indian Farmers’ Protests Have Sikhs Fearing Violent Attacks.” https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/why-indias-farmers-protestshave-sikhs-fearing-violent-attacks/. Hundal, Sunny. “Intolerant India: Narendra Modi Stokes Division in the World’s Biggest Democracy.” The Economist, January 23, 2020. https://www.eco nomist.com/leaders/2020/01/23/narendra-modi-stokes-divisions-in-theworlds-biggest-democracy. Kofman, Sarah. Selected Writings. Translated by Georgia Albert. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007. Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memory. Columbia UP, 2010. Mann, Harveen Sachdeva. “‘Our Periodic Table of Hate’: The Archive of 1984 Punjab in Jaspreet Singh’s Helium.” Sikh Formations 14, no. 1 (2018), 26– 54. https://doi.org/10.1080/17448727.2018.1408239. Nath, Deeksha. “Violence and Resistance.” Frontline, March 19, 2014. https:// frontline.thehindu.com/arts-and-culture/art/violence-and-resistance/articl e5787634.ece. Roy, Arundhati. 2016. The End of Imagination. Chicago: Haymarket Books.

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Roy, Arundhati. “New Laws Will Break the Bones of Agri Sector.” India News. https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/new-laws-willbreak-the-backbone-of-agri-sector-arundhati-roy-101612024893499.html. Said, Edward. “Punishment by Detail.” Al-Ahram Weekly, August 8–14, 2002. http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/598/op2.htm. Sharma, Pranay. “Our Selective Archive.” Outlook India, October 17, 2011. http://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/our-selective-archive/ 278545. Singh, Parvinder. “1984 Sikhs’ Kristallnacht.” 2009. http://www.ensaaf.org/ pdf/reports/kristallnacht.pdf. Singh, Jaspreet. “Carbon: An Essay on 1984.” Open Magazine, November 9, 2013. http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/arts-letters/carbon. Singh, Jaspreet. Helium: A Novel. New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. “The 1984 Anti-Sikh Pogroms Remembered.” http://www.wienerlibrary.co.uk/ Whats-On?item=154. Verma, Rita. “Making Meaning of 1984 in Cyberspace: Youth Answering Back to Reclaim Sikh Identity and Nationhood.” Sikh Formations 7, no. 1 (April 2011), 43–56. Weissberg, Liliane, and Karen Beckman. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2013, 202–230.

CHAPTER 8

The Pencil is Mightier Than the Kalashnikov: What Cartoons Can Tell Us About Our (Mis)understanding of Terrorist Acts in the Wake of the Charlie Hebdo Massacre Matthew Leggatt

“Charlie Hebdo is a punch in the face….” asserts the magazine’s homepage, “Against those who try to stop us thinking. Against those who fear imagination. Against those who don’t like us to laugh.”1 This defiant statement, expressed by a magazine which has seen its fair share of controversy and tragedy in recent times,2 epitomizes the reaction of a significant subsection of the ‘Western’ public who, after the murder of twelve people at the offices of Charlie Hebdo on 7th January 2015, took to the streets to voice their anger about the atrocity.3 Later that week over a million people marched through the streets of Paris and many more attended subsidiary marches across France and other nations in solidarity. They were joined by a host of world leaders including then UK Prime Minister

M. Leggatt (B) University of Winchester, Winchester, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 E. Caoduro et al. (eds.), Mediated Terrorism in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73511-1_8

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David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and both the Israeli and Palestinian Presidents, Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas. Suddenly, as American scholar Hillary Chute asserts, “the simple figure of the old-fashioned pen was thrust into the spotlight as a symbol of free speech” with those at rallies, meetings, and during minute-silences holding pens aloft in a show of support.4 Combine this with the more than three million mentions of #JeSuisCharlie on Twitter in just 24 hours and we get some indication as to what was really extraordinary about this particular moment: it was less the attack itself and more the response to it.5 The blowback was deafening, and in that moment it seemed as if the terrorists had become the objects of their own satirical cartoon— caricatures that even the artists at Charlie Hebdo, for all their sardonic wit, could not have conjured. The terrorists had not only brought the world closer together in defiance they had also justified the very depiction of Islamic violence and intolerance at which they supposedly railed. At least that is what the media, politicians, and cartoonists—both professional and amateur—often implied in the outpouring that followed. After the attack, the Internet was flooded with cartoons in support of those murdered cartoonists, and we saw these same messages oft-repeated in their various forms: The Pencil is Mightier than the Kalashnikov, they collectively declared. In this chapter I aim to further examine and challenge this message. I contend that we can learn much from the cartoons that emerged in the wake of the 2015 attack, but that in order to do so we must very carefully consider the role that culture and the media play as enablers of terrorism and resist calls to fight terrorist violence with yet more demands for freedom of expression. In their study of around five hundred cartoons relating to the Charlie Hebdo attack, Communication scholars Catherine Bouko, Laura Calabrese and Orphée De Clercq identify eight broad categories into which the images could be placed. These, they assert, represent “recognizable social frames” which emerge as a response to social trauma as both interpretive mechanisms and as ways of dealing with events.6 The categories were: “The pen fighting the sword”, “freedom of speech”, “the journalist presented as a hero”, “rebirth after death”, “connection to past events”, “visual description of the attack”, “judgment of the terrorists” and “mourning and expressions of sadness and solidarity”. While Bouko et al. found that many of the cartoons seemed to belong to a number of these categories most frequently they fell into

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either of the first two distinctions.7 At the time, one image in particular seemed to encapsulate the spirit of the world’s response. Penned by illustrator James Walmesley from Sheffield in the UK, although not signed by the artist, it immediately went viral. The image is comprised of four panels and a left to right reading pattern depicts a terrorist shooting a pencil in half moments before it returns to life by way of a pencil sharpener to exact a terrible revenge on the unsuspecting killer, rubbing him out via the eraser at the other end. Beneath the image a caption reads, simply, “JE SUIS CHARLIE” (“I am Charlie,” in translation. This expression became the transnational battle cry to indicate solidarity with the murdered cartoonists). The image has attracted the interest of academic scholarship. In “Political Cartoons as Epideictic: Rhetorical Analysis of Two of the Charlie Hebdo Political Cartoons”, American media scholar Mary Elizabeth Bezanson analyses Walmesley’s cartoon, suggesting that: The comic demonstrates through the power of pencils and erasers the power of freedom of speech to master violence. The opposition is demonstrated by not only the shock of the assailant but also the obliteration of the image. The use of violence is not only overcome but also removed. The two sides are shown in conflict, and violence is defeated not by an increase in the level or intensity of violence but by the removal of violence.8

Indeed, a similar message is delivered in a number of other images which show terrorists being erased by a pencil. One cartoon, by editorial cartoonist Gary Varvel, depicts a masked terrorist fleeing from a pencil— upon which the word “freedom” is inscribed—as he is gradually wiped from existence. Another, by cartoonist AF Branco for the conservative website “legalinsurrection.com”, shows a stereotypical depiction of an Arab wearing a turban bearing the words “RADICAL ISLAM” being erased by a pencil stamped with the slogan “Je Suis Charlie”. In her analysis, Bezanson astutely notes the potential “darker interpretation” of Walmesley’s image relating to the erasure of individuals and their beliefs, and yet her reading still reduces the political and symbolic ramifications of the artist’s cartoon and by extension others like it that spread like wild fire after the Charlie Hebdo killings.9 While some cartoons encouraged a peaceful response to violence, for example another frequently shared image of indeterminate origin shows a pencil being pushed into the barrel of a Kalashnikov in a mirror

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of the hippy flower-power symbolism popularized as a form of antiviolence resistance in the 1960s and ’70s, there were also images that appeared retaliatory. Political cartoonist Mike Flugennock, for instance, depicted himself carrying a bazooka loaded with a pencil,10 and many other images showed a mass of pencils or pens either stabbing or raining down like bombs on figures intended to represent terrorists.11 Bezanson clearly connects these cartoons with the wider values of “Western” society suggesting that “by celebrating freedom of speech and condemning violence, these comics celebrate and censure values, thereby reinforcing a set of cultural values that many would suggest animate democracies across the world” and the critic further asserts that their purpose seems to be to “urge receivers to renew their personal covenant with the value of freedom of speech”, something that “will become more and more essential as more and more individuals are seemingly forced to choose between safety and freedom.”12 My own problem with this, however, comes less from the “darker interpretation” hinted at by Bezanson and more from the worry that such cartoons act as a blatant form of wish fulfilment. These images, through both their content, and their nature as viral images spread by the ubiquity of social media, suggest and encourage a line of thought that terrorism can be tackled, fought, and otherwise defeated, through the power of culture and, in the case of Charlie Hebdo more specifically, image culture. What this seems to defy is the more obvious conclusion we might draw from the attack, namely that hegemonic displays of image culture are what spur terrorist attacks in the first place.

Responding to Terrorism In a speech to US Central Command, February 2017, US President Donald Trump claimed that terrorism has “gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported and in many cases the very very [sic.] dishonest press doesn’t want to report it”. The White House released a list of 78 terror attacks they believed had been under-reported by the press. Yet what we have is precisely the opposite. An academic study into news reporting of terrorist attacks in the US between 2006 and 2015 demonstrated that attacks perpetrated by Muslims achieved over 350% more coverage than those by non-Muslims.13 In the data they examined, “Muslims perpetrated 12.5% of the attacks yet received half of the news coverage.”14 A number of academic studies have been conducted

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into the role played by the media in terrorist propaganda. In 2012, for example, media scholars Ashley Nellis and Joanne Savage found that watching TV news was associated with an increase in a person’s perceived risk of falling victim to terrorism.15 Further to this, scholar Kimberly Powell’s research in 2011 “revealed a pattern of media coverage of terrorism in which fear of international terrorism is dominant, particularly as Muslims/Arabs/Islam working together in organized terrorist cells against a ‘Christian America,’ while domestic terrorism is cast as a minor threat that occurs in isolated incidents by troubled individuals.”16 This is in spite of research conducted by Fondapol (Foundation pour L’Innovation Politique) estimating that in the last fifty years over 90% of the victims of Islamist terror attacks were themselves Muslim.17 What, perhaps, irked Trump most about the coverage of terrorist attacks, judging by his tweet in response to the mass shooting at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, 2016 was that not enough of it focused on him. He responded, “Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don’t want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!” Trump himself has a history of weighing in on such attacks and his response to the Charlie Hebdo shootings doesn’t make for much better reading. At the time in 2015, the then businessman used Twitter and the attack as cover for a quick swipe at a magazine that has always been critical of him: “Charlie Hebdo reminds me of the ‘satirical’ rag magazine Spy that was very dishonest and nasty and went bankrupt. Charlie was also broke!” he tweeted, followed by: “If the morons who killed all of those people at Charlie Hebdo would have just waited, the magazine would have folded — no money, no success!” From this we might surmise that while for Trump terrorism may well be one of the greatest threats to US values, when that terrorism takes its aim at an unfriendly media source, it’s OK to have a little dig at them along the way.18 But more than this, Trump’s demand for amplified news coverage of terrorist attacks is not only predicated on a narcissistic desire to be “proven right” about the dangers posed by Islamic extremism, it is also itself a dangerous policy that displays a clear misunderstanding of the relationship between terrorism and the media. Indeed, in his important book Liquid Fear, the Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman highlighted the symbiotic relationship that exists between the terrorist and the news reporter: “If the declared (immediate) purpose of the terrorists is to spread terror among the enemy population,” he wrote, “then the enemy

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army and police, with the whole-hearted cooperation of the mass media, will certainly see to it that this purpose is achieved far beyond the level which the terrorists themselves would be capable of securing.”19 And this is, perhaps, the key point. The more coverage an attack receives, the greater a success it might be deemed by terrorist groups and organizations. Indeed, while Trump may have gotten his facts on news-reporting backward, and be encouraging a strategy which actually increases the “success” of terror attacks, he is at least right to have some distrust of the media coverage. Rather than blame the media exclusively, however, we would be wise to heed the accusation made by the British journalist Will Self less than a month before the Hebdo attack in a response to the Islamic State beheading videos that were circulating online at the time: “we are passive consumers of the pornography of violence” he asserted in disgust.20 There is, therefore, a tension between our passionate rebuke of terrorist atrocities and our greedy consumption of news items and terror spectacles. “We live in a disembodied realm where, unable to move let alone act, we instead exercise our inalienable right to feel outraged”, he concluded.21 The problem with the response to the Charlie Hebdo killings was not exactly this, however—as suggested by the subsequent marches many people were moved, at least enough people poured onto the street to suggest as much—the problem was with the very nature of this action and what it hoped to achieve. The “dynamic” response to the Hebdo killings warrants some scrutiny. It is worth noting that the majority who had some interaction did little more than share online images, posts, words, or links on social media. Indeed, this effect was exaggerated after the November attacks of the same year which prompted swathes of Facebook users to change their profile image, using a newly introduced function that superimposed the tricolor over their picture as a show of support—an act that would later be copied for other attacks in France and elsewhere. Equally, many millions tuned into the coverage of the attack which was, in itself, distinctive. Unlike most attacks across Europe which have tended to end on the day in which they began—terrorists either committing suicide or being captured or killed in the act—Paris remained on high alert for a full two days while the Kouachi brothers led the police a merry goose chase. The world was gripped: this was much like the police chases popularized by American cable news channels with the advent of 24-hour news coverage. To this extent, if we consider coverage as impact, the killing of these 12

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individuals was one of the most impactful terrorist coups since 9/11: the media and the public made this the case. Returning to Walmesley’s and by extension many other cartoonists’ responses, then, my second issue is that the cartoons mimic the reaction of France, and much of the West, to the attack; that is to say they articulate the instinct for a rallying cry against terrorism. This is a rallying cry which was voiced in the overwhelming pro-democracy/anti-terror demonstration in Paris and echoed by the selling out of five million copies of Charlie Hebdo within hours, just days after the attack, when the normal run for the magazine is only around sixty thousand. The reaction is this: “we will not allow your terror to change the way we live our lives.” Whilst such solidarity may seem both natural and also healthy, few stopped to consider the messages sent out by such an outpouring in their rush to show support. On Charlie Hebdo’s website, they follow the statement about their identity with which I opened this piece with a cartoon explaining “cartoon satire for dummies (especially the dummies in the press).” At the top of the cartoon they depict eight different negative reactions to a Charlie Hebdo cartoon of a migrant child shown facedown (presumably dead) in front of a McDonald’s signpost on which Ronald McDonald gleefully announces “Special offer: 2 kiddie meals for the price of one.”22 The caption for the image reads “so close but so far.” In the text/cartoons below this the writer(s) attempt to undermine each of the negative reactions shown as potential responses to the cartoon of the dead migrant child. The problem I have with this cartoon is not how the writer(s) dismiss(es) criticism of the image—in fact, I happen to agree with the majority of what the explanation has to say—rather the problem is that the supposedly “controversial” cartoon at the center of this is nothing like as controversial or problematic as those which helped bring the magazine notoriety. While it is certainly provocative and could also be labeled insensitive, it is not offensive in the same way that many of Hebdo’s more controversial images have been. This is because the child itself is not the object of the satire but rather the victim of government indifference to the plight of migrants. Thus, it is hardly a fitting example through which to defend their own mode of “satire.”

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History of Terrorist Attacks on Charlie Hebdo A brief and recent history of the magazine might help to inform the debate a little. While the attack of January 2015 was certainly the most deadly and most spectacular that the magazine had experienced, it was not the first. The story starts in 2007 when the magazine reprinted a set of controversial cartoons originally published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten one of which depicted a line of Islamic terrorists, bombs strapped to their chests, queuing for entry to heaven. Muhammad bars their way shouting “Stop, STOP! We ran out of VIRGINS!” The Danish images sparked fury and large-scale protests in the Middle East and Charlie Hebdo themselves were sued by a number of Muslim groups for “insulting” Islam shortly after, prompting French President François Hollande to testify on behalf of the magazine citing the importance of free speech. Later, in 2011, Charlie Hebdo’s offices were destroyed by a petrol bombing after the magazine featured a cartoon of Muhammad on its front page and the words: “100 coups de fouet, si vous n’etes pas morts de rire!” (100 lashes if you haven’t already died of laughter!). In a similarly provocative gesture, in September of 2012 the magazine published images of Muhammad naked sparking yet more controversy and once again the magazine was sued for “inciting racial hatred”. The magazine couldn’t resist yet more provocation the year after the massacre when, in August of 2016, its front cover featured an image of two nude Muslims (a man and a woman) running along a beach, wide grins and arms aloft, with the caption “réforme de’Islam: musulmans dé-coin-cez-vous!” (“the reform of Islam: Muslims loosen up”) in response to the Mayor of Cannes’ decision to ban so-called “burkinis” on the city’s beaches. In short, Charlie Hebdo courted controversy and sought not just to provoke but to offend, repeatedly using lewd or profane imagery to illicit violent responses from Muslims. Nothing is more damning of the response to the Charlie Hebdo attack, however, than the hypocrisy of the French authorities when dealing with those who have been seen to condone them. In the immediate aftermath France became engaged in its own crack-down on freedom of expression with the arrest of dozens of people for comments made on social media sites. The bi-product of the attacks might have been a restriction of free speech, but it would seem that it was the French authorities, as much as anyone else, who were determined to realize this. One is tempted again to reach for Bauman, who wrote that:

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if the terrorists’ long-term intention is to destroy human freedoms in liberal democracies and to ‘close back’ open societies, they may count again on the immense capacities commanded by the governments of the ‘enemy countries.’ A few packets of explosives and a few desperados eager to sacrifice their lives ‘for the cause’ can therefore go a long way—much, much further than the terrorists themselves could dream of achieving with the resources they themselves can muster, command and administer.23

The problem becomes how to respond to terrorism if our response is what the terrorists actually desire. One cannot simply ignore them since they are, of course, a deadly force. But we must be sensitive to the kind of war we are currently engaged in: namely, a cultural war in which the images that we produce and reproduce have the capacity to stir up sentiment on both sides. To be clear, I would in no way ever support violence against anyone and would certainly never forgive terrorism, but it is important to know exactly who those millions of people were claiming allegiance with when posting their #JeSuisCharlie. For Self, such a reaction was typical of a society that, “makes a fetish of ‘the right to free speech’ without ever questioning what sort of responsibilities are implied by this right.”24 By endorsing Charlie Hebdo in one clear voice, the public was not simply supporting freedom of expression, they were taking sides, however unwittingly, in the culture war itself. For Hillary Chute, American literary scholar and author of Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form, “Images deliver us something words do not, however uncomfortable; that is part of their allure and danger.”25 Graphic novelist Art Spiegelman, famous for his depiction of the Holocaust in his work Maus and his response to 9/11 In the Shadow of No Towers, claims that “cartoons are so much more immediate than prose.”26 Indeed, where words can often be retracted, denied as having been taken out of context, or simply brushed aside, images seem indelible. For Spiegelman, speaking in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack, “[Cartoons] have a visceral power that doesn’t require you to slow down, but it does require you to slow down if you want to understand them.”27 Spiegelman was, in this instance, defending the Hebdo magazine and its art but what I find particularly interesting about the outpouring of cartoons that appeared in response to the massacre is that, despite the highly charged emotional backdrop, very few, if any, of the cartoons produced by other outlets and individuals were anywhere near as provocative or insulting as those printed by Hebdo. Even in a moment

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of fury, with artists coming out in support of their murdered fellow cartoonists, certain lines of decorum were in evidence. These cartoons, en-masse, were almost all anti-violence, rather than anti-Muslim as the Hebdo cartoons often appear. Pushing this observation further, in the vast majority of cases the identity of the terrorist is left oblique, not expressly connected with Islam, in the reactionary cartoons.

What Cartoons Can Tell Us In their study of the Hebdo response cartoons Bouko et al. highlight the polarizing nature of cartoon imagery and argue that engagement with these images asked the viewer a very direct question: whose side are you on? “Normal, effortless actions, such as liking and sharing content, became meaningful, as sharing a cartoon or posting the slogan ‘Je suis Charlie’ became a way of taking sides” they write.28 To this extent, the images followed a pattern established in the wake of the September 11 attacks of 2001 in which cartoons became a vehicle for expressing sentiment about a new form of conflict that the George W. Bush administration had labelled a battle between good and evil. Cultural Studies scholars Simon Cooper and Paul Atkinson in their piece “Graphic Implosion: Politics, Time, and Value in Post-9/11 Comics” highlight the use value of analyzing comics in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks that brought international terrorism to the forefront of the public’s imagination at the turn of the twenty-first century. The simple narrative structures comics tend to present through their rendering of the binary of good and evil, they argue, makes the medium particularly appropriate in a political environment in which governments and the media are also trying to binarize the issues.29 One reason to study the comic universe, therefore, is “the uncanny resemblance between the starkly rendered political landscape of the ‘war on terror’ and the moral universe of the mainstream comic book.” Continuing, they assert that, “The Bush administration’s depiction of a Manichean post-9/11 world of heroes and villains has sounded at times like a classic comic book scenario.”30 Clearly many of the images produced by artists after the Charlie Hebdo attack work on a subtly different level and, as already highlighted, the most common thread was some variation on the wording or theme of “the pen is mightier than the sword”. There are far too many examples to list them but a brief reference to two might showcase the wide variance such a response took: one image, by illustrator MacLeod and discussed

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at some length in Bouko, Calabrese, and De Clercq’s analysis, shows a simple image of a terrorist with a gun, the label “powerful” written at the top, contrasted with an illustrator drawing a figure saying “Je suis Charlie” above which is written “more powerful.” Another image by editorial cartoonist Shreyas Navare depicts the Eiffel Tower as a pair of scales; on the left is a huge pile of weaponry which appears to weigh very little with the scales tipped in favor of the right cradle in which sits only a small mug of pens and pencils adorned by a smiley face. On at least some level, these images do force one to take sides, but more than this they also perpetuate the myths explored in the response more broadly about the power of free speech and our ability to defy terrorism through the spread of images. But we can learn more from the Charlie Hebdo response cartoons than simply that the general populace and the media tend to misunderstand the purpose of terror attacks. While the majority of these images might offer similar sentiments, a number of stand-out responses do more to highlight the complexities of the situation. One of the most astute cartoons I came across was penned by Indian cartoonist, Satish Acharya, from Kundapura. Unlike many of the other cartoons it is dark and not particularly hopeful. The terrorists are shown against the backdrop of their own carnage. They are ridiculed for their overreaction but, to be clear, there are no winners here. In some ways the image seems to be another variation on “the pen is mightier than the sword” analogy only in this instance the phrase has been emptied of its significance. Where Acharya’s cartoon succeeds is in its capture of the absurdity of the situation: the terrorists’ confusion at their own blunder offers comic relief, but the dark and somber mood of the image’s backdrop does not mistake tragedy for triumph (Fig. 8.1). There is also an attempt in Acharya’s cartoon to undermine the masculinity of the terrorist figure. One of the men depicted is clearly very muscular and both are armed, rounds slung over their shoulders like archetypal action stars. Yet this persona is unraveled by the threat posed by such a small object as the pen held in the terrorist’s hand. And so, Acharya’s critique is more subtle than most since it is also aimed at an image culture that inflates the egos of young men. Few cartoons are as well-judged. A cruder version of this critique is found in an image drawn by The Guardian political cartoonist Steven Bell which shows four casually dressed figures, we assume to be Hebdo cartoonists, tied to pencils and laughing as a balaclava clad terrorist points a Kalashnikov at them. In response the barrel of the gun sags in order to emphasize the impotence

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Fig. 8.1 “What’s this little weapon which hurt us so much?” Reproduced with the permission of the artist Satish Acharya

of the terrorist. Here the erect figure of the pencil is clearly meant to contrast the flaccid assault weapon. Indeed, in another response by Bell this same theme of ridicule is carried through. The image mimics CCTV footage of the terrorists, guns at the ready, and their vehicle during the attack on the Hebdo offices. In Bell’s version, however, the terrorists wear skeleton party outfits complete with Micky Mouse ears. As the driver shouts “Allahu Akbar” one of the gunmen asks “Why are the fuckers still laughing at us?” Clearly the terrorists become the source of the artist’s ridicule but the Americanization here adds a further dimension to the image. The implication is that these are not real terrorists but rather they are themselves cartoon imitations, already drawn in the image of American commercialism. These are not radicals at all, but rather the victims of another competing ideology. During a panel discussion about the Hebdo attack Bell, himself, suggested that drawing cartoons is “almost like dealing with explosives sometimes” stressing the “ambiguity” of cartoon imagery but also highlighting that

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cartoonists do seek to use these images to provoke.31 With this comes a certain responsibility. Another well-judged cartoon from the day warrants consideration. Malcom Mayes, who draws for Canadian publication the Edmonton Journal, produced a cartoon which is not just a variation on “the pen is mightier than the sword” theme but rather a reversal of the sentiment expressed in the vast majority of other responses. In the image, which shows a mother and her son hand-in-hand as they stare at a newspaper stand, the headline “Charlie Hebdo Attack” clearly displayed, the boy asks “Isn’t the pen mightier than the sword?” to which his mother replies “They’re armed with assault rifles these days…” This, somewhat pessimistic, retort might seem self-defeating but it at least acknowledges the imbalance here: cartoonists cannot defend themselves against an armed terrorist. Such an idea only lionizes the cartoonists, figuring them as martyrs or, even worse, soldiers in a cultural war. It is clear also that this is how the Kouachi brothers viewed the artists at Charlie Hebdo. Unlike many terror attacks seen in Europe over recent years theirs was distinctly targeted. Where attacks, particularly those in France and the UK, have commonly been characterized by their indiscriminate nature—I am thinking here of those which involved driving into large crowds (Nice, Bastille Day, 2016, London Bridge, 2017, Westminster, 2017), killing civilians at concerts (Bataclan, Paris, 2015, Manchester Arena, 2017), or attacks with melee weapons in the street (London 2017, Notre Dame, 2017, Paris 2018, London 2019, Dresden 2020, Nice 2020)—the Charlie Hebdo attack was clearly aimed at individuals rather than at the general public more broadly. Indeed, this was emphasized when, while on the run after the attack on the offices, a salesman encountered the men shortly before the shootout with the police that would finally put an end to the lengthy pursuit. Rather than kill the man, he was instead told: “leave, we don’t kill civilians anyhow”. We might read from this an inconsistency in the behavior of the Kouachi brothers but, perhaps, the more likely explanation is that the terrorists did not see the cartoonists as “civilians” but rather as actors, or agents, in the broader cultural war against radical Islam. In an interview after the attack, cartoonist Mayes reinforced ideas about the power of images, particularly cartoons which he said “in general, have more power than words alone.” He continued with the explanation, “there’s something about satire and ridicule that is really much more cutting than words. I suspect this is what drives the radical

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Islamists crazy, because cartoons have the unique ability to make them look ridiculous. When a terrorist is made to look ridiculous, you really take away their power.”32 In the right hands such power can be made to serve a purpose—indeed, Mayes’ comments chime with such cartoons as those of both Steven Bell and Satish Acharya—but, it’s worth noting that this is a far cry from Charlie Hebdo themselves who, rather than ridiculing terrorists as such, seemed to provoke for the sake of it. Mayes stresses the need of the cartoonist to understand the power of their own craft and to exercise a degree of restraint: When you’re thinking about cartoons, when you hold back or censor yourself, it immediately kills the spontaneity and the originality. So, when a cartoonist writes a cartoon, they have to just let their imagination go. They record anything that comes out and filter it later, asking is the cartoon on point? Is it funny? Is the cartoon needlessly offensive?33

It is these last three questions which Charlie Hebdo often seem to forget. Many of their cartoons provoke the same criticism levelled at the Danish cartoons which started the cycle of antagonism. Writing for The New York Times about these cartoons, journalist Michael Kimmelman dismissed any idea that these images should simply be considered satire: “like all pictures calculated to be noticed by offending somebody, the caricaturist’s stock in trade and the oldest trick in the book of modern art, they would have disappeared into deserved oblivion had not their targets risen to the bait.”34 Kimmelman lays the blame on all parties here: those who take offense are clearly thin-skinned according to Kimmelman and ignoring such images will reduce their power, but equally there is a degree of scorn poured on the artists who needlessly exploit these sensitivities in order to advance their own agendas. Kimmelman’s response in 2006 seems to anticipate our current concerns with fake news, filter bubbles, echo chambers, and the impact of social media on our own tribalism in politics, especially in light of the alleged Russian interference into the 2016 Presidential Elections in the United States and the more recent actions of tech giants such as Facebook and Twitter who banned President Donald Trump from their platforms for incitement in the wake of the violence at the US Capitol building where his supporters interrupted the confirmation of his successor, Joe Biden: “As is so often the case in the culture wars, choosing sides can be exasperating. Modern artists and their promoters forever pander to a

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like-minded audience by goading obvious targets, hoping to incite reactions that pass for political point-scoring.”35 What we would do well to remember here is that, from a “Western” perspective it is easy to see riots on the streets, the burning of effigies, and other violent responses to these images as massive over-reactions. After all, it is “only a cartoon” and we are not the ones who are being slighted. But, while violence should never be a legitimate outlet, we are currently waging a cultural war on an “enemy” that cannot possibly fight back on the same terms. The image is made more powerful today because it is we who maintain rigid control over it, who have militarized it as a form of cultural domination.

Conclusions: The Pencil is not Mightier Than the Kalashnikov After-All Hillary Chute highlights that the “power […] of hand drawn images [remains] undiminished even in our current age of the camera and digital media.”36 With that in mind, in this piece I have tried not only to capture a flavor of the cartoons artists drew as a response to the Charlie Hebdo attack but also, more importantly, to attempt to draw some conclusions from these images about the way in which the general public and mass media make sense of such attacks. In the concluding remarks of their wide-ranging review, Buoko et al. assert that “The Charlie Hebdo attack triggered one seminal image in cartoonists’ imagination, that of life and freedom defeating death and obscurantism.”37 But, I argue, as a collective response, this represents a culture blind to its provocation of such attacks, in turn unwittingly creating an environment that encourages further disillusionment and fosters the radicalization of disenfranchised parties the world over. For the most part, the Hebdo response cartoons, while offering images of resistance, were in fact mainstream in the ideological positions they adopted. Some notable examples explored here, however, do challenge the general consensus of the attack as a moment of Western triumph over fear, in doing so providing a potential template for a more effective response. The cartoons by Satish Acharya and Malcolm Mayes speak of a world in which no-one wins in the culture war. They acknowledge the power of the violence wielded by the terrorists, which in turn is amplified by our own media response. These responses, while certainly more pessimistic, advocate real change because rather than suggesting defiance—the desire to carry on doing what we do in the face of threat because to do otherwise

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is, as the political mantra suggests, to “let the terrorists win”—they show a disillusionment with the status quo by highlighting its absurdity. In fact, I would argue that we should think of this cheap and throwaway statement in reverse: to continue to live as we currently do will simply continue to encourage more acts of terrorism. When something clearly isn’t working, then why shouldn’t we look to change it? With the media attention heaped on terrorism in the West today, we could be forgiven for thinking that we all lived in Nigeria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, or Pakistan, countries which have real problems with terrorism. When our politicians, our media, and our citizens also stand up in defiance to announce that terrorism will not change the way we do things it is the people in those countries who are often worst affected, countries in which hundreds, even thousands, of people a year die in terrorist atrocities. Changing in response to terrorism isn’t letting terrorism win, it’s taking responsibility, a responsibility that Self argues we do not want because “it’s too uncomfortable; it forces us to think —it may even force us to act.”38 If we allow our politicians and our media to continually misread terrorism and dismiss attacks as simply the product of “evil”, or as directed at fundamental principles of freedom, we will remain blind and the attacks will not only continue to occur but will become more frequent—as, indeed, they have in recent years.39 In their introduction to Deliver Us From Evil, editors David Eckel and Bradley Herling write that, “in a world full of ambiguities, the forthrightness of calling something or someone ‘evil’ can be intensely gratifying because of the sense of moral clarity that often accompanies it.”40 It reduces all to the level of the staple comic narrative in which good dispels evil. But moral clarity and certainty provide the path that leads to extremism and so the circular logic is complete on both sides. The terrorists have justified their own depiction, and we have responded by sticking rigidly to our own ideas about what fuels terror and how it can be defeated. No winner can possibly emerge here. Until we dismantle the barriers which we ourselves have raised in order to shield us from our responsibility to understand terrorism, people will be murdered all around the world. Cartoons may be powerful cultural tools and agents, but despite what they might claim, they cannot protect us from a villain with an assault rifle and a murderous intent.

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Notes 1. “Who Is Charlie Hebdo” Available at: https://charliehebdo.fr/en/ (Accessed 9th July 2018). 2. Charlie Hebdo was also the target of a stabbing incident in September of 2020 outside its former headquarters with two people seriously injured in a religiously motivated attack. The assailant did not realise that the magazine, whose office location is now kept secret, had moved and falsely believed the two victims to be employees. 3. In December of 2020 fourteen people were found to be complicit in the 2015 attacks by a court in Paris. 4. Hillary L. Chute, Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form (Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 2016), 257. 5. For a fuller discussion about the impact of social media on the Charlie Hebdo attack and terrorism more broadly see Matthew Leggatt, Cultural and Political Nostalgia in the Age of Terror (New York: Routledge, 2018). 6. Catherine Bouko, Laura Calabrese, Orphée De Clercq, “Cartoons as Interdiscourse: A Quali-quantitative Analysis of Social Representations Based on Collective Imagination in Cartoons Produced After the Charlie Hebdo Attack,” Discourse, Context and Media, vol. 15 (2017), 24–33, 25. 7. Buoko, Calabrese, De Clercq, “Cartoons as interdiscourse,” 26. 8. Mary Elizabeth Bezanson, “Political Cartoons as Epideictic: Rhetorical Analysis of Two of the Charlie Hebdo Political Cartoons,” First Amendment Studies, vol. 51, no. 1 (2017), 1–13, 7. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 21689725.2017.1301264. 9. Bezanson, “Political Cartoons as Epideictic,” 7. 10. Mike Flugenock, (2015). “Je Suis Charlie!” Available at: https://sinkers. org/stage/?tag=terrorism (Accessed 29th July 2018). 11. See images by Mark Knight, Kaveh Adel, Lalo Alcaraz, and Jim Morin. 12. Bezanson, “Political Cartoons as Epideictic,” 11. 13. Erin Kearns, Allison Betus, and Anthony Lemieux, “Why Do Some Terrorist Attacks Receive More Media Attention Than Others?” Justice Quarterly (April 2018). Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pap ers.cfm?abstract_id=2928138 (Accessed 6th August, 2018). 14. Betus Kearns and Lemieux, “Why Do Some Terrorist Attacks Receive More Media Attention Than Others?” 27. 15. Ashley Nellis and Joanne Savage. “Does Watching the News Affect Fear of Terrorism? The Importance of Media Exposure on Terrorism Fear” Crime & Delinquency, vol. 58, no. 5 (2012), 748–768. 16. Kimberly Powell. “Framing Islam: An Analysis of U.S. Media Coverage of Terrorism Since 9/11,” Communication Studies, vol. 62, no. 1 (2011), 90–112, 91.

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17. Fondapol, “Islamist Terrorist Attacks in the World 1979–2019.” Available at: ISLAMIST TERRORIST ATTACKS IN THE WORLD 1979–2019. Data.fondapol.org (Accessed 11th January, 2021). 18. It is worth noting Trump’s own assault on the free press in the US which was driven by an anti-media campaign countering any criticism of the President or his policies with the accusation of ‘Fake News’. Things were so bad that some 300 media outlets took part in a coordinated action against Trump’s war on the media by publishing stories about the importance of a free press in August of 2018. 19. Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Fear (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006), 108. 20. Will Self. “We are Passive Consumers of the Pornography of Violence,” The Guardian, 23 December 2014. Available at: https://www.thegua rdian.com/news/2014/dec/23/-sp-passive-consumers-pornography-vio lence (Accessed 7th August 2018). 21. Will Self. “We are Passive Consumers of the Pornography of Violence,” The Guardian, 23 December 2014. Available at: https://www.thegua rdian.com/news/2014/dec/23/-sp-passive-consumers-pornography-vio lence (Accessed 7th August 2018). 22. The image appears to recall the photograph of Alan Kurdi, a three-yearold Syrian child whose death made headlines around the world after the circulation of a highly provocative image of the drowned boy lying facedown on a Turkish beach in 2015 which prompted increased debate about the ongoing European migration crisis. 23. Bauman, Liquid Fear, 108. 24. Will Self. “The Charlie Hebdo Attack and the Awkward Truths About Our Fetish for ‘Free Speech,’” Vice, 9 January 2015. Available at: https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/kwpvax/will-self-charliehebdo-attack-the-west-satire-france-terror-105 (Accessed 31st July 2018). 25. Chute, Disaster Drawn, 260. 26. Kirsten Salyer, “Art Spiegelman: Je Suis Charlie—But I’m Not Pamela Geller,” TIME, May 2015. Available at: https://time.com/3849465/artspiegelman-je-suis-charlie-but-im-not-pamela-geller/ (Accessed 13 August 2018). 27. Kirsten Salyer, “Art Spiegelman: Je Suis Charlie—But I’m Not Pamela Geller,” TIME, 7 May 2015. Available at: https://time.com/384 9465/art-spiegelman-je-suis-charlie-but-im-not-pamela-geller/ (Accessed 13 August 2018). 28. Catherine Bouko, Laura Calabrese and Orphée De Clercq, “Cartoons as interdiscourse,” 24. 29. Simon Cooper and Paul Atkinson, “Graphic Implosion: Politics, Time, and Value in Post-9/11 Comics,” in Ann Keniston and Jeanne Follansbee Quinn (eds.), Literature After 9/11 (New York: Routledge, 2008), 60–81. 30. Cooper and Atkinson, 60.

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31. Guardian Live, (2015), “Steve Bell: Cartoons are Like Playing with Explosives” Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag5NDM KyDd8 (Accessed 16th August, 2018). 32. “Edmonton Journal Editorial Cartoonist Malcolm Mayes Reacts to Paris Terrorist Attack.” Edmonton Journal (January, 2015). Available at: https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/edmonton-journal-edi torial-cartoonist-malcolm-mayes-reacts-to-paris-terrorist-attack (Accessed 16th August 2018). 33. Edmonton Journal. 34. Michael Kimmelman, “A Startling New Lesson in the Power of Imagery,” The New York Times, 8 February 2006. Available at: https://www.nyt imes.com/2006/02/08/arts/design/08imag.html (Accessed August 16, 2018). 35. Kimmelman, “A Startling New Lesson.” 36. Chute, Disaster Drawn, 256–257. 37. Buoko, Calabrese, De Clercq, “Cartoons as interdiscourse,” 32. 38. Will Self, “We are Passive Consumers.” 39. For arguments about the connection of this word with terrorists see Richard Bernstein’s The Abuse of Evil: The Corruption of Politics and Religion since 9/11 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007). 40. David Eckel and Bradley L. Herling, “Introduction,” in Deliver Us From Evil (New York: Bloomsbury, 2011), 2.

Works Cited Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Fear. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006. Bernstein, Richard. The Abuse of Evil: The Corruption of Politics and Religion since 9/11. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007. Bezanson, Mary Elizabeth. “Political Cartoons as Epideictic: Rhetorical Analysis of Two of the Charlie Hebdo Political Cartoons.” First Amendment Studies, vol. 51, no. 1 (2017), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/21689725.2017.130 1264. Bouko, Catherine, Laura Calabrese, and Orphée De Clercq. “Cartoons as Interdiscourse: A Quali-quantitative Analysis of Social Representations Based on Collective Imagination in Cartoons Produced After the Charlie Hebdo Attack.” Discourse, Context and Media, vol. 15 (2017), 24–33. Chute, Hillary L. Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form. Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 2016. Cooper, Simon, and Paul Atkinson. “Graphic Implosion: Politics, Time, and Value in Post-9/11 Comics.” In Ann Keniston and Jeanne Follansbee Quinn (eds.), Literature After 9/11. New York: Routledge, 2008, 60–81.

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Eckel, David, and Bradley L. Herling. “Introduction.” In David Eckel and Bradley Herling (eds.), Deliver Us From Evil. New York: Bloomsbury, 2011, 1–13. Edmonton Journal. “Edmonton Journal Editorial Cartoonist Malcolm Mayes Reacts to Paris Terrorist Attack.” https://edmontonjournal.com/news/localnews/edmonton-journal-editorial-cartoonist-malcolm-mayes-reacts-to-paristerrorist-attack. Accessed 16 August 2018. Fondapol, “Islamist Terrorist Attacks in the World 1979–2019.” Available at: ISLAMIST TERRORIST ATTACKS IN THE WORLD 1979–2019. Data. fondapol.org. Accessed 11th January, 2021. Guardian Live. “Steve Bell: Cartoons Are Like Playing with Explosives” (2015). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag5NDMKyDd8 Accessed 16 August 2018. Kearns, Erin, Allison Betus, and Anthony Lemieux. “Why Do Some Terrorist Attacks Receive More Media Attention Than Others?” Justice Quarterly, April 2018. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2928138 Accessed 6 August 2018. Kimmelman, Michael. “A Startling New Lesson in the Power of Imagery.” The New York Times, 8 February 2006. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/ 08/arts/design/08imag.html. Accessed 16 August 2018. Leggatt, Matthew. Cultural and Political Nostalgia in the Age of Terror. New York: Routledge, 2018. Nellis, Ashley, and Joanne Savage. “Does Watching the News Affect Fear of Terrorism? The Importance of Media Exposure on Terrorism Fear.” Crime & Delinquency, vol. 58, no. 5 (2012), 748–768. Powell, Kimberly. “Framing Islam: An Analysis of U.S. Media Coverage of Terrorism Since 9/11.” Communication Studies, vol. 62, no. 1 (2011), 90–112. Salyer, Kirsten. “Art Spiegelman: Je Suis Charlie—But I’m Not Pamela Geller.” TIME, May 2015. https://time.com/3849465/art-spiegelman-je-suis-cha rlie-but-im-not-pamela-geller/. Accessed 13 August 2018. Self, Will. “The Charlie Hebdo Attack and the Awkward Truths About Our Fetish for ‘Free Speech.’” Vice, 2015. https://www.vice.com/en_uk/art icle/kwpvax/will-self-charlie-hebdo-attack-the-west-satire-france-terror-105. Accessed 31 July 2018. Self, Will. “We Are Passive Consumers of the Pornography of Violence.” The Guardian, 23 December 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/ dec/23/-sp-passive-consumers-pornography-violence Accessed 7 August 2018. Spiegelman, Art. Maus. London: Penguin, 2003.

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Spiegelman, Art. In the Shadow of No Towers. New York: Viking, 2004. “Who Is Charlie Hebdo.” Available at: https://charliehebdo.fr/en/ Accessed 9 July 2018.

CHAPTER 9

Return to Entebbe: CineTerrorism as Contested Memory Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann

Immediately after, in the night of July 4th 1976, an Israeli special military commando rescued more than 100 hostages from the old terminal building at Entebbe airport in Uganda, several production companies started with preparations for movies about the daring rescue operation. A week before, a terrorist commando consisting of two members from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and two members of the German left militant group Revolutionäre Zellen (Revolutionary Cells) had hijacked a French plane and forced it to Uganda. There, they kept the hostages to free Palestinian and militant left prisoners held in Israeli, Swiss, German and Kenyan prisons. After the successful Israeli rescue mission, Entebbe turned into a synonym for combatting global terrorism of the 1970s, a mythic place where innocent victims, cruel terrorists and brave soldiers encountered

T. Ebbrecht-Hartmann (B) Department of Communication and Journalism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 E. Caoduro et al. (eds.), Mediated Terrorism in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73511-1_9

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each other. However, it also became the symbol for a recurring traumatic past and persisting Holocaust memories that blended into the actual experience of terrorist violence, after the terrorists decided to separate Jewish-Israeli hostages from the others.1 The limited space of the airport building offered an excellent opportunity to visualize the traumatic situation of the entrapped hostages, and to intersect its narrowness with the political decision making process and the rescue preparations. Three films were finally produced that depicted the events through different genres (melodrama and action) as well as from different national perspectives (US-American and Israeli): Victory at Entebbe (USA 1976, directed by Marvin Chomsky), Raid on Entebbe (USA 1976, directed by Irvin Kershner) and Operation Thunderboldt (Israel 1977, directed by Menahem Golan). These films established a specific cinematic space for imagining the Entebbe hostage crisis. In 2018, more than forty years after the actual events, Brazilian film director José Padilha adopted the terrorist attack into another film, this time proposing that it would equally interrelate the different perspectives entangled in this episode of transnational memory. However, as it is the case in most historical dramas, 7 Days in Entebbe was not a pure reconstruction of the historic events but offered a post-9/11 reading of 1970s terrorism by blending the historical situation with current conflicts in the Middle East, especially in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Padilha’s film thereby established a cinematic space that intersected different times and places, experiences and memories, which nevertheless demonstrate the entangled character of terrorism as a contested memory. In this chapter, I compare 7 Days in Entebbe to the earlier films by focusing on Holocaust memory frames and the representation of the German terrorists as well as by analyzing the interrelation of different spaces and temporalities in these films. Through these cinematic depictions, Entebbe turned into a significant case of CineTerrorism, a cinematic imagination of terrorist violence and its repercussions with the past and the present.

Once Again: Entebbe When Padhila’s 7 Days in Entebbe was released, beyond Israel and parts of the German left the historical events in Entebbe were nearly forgotten. The starting point for the newest cinematic version of the hostage crisis was a detailed reconstruction by the British military historian Saul David.

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In his book Operation Thunderboldt: Flight 139 and the raid on Entebbe airport, David presented a precise chronology of the events based on known and unknown sources that followed the multilayered structure of multiple perspectives.2 Thereby, he interrelated the perception of the hostages, with the Israeli government decision making process, with the hijackers’ personal and ideological background, and with information about the involvement of Uganda’s infamous dictator Idi Amin as well as international reactions in other countries such as France and Germany. This multilayered structure served as basis for Padhila’s attempt to review the hostage crisis for an international audience in the twenty-first century. In preparation of the movie, the director tried to even gather additional information by talking with witnesses of the events: “It was very important to me to try to get as many details right as possible […]. We talked to lots of people who were there at the time […]. The criteria was to run with direct witnesses, as opposed to people who said ‘I heard’ or ‘I believe’ it was like this. So I think that we are close to the truth.”3 Besides the intended authenticity effect, a crucial element of most historical docudramas, 7 Days in Entebbe attempted to retell the events from several points of view. Nevertheless, the film follows a chronological structure. Thereby, the plot adjusts to the unfolding of the well-known historical events that were presented to the public in several books and newspaper reports immediately after the successful Israeli rescue mission: On June 27, 1976, Air France flight 139 left Lod Airport in Israel for Paris. During a brief stopover in Athens the terrorists entered the plane and directed it to Benghazi in Libya. From there the plane headed for Uganda, where the aircraft landed on June 28 around 4:00 a.m. and the passengers were transferred to the airport’s old terminal building. There the four hijackers together with three additional Palestinian combatants who had joined them in Entebbe, guarded the hostages with the support of Ugandan soldiers. After three days in captivity the hostages were divided into two groups. Those holding Israeli passports or other Israeli documents were ordered to a separate room. The others were released. In the early morning of July 4th, Israeli elite soldiers lead by a special operations teams, the Sayeret Matkal, raided the airport, shot the hijackers, and evacuated the hostages. Only sporadic flashbacks and some rather symbolic scenes interrupt the chronological order and contribute to a more complex narrative. Most important in this context are those flashbacks that offer insight into the personal and ideological background of the two German hijackers. While

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Brigitte Kuhlmann (Rosamund Pike) is driven by a feeling of responsibility for the arrest of her mentor, Ulrike Meinhof, one of the founding members of the German Red Army Faction (RAF), Wilfried Böse (Daniel Brühl) is presented as a weak pseudo-revolutionary who is struggling with his values and ideological worldview. Besides that, a series of sequences depicting a famous Israeli dance performance establish a layer detached from the plot that serves as an equivalent of the classic chorus. The performance of the famous Passover song “Echad Mi Yodea” was first choreographed by Ohad Naharin for the Batsheva Dance Company in the 1990s. It includes dancers dressed as ultra-Orthodox Jews. Connected to the narrative through an Israeli commando’s girlfriend who is a member of the dance company, Padilha included the dance “to make a comment ‘in a cinematic and visual way’ about the need to break free of the preconceptions that stopped the Israelis from negotiating with the terrorists.”4 Hence, rather programmatically the film opens with a scene from this performance, thereby emphasizing on the one hand its symbolic importance, and on the other hand thwarting the audience expectations of an action driven opening. Instead, the cutting from the dance to the diegetic character Zeev (Ben Schnetzer) who is sitting in the audience emphasizes from the beginning the construction of a cinematic space that functions as a screen for the historical events. The ending of the film echoes this notion at it edits the raid of Entebbe airport against the “Echad Mi Yodea” performance, thereby creating an ambivalent cinematic space that on the one hand aestheticizes the violence, and on the other hand emphasizes it as a kind of vicious circle. In this montage, terrorists, Israeli military and politicians as well as the dancers (that recall a rather stereotypical image of orthodox Jewry) dominate the scenery while the hostages and actual victims are out of focus, a problematic outcome of the movie, which I will later discuss in more detail. The sequence ends with documentary footage of the homecoming hostages and commandos and explains the fate of some of the characters. The editing establishes a cinematic spatial continuum that intersects Entebbe airport as a historical and metonymic space—a place that recalls other memories of violence and persecution—with the generic “War Room” setting, in which the Israeli political leaders follow the raid, and the symbolic space constituted by the dance performance. In addition, the film also juxtaposes different temporalities. This is also already demonstrated in the opening sequence by augmenting the cinematic frame with

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captions that establish another visual layer and attempt to broaden the diegetic space and the symbolic space towards a diachronic historical continuum. The captions explain that Israel was founded in 1948 and immediately after was attacked by Palestinians who fought for returning to “their land”, a struggle in which they cooperated also with left-wing militants. The description then culminates in an indirect reference to a famous quote: “They saw themselves as freedom fighters. The Israelis called them terrorists.” In doing so, the captions not only introduce the historical background of the enfolding events, but also a specific interpretative scheme. Actually, the historical contextualization is misleading, because not “the” Palestinians but regular Arab armies attacked Israel in 1948. An organized Palestinian struggle against Israel did not start before the war in 1967, which was also the starting point of the Israeli occupation of the Westbank and Gaza, territories that were controlled by Jordan and Egypt before. Most left-wing activists—at least in West Germany—were rather sympathetic with Israel until 1967. Only afterwards, the close alliance between the militant left and Palestinian organizations such as the PLO or the PFLP began. Thereby, the historical contextualization in the captions does not only create a multilayered narrative and visual space but also intersects different temporalities. Actually, the contemporary PalestinianIsraeli conflict serves from the beginning as main interpretative framework against which 7 Days in Entebbe depicts the events from 1974.

Experiencing Entebbe With the next shot the chronological reconstruction of the hijacking and the later hostage crisis begins. It introduces a bearded man in an airport washroom. It is Wilfried Böse, one of the Germans in the terrorist commando. Again, the editing serves the purpose of juxtaposing different positions, this time referring to the specific perspectives of opposing actors: the German terrorists and the Israeli commandos. Both men, Zeev and Böse, are interlinked as a two-sided pair, as two hesitant soldiers. This also echoes the stereotypical notion of “freedom fighter vs. terrorist”, expressed in the opening captions. The movie then introduces the setting: Athens airport, specified by a huge red caption introducing “Day 1”, the date and the place. Corresponding the historical background, airports and planes play a significant role in 7 Days in Entebbe. These are places, which Marc Augè has

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characterized as “non-places”: “The installations needed for the accelerated circulation of passengers and goods (high-speed roads and railways, interchanges, airports) are just as much non-places as the means of transport themselves”.5 In opposition to a place and its relational character, its historical references and its concern with identity, a non-place is a place that does “not integrate the earlier places.”6 Non-places are nonrelational, a-historical and do not provide space for identity building. They are “transit points”, “a world thus surrendered to solitary individuality, to the fleeting, the temporary and ephemeral”.7 However, exactly because they are voided spaces, ephemeral, and provisional they can become places of multifaceted encounters. Augé emphasizes this implicit potentiality when he states: “It never exists in pure form; places reconstitute themselves in it; relations are restored and resumed in it”.8 As an historical event, Entebbe marked such a culmination point, in which several perspectives, political and ideological positions, memories, and interpretations collided. 7 Days in Entebbe, however, misses the opportunity of turning this into a cinematic approach. The style of the film is rather nostalgic, successfully imitating action movies from the 1970s and 1980s. The editing interrelates the events in the plane and later at the airport in Entebbe with the decision-making and planning process in Israel dominated by Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin (Lior Ashkenazi) and Defense Minister Shimon Peres (Eddie Marsan). Peres is presented as the villain, the performance even emphasizes negative attributes. Rabin is a more tragic figure. One of the most pathetic scenes show him standing on a balcony (this scene was filmed at the visitors terrace at Mishkenot She’ananim in Jerusalem) watching over the old city and the Land of Israel. Most tellingly, the camera also captures the Israeli separation fence blocking Jerusalem from the Palestinian territories, a structure that was actually only build after 2002. This again demonstrates that the present conflict serves as interpretative frame for the historical events. The movie introduces the Palestinian fighters as legitimized by a righteous course with the wrong means. However, their motivations are only explicated in a rather limited and stereotypical way: Israelis raided a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, killing the whole family of Jaber (Omer Berdouni), one of the hijackers. Beyond that, and despite the use of some well-known anti-Israel phrases, the Palestinian perspective is not further explored. Most notable in this context is a conversation between Jaber

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and Böse, in which Jaber accuses the German: “You are here because you hate your homeland, I am here because I love mine.” The two Germans are introduced as tragic figures. Especially Böse is presented as an ambivalent character with conflicting perceptions and emotions. Most significant for expressing this inner conflict are the repercussions of the Nazi past and the Holocaust that resonated in Entebbe.9 This directly refers to one of the movie’s key scenes. On day 3, succeeding another scene depicting the dance rehearsal, the hijackers divide the hostages in two groups by calling Israeli Jews to enter another room. The sequence does not immediately evoke references to the Holocaust. From the beginning, however, it focuses on the hostages, depicts them praying, playing cards or chatting, and later shows shocked or terrified faces. After Böse ordered the hostages to stand back, and while two Ugandan soldiers begin tearing a hole in the wall to the neighboring room, the scene becomes an extension of the dance, expressing a harsh rhythmic structure based on the monotonous sound of knocking at the wall and intensified through a fast editing that intercuts the hammering soldiers with shots of the trembling hostages. In doing so, the sequence is one of few that at least partially build up empathy with the victims. In general, the hostages’ perspective is not explored at all in the movie. The only exception is a French flight engineer (Jacques Lemoine) who is presented as ordinary men with a moral consciousness, striving towards a peaceful solution of the crisis, thereby personifying the neutral honest broker. In the scene depicting the separation of the hostages, Jaber begins reading names. After recognizing that those are all Israeli and/or Jewish names, Böse tries to stop the separation. After he fails, he leaves the room. Attached to the reproachful gaze of the French engineer and to the wearily face of a female Holocaust survivor, which Böse had calmed down in an earlier scene, he is presented as a tragic figure. Thereby, the film moves again away from the hostages to the German hijacker. The reverse shot to Kuhlmann’s gaze into the room with the separated IsraeliJewish hostages at the end of the sequence, consequently, does not depict the terrified victims, but cuts to the Israeli political leaders discussing the potential rescue operation. This transition is symptomatic for the movie’s depiction of the historical events. The hostages vanish from the scenery. Although some of the Israeli hostages are briefly introduced, they do not get much attention. The film even refrains from showing the deaths of the Israeli hostages

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in the final scenes of the film, although Pasco Cohen, Jean-Jacques Maimoni, Ida Borochovich and Dora Bloch who were killed during and after the raid are more or less explicitly referenced. The audience also does not learn that Dora Bloch was taken to the hospital and later brutally killed by Idi Amin’s death squadron.10 The final titles just mention that four Israeli hostages “died” at Entebbe, while 45 Ugandan soldiers and the terrorists “were killed”. Entebbe clearly serves as historical screen for the present conflict in the Middle East. Like many other historical films, 7 Days in Entebbe does primarily refer to the present. In doing so, however, the film’s attempt of combining multiple points of view, and establishing a cinematic space for competing perspectives and conflicting memories fails. Basically, the plot is primarily based on two contrasting plot lines: the events at Entebbe airport focusing on the (German) hijackers, and the political decisions in the demonic “War Room” scenery in Israel. The one perspective that is nearly completely neglected is that of the hostages. They mainly serve a narrative function, act as nemesis of the two German characters, especially in those scenes that refer to the uncanny repercussions of the Holocaust and the Nazi past. Correspondingly, the survivors and victims are mostly out of focus. This echoes a significant shift in the collective memory of Entebbe, which was in the immediate aftermath heavily loaded with references to the traumatic memories from the Holocaust, and then transformed into a heroic tale of a daring rescue mission. 7 Days in Entebbe’s attempt, however, to deconstruct this heroic version finally removes the victims of the hostage crisis from the scene again, although the first cinematic depictions were quite successful in integrating their perspective and perception into the reconstruction of the historical events.

Entebbe as a Cinematic Space Shortly after the successful rescue operation, three feature films were realized in 1976 and 1977 for both cinema and television.11 The first was Victory at Entebbe, produced for television by ABC. This melodramatic staging of the hostage crisis stars several famous actors, among them Anthony Hopkins, Burt Lancaster, Elizabeth Taylor, Kirk Douglas, and Richard Dreyfuss. The German terrorist Böse is played by the Austrianborn actor Helmut Berger. The second version, also made for TV, this time by NBC, presents the events as an action film. Starring Charles Bronson as Commander Dan Shomron, Raid on Entebbe focuses on the

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military action. In this film, the German actor Horst Buchholz plays Böse, and Holocaust references are emphasized less than in Victory at Entebbe. Instead, a second, partly competing element is applied to the story. Raid on Entebbe retells the events so as to highlight Israeli strength and cleverness. Correspondingly, a German review classified the film as an “advertisement” for the Israeli army.12 This also affected the “German” context. Buchholz’s character, for instance, recalls not a notorious Nazi but a “German general in a British antiwar film.”13 This clearly referred to the events of World War II instead of Holocaust memory. Finally, the Israeli director-producer Menahem Golan restaged the events one year after on the trade fair grounds in Tel Aviv. In this version, Klaus Kinski presents Böse as an ambivalent personality similar to the version in 7 Days at Entebbe, while the female German terrorist, played by the Austrian actor Sibyl Danning, is depicted as a stereotypical “Nazi beast.”14 Operation Thunderbolt (or in the Israeli version, Mivtsa Yonatan named after the commando Yonathan Netanyahu, brother of the later Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, who was shot dead in Entebbe), a crossover of docudrama and action thriller, stars Israeli politicians playing themselves and appropriates photographs and documents from military records. Holocaust references play a crucial role in the narration, with the Jewish fate during World War II mentioned at least thirteen times, constituting a pattern of verbal and visual allusions that establish an interpretative framework for understanding the events.15 This topic line begins shortly after the hijacking.16 During this chapter the film refers twice to Holocaust imagery; both references are closely aligned to German-language dialogue that indicates the hijackers’ origins. One scene is particularly striking: the German female terrorist gives the order that passengers must show their hands before heading to the bathroom. One passenger slowly raises his hand. On his arm we recognize a tattooed number. Then the film cuts between a close-up of the German terrorist and a repeated shot of the rising arm, this time moving even closer to the number. Thus the editing emphasizes the iconic number and identifies the man as a camp survivor. His identity as a victim is further underscored when, after a sniffy nod from the woman, the man is allowed to walk to the toilet. The depiction of the man with his upraised hand resonates with the iconic photograph of a Jewish boy in the Warsaw Ghetto threatened by an armed German soldier.17 The confrontation of victim and perpetrator, in this case the female German terrorist pointing a gun at the Jewish hostage, even accentuates this reference. However,

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the presentation of the German female terrorist as a notorious blonde “Nazi beast” also plays on gender stereotypes well known from “stalag” pulp fiction stories, which were immensely popular in Israel during the 1960s.18 Consequently, we can see that the topic line is fed by references and visual allusions that create a resonant cinematic space, in which the Holocaust memory plays a crucial role for interpreting the events. In Operation Thunderbolt this is most explicit during the separation scene. After fifty-three minutes Böse begins calling out the names of hostages. Sad violin music emphasizes the impression of separation and selection, with the Holocaust survivor again alluding to the helpless Diaspora Jew. Following eight earlier scenes, the selection scene establishes a pattern relating to Holocaust memory. This provides the interpretative background for the events that culminate in the rescue mission. After the selection scene the film refers to the Holocaust only three more times, the last when the soldiers are taking off from Israeli soil to carry out their mission. This also indicates that the trauma of the Holocaust does not provide the only topic; rather, the final thirty minutes contribute to a heroic narrative that evokes religious and messianic references. In doing so, Operation Thunderboldt corresponds to and intensifies a significant shift in the memory of Entebbe. From a victim centered perception that is mainly based on Holocaust references, Entebbe transformed—at least in the Israeli context—into an heroic myth, which mainly focused on the rescue mission, and on the death of Yonatan “Yoni” Netanyahu (Yehoram Gaon). Years later, Israeli director Joseph Cedar illustrated this dominant interpretation by intercutting the final scenes from Operation Thunderboldt into his own film Campfire (Israel 2004), in which he shows members of a national-religious youth movement cheering the death of Böse during a screening of Mivtsa Yonatan and emotionally mourning “Yoni’s” death on screen. Marvin Chomsky’s Victory at Entebbe premiered on 13 December 1976. It focused on Chana Vilnofsky (Linda Blair), a 16-year-old hostage from Jerusalem, and her desperate parents (Kirk Douglas and Liz Taylor). Both actors had strong sentiments for Israel. Douglas had famously performed in the role of American-Jewish Colonel David Marcus during Israel’s war of independence in Cast a Giant Shadow (USA 1966, Melville Shavelson). And, as it was disclosed one year after the events, Taylor, who had converted to Judaism in 1959 and was an active sponsor of the Jewish National Fund’s activities in Israel, had offered to replace the

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remaining hostages in Entebbe.19 Next to the Vilnofsky family a second couple is in the center of the film’s narration: the Holocaust survivor Etta Grossmann-Wise (Helen Hayes), modeled after the hostage Dora Bloch, and her son Benjamin (David Grohe). This constellation illustrates the importance of the highly emotional family narrative in Victory at Entebbe that retells the simultaneous events from the perspective of the hostages and their families, a similar narrative strategy like the one which Chomsky also adopted for the US TV series Holocaust (USA 1978), made only two years later.20 Accordingly Victory at Entebbe interrelates the personal storyline about the hostages and their relatives with the political and historical storyline reconstructing the decision making process of Israeli Prime Minister Rabin (Anthony Hopkins) and Defense Minister Peres (Burt Lancaster) as well as the rescue operation lead by Yonatan Netanyahu (Richard Dreyfuss). Victory at Entebbe evokes the Holocaust eleven times, it thus emphasizes even more the Holocaust trauma as the main reference. All the references appear one and a half hours into the film, before the Israeli government finally votes in favor of the raid.21 These references constitute a pattern that provides the necessary framework for interpreting the unfolding political and military event and therefore always appear as part of the film’s family-related plot. Thus the melodramatic genre pattern and the reference frame merge, much as they do in Holocaust. Holocaust provided narrative and stylistic patterns for later films to represent and understand the past events.22 It re-enacts iconic visual evidence from the Holocaust such as film footage and photographs, among them also the famous image of the Jewish boy with uplifted hands in front of a German soldier. But it also shaped future patterns of depicting the persecution and murder of European Jews and thereby turned into a new prototype for succeeding works, including the use of the melodramatic family narrative. Thus Holocaust created a specific cinematic memory of the events that turned certain incidents into cornerstones of later films. A closer look towards the narrative and visual structure of Holocaust reveals the recurrence of a specific leitmotif throughout the different parts of the series. Several times the audience witnesses columns of Jews gathered by force walking towards their terrible destiny. In Holocaust the repeated recurrence of this motif establishes a pattern that interrelates the different storylines and builds a topic line that helps the viewer to generate a coherent picture of the depicted events as well as the feeling of disorientation and constant migration. As I have argued elsewhere, it is striking

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that one significant historic scenery that is closely related to this topic line is not included in the miniseries. Although Holocaust attempts to tell the whole passage of Jewish suffering during World War II, the iconic situation of selection after arrival in Auschwitz is not part of the film’s narrative. Through its dominant topic line, however, Holocaust implicitly echoes Victory at Entebbe that contains this “missing scene” and, as argued before, is based on a similar pattern of melodramatic narration.23 After forty-six minutes the hostages are gathered in the old terminal hall and their names called. In this sequence the film emphasizes the Holocaust reference. When the hijackers announce that they will read the Israeli passengers’ names, one hostage, a Holocaust survivor, evokes the memory of selection and disembarking the trains at Auschwitz. During the sequence Benjamin Wise asks a Jewish non-Israeli next to him to bear witness after his release. However, when this Belgian Jew (Severn Darden) is also called to the side of the Israelis, it becomes clear that the selection is taking place according to anti-Semitic stigmatization.24 Now the German background of two of the hijackers is also alluded to. Again, the female hijacker transforms from a rational activist into a Jew-hating fanatic. This is intensified on an audible level. When the first name is called, dramatic music rises. The German phrase “Schnell, schnell” (Move it, move it) intertwines with the instructions brutally executed by the female terrorist. When the Belgian Jewish couple protests her decision, her language changes to German: “Ihr seid Juden! Los, gehen Sie rechts. Schnell!” (You are Jews! Go to the right. Move!). During the selection scene the dramatic musical score transforms into a variation on traditional Jewish tunes and melodies, further highlighting the scene’s meaning. When the selected hostages are forced to walk silently into a separate room, the situation transforms into a moment that merges two temporalities, the past of the traumatic Holocaust memory and the present of the new experience of violence.25 Thus the memories of the Holocaust clearly resonate through the depiction of the events. This resonance, however, is closely related to the centrality of the hostages’ or victims’ perspective in the film, which even exceeds the role the hostages play in Golan’s Israeli version of the events.

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The Shifting Memory of Entebbe As a transnational event, the Entebbe hostage crisis affected several countries and societies. Besides the actively involved players—the Palestinian terrorist organization PFLP, German militant left-wing activists, Idi Amin’s Uganda, and Israel—several other countries were more or less implicitly involved: West Germany through the participation of Germans in the hijacking and the demand to release members of German terrorist groups from prison, France, which was home of the hijacked plane and crew, as well as of many hostages, and also destination of the flight, Kenia that assisted Israel in the operation and was also a target of the terrorists’ demands to free prisoners, the United States, which had no diplomatic relations with Uganda but citizens on the plane, Greece and Libya, through which the plane had crossed, and other Arab countries, in which the hijackers were trained. Only in Israel, however, Entebbe became a significant part of collective memory, also because it had evoked memories from a different but even more formative past: the Holocaust. Tom Segev, in his seminal study about the perception of the Holocaust in Israel, emphasizes that Entebbe was among those “situations that evoked the Holocaust” in the years after the Yom Kippur War, and that the separation of the Israeli passengers “inevitably recalled the ‘selection’ at Auschwitz.”26 After the Eichmann trial in 1961 the Holocaust had become a crucial part of Israeli collective memory; however, it still competed with heroic narratives of resistance and national rebirth. Shortly before the Entebbe hostage crisis, the 1973 Yom Kippur War fundamentally renewed the traumatic experience of helplessness and thus transformed the Holocaust in a shared collective Israeli memory. The Jewish trauma of the Holocaust clearly resonated with the hostages’ separation in Entebbe. The presence of Germans (although from a different generation and ideological background) and the repercussive action (the separation of the passengers that mirrored the selection process of incoming Jews on the ramp at Auschwitz) caused this effect. Already by June–July 1976 the events of the Holocaust provided a negative reference frame, which at first affected the hostages and later the political actors dealing with the events. The recurring memory of the Holocaust especially affected those hostages in Entebbe who had been personally experienced the traumatic past. One of them, a forty-seven-year-old unnamed Holocaust survivor,

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was released on the fourth day, because she was not identified as Israeli. For her, the situation evoked strong memories that made her feel as if she were “back 32 years when I heard the German orders … and imagined again the shuffling lines of prisoners and the harsh cry: ‘Jews to the right.’”27 Her traumatic memories clearly framed her present experience. The reports about the selection immediately became public after the non-Israeli hostages were released and interrogated.28 Following these reports, Israeli politicians and journalists also began to adopt the Holocaust as a significant reference for the hostage crisis. Shimon Peres, then minister of defense, allegedly reacted on June 29 to the information about the selection by describing it to his staff as a repetition of what he considered the most significant moment for Jews arising from the “Final Solution.”29 He later referred to the Nazi past in a July 5 press conference, when he declared: “Again two Germans were standing in front of helpless Jews with pistols and threatened innocent life. To imagine this was unbearable.”30 According to Segev, the centrality of Holocaust memory in Peres’s argument for a military solution results from his belonging “to the generation that felt guilt and shame about the extermination of the Jews.” Although he had immigrated to what is now Israel in the early 1930s, Peres did not easily adjust to the status of a new Zionist man. According to Segev, he “preserved a certain measure of ‘Polishness,’ or sentimental Jewishness.” Most significantly for his stance during the Entebbe hostage crisis, Segev refers to the death in Poland of Peres’s beloved grandfather, whom Nazi occupiers had burned alive in his community’s synagogue.31 After the rescue operation the Israeli parliament’s opposition leader, Menachem Begin, explicitly referred to the Holocaust in his speech to the Knesset.32 In this speech Begin compared the German terrorist Wilfried Böse with Josef Mengele and evoked the memories of the selections at Auschwitz.33 Moreover, when one of the Israeli victims from the Entebbe raid was laid to rest, the minister of immigrant absorption, Shlomo Rosen, referred to the fact that the murdered hostage had been a concentration camp prisoner.34 Israeli newspapers also evoked the Holocaust as a reference frame. Yedioth Ahronoth, a popular daily paper, had already mentioned the separation on July 1 and emphasized that it recalled in every respect Nazi concentration camps.35 A day later, the national-religious newspaper HaTzofe also referred to memories of selections in German concentration

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camps in the context of reports about the separation of the hostages in Entebbe.36 The immediate personal, political, and media reactions to the selection in Entebbe show how strongly the memory of the Holocaust dominated interpretations of the events. They became inseparably interconnected and constituted an enduring framework that shaped the public perception of the events for many years, which is indirectly expressed by the fact that some hostages had to insist that “Entebbe was not Auschwitz,” a claim first raised by Michel Goldberg in 1982 and repeated by Ilan Hartuv during the thirty-fifth anniversary of the hostage crisis.37 Goldberg, however, still recalled the permanent presence of references to the Nazi past during the crisis. He spoke of “stalag reflexes,” referred to the traumatic memories of a Jewish hostage of German origin, described arguments with Böse about the “logic of the SS,” and, regarding the Israelis in the separate room, evoked the image of the “people from the ghetto.”38 Hartuv, who stressed that Entebbe was indeed not Auschwitz, nevertheless emphasized that the dispute about the Holocaust’s legacy was already expressed during the hostage crisis. Triggered especially through cinematic reenactments, most significantly in Victory at Entebbe these memories became the most dominant reference for interpreting and commemorating the hostage crisis. In the ‘official’ Israeli film version of the events, Operation Thunderboldt, the references to the Holocaust that put the hostages center stage already shifted towards an emphasis on Israeli heroism. Thereby, the movie adapted the traumatic memories from Entebbe to the dominant Israeli narrative from destruction to redemption. Correspondingly, only a short while after the events, the heroic implications of the rescue mission and especially the tragic death of Netanyahu, started dominating public perception and later collective memory. In the length of time, the dead soldier turned not only into the best known but finally into the only Israeli victim of the Entebbe hostage crisis in Israeli public memory. Several memorials, street names as well as other public exhibitions commemorate the brother of the current Prime Minister. Recently, the documentary Follow me: the Yonatan Netanyahu Story (USA 2012) presented a film version of his biography. Over the years, due to the dominant focus on Yonatan Netanyahu, the other Israeli victims vanished from the selective public memory of Entebbe: JeanJacques Mimouni, Holocaust survivor Pasco Cohen and Ida Borochovitch

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as well as Dora Bloch who was brutally murdered in a hospital after the raid. The documentary film Live Or Die in Entebbe (Israel 2012) only recently brought back these ‘forgotten victims’ to Israeli public consciousness. 7 Days in Entebbe, however, shifts perspective away again from the hostages and simultaneously downplays the rescue mission, relative to earlier movies. Its main focus is the hijackers, especially the two German terrorists. Correspondingly, Holocaust references play a less significant role for its interpretation of the events, as are the specific historical background and the perception of the hostages. Instead, in this movie the events in Entebbe become a projection screen for the contemporary state of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and its global perception.

Notes 1. This paper partly relies on research first published in Tobias EbbrechtHartmann. “Resonating Trauma.” New German Critique 46:2 (137), 91– 116. 2. David Saul. Operation Thunderboldt: Flight 139 and the Raid on Entebbe Airport (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2015). 3. Nirit Anderman. “New Film on Operation Entebbe ‘Likely Anger Prime Minister Netanyahu.’” Haaretz, 19 February 2018. 4. Hannah Brown. “‘7 Days in Entebbe’ Film Plays Down Israeli Heroism.” The Jerusalem Post, 20 February 2018. 5. Marc Augé. Non-Places. An Introduction to Supermodernity (London and New York, 2008): 29. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Ebbrecht-Hartmann, “Resonating Trauma.” 10. Ida Borochovitch, was killed by a Palestinian hijacker; Pasco Cohen and another hostage, Jean-Jacques Maimoni, were accidentally shot by Israeli soldiers. Dora Bloch, was not at the terminal during the raid. She had been transferred shortly before to a hospital and was kidnapped and murdered by the Ugandan secret police. See David, Operation Thunderbolt, 345. 11. Tony Shaw and Giora Goodman. “Hollywood’s Raid on Entebbe: Behind the Scenes of the United States-Israel Alliance.” Diplomatic History 42:4 (2018): 590–612. 12. Markus Mohr. “Kampagne gegen einen ‘Herzfilm’ und der EntebbeStrafprozess,” 163. In Markus Mohr (ed.), Legenden um Entebbe: Ein

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Akt der Luftpiraterie und seine Dimensionen in der politischen Diskussion (Münster: Unrast, 2016): 151–173. P.N. 1977. “… die keine Gnade kennen.” Tagesspiegel, 19 June 1977. Shraga Har-Gil. “Eine Schlacht wird ausgeschlachtet: Das Unternehmen Entebbe in mehreren Filmversionen.” Hannoversche Allgemeine, 6 January 1977. Ebbrecht-Hartmann. “Resonating Trauma.” Peter Wuss. Cinematic Narration and Its Psychological Impact: Functions of Cognition, Emotion and Play (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009): 27. Tobias Ebbrecht. Geschichtsbilder im medialen Gedächtnis. Filmische Narrationen des Holocaust (Bielefeld, 2011): 115–116. Amit Pinchevski and Roy Brand. “Holocaust Perversions: The Stalags Pulp Fictions and the Eichmann Trial.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 24:5 (2007): 387–408. Elizabeth Taylor Offered to be a Hostage, Dinitz discloses, in: Jewish Telegraph Agency, June 16, 1977, quoted in: Ami Eden, In the JTA Archive: Liz Taylor says trade me for Entebbe hostages, in: JTA Telegraph Blogging, 23 March 2011, online: https://www.jta.org/2011/03/23/ news-opinion/the-telegraph/in-the-jta-archive-liz-taylor-says-trade-mefor-entebbe-hostages. Annette Vowinckel. “Skyjacking: Cultural Memory and the Movies.” In Ingo Cornils / Gerrit-Jan Berendse (eds.), Baader-Meinhof Returns. History and Cultural Memory of German Left-Wing Terrorism (Amsterdam and New York, 2008): 251–268, here 253. Ebbrecht-Hartmann. “Resonating Trauma.” Judith E. Doneson, Holocaust Revisited. A Catalyst for Memory or Trivialization?, in: Annals, AAPSS 548 (1996), 70–77, here 75. Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann, “The Missing Scene: Entebbe, Holocaust, and Echoes from the German Past.” In Raphael Gross (ed.), Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 14 (Göttingen: Vandenhoek and Ruprecht, 2017): 243–262. Although most of the hostages who were separated and had to stay at the airport building were Israeli or dual citizens, two non-Israeli couples, obviously observant Jews, were kept by the hijackers in Entebbe. One couple was from the United States, the other from Belgium. Ewout van der Knaap. “‘The New Executioners’ Arrival: German LeftWing Terrorism and the Memory of the Holocaust.” In Ingo Cornils and Gerrit-Jan Berendse (eds.), Baader-Meinhof Returns: History and Cultural Memory of Left-Wing Terrorism (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008): 286–299, here 290. Tom Segev. The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (New York: Owl Books, 2000): 395.

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27. Quoted in William Stevenson. 90 Minutes at Entebbe: The Full Inside Story of the Spectacular Israeli Counterterrorism Strike and the Daring Rescue of 103 Hostages (New York: Skyhorse, 2015): 18. 28. Yehuda Ofer. Operation Thunder: The Entebbe Raid: The Israelis’ Own Story (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1976): 53. 29. Yeshayahu Ben Porat, Eitan Haber, and Zeev Schiff. “Unternehmen Thunderball: Die Geiselbefreiung von Entebbe.” Der Spiegel 44, 25 October 1976, 182–196, here: 185. 30. Quoted in Per Fischer. “Air France Flugzeugentfuehrung. Hier: Auswirkung auf deutsch-israelisches Verhältnis, 13 July 1976.” PAAA B34 Flugzeugentführung und Geiselbefreiung Entebbe, 1–2. here: 2. The original source was Die Welt, July 6, 1976. All translations from the German are mine. 31. Segev, Seventh Million, 395. 32. David, Operation Thunderbolt, 342–343. 33. Shelley Harten. Reenactment eines Traumas: Die Entebbe Flugzeugentführung 1976. Deutsche Terroristen in der israelischen Presse (Marburg: Tectum, 2012): 65. 34. Fischer, “Air France Flugzeugentführung … 13. Juli 1976,” 1. This was at the funeral of Pasco Cohen, one of the three Israeli hostages killed during the raid. 35. Quoted in Alexander Sedlmaier and Freia Anders. “‘Unternehmen Entebbe’ 1976: Quellenkritische Perspektiven auf eine Flugzeugentführung.” Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 22 (2013): 267–289. Here: 276. See also Harten, Reenactment eines Traumas. 36. Per Fischer. “Air France Flugzeugentführung. Hier: Presseecho auf israelische Verhandlungsbereitschaft, 2 July 1976.” PAAA B34 Flugzeugentführung und Geiselbefreiung Entebbe, 1–2. Here: 1. 37. Michel Goldberg. Namesake (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982): 144; Yossi Melman. “Setting the Record Straight: Entebbe Was Not Auschwitz.” Haaretz, 8 July 2011. 38. Goldberg, Namesake, 128, 129, 131, 138.

Works Cited Anderman, Nirit. “New Film on Operation Entebbe ‘Likely Anger Prime Minister Netanyahu.’” Haaretz, 19 February 2018. Augé, Marc. Non-Places. An Introduction to Supermodernity. London/New York: 2008, 29. Brown, Hannah. “‘7 Days in Entebbe’ Film Plays Down Israeli Heroism.” The Jerusalem Post, 20 February 2018.

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Cornils, Ingo, and Gerrit-Jan Berendse (eds.). Baader-Meinhof Returns: History and Cultural Memory of Left-Wing Terrorism. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008. Ebbrecht-Hartmann, Tobias. “Resonating Trauma.” New German Critique 46:2 (137): 91–116. Ebbrecht-Hartmann, Tobias. (Bielefeld, 2011). Geschichtsbilder im medialen Gedächtnis. Filmische Narrationen des Holocaust. Goldberg, Michael. Namesake. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982. Göttingen: Vandenhoek and Ruprecht, 2017. “The Missing Scene: Entebbe, Holocaust, and Echoes from the German Past.” In Raphael Gross (ed.), Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 14. Fischer, Per. “Air France Flugzeugentführung. Hier: Auswirkung auf deutschisraelisches Verhältnis, 13 July 1976.” PAAA B34 Flugzeugentführung und Geiselbefreiung Entebbe, 1–2. The original source was Die Welt, July 6, 1976. All translations from the German are mine. Goldberg, Michel. Namesake. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. Har-Gil, Shraga. “Eine Schlacht wird ausgeschlachtet: Das Unternehmen Entebbe in mehreren Filmversionen.” Hannoversche Allgemeine, 6 January 1977. Harten, Shelley. Reenactment eines Traumas: Die Entebbe Flugzeugentführung 1976. Deutsche Terroristen in der israelischen Presse. Marburg: Tectum, 2012. Judith E. Doneson. “Holocaust Revisited. A Catalyst for Memory or Trivialization?”. Annals, AAPSS 548 (1996), 70–77. Mohr, Markus. “Kampagne gegen einen ‘Herzfilm’ und der EntebbeStrafprozess,” In Markus Mohr (ed.), Legenden um Entebbe: Ein Akt der Luftpiraterie und seine Dimensionen in der politischen Diskussion. Münster: Unrast, 2016. 151–173. Ofer, Yehuda. Operation Thunder: The Entebbe Raid: The Israelis’ Own Story. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1976. Pinchevski, Amit, and Roy Brand. “Holocaust Perversions: The Stalags Pulp Fictions and the Eichmann Trial.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 24:5 (2007): 387–408. P.N. 1977. “… die keine Gnade kennen.” Tagesspiegel, 19 June 1977. Porat, Yeshayahu Ben, Eitan Haber, and Zeev Schiff. “Unternehmen Thunderball: Die Geiselbefreiung von Entebbe.” Der Spiegel 44, 25 October 1976, 182–196. Saul, David. Operation Thunderboldt: Flight 139 and the Raid on Entebbe Airport. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2015. Sedlmaier, Alexander, and Freia Anders. “‘Unternehmen Entebbe’ 1976: Quellenkritische Perspektiven auf eine Flugzeugentführung.” Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 22 (2013): 267–289. Segev, Tom. The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust. New York: Owl Books, 2000.

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Shaw, Tony, and Giora Goodman. “Hollywood’s Raid on Entebbe: Behind the Scenes of the United States-Israel Alliance.” Diplomatic History 42:4 (2018): 590–612. Stevenson, William. 90 Minutes at Entebbe: The Full Inside Story of the Spectacular Israeli Counterterrorism Strike and the Daring Rescue of 103 Hostages. New York: Skyhorse, 2015. Van der Knaap, Ewout. “‘The New Executioners’ Arrival: German Left-Wing Terrorism and the Memory of the Holocaust.” In Ingo Cornils and GerritJan Berendse (eds.), Baader-Meinhof Returns: History and Cultural Memory of Left-Wing Terrorism, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008, 286–299. Vowinckel, Annette. “Skyjacking: Cultural Memory and the Movies.” In Ingo Cornils/Gerrit-Jan Berendse (eds.), Baader-Meinhof Returns. History and Cultural Memory of German Left-Wing Terrorism. Amsterdam/New York 2008, 251–268. Wuss, Peter. Cinematic Narration and Its Psychological Impact: Functions of Cognition, Emotion and Play. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2009, 27.

Films Days in Entebbe. Directed by José Padilha. UK/USA/France, 2018. Operation Thunderboldt. Directed by Menahem Golan. Israel 1977. Raid on Entebbe. Directed by Irvin Kershner. USA 1976. Victory at Entebbe. Directed by Marvin Chomsky. USA 1976.

CHAPTER 10

In the Fade: Motherhood, Grief and Neo-Nazi Terrorism in Contemporary Germany Elena Caoduro

Germany had a short but violent history with left-wing terrorism: radical groups such as the Red Army Faction (RAF) were responsible for a series of murders and violent attacks on government officials and post-war establishment figures in the late 1960s and 1970s.1 German terrorism in the twenty-first century has changed completely. Lesser known internationally is the emergence of right-wing extremists who target immigrants and civilians who have settled in Germany.2 Between 2000 and 2007, the country was shaken by a series of xenophobic murders of several Turks, as well as one Greek and a German policewoman on patrol. While the broadcast media initially connected the killings to the businesses of the victims or their supposed involvement in criminal activities within their own ethnic groups, thus blaming them on their immigrant status, the police denied the potential of racially motivated nature and German

E. Caoduro (B) School of Arts, English and Languages, Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 E. Caoduro et al. (eds.), Mediated Terrorism in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73511-1_10

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assassins. Following a few bomb explosions and bank robberies, the rightwing connection started to be investigated, and it emerged that these violent acts were not separate isolated incidents, but xenophobic crimes perpetrated by organized domestic German terrorists. Three individuals responsible for the murders had neo-Nazi links, specifically they were part of a new criminal identity: the National Socialist Underground or NSU, a small but deadly organization, which remained uncovered until 2011.3 Those murders felt personal to award winning filmmaker Fatih Akin, who was born in 1973 in Hamburg to a family of Turkish immigrants. He decided to make a film to spotlight the inertia of the mass media and investigative forces in revealing the truth, the extend of the NSU ramification in public life and more generally, the personal damage of these tragedies. The result is In the Fade with the German title Aus dem Nichts, a film which premiered at Cannes in April 2017. The drama challenges and reinvents the terrorist film, relying on the maternal melodrama to channel the trauma of a violent loss. The film draws inspiration from the NSU murders, but is even more interested in the psychological effects of terrorism on the victims and their relatives—something that fictional films about terrorism often overlook—and fictionalizes the story of Katja Sekerci, ¸ nee Jessen (Diane Kruger), who loses her husband, Nuri (Numan Acar), and six-year-old son, Rocco (Rafael Santana) in a terrorist bomb attack orchestrated by two German neo-Nazi individuals. Divided into three chapters: “The Family,” “Justice” and “The Sea,” In the Fade falls less on procedural aspects, although a crucial part of its plot dwells on the legal difficulties of trials for terrorism in the German system. It rather emphasizes the psychological effects and Katja’s own shifting morality and attempts at coming to terms with the events and the death of her dear ones. This chapter focuses on the figure of the survivor, the grieving mother, in relation to the environment, and specifically the three main settings of the film: the domestic space of the family home, the institutional space of the courthouse and the natural landscape of Greece where the film terminates with another assassination: Katja takes the law into her own hands and kills the murderers of her family with a self-made nail bomb. She decides to commit suicide at the same time, delivering the bomb, strapped to her own body. Her experience of physical and psychological trauma, not only losing her husband and son but also being framed by the German justice system, leads her to become an assassin, killing the perpetrators with the exact same means as they had used, a

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home-made device, and the same strategy as the Chechen widows turned suicide bombers. The consideration of spatial politics can add a productive perspective to the study of representation of traumatized survivors since In the Fade produces a space where motherhood, grief and violence become intertwined.

Negotiating Grief Through Space The terrorist attack, which takes place in the first ten minutes, is not the narrative center of the film. Akin is interested in the aftermath of terror, as his protagonist negotiates grief through drugs, an attempted suicide, a timid trust in the institutions and finally a growing desire for revenge. He divides Katja’s journey through loss and despair into three distinct episodes, a spatial (and temporal) division which reminds the three chapters of his earlier film, The Edge of Heaven (Auf der anderen Seite, 2007).4 The episodes are preceded by home-movie sequences, shot by one of the characters with different mobile devices. We are first introduced to Nuri Sekerci, ¸ a Turkish-Kurdish man in prison. He has been arrested for drug charges. At the outset of the movie, we see him walk through the corridors in a white ceremony suit, celebrating his release with his fellow inmates who cheer him on from their cells; he is about to marry Katja in an intimate ceremony with two witnesses present. One of them is Birgit (Samia Chancrin), the other Danilo Fava (Denis Moschitto), lawyer and family friend. Despite the circumstances the couple seems sincerely happy, and the handheld video captures the genuineness of the moment. This nostalgic memory leads to the first chapter, “The Family.” Nuri works in a busy Turkish corner in Hamburg as a travel agent and tax preparer in a small store, catering to immigrant customers. He looks after his young son, Rocco, as Katja enjoys a day at the Turkish bath with the pregnant family friend Birgit. Before Katja drops Rocco off, mother and son are almost hit by a speeding car, an episode which foreshadows the terrible tragedy about to unfold. As Katja leaves Nuri’s office, she notices a young woman, actually the neo-Nazi Edda Möller (Hanna Hilsdorf) who is parking a bike against a lamppost and quickly walks away. Katja tells Edda that she better lock the bike but does not realize that a bomb has been hidden in a compartment. The actual explosion takes place offscreen. It not only destroys the travel agency but also kills both Nuri and Rocco in the most violent way. The audience is initially left in the dark about the murders as Katja is told of her family’s fate by the authorities in

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Fig. 10.1 Katja (Diane Kruger) is strapped down to the ground as she breaks the cordon line after the terrorist attack

the evening; returning from her leisure trip, she sees police blocking off the street in front of the site. She breaks a cordon line delimitating the affected area while several officer attempt to keep her from approaching the site of the explosion. Katja is wrestled to the ground (see Fig. 10.1). The majority of the subsequent first chapter is set primarily in Katja and Nuri’s comfortable and large middle-class home, once a site of laughter but now a place of despair for Katja, who defines herself first and foremost as a stay home mother. The cinematography of Rainer Klaussman captures the harrowing experience of the woman and her plight becomes a visual experience for the viewer thanks to the nocturnal setting, and its cold hues, a mournful blue, and the stormy weather, raging outside the home. The police investigators initially tie the attack to the Turkish mafia or Nuri’s background, his criminal record, his supposed drug problem, his ethnicity and religion. These stereotypes and more generally the underworld crime are a familiar trope in Akin’s oeuvre: in previous works he has addressed social and economic issues related to the Turkish-German experience such as alcoholism, rape, drugs, and religious conservatism. In the Fade attempts to subvert these: Nuri has a record, but he is ultimately reformed, a good father and husband, an innocent victim. However, as comparative literature expert, Ayten Tartici, notes, “Katja’s final act of vigilante justice could also be described as a kind of inverted honour killing, a common theme at least in Turkish cinema”.5 During the trial she refers to the possibility of revenge, remarking that if she had been the

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victim of the bombing and “Nuri had survived, he wouldn’t have stood for all the chit-chat.” Katja tries to convince the detectives of the neo-Nazi trail in vain that her husband and son had been victims of a terrorist act, not a mafia revenge plot, a hypothesis considered too farfetched by the police. The investigating German agents, especially the investigator “Kommissar Fischer” (Laurens Walter), become fixated with Nuri’s history of drug abuse; ultimately, Katja is searched and a small amount of drugs found in her bedroom. This allows the aggressive defender of the murderers, “Verteidiger Haberbeck” (Johannes Kirsch), to frame Katja as a drug addict as well, thereby discrediting her ability to serve as witness. As Katja swings between depression, loneliness and determination, the camera frames her in claustrophobic close-ups of her desperate face, on the ground, held down by two officers and screaming when the news of the attack breaks out, or over the shoulders when she sleeps in her son’s bed. Bookending this chapter is the scene capturing her suicide attempt by slitting her wrists in the bathtub. Here the camera crawls on the bathroom floor, up over the lid of the bathtub and into the water that is slowly soaking with the blood, pouring out from the open wounds, before revealing a bird’s eye shot of Katja waiting to lose consciousness. She regains some strength and pulls out of the bath, as she hears the phone ringing and the message in the voice machine (see Fig. 10.2). The investigator, Commissar Fischer, confirms that her Nazi theory is correct.

Fig. 10.2 Katja waits to bleed out, following the violent death of her family

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Female suicide, as well as self-destruction and death are recurrent motifs in Akin’s oeuvre.6 In Head-On (Gegen die Wand, 2004), for example, Sibel Güner (Sibel Kekilli) plays with suicide as a possible escape to her traditional Muslim parents and brother. In Katja’s case, instead, suicide acts as an escape from the disappointment of the narrow-minded police investigators. According to Tartici the significance of the film’s title in its German and Turkish version is poignant, similar to the way the title of Auf der anderen Seite was changed to The Edge of Heaven, Akin altered his new film’s title for its English and Turkish release. The original title, Aus dem Nichts, literally translates as “out of nothing,” suggesting perhaps the unexpectedness of Katja’s tragedy, while the Turkish title, Paramparça, means “shattered into pieces.”7

The producers and distributors’ choice of having different English, German and Turkish titles, and not direct translations of one another, provides a semantic multiplicity, thus offering different interpretations. Tartici concludes that the English title, more than the others, seems to suggest the theme of disappearance, erasure and annihilation. Moreover, the English title originates from a song by American hard rock band, Queens of the Stone Age, whose lead singer, Josh Homme, wrote the film’s score and collaborated with Akin on creating the right sonic atmosphere for the drama. In the original song, Homme sings “Live till you die. Loosing feeling, but I couldn’t get the way. Counting and breathing, disappearing in the fade.” The lyrics capture well the feelings experienced by Katja, holding on, surviving before her dark journey to revenge and ultimately death. In an interview for Variety Akin claims, “I had the feeling that this [Queens of the Stone Age] could be the music that the character was listening to. It has a self-destructive attitude and somehow the film is about self-destruction.”8 Akin’s films are a unique experience of musical and dialogue mixing: the musical soundtrack, in particular, is used to provide a powerful tool to match the characters’ subjectivities but also a sensorial experience of heterogeneity. For German studies scholar Berna Gueneli the director employs music to reflect the multiethnicity and multilinguism characterizing Europe and not simply as a decorative act. The Balkan music listened by a dancing and ecstatic Sibel in Head On counters the gloomy tunes that accompany Katja in her journey.9

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The expression “in the fade” makes an allusion to gothic iconography: in particular to the imagery of ghosts and vampires emerging as the sun sets.10 After the attack on her family, Katja does become a ghost: with a hood over her head and wearing an all-black attire, she wonders aimlessly at night while the rain pours over her, a poignant image of despair which was also chosen for the film’s poster and international marketing campaign. We also see her on her sofa, staring at her garden and her son’s trampoline. In Greece where Katja tracks down the two released murderers who have left Germany to go on vacation in a mini bus, she can be seen preparing the mix of nails and explosives, and fixing an electric circuit for a home-made bomb in the middle of the night. The bomb that killed her family had also been self-made in a garage, owned by the neo-Nazi couple, Edda and André Möller (Ulrich Brandhoff). It is interesting to note that Katja deploys the same precision skills in this activity of mixing the explosives as when she repaired Rocco’s broken toy car, depicted in a home-video, most likely shot on an iPhone, that is introducing the second chapter. Neo-Nazi Terrorism on the Screen In the Fade is probably one of the most politically-engaged films by Fatih Akin, who previously completed his “love, death and the devil” trilogy: Head-On, The Edge of Heaven and The Cut (2014). Specifically, the plot of In the Fade was loosely based on an event that had occurred in 2004 in Cologne, when a bomb detonated in a neighborhood heavily populated by Turkish immigrants, wounding twenty-two. At that time, the existence of the NSU was still unknown to the police, and in fact the investigators did not consider the hate-crime nature of this incident and the others that followed over a decade. Germany was in shock when it turned out that police officers had links with the NSU and secret services were aware of these activities.11 Akin translates the difficult events which occurred at the beginning of the new millennium to the current political climate, where xenophobia and racist language have been normalized by the rise to power of parties such as the Golden Dawn in Greece, Alternative for Germany (AfD), the National Front in France and individuals such as former President Donald Trump in the US and Matteo Salvini in Italy. Overall few films have engaged with far-right domestic terrorism and the motivations of their followers, thus maintaining these organizations in the shadow.12 According to Paul B. Rich, historian of terrorism

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and insurgency, Hollywood films have rarely engaged with US domestic terrorism and have produced a traditional image of the far-right fighter as combat-ready militia man or member of the Klan, with films such as Betrayed (Costa Gavras, 1988), Arlington Road (Mark Pellington, 1998) and Imperium (Daniel Ragussis, 2016).13 The reason for this negligence are multiple, but as Rich suggests the far-right threat has never drawn broad attention and received weak public understanding.14 Seven years after Norway’s deadliest far-right terrorist attacks, two films tried to make sense of what happened, and why, on July 22, 2011, when neo-Nazi extremist Anders Behring Breivik killed dozens of citizens and injured hundreds in a bomb attack and a mass shooting. On that day, Breivik detonated a bomb in central Oslo, before impersonating a police officer and reaching the island of Utoya, where he shot teenagers and group leaders at a youth camp sponsored by the Labour Party. Paul Greengrass’s 22 July (2018) offers a privileged reconstruction of the event, triangulating the experience of the perpetrator, the victims and survivors on the island, but also their relatives and Norway’s society at large. Erik Poppe, the director of Utøya – July 22 (2018), instead, avoided portraying Breivik at all, focusing on the victims because of an ethical decision to deprive the perpetrator of any possible fame and attention. Similarly, Akin shifts the focus almost completely on the figure of the female survivor. The perpetrators, the young German couple of neoNazis, Edda and André Möller, remain silent for the most part, denying them the possibility of explaining, but also of spreading their ideology. By choosing silence, Akin also limits their political strength, as it is evident in the trial scenes when even some witnesses are cut short to limit their hate language. But this remains among the few exceptions as films about terrorism, historical dramas reconstructing kidnappings, geopolitical thrillers or espionage films about conspiracies, seem more preoccupied to tell the story of criminals, or those fighting terrorism. Discourses of terrorism are highly concerned with the definition and categorization of violence, a concern shared by In the Fade when exploring the problematics of ascribing the charge of terrorism to a young couple: André and Edda Möller. As the major experts of terrorism attest, one of the primary sites of contention is the definition itself: what constitutes an act of terrorism and when is a specific act labelled terrorism?15 The notion of legitimacy plays a crucial role in this definition, but labelling violence as terrorism is an ideological act whereby one’s own violence becomes necessary. In fact, the notion of terrorism seems to be

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constructed on several binary oppositions: legitimate force/illegitimate violence, order/chaos and good/evil. These antithetical themes constitute the syntax of the action genre and melodrama, an aspect to which I will return in the following section. In the Fade explores more specifically the threat of domestic terrorism, violent and dangerous acts committed by homegrown radical formations, which are distinguished from acts perpetrated by externally based terrorist groups.16 The film defines the nail bomb attack as illegitimate, but it juxtaposes it against the violence of Katja, who unable to process the inability of the court to condemn the perpetrators, takes justice in her own hands. She uses violence for immoral ends. Her plan to blow up the campervan, where the neo-Nazi couple are sheltering, is a fantasy of violent action, where the ethical consequences of legal injustices are destructive. To some extent, her revenge logic seems to follow the typical terrorist action film, where the hero’s violent behavior is the only means to combat the violence wielded by the terrorists who disrupt society. But while the action film offers a suspension of social decorum and legal regulations, the heroine of In the Fade is not given a free pass to murder, her social transgression and personal restoration of order culminates with a violent spectacle, which includes her own death. The third chapter of the film, entitled “The Sea” blurs the idea of moral legibility. Deviating in certain instances from the good/evil moral polarity that characterizes Hollywood productions and genres such as the action film or the melodrama, In the Fade attempts to display the ideological complexity of terrorism and the ethical flaws of anti-terrorist efforts, policies and legal structures. The film resolves these dilemmas, following a revenge narrative and a spectacle of violence. The immolation of the heroine represents a total failure of support networks: the family and friends who are pushed away or lied to; the legal and medical system who are not able to provide justice or comfort to a grieving woman. In the Fade, in other words, does not display ambivalence about terrorism, it condemns it, but it shows the necessity of moral polarity and that the solution proposed by Katja conflates the two opposites. The film shows a new threat to social order: moral ambiguity and confusion, as the viewer becomes involved in the human suffering of the terrorists. Katja chooses to take justice in her own hands instead of pursuing an appeal in court under the recommendation of her friend lawyer Danilo Fava. The second amateur video introducing the “Justice” chapter is shot by Nuri and recounts a simple family life moment as Katja tries to repair

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a toy car. In this court drama section, Akin dissects an aloof criminal justice system, and constructs his attack on Germany’s liberal democratic order, whose emphasis on reason and rules can only disappoint Katja. The failure of the legal system is epitomized when the charges are read as a voiceover as Katja leaves court. Attending the trial as witness as well as plaintiff represents a second act of violence against Katja; she has to endure the most excruciating factual details of the death of her husband and son. A medical specialist describes the wounds that the pipe bomb has inflicted on Rocco before he died in the blast: his body was shredded. The blinding artificial lights, the dolly zooms in the chamber and the claustrophobic and aseptic mise-en-scene frame Katja as an animal in a cage, her rage mounting every day until she unleashes it against the perpetrators in one of the most striking scenes of the film. The trial is also the occasion to introduce the connection and widespread network of Nazi sympathizers around Europe.17 The defense produces in fact an alibi for the couple, a Greek witness, Nikolaos Makris (Yannis Papadopoulos) who testifies their presence at a hotel, he owns in a Greek tourist region; in reality it turns out that he belongs to the racist Golden Dawn Party. Akin hints here at the transnational nature of contemporary far-right movements, their shared interests in advancing xenophobia even where their individual nationalist agendas conflict.

Revenging the Maternal Melodrama In the Fade received mixed reviews since its premiere at the Cannes Film festival in 2017. Critics were not convinced by its violent finale. The New York Times, for example, chastised the film for its puzzling ending, which wanted to conflate the political and the personal side of the story but resulted in a stalemate.18 But overall, many praised Kruger’s powerful depiction of a grieving mother and wife, a performance which carries the whole film and was a strong contributor to the film winning the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film in 2018.19 As such, the Akin’s work occupies an important space in German film history, as one of only a few films addressing far-right domestic terrorism by a major filmmaker, and a star vehicle for Kruger, an interesting transnational figure in twentieth-first century cinema.20 Her performance was awarded a Best Actress Award at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival for showing the depth of a mother’s grief as well as her rage. What is peculiar is that In the Fade reveals the discourse of terrorism as informed by a melodramatic

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logic. By melodrama, however, I do not employ the common usage as a synonym for “women’s films.” Rather I follow film studies scholar Linda Williams’ conceptualization of the term in her pioneering article “Melodrama Revised”, where she defines it as a “form that seeks dramatic revelation of moral and emotional truths through a dialectic of pathos and action.”21 Williams maintains that melodrama does not constitute a particular genre, nor a form that uses emotional and visual excess to disrupt a classically continuous narrative. Furthermore, she suggests that melodrama affirms a hidden moral legibility when judicial truth and more generally morality are questioned.22 The melodramatic mode has often been associated with femininity and its vast adoption is motivated by its ability to underline a nation’s sense of its own goodness. As American media scholar Russell Meeuf has remarked, the melodramatic mode, surprisingly shares many characteristics with the (terrorist-focused) action film: visual spectacle and excess; overwrought emotions and situations; Manichean distinctions between good and evil, and a mode of address meant to engage the spectator physically (inducing tears, fear, tension).23

In addition, Williams claims that the pathos we usually associate with melodrama is correlated with the spectacle of action. According to Williams, “pathos and action are the two most important means to the achievement of moral legibility.”24 In fact it is the suffering of virtuous women which characterizes the melodramatic mode, that provides tension and narrative development. Katja’s suffering reaches the pinnacle at the reading of the trial’s verdict. She then embarks on a solitary revenge journey in the third chapter, “The Sea”, a final act introduced by a home video shot by Katja’s mobile phone. The video captures a seaside holiday as the nuclear family enjoy time on the beach, most likely in Turkey or Greece. Although it does not specify the location, the video foreshadows Katja’s travel to Greece on the track of the acquitted neo-Nazi. This final segment of the films differs from the other for the choice of focusing on a natural element, the sea, a setting often associated with peace and acceptance. The sea does not simply play an illustrative function, a backdrop to the Mediterranean location of the sequence, but the liquid element assumes a symbolic and narrative relevance. The viewer is left with the final image of the seabed. Afterall the sea is supposed to bring peace, placate the anxiety. Yet, as the credit of the film scrolls, the viewer is left with the close-up

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image of the seabed, first muddy because of the waves and the explosion and then cleared as if nature goes back to normal despite the suicide attack. In recent years, the portrayal of bereavement on screen has avoided melodramatic clichés. It is sufficient to think of the exceptional performances of Frances McDormand in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Martin McDonagh, 2017) and Brenda Blethyn in London River (Rachid Bouchareb, 2009) which eschew tradition in their portrayals of women’s rage and grief. Akin succinctly provides a medical treatise of grief phases, which include denial and isolation; anger; bargaining; depression; and acceptance.25 Katja displays several features associated with these. First, she is seen withdrawing from family and friends: Katja’s mother, Annemarie (Karin Neuhäuser) is pushed away when resentment about her daughter’s choice of spouse and his history becomes apparent. Then, the in-laws, instead, decide to return to Turkey after their request to bring the remain of Nuri and Rocco was categorically denied by Katja. The mother-in-law, Hülya (Aysel Iscan), blames Katja for the death of her son Nuri and the grandson, uttering in desperation “if you’d taken better care, my grandson would still be alive.” She cannot accept why the daughter-in-law went to a Turkish bath and dropped the child at Nuri’s office. Overall Katja gets warped in a stage of depression and rage and this grieving experience is told through melodramatic tones. Katja collapses on the pavement at the outset of the film, when she realizes that her husband and son are among the explosion victims; this crashes her main identity as that of mother. When she is interviewed by the police, she presents herself first and foremost as a mother, although it turns out that she is also the bookkeeper of her husband’s agency. Later, when her friend Birgit visits with her newborn, she is too overwhelmed to bond with the baby, with her house still full of toys belonging to her own son. Katja reveals to her friend that she no longer has her period, even though she is still in child-bearing age, because of the stress and grief. And it is significant how blood becomes a sign of passage of different phases of her grief. Her attempt suicide marks her decision to fight in court, to attend the trial and make sure the perpetrators are consigned to justice. Secondly, it is the return of her period while staring at the sea from a terrace of her holiday home in Greece that she decides to act and take revenge. Although the return of her period marks the return of her fertility, she cannot be a mother any longer and prefers to take her own life along with the accused couple. Her anger, in fact, seems to stop only

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Fig. 10.3 The campervan, parked by a tranquil Greek beach, explodes with Katja and the neo- Nazi couple inside

at the very end when she meticulously study court proceeding, builds a nail bomb with fertilizer and a pressure cooker and straps it on her body (Fig. 10.3). When the trial fails to serve justice, Katja leaves Germany on the track of the transnational connections of the accused. She finds the couple’s where-abouts through social media posts on Facebook. Kruger already played a role in a revenge narrative in an earlier film, set during World War II: in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds (2009). In both films the heroines are independent women, who spurn the help of friends to achieve their targets. Katja, in fact, loses hope in the law when she lies to her solicitor and friend on his request to sign the appeal request paperwork for a new trial. Differently from Tarantino’s film, which finds vengeance satisfying, Katja is ambivalent about her plan; she aborts her first mission when she notices a bird on the mirror of the neoNazi’s campervan, and finally completes the mission out of desperation. According to the Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood, revenge narratives often result in violence because “death pays all debts.”26 In this case, Katja acting as a street vigilante points to a general anxiety about the efficacy of the court system, a long-standing inability of liberal justice to address the problem of right-wing violence. The audience is left uncomfortable as the revenge narrative becomes more than an individual payback. It becomes a story of systemic retaliation.

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Conclusions The film is about Katja’s revenge, but acts as a collective cathartic moment in light of the revelations that have emerged during the real NSU’s trial with exposed links between the police, secret services and the far-right. At the same time, this is also a piece of working through for Akin, who found his name on a target list of a Neo-Nazi website just before starting shooting the movie. In the Fade questions liberal anxieties about the “eye for an eye” principle and whether one fights violence with more violence, especially when the system does not protect the survivors and the victims. Ultimately, the films asks whether far-right terrorism demands a more muscular response when justice fails. While assimilation and multiculturalism were at the center of Akin’s previous works, here the challenge is about how to behave as democratic citizens when the law lets you down. In fact, Germany’s law and order lets Katja’s relatives down, allowing their killers to go free on some technicalities. The tension of the final act builds up exactly because Katja is torn at the thought of harming others outside the state’s mandate. Katja’s hesitancy and her change of heart during a first attempt at placing the bomb resonates with liberal concerns on how to respond to widespread racism and right-wing violence, and more importantly how to counter nationalistic hatred without becoming its victim. As a result of the system’s failure, the only way Katja can go through with executing Nuri and Rocco’s killers is by immolating herself, holding a rucksack with the home-made bomb in her arms. After the explosion, the camera turns upside down on the open sea, as if it has been damaged by the bomb, and the final credits scroll first on muddy water, stirred by the blast, and then on clear crystalline water. Katja who has been an onlooker for so long is finally at a junction and has to make a final decision. By juxtaposing one after the other the failed attack and then the decisive one, Akin seems to offer two optional endings to his audience and leaves the verdict up to them. Although In the Fade appears as the most conclusive of his works, by delivering two finales, he suspends his judgement and casts doubts on a possible closure or resolution. In the Fade forms a neatly-organized, tripartite story, but it is colored by ambiguity: from mixing action, court and melodrama to portraying a grief ridden mother turned vigilante.

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Notes 1. For a gender perspective on the revolutionary terrorism of the late 1960s and its transnational connections see my chapter “Sisters in Arms: Epic Narratives in United Red Army (2007) and The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008),” in Clementine Tholas, Karen Ritzenhoff and Janis Goldin (eds.), New Perspectives on the War Film (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019): 245–264. 2. It is worth noting that the phenomenon of far-right terrorism in Germany exploded in the twenty-first century, but attacks were taking place also before, such as the 1980 Oktoberfest bombing in Munich. 3. The three individuals linked with the murders are: Uwe Böhnhardt and Uwe Mundlos, who were found dead by police after a bank robbery; and Beate Zschäpe who surrendered and was charged with several charges, including belonging to a terrorist organization. During the laborious investigation and trials, it emerged that secret services had links with the NSU and knew about the illegal activities of the group. Despite the lengthy documentation and trial transcripts, several doubts remain regarding the extent of the network, the supporting structures of the terrorists and how many other members were involved in NSU. 4. In the Fade, however, follows a much more linear narrative than The Hedge of Heaven, which proceeds with different timelines, parallels and repetitions. See Claudia Breger, “Configuring Affect: Complex World Making in Fatih Akin’s Auf der anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven),” Cinema Journal, vol. 54, no. 1 (Fall 2014): 65–87. 5. Ayten Tartici, “You Live Till You Die: Fatih Akin’s Hesitant Vigilante,” Senses of Cinema, Issue 87, June 2018. https://www.sensesofcinema. com/2018/feature-articles/live-till-die-fatih-akins-hesitant-vigilante/. 6. Muriel Cormican, “Masculinity and Transnational Paradigms: The Cinema of Fatih Akin.” Colloquia Germanica, vol. 46, no. 1 (2013): 21–46. 7. Ayten Tartici, “You Live Till You Die: Fatih Akin’s Hesitant Vigilante.” Differently from Tartici’s translation, ‘auf dem Nichts’ could also be translated as ‘out of nowhere’, which also better captures the element of surprise. Katja detonates the bomb, leaving the murderers the murderers unaware just like her husband was. 8. Alissa Simon, “Director Fatih Akin on Returning to Cannes With Competition Film ‘In the Fade’,” Variety, May 22, 2017. https://variety. com/2017/film/festivals/cannes-film-festival-2017-director-fatih-akin1202439387/. 9. Berna Gueneli, “The Sound of Fatih Akin’s Cinema: Polyphony and the Aesthetics of Heterogeneity in The Edge of Heaven,” German Studies Review, vol. 37, no. 2 (May 2004): 337–356.

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10. In the opening credits the title of the film is displayed in blackletter, more specifically in the Fraktur font, a typeface heavily employed in Nazi Germany. 11. Erika Solomon, “Germany Fears Far-Right Influence in Police and Security Forces,” Financial Times, July 28, 2020. https://www.ft.com/con tent/4351721b-adc7-4381-a355-21c88a7b23bd. 12. The German film Combat Girls (Kriegerin, 2011) by David Wnendt investigates the motivations that drew two young women from the former East Germany into a far-right organization. 13. Paul B. Rich, “Hollywood and Cinematic Representations of Far-Right Domestic Terrorism in the US,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, vol. 43, no. 2 (2020), 161–182. https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2018.144 6295. 14. Rich, “Hollywood and Cinematic Representations of Far-Right Domestic Terrorism in the US,” 163–164. 15. Among the classic studies of terrorism see Jack P. Gibbs, “Conceptualization of Terrorism,” American Sociological Review, vol. 54, no. 3 (1989): 329–340. Walter Laquer, The Age of Terrorism (Boston: Little, Brown, 1987). Juliet Lodge (ed.), Terrorism: A Challenge to the State (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981). 16. It goes beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss the nature and history of these organisations, but for more details about the far-right terrorist phenomenon, specifically in the context of Germany see Daniel Koehler, Right-Wing Terrorism in the 21st Century (London and New York: Routledge, 2017). 17. It is noteworthy mentioning how the broadcasting of the recent riot at the Capitol showed the similarities of insignia between the far-right organisation Proud Boys and the spectators attending the trail in Akin’s film. 18. A. O. Scott, “Review: ‘In the Fade’ Is a Tale of Grief and Violence in Modern Germany,” New York Times, December 26, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/movies/in-the-fade-rev iew-diane-kruger.html. 19. See for instance Peter Bradshaw, “Ninja heroine Diane Kruger Marooned in Feeble Revenge Drama,” The Guardian, May 26, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/may/26/in-the-fadereview-diane-kruger-fatih-Akin-cannes-2017. 20. Born in Germany in 1976, Kruger is fluent in German, French and English. She was first a model before pursuing an acting career in Hollywood, reaching popular acclaim with the role of Bridget von Hammersmark in Quentin Tarantino’s film Inglorious Basterds (2009). In the Fade is her first German-language film.

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21. Linda Williams, “Melodrama Revised,” Refiguring American Film Genres: History and Theory, ed. Nick Browne (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998): 42. 22. Williams, “Melodrama Revised,” 50–51. 23. Russell Meeuf, “Collateral Damage: Terrorism, melodrama, and the action film on the eve of 9/11,” Jump Cut, No. 48, winter 2006, np. https:// www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc48.2006/CollatDamage/text.html. 24. Williams, “Melodrama Revised,” 59. 25. Among the many approaches to grief, here I am outlining the well-known model of the five stages of grief as first developed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in On Death & Dying (Simon & Schuster/Touchstone, 1969). 26. Margaret Atwood, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2008): 119.

Works Cited Atwood, Margaret. Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth. Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2008. Bradshaw, Peter. “Ninja Heroine Diane Kruger Marooned in Feeble Revenge Drama.” The Guardian, 26 May, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/ film/2017/may/26/in-the-fade-review-diane-kruger-fatih-Akin-cannes2017. Accessed on January 12, 2021. Breger, Claudia. “Configuring Affect: Complex World Making in Fatih Akin’s Auf der anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven).” Cinema Journal, vol. 54, no. 1 (Fall 2014): 65–87. Caoduro, Elena. “Sisters in Arms: Epic Narratives in United Red Army (2007) and The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008).” In Clementine Tholas, Karen Ritzenhoff and Janis Goldin (eds.), New Perspectives on the War Film. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019: 245–264. Cormican, Muriel. “Masculinity and Transnational Paradigms: The Cinema of Fatih Akin.” Colloquia Germanica, vol. 46, no. 1 (2013): 21–46. Gibbs, Jack P. “Conceptualization of Terrorism.” American Sociological Review, vol. 54, no. 3 (1989): 329–340. Gueneli, Berna. “The Sound of Fatih Akin’s Cinema: Polyphony and the Aesthetics of Heterogeneity in The Edge of Heaven.” German Studies Review, vol. 37, no. 2 (May 2004): 337–356. Koehler, Daniel. Right-Wing Terrorism in the 21st Century. London and New York: Routledge, 2017. Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. On Death & Dying. Simon & Schuster/Touchstones, 1969. Laquer, Walter. The Age of Terrorism. Boston: Little, Brown, 1987. Lodge, Juliet. “Introduction.” Juliet Lodge (ed.), Terrorism: A Challenge to the State. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981, 1–10.

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Meeuf, Russell. “Collateral Damage: Terrorism, Melodrama, and the Action Film on The Eve of 9/11.” Jump Cut, No. 48 (winter 2006). https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc48.2006/CollatDamage/text. html. Accessed on January 12, 2021. Rich, Paul B. “Hollywood and Cinematic Representations of Far-Right Domestic Terrorism in the US.” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, vol. 43, no. 2 (2020): 161–182. https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2018.1446295. Accessed on January 12, 2021. Simon, Alissa. “Director Fatih Akin on Returning to Cannes with Competition Film ‘In the Fade’.” Variety, 22 May, 2017, https://variety.com/2017/ film/festivals/cannes-film-festival-2017-director-fatih-akin-1202439387/. Accessed on January 12, 2021. Solomon, Erika. “Germany Fears Far-Right Influence in Police and Security Forces.” Financial Times, 28 July, 2020. https://www.ft.com/content/435 1721b-adc7-4381-a355-21c88a7b23bd. Accessed on January 12, 2021. Tartici, Ayten. “You Live Till You Die: Fatih Akin’s Hesitant Vigilante.” Senses of Cinema, Issue 87, June 2018. https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2018/fea ture-articles/live-till-die-fatih-akins-hesitant-vigilante/. Accessed on January 12, 2021. Williams, Linda. “Melodrama Revised.” In Nick Browne (ed.), Refiguring American Film Genres: History and Theory. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998: 42–88.

Films Arlington Road. Directed by Mark Pellington, United Kingdom/United States, 1998. Betrayed. Directed by Costa Gavras. United States, 1988. Combat Girls (Kriegerin). Directed by David Wnendt. Germany, 2011. The Cut. Directed by Fatih Akin. Canada/France/Germany/Italy/Poland/Turkey, 2014. The Edge of Heaven (Auf der anderen Seite). Directed by Fatih Akin. GermanyTurkey, 2007. Head-On (Gegen die Wand). Directed by Fatih Akin. Germany/Turkey, 2004. Imperium. Directed by Daniel Ragussis. USA, 2016. Inglorious Basterds. Directed by Quentin Tarantino. USA/Germany, 2009. In the Fade (Aus dem Nichts). Directed by Fatih Akin. Germany/France, 2017. Kill Bill: Volume 1. Directed by Quentin Tarantino. USA, 2003. London River. Directed by Rachid Bouchareb. United Kingdom/France, 2009. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Directed by Martin McDonagh. USA/UK, 2017. Utøya – July 22. Directed by Erik Poppe, Norway, 2018. July. Directed by Paul Greengrass. USA, 2018.

CHAPTER 11

Tales of Chaos and Order: Exploring Terrorism’s Melodramatic Use in The Dark Knight (2008) and Skyfall (2012) Charles-Antoine Courcoux

An enigmatic international terrorist creates a wave of chaos in a city whose complexity and ramifications make controlling it difficult. The criminal mastermind is captured, but only then does the hero realize “too late” that getting caught was part of the terrorist’s plan from the very beginning. Indeed, after having outwitted the hero and the authorities once again, the villain carefully carries out his criminal endeavor, pushing the hero into his last entrenchments, until the latter ultimately finds the resources to overpower him. This scenario, which effectively stages the confrontation between an all-powerful terrorist and a disqualified protagonist within a highly mediated urban space emblematic of the world’s great capitals, has structured the narrative stakes of two of the most commercially successful and critically-acclaimed action films in recent memory, namely The Dark Knight (TDK, 2008) and Skyfall (2012).

C.-A. Courcoux (B) University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 E. Caoduro et al. (eds.), Mediated Terrorism in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73511-1_11

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Furthermore, it also resonates with more sci-fi oriented and just as profitable pictures such as The Avengers (2012) and Star Trek into Darkness (2013). Yet, despite this and these films’ ostensible usage of 9/11 iconography, none of them ever really deals with the issues of modern terrorism and its geopolitical implications. Even more unexpectedly, none of the films represent its “evil” antagonist as a foreign character, a fanatic or even an activist, such as the terrorist characters who populated most American films in the 1990s1 or the individuals who have been held responsible for the attacks perpetrated on Euro-American soil since the early 2000s. On the contrary, all these fictional adversaries are designated as “enemies from within”, criminals with personal agendas, who appear as a by-product of a system in crisis—and generally, as such, as a distorted reflection of the hero chasing them. This observation leads us to question the nature of the discursive use these films make of the mastermind terrorist figure and of the urban space in which he thrives in Gotham City and London.2 More fundamentally, one wonders what is the “appeal” of these types of characters and of the over-dramatization function of this narrative scheme? Indeed, if these films do not really talk about terrorism, what are they talking about in terms of utilizing the motives and fears associated with terrorism? Likewise, what are, subsequently, the historical tensions explored by these films? To answer some of these questions, I will consider The Dark Knight 3 and Skyfall from a gender perspective, reflecting also, to a lesser extent, on the political meanings the latter convey with respect to age. Obviously, to argue that filmic adaptations of the adventures of archetypically masculine characters such as Batman and James Bond (let alone Iron Man and Capitan Kirk) produce discourses with masculinist and (hetero)normative overtones should hardly qualify as an original contribution. That is why I will start from two slightly more specific observations. My first remark has been abundantly examined elsewhere: from 1996 to 2014, the great majority of heroes of American cinema have founded the assertion of their masculine hegemony4 in an antagonistic relationship to technological modernity and scientific advances.5 This discursive opposition, which transcends film genre boundaries, stems from the (mostly) imaginary imbalance of power induced by new technologies with respect to masculinity, within the historical context in which these films were produced. Moreover, in a significant number of these movies, the over-domestication or effeminizing effects associated with technology or

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science are metonymically linked to urban space, which is presented in a typically “urbanoïac” manner.6 On the discursive level, the city stands as the epicenter of an artificial Otherness that proves damaging for the “nature” of man. In several of these films, technology and urbanity are endowed with disturbing gender or sexual connotations in order to underline either the pathologically feminine or the queer nature of the antagonist linked to them and, reciprocally, essentialize the natural gendered superiority of the protagonist. This is the path I intend to follow to decode the discourses of TDK and Skyfall. However, one should also point out that the symbolic workings of both of these films rely on a broader rhetorical strategy. This is my second observation: each of them can be considered a masculine melodrama, in the sense that they exploit a narrative canvas in which the eventual triumph of the protagonist is commensurate with the intensity of the failures he has endured. Each film begins with a form of sociopolitical marginalization of its hero, which is induced by the danger inherent to the urban space. Hence, the narrative instigates a series of setbacks that emphasizes the protagonist’s status as a martyr before finally leading to the melodramatic reaffirmation of his physical and/or moral superiority. Therefore, I postulate, in line with film historian Linda Williams’ conceptualization of the melodramatic mode in American cinema after the work of interdisciplinary scholar Peter Brooks, that TDK and Skyfall focus their narrative on “a hero victim” whose trajectory, largely made up of action and pathos, aims at the recognition of the protagonist’s virtues through suffering.7 Drawing on these observations, I will study to what extent the inclusion of Batman and Bond in this “technophobic” and melodramatic paradigms opens up a critical space for thinking beyond the apparent theme of terrorism, and engage a reflection on the use of the terrorist figure in this context. In other words, I primarily want to examine how these films’ symbolic stakes, whatever they are, are shaped by issues of their time. To that end, I will proceed to a successive analysis of the ways that TDK and Skyfall question, at first, their hero’s power through the celebration of an antagonist whose omnipotence depends on technology in order to reaffirm better the hero’s innate gendered hegemony. After this analysis, I will reflect on the discursive use of terrorism and the melodramatic mode on which they rely.

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The Good, the Bat and the Ugly Judging by the critical, public and “institutional” reception of TDK, the character of the Joker, played by the late Heath Ledger, stands out as the element that drew the most attention at the time of the film’s release.8 The fact that Ledger died a few weeks after filming, of course, contributed in reinforcing the myth of an overwhelming role (the Joker being an important part of Batman’s mythology) and of a “unique” performance. However, it is not unreasonable to think that this was only one factor among many others. Indeed, I would suggest that the Joker is the film’s defining character, also because he offers a compelling metaphor for some of the most pervasive fears of the period. These fears, just like the character itself, are plural and ever changing in nature. At the descriptive level, the Joker is characterized by a wide variety of terms: “freak”; “guy”; “terrorist”; “clown”; “psychopath”; “criminal”; etc. Like his physical attributes and his deeds, these terms are polarized and make him the condensate of a form of psychic and semantic instability. In other words, the Joker appears dangerous because he stands outside of categorization, he is fundamentally “queer.” He embodies the transgression of most of the anthropological frontiers of American culture: he operates beyond the limits of legality and illegality (as he even violates the code of conduct of criminals), of reason and madness, of identity, of humanity and bestiality, life and death, but also gender and class.9 Moreover, the Joker is firmly anchored in the urban. This is manifest in the character’s introductory forward tracking shot, which shows him from the back, centered in the frame, waiting with a clown mask in his left hand at a crossroads in downtown Gotham in broad daylight, before participating in the bank robbery, he has organized (Fig. 11.1, 00:01:22). On psychological and iconographic levels, the character fits into the “urbanoïac” tradition of gangster and vigilante films, whose codes director Christopher Nolan has, by his own admission, tried to emulate.10 In these productions, which had their last days of glory in the 1970s with the Dirty Harry series (1971–1988), Taxi Driver (1969), French Connection (1971), Charley Varrick (1973), Death Wish and its four sequels (1974–1994), the chase between the protagonist and his adversary is coupled with a documentary autopsy of the urban environment: an ethnography of the city as a living space, where the development of a “healthy” community is opportune or unfavorable. The narrative overviews its emblematic spaces and unusual recesses, revealing the

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Fig. 11.1 The Joker (Heath Ledger) is seen from the back in The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008), waiting with a clown mask in his left hand at a crossroads in downtown Gotham

disturbed as well as the disruptive nature of urban space, the propensity of this environment to spawn undesirable extremes: totalitarian excesses on the one hand, libertarian extravagances on the other, fascistic law enforcers and corrupt technocrats, order and chaos, mechanical rigidity and bestiality, hypermasculine and effeminate men. On the dramatic chessboard of TDK, the Joker concentrates a large part of these drifts (excess, chaos, bestiality, dandyism), while Bruce Wayne/Batman (Christian Bale) embodies the possibility of a symmetrical reverse drift (totalitarian leaning, vigilantism, alliance with corrupt cops or technocrats, rigidity, hypermasculinity). Incidentally, Wayne’s first request to Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) can be seen as an attempt to break with his (physical) rigidity: he asks to soften and lighten his costume following the attack of dogs (which prefigures the uncontrollable bestiality of the Joker), so that he can move with more flexibility in combat. Moreover, as several dialogues underline, the two opponents are intimately linked in terms of their origins and polarized in terms of their characterization.11 The Joker appears as the degenerate product of the modern metropolis (he has escaped from a psychiatric asylum), as his seditious instability exposes the wider imbalance that surrounds him and on which he feeds. It is no wonder that the character’s specificity, which occupies most of his dialogues, until this logic is refuted on a populist mode in the final sequence, is to turn people’s loyalties, to lead them to betray their convictions and, in the end, to reveal the weakness of their values and

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their own inner queer instabilities within a space whose complexity has reinforced moral illegibility. On the other hand, Wayne/Batman represents several potential excesses because he is also, at least originally, a product of the city. However, he ultimately manages to personify the polyvalent man who lives in the city, but also in its periphery as well (the port and the family manor, which Harvey Dent wonders whether it is “within the City limits”). Even though Wayne/Batman’s daily life is part of the urban environment (he owns buildings and even a highend restaurant) unlike his enemy, he maintains a fundamental relationship with nature, notably thanks to the training he received in the Arctic landscapes (Batman Begins, 2005). Even more importantly, his authority over the metropolitan space is certified by the emblematic shots of the caped crusader that steadily play on the vertical axis of the image by placing him on the top of skyscrapers. On the level of gender relations, the antagonism staged by TDK primarily rests on the dichotomous conflict between a queer, everchanging Joker and Batman’s natural and unique masculinity. However, as I have suggested, things are more complex. The obstacles encountered by Wayne/Batman during the film and the uncertainty that weighs on his ability to triumph over the Joker are projected on the character of Harvey Dent/Two-Face (Aaron Eckhart), who functions as a composite subject in the middle of this duel. Dent/Two-Face literally embodies the (im)balance of power between the two enemies right down to the features of his face: a “white knight” at first, clearly on the side of Batman who supports him too, he ends up corrupted by the Joker, with half of the face burned by fire. Dent is the visual and psychic terrain on which the battle between reason and madness, order and chaos, masculinity and queerness is played out. In that respect, it is unsurprising that when he is compromised by the Joker, the latter is disguised as a nurse, his “feminine” side. The film implies that, contrary to Wayne, Dent is not “masculine” enough to triumph over evil, since the evil by which he is won over is a transvestite. Furthermore, in the essentialist logic of the film, Dent is a figure who, despite his appearance as a “white knight”, is marked by ambivalence and a problematic relationship with femininity from the beginning (it is said that he was already called “Two-Face” at the academy). The character of Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) plays a decisive role in this symbolic economy. While she first appears as a link between Wayne and Dent, her death at two-thirds of the narrative reveals Dent’s dependence on the feminine, as opposed to Wayne. Whereas the

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latter cannot be Batman, i.e. express the hegemonic dimension of his masculinity while attached to a woman (in this case Dawes), Dent cannot live a balanced life without a woman, at the risk of becoming Two-Face, an expression of his primary ambiguity. However, again, as Batman tells Gordon (Gary Oldman) at the end, “it’s not that simple. With the Joker it never is.” Indeed, if, as film critic Richard Newby reminded us, TDK is “ultimately a film about a rich man-child dressed up like a bat facing off against a terrorist in clown makeup”, one must hasten to point out, with Newby, “so much of the film is comprised of talk of finances, politics, extradition laws, and exposition of complicated story beats.”12 Moreover, several other issues should be added: questions of loyalty, the phenomenon of organized crime in urban areas and the possibility of restraining it, justice, surveillance, globalization, jurisdictions and the ethical limits raised by the advent of the new type of threat, omnipresent and omnipotent, that is over-dramatized by the film. Now, in order to fully grasp the gendered and technological nature of the threat posed by the Joker, with regard to these issues, it is worth pausing here to digress briefly. During the late twentieth century, the emergence of the Internet, mobile phones and other digital interfaces have been accompanied by the advent of communication regimes that have fostered the adoption of diverse and changing identities. E-mail, text messaging, social networks, virtual games, digital platforms and dating sites are all apparatuses that, by emphasizing their representational as well as communicational poles, lend themselves to the use of avatars, cloned identities, altered photographs, illustrated pseudonyms, real or imaginary characters as modalities of identification. However, this plasticity of identity has contributed to feeding, in the social imagination, a perception of screens, in general, and of the Worldwide Web, in particular, as a symbolic space of simulation with infinite potentialities. This space moreover, easily lends itself to the transgression of the so-called “natural” differences that are at the core of our social relationships: differences of gender, ethnicity, race, age, etc. In a correlative way, the generalization of these technologies and the practices associated with them has not gone without (re)activating a set of fears linked to the possibility of altering or denaturing reality. These fears are manifest in several sci-fi films of the turn of the last century, such as The Matrix franchise (1999–2003) or I, Robot (2004), and in awareness-raising campaigns that have endeavored to warn of the dangers inherent in these new forms of communication.

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For example, the 2010 “to surf safe” campaign insisted on the reality of the dangers associated with these technologies. By comparing individuals on both sides of a screen, the campaign pointed out the luring effects, inherent in mediation, which tend to be concealed. The Joker, because he resonates connotatively with fluidity of identity (he has no fingerprints), but also by virtue of his omnipotence, his continual use of screens, phones and television as a means of spreading terror, is an emblematic figure of this type of ubiquitous technological threat. From this point of view, while it is true that TDK does not really deal with the problem of terrorism per se, it nevertheless, just like Munich (2005), discussed by Frederick Wasser in this volume, underlines the importance of media technologies as a privileged instrument for generating terror in urban space.13 So that, faced with this ubiquitous, media drawing and transgressive antagonist, the masked hero, tirelessly defeated, is led to wonder how to neutralize the Joker without crossing the ethical and technological threshold that would make him fall into negative masculinity. During their first meeting, the character of Dent synthesizes this double bind in a prophetic way, making it the film’s central question: “you either die a hero or live long enough to see you become the villain.” As Newby noted, TDK dramatizes this through questions of jurisdiction, strategies and boundaries in a world made more unreadable by the advent of digital technologies. The metropolis—in this case Gotham City— metaphorizes this world’s complexity. The ethical question here applies to two fields of action: physical violence and electronic surveillance (which are more or less indirectly linked to the issue of terrorism). In the case of physical violence, Batman first gives into his impulses during the interrogation scene with the Joker [1:27:12] before showing, by saving him from certain death during their final confrontation, that he is ultimately capable of mastering his most destructive drives. As far as surveillance is concerned, the film eventually insists on the “reasonableness” of the masked hero. Although Batman resorts to mass scrutiny through his electronic sonar system, he entrusts the system’s key to Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), making him the guarantor of its one-off use. At a time marked by intense discussions around the USA Patriot Act 14 on the eve of Barack Obama’s election, and the limits of the state’s technological intrusion into the private sphere,15 this recourse to generalized surveillance seems to suggest that, according to TDK, the enemy’s exceptionalism can engage unusual means, but in a limited way. In that respect, Batman’s relationship

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to technology is very much like that of James Bond as we will see: both can use it, but must also destroy it, so as not to compromise themselves with a modernity/urbanity that is antithetical to their nature. Tellingly, the weight these dilemmas exert on the hero are aesthetically transcribed on a visual and plastic level, by the difficulties and complexity imposed by closed spaces, their ramifications and mediations, especially on television. TDK translates these challenges in a diffuse mode through its combined use of framing, staging and sets, which gives the places in which Wayne/Batman evolves a labyrinthine and oppressive aspect. The frequent joint use of low-ceilinged interior sets and of the cinemascope format tends to overwhelm the character and isolate him in the frame. Moreover, the often perspectivist framing and the way the shots play on the angles formed by the edges of the walls underline the impression of a maze, in a way that visually signifies the impasse in which Batman’s confrontation with the Joker and Gotham’s organized crime finds itself. However, TDK eventually contrasts the Joker’s queer and urban plurality with Wayne/Batman’s natural and unique masculinity. This opposition is remarkable in the case of a superhero, by definition, split between the public and private facets of his personality. Indeed, faced with an ambivalent antagonist, the hero cannot afford to appear as a cleaved character, “split in the middle” like Two-Face. So much so that TDK, more than any other Batman film adaptations, invariably suggests that Wayne and Batman are, respectively, the daytime and nighttime disguises of one and the same person. From the very first sequence, Batman must reaffirm his uniqueness by fighting false doubles in disguise. Moreover, in addition to demonstrating the complementarity between Wayne and Batman through their common struggle, the film insists on their identity. Among the possible analogies between the two characters, we can point out the fact that Wayne and Batman each drive the same kind of vehicle (a motorcycle and a car), at the same frequency, and use them for matching purposes: while Batman interposes his batmobile between an armored van and a bazooka to protect the passengers of the van, Wayne uses his sports car later in the same way, to cut off a driver who is trying to kill the passenger of a police car. More importantly, this versatility affects Batman himself, since in his final confrontation with the Joker, the character is forced to simultaneously fight against policemen and thugs. While the Joker had, until then, imposed himself as the sole “director” of this fiction, manipulating each element in order to turn the situation to his advantage (according to his principle of ambivalence), the final combat

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highlights the ubiquitous superiority of Batman in his ability to thwart the staging of the Joker, all while respecting the moral code he has imposed upon himself (according to his principle of unity). So, if Wayne/Batman is close to the Joker by being the only individual to grasp his complexity, he is ultimately shown as superior to him through his combat skills, his altruism, his trust in humankind and his ability to present himself in a different light without losing the essence of his personality.16 However, his selflessness might be only apparent. We can see it in the melodramatic climax of the film, where Batman decides to take responsibility for the murders committed by Two-Face. Following Dent’s slipping into vengeful madness, the hero sacrifices Batman’s image in order to not tarnish the aura of hope that Dent conveys to the public. With great melodramatic intensity, the last shots of Batman fleeing cops and dogs thrown after him, and especially the words voiced-over by Gordon to his son signal the hero’s capacity for sacrifice, to put himself in a position that the viewer knows is not his to take.17 As a hero-victim, the “dark knight” appears to us as a “white knight” by virtue of his ability to “endure” injustice, to conceal the moral hybridity that the Joker has managed to reveal (in the individual, but not in the community).18 Batman has found a way to successfully solve Dent’s equation: he lives long enough to become the villain (in the eyes of the public), in order to remain the hero (in our eyes). At the same time, however, the adjectives used to signify his self-sacrifice seem to be symptomatic of the fact that while the caped crusader openly renounced the use of his Orwellian surveillance system, he will nonetheless personally assume that function. As Gordon puts it: “he’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector.” In this, we can see that if Nolan’s film exploits terrorist tropes, it is to explore possible conditions of the spread of terror and the (masculine) response to it: the feeling of insecurity that stems from the destabilizing potential of phenomena as interdependent as the advent of digital technologies, the globalization of crime and the acceleration of social change.

To His Masculinity’s Secret Service Four years later, Skyfall appears just as technophobic as TDK, but organized around significantly different concerns. Cyber-terrorist Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) is characterized by a semi-pathological relationship with technology, resolutely queer features (heavy gay stereotyping, physiological malleability, mixture of softness and sadism, etc.) and a form

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of interdependence with the hero. However, these dangers take on a different function from that of the Joker in TDK. The third opus in the series in which Daniel Craig takes on the more grounded and vulnerable role of the British secret agent, Skyfall first and foremost questions Bond’s obsolescence through the threat represented by the terrorist who serves as the film’s antagonist. The problem of relevance, which is explicit in the critical reception of the film,19 is already visible in the pre-credit sequence. The latter correlates the presumed death of 007 to the use of technology by women (a younger woman in particular), which underlines the emasculating function of technological mediation. In this sequence, Bond chases a man through the streets of Istanbul and onto the roof of a train after he has killed one of his teammates and stolen an electronic file containing the names of British agents operating undercover. Bond and his teammate Eve (Naomie Harris) are somehow “remotely operated” by M (Judi Dench), who controls their actions blindly, using headsets, from the MI6 headquarters in London. The killing of 007 occurs at the end of this pursuit, by “accident,” when M, because of her lack of confidence in Bond’s efficiency, remotely orders Eve, who is holding the two men fighting on the train at gunpoint, to shoot Bond’s opponent, despite putting 007 at risk. Eve misses her target, Bond is hit and drops from the top of a bridge ending his fall into a river, left for dead. This passage from life to death is subsequently confirmed by the macabre iconography of the credits’ sequence. But right after it, a bombing by the cyber-terrorist Silva occurs at the heart of MI6 headquarters and triggers the decline of M and the resurrection of 007 (this is the film’s theme, which the hero verbalizes several times). Back in London trying to remedy the situation, Bond sees his relevance and physical abilities radically questioned by M, even though the latter has also been reprimanded for her inability to prevent the terrorist attacks (the loss of the file in Turkey and the bombing). The wrinkles of Craig’s face are further accentuated here by the make-up and lighting work. However, his fall from grace is thematized by several other elements: the physical and psychological tests to which he is subjected to (that he fails, and the psychiatrist’s detection of an infantile trauma linked to the death of his parents); the advent of the cyber-terrorist who serves as his enemy and a distorting mirror-image; and the insolent youth and computer skills of his new Quartermaster, Q (Ben Wishaw). If the pre-credit sequence tacitly exposes the lethal potentialities of the alliance between technology and the feminine, the characterization of all

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the other characters, starting with Silva, confirms, throughout the narrative, the fundamentally emasculating effects of technology. On the one hand, Silva portrays a former MI6 agent of the same generation as Bond, who has been “queerized” and even degenerated by technology, perceptible in the monstrous deformity of his face, when he reveals it to Bond and M to expose her past mistakes. The first encounter between the two men, on an abandoned island, closely articulates information technologies, and the power they supposedly give him to terrorize the world’s governments and destabilize the markets, with Silva’s effeminacy and his “queer” views (his discourse on maternal betrayal and the possibility of changing the nature of individuals through his allegory about rats). This scene, which is charged with heavy homoerotic and sadistic overtones on the part of Silva, represents the character with stereotypically gay traits (very mannered gestures, an “unctuous” diction, peroxided hair, flashy vintage clothing, sexual forwardness, etc.)20 while aligning his body with the rows of computers and servers that garnish the room. On the other hand, the young computer prodigy who now assumes the role of Q is also symbolically infantilized/feminized by technology: he is a rather slender, hairless and pimply-faced character who, by his own admission, is afraid to fly, likes sedentary life and pajamas. Moreover, he spends the entire film in closed, often underground spaces, which connote a form of intrauterine regression. Incidentally, Q and Silva share the same faith in the almost omnipotent power of computers.21 In the rhetoric of the film, modern technology appears for both characters as an all empowering tool until it is finally revealed, partly because of this blind faith, as a source of weakness, even though it is connoted as such in terms of gender from the outset. The scene of Q’s first meeting of Bond seems emblematic of the efficiency and intergenerational issues raised by Skyfall. The two characters are sitting side-by-side on a bench in the National Gallery, contemplating Joseph M. W. Turner’s oil painting The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up (1839). The painting, which depicts the towing by a steamboat of an old warship doomed to be scrapped against the backdrop of a setting sun, forms the pretext for a verbal exchange about Bond’s obsolescence, making an analogy between the agent and the old vessel. Q starts the conversation by expressing the feeling of melancholy that the painting evokes in him before turning to 007 and to ask a rhetorical question: “the inevitability of time, don’t you think?” The exchange, which dramatizes issues of power relations between generations raised by

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the passage of time, takes on an obvious political twist when Q asserts that “age is no guarantee of efficiency” and 007 replies that “youth is no guarantee of innovation.” This courteous type of rivalry is a common one: it pits the old, well-established veteran of the field against a sophisticated but inexperienced Millennial. Initially, on the visual level, the symmetry of the composition of the wide shots and the shot/reverse shot regime establishes a balanced comparative logic between the geek and the spy. This non-hierarchical depiction of the characters echoes the moderation of their discussion: each of them emphasizes the specificity of his skills and function, in which age and knowledge of technology, respectively, serve as a basis for questioning the usefulness of the other. However, if the exchange takes place in a museum that stresses the possibility of Bond’s destiny as a “vestige”, the agent’s statement that it is difficult to really assess (and therefore act in) a situation if one remains at home “in pajamas” translates into shots of 007 in low angle perspective. Moreover, an increase of his screen time suggests the ascendancy he has just taken on Q. It is not surprising, then, that Bond recognizes a powerful figure in Turner’s painted ship who metaphorizes the superiority that his actions will have to actualize. But the movement of Q in the right portion of the shot, framed in counter-dive, when he gets up to leave the room, places him in turn, finally, in a position of superiority over Bond. It is at this point that he enjoins the agent to “return the equipment in one piece” with a paternalistic tone. Finally, the rudimentary nature of the gadgets given to Bond (about which he makes ironic comments) indicates that the point here is not to rely on technology or to launch into a race with it to neutralize the cyber-terrorism that threatens the social order. Admittedly, Bond tries at first to measure himself against technological acceleration by literally trying to catch up with Silva and “the train of modernity.” The recurrence of the motif of Bond racing and then jumping after a modern apparatus shows this well, whether it is the train in Istanbul, the lift in Shanghai building or the tube in London. Moreover, the hero is manipulated from start to finish by Silva and his computer strategies. His initial trajectory, which goes from ultra-modern Shanghai to the island left in ruins from the Second World War, passing the traditional casino in Macao and ending up in London, connotes a spatial and temporal disorientation that expresses the character’s disarray. However, at the end of this race, after his action proves inoperative in an urban context rendered chaotic, Bond gives up this frantic pursuit. Significantly, it is on foot, running through the streets of London, that the hero tries to

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reach the parliamentary hearing where M is at risk of being murdered by Silva. In this sequence, the recourse to crosscutting is crucial. The editing fluctuates between three narrative lines: 007’s running through the streets of London, Silva’s arrival at the site, and M’s recitation of the last five lines of Alfred Tennyson’s Ulysses (1833, 1842) in front of the “bureaucrats” who seek to hinder M’s and Bond’s actions. The sequence thus brings together in a melodramatic manner the advance of the omnipotent enemy that threatens social order, M’s verbal determination to pursue it (to in fine trust 007), and the tangible expression of this will in the physical endurance of Bond himself. The success of the hero-victim who is constantly failing, but manages in extremis to prevent the assassination of M hinges on his abandonment of modernity. This melodramatically resonates with Tennyson’s poem and the emphasis placed on the primacy of will over age: We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are, One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

The point could not be clearer: if the past, in all its most venerable aspects (Victorian poetry), can inspire the hero’s action, it is the latter’s unwavering resolve, actualized in a literally pedestrian way, that testifies to his technological independence and superiority over cyber-terrorism. The scene culminates in a gunfight in which the cards are reshuffled: M takes refuge, helpless, under a table while Bond and Mallory (Ralph Fiennes), the man who is expected to succeed M, bravely intervene to defend her. The narrative and symbolic turn, marked by the hero’s renunciation of the technological sophistication that lays at the heart of the terrorist power of its enemy and his race against time, is the beginning of a refoundation that will take the form of a journey into the past, via a return to the family’s home that gives the film its title. Bond reaffirms the natural superiority of his roots by dusting the Aston Martin DB5 of his debut on the famous John Barry tune (that is his signature) and by returning to the wild and stripped-down Scottish moorland landscape. In the final confrontation with Silva, 007 resolves the Oedipal conflict that condenses his relationship with technology, with women and with the past. He overcomes these relationships by using sharp edged

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weapons, craftsmanship (the traps he sets in sort of a Home Alone style) and a resurrection of sorts. This resurrection becomes possible by going through purgation process by the four fundamental natural elements: fire (the explosion in the house), earth (the underground gallery), air (the blast of air of the explosion in the gallery) and of course water (his fall into the frozen lake, which echoes his fall in the pre-credit sequence).22 This resurrection is also based on the stabbing to death of his pathological double, emblematic of the technologically degenerate part of his present, the removal of M, the bureaucratic mother who symbolizes femininity and the past, and the exclusion of the young Q, who remained in London. It is a rebirth and a rejuvenation: we are in the hero’s place of origin, where he was born, in the words of his former gamekeeper, and where his parents died. The concluding sequence confirms that the character’s relevance rests on his ascendancy with respect to technology, urbanity, femininity and the representatives of the different generations that surround him. Q has been obeying Bond ever since the latter managed to identify, because of his seniority, the abandoned subway station through which Silva intended to escape and which did not appear on the digital modeling of Q. The deaths of Silva and M lead, in the concluding shots, to the renewal of Bond’s physical domination of the city from the outside: just as Batman regularly does, he firmly stands on top of the MI6 building, in an overhanging position in relation to the roofs of London (see Fig. 11.2). The character of Eve, Bond’s former clumsy teammate, then turns out to be Money Penny (M’s famous secretary in the saga), a racialized woman who now knows her place out of the field and voluntarily gets behind the desk she was “destined” to occupy. The film’s “return to equilibrium” is subsequently reflected in the remasculinization and rejuvenation of MI6’s supervision with Mallory’s access to M’s position. Although Mallory was initially suspected of being an emasculated technocrat (suggested by his epicene surname and his official appearance), he behaves, during the attack on parliament, as a man of action, and thus far from the caricature of a bureaucrat to which the film had pretended to subject him. The homosocial pact between he and Bond is sealed by the mutual recognition of their masculinity and maturity, which is itself certified by the change of pictorial reference on the wall of M’s office in the background. Turner’s oil painting in the National Gallery has indeed given way to an earlier canvas: H.M.S. “Victory” heavily engaged at the battle of Trafalgar, by Thomas Buttersworth (1825), which depicts the

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Fig. 11.2 James Bond (Daniel Craig) stands, similar to the Batman character in the super hero franchise, in a dominating position on the rooftops of the city of London in Skyfall (directed by Sam Mendes)

same “Temerary” ship as in Turner’s painting, but at the height of her military glory. By a game of temporal trade, the old vessel has replaced the new one on the basis of its invalidation by the facts. Based on a similar narrative canvas and an attention to the effects of the rise of technology in urban space, Skyfall still produces a discourse of a different nature from TDK. While both films are melodramatically apologetic about the hegemonic masculinity of their heroes, Skyfall is less interested in the ethical limits of the means to neutralize an inner threat than in arguing for a shameless assertion of the preeminence of the “mature” and natural man in a context where all other categories have mutated under the effect of technology. The hero, initially suspected of being obsolete, regains authority by virtue of his exploits. This is relevant at a historical time, when political tensions between Baby Boomers and Millennials arise, as the former generation arrives at retirement age and its relationship to power (and its [un]willingness to renounce it) is put into question. In this context, Bond rebuilds his stature on his ability to infuse others with the cult not of the old but of experience, his ability to rehabilitate the best of the past in a context where technological development generates trouble and anxiety. As Skyfall ’s nostalgic teaser poster indicates, 007 manages to make this “past become the present.”

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The Terrors and Pleasures of a New/Old Social Order It seems now possible to reflect more precisely on some of the questions raised at the beginning of this chapter. In order to do so, one must still point that each of these films includes a key scene in which the hero converses with his captured nemesis. These scenes, which, visually speaking, operate through a shot/reverse shot and mirror-like dispositive, are noteworthy because they condensate the films’ discursive stakes. Their dramatic effects stem from the shifting power balance between the characters and the suggestion that the antagonist is not only very similar to the protagonist, but also superior to him in several ways. This suggestion temporarily undermines the Manichaeism constituting the melodramatic mode and over-dramatizes the turmoil induced by the values and traits that personify the enemy, at the expense of those endorsed by the hero. In TDK, this imbalance manifests itself through a break in the 180-degree rule, whereas in Skyfall, it is perceptible in the gendered splitting of the antagonist’s reflections in the glass walls that surround him, where his image overlaps with both M and Bond. But if TDK, like Skyfall, seems to steer away from any clear-cut Manicheism at first, it is only to strongly—and more melodramatically—reintroduce sharp moral and political binaries at (or near) the end. Consequently, I would contend that the remarkable public and critical success of both these films can be explained—like that of some of the most celebrated cultural productions—by their ability to express the zeitgeist, but above all to create fascinating “monstrous” figures characteristic of that zeitgeist. They make their audience viscerally and vicariously feel the anarchical pleasures of chaos, the vertigo of radical change, of the indeterminate, before reaffirming a “stable and desirable” social order, despite the fascination exerted by the delight of unsettling contrasts.23 In this respect, TDK and Skyfall belong to a broad historical paradigm: they are part of a long line of productions that have been described as “postmodern”, because they metaphorically address the uncertainties, the “terrors” linked to actual terrorist attacks, globalization, late capitalism and the social, political, economic and cultural modifications brought about by the fast-booming of technological and epistemological change. However, as we have seen, they nonetheless are also far more historically specific by taking on issues such as ethics of safekeeping, political

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upheaval and ageing. Given the “desirable” dimension of their antagonists, their propensity to engage us, to convey pleasure and to accommodate conflicting meanings, it is not unexpected that the Joker became a popular figure a decade later, in a critically as well as commercially successful film such as Joker (2019). Moving from being a “terrorist” to being a “revolutionary”, the character follows a trajectory comparable to that of other renowned antagonists whose fascination heralded their conversion from (often queer) monster into heroes: the Terminator (from Terminator [1984] to Terminator 2: Judgment Day [1991]) or Dr. Hannibal Lecter (from The Silence of the Lambs [1990] to Hannibal [2001]). In this symbolic economy, the terrorist figure has no essential meaning outside of the binary and contingent relationship he forms with the protagonist. Just like his adversary, he stands as a historically determined character: the “alterized hero” of a protagonist who, in the words French philosopher Georges Canguilhem borrows from zoologist Louis Roule, is truly the “normalized monster.”24 As we have seen, these films are thematically much less interested in the problems of terrorism than in the broader anxieties, desires and fantasies induced by the rise of new technologies, especially in urban spaces. In particular, the changes that they produce with respect to social hierarchies, whether in terms of gender or age. In this situation, it is interesting to note that even in Bodies of Lies (2008), one of the rare films of the period to explicitly thematize terrorism on a geopolitical level, uncompromising with technology is presented as being key to the hero’s achievements. It is the fact that terrorists no longer use digital technologies that first gives them the advantage over field agent Ferris (Leonardo DiCaprio). Moreover, Ferris’ actions are constantly undermined by the very technophile Ed Hoffman (Russell Crowe), before he disassociates himself from the techno-centric methods of his superior. Americanist Susan Jeffords had shown that the films, but also the novels, centered on the Vietnam War of the 70s and 80s were never really concerned with the geopolitical stakes of the conflict, but with the remasculinization of an America symbolically feminized by the effects of military defeat (and the counter-culture climate).25 In the same way, TDK and Skyfall are masculine melodramas of their time, tales that heavily draw on the pleasures of powerlessness and power in order to reaffirm the hegemony of the white, heterosexual and natural man in an urban environment whose social order is threatened by forms of “terrorism” largely based on technological proliferation. Hence Gotham

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and London allegorize inherently “perverted” contexts in which the advent of digital technologies, as these films caution us, grant excessive power to personalities who are literally, but probably only momentarily, too eccentric.

Notes 1. In American films, the decade is schematically dominated by three types of terrorists: European, often Irish characters [Patriot Games (1992), Blown Away (1994), The Devil’s Own (1997), The Peacemaker (1997)]; foreign, often Arab terrorists [True Lies (1994), Executive Decision (1996), The Siege (1998)]; and those I would call “playful” terrorists, who engage in a duel with their adversary primarily for the “sake of the game” [Demolition Man (1993), In the Line of Fire (1993), Speed (1994), The Jackal (1997), Face/Off (1997)]. 2. But it could just have well been New York City and San Francisco in The Avengers and Star Trek into Darkness. 3. TDK henceforth. 4. Raewyn Connell, Masculinities (St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1995). 5. Charles-Antoine Courcoux, Des machines et des hommes. Masculinité et technologie dans le cinéma américain contemporain (Chêne-Bourg: Georg, 2017). 6. I borrow the term “urbanoïac” from film scholar Carol Clover, for whom it refers to a primal and properly urban fear of the rural world. Importantly for me, Clover points out that this fear has its roots in a city/country split (civilized/wild) based on the idea that the urban is a site of material comfort and therefore of effemination: “City man may be rich, but he is also soft; and he is soft because he is rich.” Carol Clover, Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 132. 7. Linda Williams, Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001) 26–42. 8. Heath Ledger received several posthumous tributes for his performance, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor. Regarding the emphasis given to the Joker in the critical reception, see: David Ansen, “‘Dark Knight’ Is Grim, but Impressive Epic”, Newsweek, July 11, 2008; Peter Bradshaw, “The Dark Knight”, The Guardian, July 25, 2008; Scott Foundas, “Heath Ledger Peers into The Abyss in The Dark Knight”, The Village Voice, July 16, 2008; and Claudia Puig, “Ledger’s Talent Lives on as The Joker in ‘Dark Knight’”, USA Today, August 1, 2008.

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9. The Joker kills mobsters as well as policemen, blacks and whites, sets off bombs and robs banks, disguises himself as a (male) clown and a (female) nurse, assaults men and women alike, searches for money and then burns it, uses bladed weapons and heavy artillery, attacks free citizens as well as prisoners, etc. 10. Nolan’s recurring reference in interviews is Heat (1995). See Aron Couch, “All the Ways ‘The Dark Knight’ Borrowed from ‘Heat’ Revealed”, The Hollywood Reporter, February 6, 2017. Online: https:// www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/dark-knight-heat-comparisonsrevealed-video-972620. 11. The film highlights on several occasions that it was the advent of the Batman that induced the appearance of the Joker, that there is some sort of escalation in the means criminals and “good guys” alike allow themselves to confront each other. 12. Richard Newby, “The Complicated Legacy of ‘The Dark Knight’”, The Hollywood Reporter, July 14, 2018. 13. See my “To Be or Not to Be (Born). The Spielbergian Hero and the Uterine Challenges of the Digital Revolution”, in David Roche (dir.), Steven Spielberg: Hollywood Wunderkind & Humanist (Montpellier: Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2018), 235–251. 14. The issue of the USA Patriot Act is the subject of an explicit thematic treatment through the Dent Act in The Dark Knight Rises (2012). 15. See the two first seasons of Homeland (2011–2020). 16. As such, Batman, like Bond, falls squarely into my category of the “polyvalent hero”. See Courcoux, Des machines, 333–378. 17. The narrative establishes a conniving relationship with its audience through the mediation of Commissioner Gordon’s son. Unlike the citizens of Gotham, he knows that the hero is an innocent victim who, out of moral integrity, is willing to take upon himself a guilt that is not his own. 18. The fact, in the end, that neither the inmates nor the passengers of the two ferryboats detonated the bombs that had been placed on board their boats indeed demonstrates the accuracy of the faith that Batman has placed in the benevolence of the human community at large. 19. Peter Bradshaw states that “Daniel Craig’s Bond looks older, more careworn, slightly more jug-eared. This is a Bond who has something to prove, and who could be damaged goods, physically and even mentally”, whereas Richard Corliss asks “Is a half-century too long a career for a movie secret agent?” to answer a couple of paragraphs later “[a]s Bond is revived, so is the franchise”. See: Peter Bradshaw, “Skyfall”, The Guardian, October 25, 2012; Richard Corliss, “Skyfall: Bond and Bardem Go Boom”, Time, November 9, 2012.

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20. Silva’s character is, in that respect, in line with a certain Bondian tradition, which, from Red Grant (Robert Shaw) in From Russia With Love (1962) to Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) in Casino Royale (2006) through Stamper (Götz Otto) in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and Xenia Onatopp (Famke Jansen) in GoldenEye (1995), has often provided its megalomaniac villains or their “henchman” with gay stereotypes of their times and a sadism whose function is to metaphorize their “deviant” sexual drive. It should also be noted that, exceptionally, the character of Silva merges these two types of characters, since he is his own henchman. 21. Just before Silva appears for the first time, his associate Sévérine (Bérénice Marlohe) states about his actions that “[it]’s amazing the panic you can cause with a single computer”, while Q tells Bond earlier: “I can do more damage on my laptop, sitting in my pajamas, before my first cup of Earl Grey than you can do a year in the field.” 22. Sam Mendes will elevate this ritual of purification by nature into the main organizational principle of 1917 (2019), in which the heroisation of the protagonist (George MacKay) also involves brutal encounters with earth, fire, air and finally water. 23. In this situation, it is hardly surprising that rational planning (the Joker and Silva’s Machiavellian “plan”) is associated with the villain, while natural improvisation is linked to the hero. 24. Georges Canguilhem, “Le Normal et le pathologique”, La Connaissance de la vie (Paris: Vrin, 2015 [1965]), 206. 25. Susan Jeffords, The Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War (Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989).

References Canguilhem, Georges, La Connaissance de la vie. Paris: Vrin, 2015 [1965]. Clover, Carol. Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. Connell, Raewyn. Masculinities. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1995. Courcoux, Charles-Antoine. Des machines et des hommes. Masculinité et technologie dans le cinéma américain contemporain. Chêne-Bourg: Georg, 2017. ———. “To Be or Not to Be (Born). The Spielbergian Hero and the Uterine Challenges of the Digital Revolution.” In David Roche (ed.), Steven Spielberg: Hollywood Wunderkind & Humanist. Montpellier: Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2018, 235–251. Jeffords, Susan, The Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War. Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989.

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Williams, Linda. Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001.

Films (list any TV and film sources mentioned in the text) 1917 . Directed by Sam Mendes. United States, 2019. The Avengers . Directed by Joss Whedon. United States, 2012. Batman Begins. Directed by Christopher Nolan. United States, 2005. Blown Away. Directed by Stephen Hopkins. United States, 1994. Bodies of Lies . Directed by Ridley Scott. United States, 2008. Casino Royale. Directed by Martin Campbell. United Kingdom, 2006. Charley Varrick. Directed by Don Siegel. United States, 1973. The Dark Knight . Directed by Christopher Nolan. United States, 2008. The Dark Knight Rises. Directed by Christopher Nolan. United States, 2012. Death Wish series. Directed by Michael Winner, J. Lee Thompson and Allan A. Goldstein. United States, 1974–1994. Demolition Man. Directed by Marco Brambilla. United States, 1993. The Devil’s Own. Directed by Alan J. Pakula. United States, 1997. Dirty Harry series. Directed by Don Siegel, Ted Post, James Fargo, Clint Eastwood, Buddy Van Horn. United States, 1971–1988. Executive Decision. Directed by Stuart Baird. United States, 1996. Face/Off . Directed by John Woo. United States, 1997. French Connection. Directed by William Friedkin. United States, 1971. From Russia with Love. Directed by Terence Young. United Kingdom, 1963. GoldenEye. Directed by Martin Campbell. United Kingdom, 1995. Hannibal. Directed by Ridley Scott. United States, 2001. Heat. Directed by Michael Mann. United States, 1995. Homeland. Developed by Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa based on the Israeli series Prisoners of War created by Gideon Raff. Produced by Lauren White, Katie O’Hara, Charlotte Stoudt, Mandy Patinkin, Sunday Stevens, 2011–2020. I, Robot. Directed by Alex Proyas. United States, 2004. In the Line of Fire. Directed by Wolfgang Petersen. United States, 1993. The Jackal. Directed by Michael Caton-Jones. United States, 1997. Joker. Directed by Todd Phillips. United States, 2019. The Matrix Triolgy. Directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowski. United States, 1999– 2003. Munich. Directed by Steven Spielberg. United States, 2005. Patriot Games. Directed by Phillip Noyce. United States. 1992. The Peacemaker. Directed by Mimi Leder. United States, 1997.

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The Siege. Directed by Edward Zwick. United States, 1998. The Silence of the Lambs. Directed by Jonathan Demme. United States, 1990. Skyfall. Directed by Sam Mendes. United Kingdom, 2012. Speed. Directed by Jan de Bont. United States, 1994. Star Trek into Darkness. Directed by J. J. Abrams. United States, 2013. Taxi Driver. Directed by Martin Scorsese. United States, 1969. Terminator. Directed by James Cameron. United States, 1984. Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Directed by James Cameron. United States, 1991. Tomorrow Never Dies. Directed by Roger Spottiswoode. United Kingdom, 1997. True Lies. Directed by James Cameron. United States, 1994.

CHAPTER 12

Terrorism and Gender in Eye in the Sky and Zero Dark Thirty: Women and Girls on the War Front in Contemporary Cinema Karen A. Ritzenhoff

This chapter discusses the depiction of modern war with drones and cyber surveillance in contemporary film to fight international terrorism and the implications this fictitious world in popular culture may have for the acceptance of warfare in the United States and Europe. It will also address the changing gender roles in post 9/11 action thrillers where women are pulled into a digital war theatre—with a certain entertainment value due to adrenaline provoking suspense—that is conducted remotely, via screens, digital files and recorded videotapes, far from any trenches but with equally lethal consequences.1 Prominent female protagonists in an overwhelmingly male dominated environment are the ones who push the narrative forward, adding their observations and ultimately leadership to the success of violent military missions. Thereby they are

K. A. Ritzenhoff (B) Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, CT, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 E. Caoduro et al. (eds.), Mediated Terrorism in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73511-1_12

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defying some of the gender stereotypes depicted in archetypical war narratives where women mind the hearth and home, guard the children until their battle-stricken husbands/partners/brothers return from their trials and tribulations. Instead, the films discussed here develop an image of female intelligence in combat situations. The essay will rely on close visual analysis and focus primarily on these two movies to show the different approaches in representing the conflicts of divergent war scenarios.

Drone Warfare in the Twenty-First Century When American drones destroy targets in the Middle East nowadays, no cameras are present. This is distinctly different from, for example 2003, when the Iraq War was launched with a military offensive, broadcast live on singular televisions. When Gaddafi from Libya was captured and assassinated in 2011, the picture of his mutilated, blood-stained naked upper body was shown in such a way as to depict him as a war criminal on international television screens. His shattered body was used to document American American triumph over terrorism in the same way as the capture of Osama Bin Laden was used to herald it as an act of revenge against the terror attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon on 9/11. As Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty (2012) illustrates, Bin Laden’s dead body was discarded without a trace. In January 2020, President Donald Trump responded to the killing of Qasem Soleimani with a press release, so-called “Remarks” from Mar-a-Lago, available on the White House website until noon on January 20, 2021 when President Joseph Biden’s government was sworn in: Last night, at my direction, the United States military successfully executed a flawless precision strike that killed the number-one terrorist anywhere in the world, Qasem Soleimani. Soleimani was plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel, but we caught him in the act and terminated him. Under my leadership, America’s policy is unambiguous: To terrorists who harm or intend to harm any American, we will find you; we will eliminate you. We will always protect our diplomats, service members, all Americans, and our allies.2

Cities in Syria that have been thoroughly destroyed by bombs, not only by Russian Forces but also similarly by American-led coalitions, rarely make it onto screens. Unlike the face-to-face combat that Steven

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Spielberg describes in Munich (2005)—discussed by Frederick Wasser in Chapter 3 of our collection—where Mossad agent Avner (Eric Bana) hunts down members of the Palestinian terrorist group “Black September” throughout the world in the mid-1970s to avenge the Munich assassination of eleven Israeli members of the Olympic Team, modern warfare is carried out remotely. The British action thriller Eye in the Sky (2015) shows how a drone bomb, launched from a container war center in the Nebraska desert, can eliminate a suspected terrorist in a specific house in Kenya. Drone War has replaced the battlefield, targeting suspects with precision.3 American researcher Anand Gopal writes in the December 21, 2020 issue of The New Yorker Magazine that American recent “remote warfare” is challenging the codes of international conduct in Armed Conflict, indicating a crisis in the legal understanding of what constitutes “military necessity” in contrast to state sanctioned mass killings.4

Women in Charge in Eye in the Sky and Zero Dark Thirty In the international co-production Eye in the Sky, directed by Gavin Hood from South Africa, the driving force behind a military anti-terrorism mission to fight the East African fundamentalists Al-Shabaab, is a woman: the British Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren), a sixty-year-old war veteran who runs the operation with an iron fist. In the US thriller Zero Dark Thirty, American director Kathryn Bigelow casts the then 35-year old Jessica Chastain as a young CIA operative who tracks and succeeds in leading a US run kill mission to eliminate Osama Bin Laden, the leader of Al-Quaeda. Similar to the iconic image of President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the then Vice President Joe Biden sitting in a crowded room to follow the capture of Bin Laden, Eye in the Sky allows viewers access to different war rooms. These views connect interrelated screens and plotlines that offer aerial views of the moving terrorist targets, a visual strategy to enhance the building of hurdles and surprises, needed to be overcome by last minute tactical changes, that is valid in both films. However, the film audience has access to an additional platform, the actual film footage that is shot on the ground in Kenya. This interplay between drone footage and the movie footage creates a conflict between military and civilian realities: a little girl, Alia (Aisha Takow),

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enters the frame and complicates the decision making and ethics of the kill mission because she would be murdered in a potential drone attack. The interconnected screens work like aerial spider webs in Eye in the Sky. Not only are two US pilots in a trailer in the Nebraska desert looking at drone footage on their parallel monitors but there are several war rooms with concurrent screens, offering multiple views, in the United Kingdom, Hawaii and the United States as well as on the ground in Kenya. They all have seamless access to the same image feeds, illustrating a highly sophisticated network of intelligence that bridges vast distances with little delay. Colonel Powell is initially shown in her morning routine of getting up in her own house and venturing with a cup of coffee to her own private war room in an office just a few steps from her kitchen. Even though this scenario may have been unusual for a high-ranking military official in a film in 2016, we have learned during the global pandemic in 2020/2021 that the boundaries between private space and the work space have become seamless. Powell is shown as being obsessed by her work hunting international terrorists captured in a series of images that track their various stages of disguise on a wall. Particularly important is the revelation that one of the few women in the Al-Shabaab group is a British civilian, Susan Danford (Lex King) who wears a veil in one of the shots, indicating that she might have converted to Islam and has been radicalized. She has changed her name of Ayesha Al-Hady (see Fig. 12.1).

Fig. 12.1 British Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren) is working in a home office close to her kitchen to visualize her manhunt of international AlShabaab terrorists in Eye in the Sky (Gavin Hood, 2015). She uses old-fashioned threads to connect the dots as well as cutting edge digital technology

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In Powell’s private office, she has built her own strategy of visualizing the movement of the terrorists: images of suspects are pinned to a large display, crossing the entire world map, connected with yellow threads and post-its, showcasing that her search, the hunt, has taken many years. She accesses her laptop computer with her finger print, looking at news coverage of terrorist insurgents, covered in head gear and being heavily armed, familiar stock images and menacing visual clichées of international terrorism.5 The majority of the time Powell is depicted not in her night robe and galoshes (as at the very beginning of the movie) but with a stern composure in military uniform, directing a large control room with subservient personnel. She is basked in cold blue light, fixated on the large screens of international transmissions where the war scenario plays out. The sophisticated digital multiplicity of platforms and the high military presence stand in contrast with the work of the local agent, on the ground in Kenya, a skinny young man, Jama Farah (Barkhad Abdi) who operates drone equipment in the size of a bird and then as small as a kitchen fly bug with a handy little remote (see Fig. 12.2). He feeds the signal from a work station in a defunct VW bus, assisted by another young woman. The “eye in the sky” is not only the aerial view of the drone footage but also originates from the small gadgets that have tremendous potency. Rather than watching only the film screen, the audience follows the same visual path as the participants of this secret military mission and

Fig. 12.2 A surveillance drone in Eye in the Sky (Gavin Hood, 2015) has only the size of a bug. Its signal can be beamed to military headquarters and labs all over the world. It supposedly helps to rule out ambiguities about terrorist targets in Kenya

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are part of the connected web to supposedly eradicate evil. Ironically, the goal of the terrorists who are represented in Eye in the Sky is that their murderous attacks on civilians in a shopping mall in Kenya are to be broadcast on international media in order to create havoc and instability. The plot gets further complicated because the initially planned capture mission of the terrorists transforms into a kill mission from above. A drone missile is supposed to be dropped on a specific house in a Nairobi suburb, populated by warlords who sit, heavily armed in jeeps, monitoring the neighborhood. The film reveals without doubt due to the “drone fly on the wall” that the terrorists harbour weapons and even record a suicide video while assembling their suicide vests with explosives. The evidence is indisputable because the local agent has flown his mini drone, camouflaged as a flying bug fly, into the house with a signal that is strong enough to be transmitted instantly around the world. Despite the highest degree of military intelligence and technology, Alia gets in the way of the mission, complicating the war zone. Her presence adds ambiguity to the military mission because she is an innocent bystander. At first it seems as if everybody in the different war rooms roots for her and wants her to survive. Alia is a powerful symbol that stands for the entire civilian population in warfare who are suffering from drone attacks and remote warfare. Contrary to the killing of a child in the blockbuster war film by Clint Eastwood, American Sniper (2014), where a young boy is about to launch a hand grenade, handed to him by his veiled mother, and haul it at an American tank, Alia is innocent. If she dies, the military mission can also be scrutinized by the international press. Therefore, the military and political envoy has to decide whether the little girl could be sacrificed in the drone attack for the greater good of the mission. The plot is quite different in Kathryn Bigelow’s 2012 thriller Zero Dark Thirty. There is no doubt that CIA operative Maya (Jessica Chastain) is dealing exclusively with war criminals. From the outset, Maya witnesses and assists in the torture of terrorist suspects.6 This has been a controversial aspect of Bigelow’s initial representation of fighting terrorism in so-called “Black Sites,” run by the American government clandestinely. Maya is part of another man hunt. She wants to capture the head of AlQuaeda, Osama Bin Laden. It takes her more than ten years for her hunt to succeed. By the end of this journey, she tells the SEALS team that will execute her orders, “I didn’t even want to use you guys with your gear and your velcro and all that bullshit. I wanted to drop a bomb!” Her rationale is that a bomb could be precise and take out the enemy even

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more effectively, a striking parallel to Eye in the Sky. Maya is speaking to special troops in an airport hangar (similar to the one depicted on the cover of our collection) explaining how to execute a secret mission to capture the terrorist leader who has been hiding in a compound with his family in Pakistan, close to a Military Academy.7 Maya has worked obsessively, poring over piles of videotapes of interviews with suspected terrorists, many of whom also talking under torture, to locate Bin Laden’s whereabouts and is determined to complete her mission with heavy military force (see Fig. 12.3) “You cannot run a global network with interconnected cells from a cave,” explains the secret agent when asked how she tracked the terrorist leader. Maya has monitored these recorded tapes of suspected terrorists who were interviewed by the CIA, and followed digital signals to detect the location of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. Her patience and diligence, supposedly a female trait that is enhanced by the fact that Maya does not have any family obligations or even a romantic partner, are rewarded. At the end of the movie she is allowed to take a glimpse at the mutilated body of the terrorist leader and unzip a body bag to watch his face because his remains will get discarded to prevent further aggression (see Fig. 12.4). In her quest, she has indeed hunted a man, not for romance

Fig. 12.3 Special CIA Operative Agent Maya (Jessica Chastain) is tracking military intelligence by diligently working on reviewing recordings online to find Osama Bin Laden in Kathryn Bigelow’s Award winning war film Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

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Fig. 12.4 CIA Agent Maya (Jessica Chastain) identifies the dead body of AlQuaeda leader Osama Bin Laden by unzipping a body bag after his capture in Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012)

but to kill. The body is supposedly destroyed. Unlike the images that were made public after the capture of Colonel Gaddafi from Libya and Saddam Hussein in Iraq, there were no official pictures or trophy shots of Osama Bin Laden. The American film scholar Linda Williams has explained that these shots of mutilated terrorist bodies have been used by the American government to show their superiority in the fight against International terrorism.8 In Eye in the Sky only body parts are remaining after a drone missile has hit a suspected house in a neighborhood in Kenya where several insurgents plotted a suicide bombing mission that would have killed innocent bystanders at a shopping mall as collateral damage. The earlobe of a female British terrorist can be spotted in the rubble and a close-up digital picture, taken by a drone camera, can then be sent electronically to a lab in Hawaii that is able to trace and confirm the identity of the enemy. The entire war manoeuvre is executed remotely. Contrary to Zero Dark Thirty, this war film relies on British-US collaboration of the military as well as politicians in several separate war rooms, two in the United Kingdom, the United States and Kenya. One of the members of the British war room in Eye in the Sky points out that Nairobi is not an officially designated

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enemy of the UK and the USA and therefore, a drone attack might not be understood as a necessary military strike. The rationale is that the international press might be reacting with disapproval, especially if there are reported civilian casualties due to an American drone. Colonel Katherine Powell, similar to Maya, has spent years of searching and finding international terrorists. The only obstacle for her to authorize the dropping of the lethal missile is the existence of Alia, who happens to sell her mother’s bread loafs on a street stand in front of the terrorist house. In the process of the attack, she will be killed. The British-American task force has to weigh the effect, the death of a child would have on the publication of the prevented terrorist ambush in the press. Despite the fact that women are associated with the desire to protect their children, Colonel Powell is driven by a call to arms, overriding the objections of the political envoy that tries to prevent her from going through with the missile launch. In the siege of Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Zero Dark Thirty, women and children are also being affected, hurt and killed. Maya is equally convinced that the terrorist leader and his capture outweigh any sacrifice by other family members who happen to be near-by. While the little girl in Eye in the Sky has no connection to the terrorists who operate in her neighborhood, the family members of the Bin Laden compound are part of the terrorist network. Their death is not documented in detail. The killing of the little girl, however, is the central plot point of the movie. By focusing on one innocent child, the entire cruelty of drone warfare and the traumatic effect it has on soldiers who execute the commands is being depicted to highlight the trauma of witnessing to those operators that push the button. There is no doubt that the terrorists in the house need to be eliminated: there are no hesitations about their culpability of being executed without a trial or investigation. In the end, even the death of the child is a legitimate sacrifice, in the logic of the film, to secure the longterm well-being of the European-American allies, outweighing even the significance of the prevention of innocent deaths in the Kenyan shopping mall that had been the target of the international insurgent group.

Drone Warfare in the Twenty-First Century How is the topic of drone warfare relating to our current political situation in a post 9/11 global context? The rules of engagement in contemporary war to fight global terrorism have changed. As Anand

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Gopal, assistant research professor at Arizona State University, writes in his essay “Clean Hands” in The New Yorker Magazine in December 2020: The core principle of humane warfare is that fighters may kill one another at any time, excepting those who are rendered hors de combat, and must avoid targeting civilians. (…) In Syria, home to a popular revolution, entire towns were mobilized for the war effort. Civilians — even children — acted as lookouts, arms smugglers, and spies. What really matters, then, is the type of danger that someone in a battle zone presents. The moment a person picks up a weapon, whether donning a uniform or not, he or she poses a direct and immediate danger. This is the crucial distinction between armed personnel and civilians.9

Alia does not fit that mold. This complicates the ethical decision-making process in Eye in the Sky. As the viewer of the movie, spectators know her even better than the war room members in front of their different large screens. The director introduces the little girl at the outset of the movie when the camera initially hovers over the neighborhood where Alia’s family lives and we see the pictures from the sky through the eye of a drone. Then, the camera moves to the ground and stays with Alia and her father on eye level in their backyard. While the drone operators can still watch the little girl from above without any audio transmission, the audience of the film experiences Alia when she asks her father whether she can play with her new hula-hoop. The picture of Alia in her long dress with a bright red scarf wound around her head is memorable. She takes the colorful hula-hoop and shifts it around her waist while being hidden from public view in her parents’ otherwise bleak-looking backyard. The viewers of the film are privy to her conversation with her father who warns her not to play outside their yard because of the religious fanatics who patrol their district. It is made quite obvious that Alia’s family, although they live close to a house populated by dangerous terrorists, has no criminal involvement. The camera zooms out and the roof of the family’s dwelling with the surrounding wall of the property is seen from a high angle shot, the view of the drone transmission. In a further zoom out, the geography of the district with the skyline of Nairobi in the distant horizon is displayed. Suddenly two target symbols appear on the screen, marking the visual field of a drone’s perspective. The markers dissolve into letters with the title of the movie, “Eye in the Sky”.

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Alia does not know that she is in the sights of a drone transmission, watched by high-ranking officials. She is unaware that when she plays with her toy, the world is watching her. This idea that a drone could constantly watch civilians while they are unaware is a powerful tool of suspense and the sense of intrusion and discomfort. The eye in the sky can be just a tool to observe: but it is also a weapon, able to launch a deadly missile with the movement of a joy stick like a video game console. There is a first world/developing world dichotomy established from the outset of the film. Would the film’s narrative work differently if the child were a boy? At one point the agent on the ground sends a young boy to Alia’s table to purchase all the bread, encouraging her to leave the killing field. The agent does not know whether and when the drone might hit. He is intermittently also exposing the boy child to the danger of an attack from the sky. In drone warfare, targets are no longer located and attacked in a horizontal battlefield with armed, male, military personnel in up-close combat but there is the attack from above as a vertical weapon, with synchronized computer surveillance and many different players and decision makers. In his A Theory of the Drone, Grégoire Chamayou explains that the history of the drone “is that of an eye turned into a weapon.” He writes, The drone has become one of the emblems of Barack Obama’s presidency, the instrument of his official antiterrorist doctrine, “kill rather than capture”: replace torture and Guantanamo with targeted assassination and the Predator Drone.10

War films since 9/11 depict the fight against terrorists as a necessary and unavoidable task, even if it involves civilians. Eye in the Sky focuses entirely on this dilemma when the American missiles are launched, affecting a civilian target. New technologies are seamlessly used in this global war theatre, adding to the allure of the action movie.11 While the drone technologies featured in Eye in the Sky such as the fly sized surveillance drone are fictional, they are currently under development and close to actually being implemented in the war on terror.12 They allow surveillance to take place outside of national borders, regardless of whether the terrorist is spotted in “enemy” or “friendly” territory such as Kenya where the military/government of Britain and the United States are executing a “capture” mission outside of Nairobi to target members of the real-life East African terrorist group Al-Shabaab. It is indeed historically correct

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that this terrorist group targeted civilians in a bombing of a shopping mall in Nairobi in September 2013 that killed 67 people. As recently as October 2020, two Kenyans were convicted for the so-called “Westgate Attack.”13 The “Eye in the Sky” is a drone that is operated by American soldiers. While Kenya is not a country at war with the United Kingdom or the United States, however, several of the terrorists are British and US nationals with passports, legitimating the military mission. The film raises the issue whether there could be a public relations fall-out, targeting citizens in a deadly drone attack, when the mission turns from “capture” to “kill.” Explosives have been detected in the house, clearly filmed and sent back by the tiny fly-drone who can enter the inside of a house, supposedly without being noticed. One of the (newly appointed) female members of the British Parliament, Angela (Kate Liquorish) in a war room in London, England, so-called COBRA, mentions that having British citizens killed in a friendly country with an American drone would set a new precedent. In addition, having a child be killed could be a PR disaster. She states that it might be safer to have terrorists blow up civilians in Nairobi rather than getting involved in this government-sanctioned deadly attack. It is suggested therefore that the “Westgate Attack” of 2013 in Nairobi might have also have been preventable and that the Western allies might have rather sacrificed the Kenyan bodies than risk a diplomatic fallout. This is a theme that is clearly expressed in Eye in the Sky: the value of bodies. Angela is seemingly concerned that the international news media might focus on the little girl who got killed, questioning the necessity of the drone deployment. From her perspective, yet another explosion in a Kenyan shopping mall by AlShabaad militants, killing other African civilians, would not be granted much news attention. In this way, Angela is not a female protector of young children but rather seen as yet another calculating politician. In contrast to Colonel Powell, she sheds a tear when Alia is killed. The film Eye in the Sky models a so-called “kill box” or “kill cube,” an area where military intervention is possible from above without prior warning, even if the targets are surrounded by non-military, peaceful bystanders. This type of weapon deployment is permitted to protect larger damage. The narrative does not provide definite answers as to how such a mission is executed, but depicts the “kill-chain” of command, where several parties in different locations around the world are involved in the witnessing of such a capture and decision-making from their multiple screens, where signals can be communicated via text messages, skype or

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actually by phone. The drone serves as the “eye” from the sky but it is also a body-less weapon. Once the mission turns from “capture” to “kill,” the bomb can be launched onto the target remotely, a realistic representation of current U.S. drone warfare in Syria, and Pakistan among other Arab countries. The film shows that the former WWII allies Britain and United States are in charge of this military mission without any other country’s involvement. In this way, the two post-colonial countries collaborate in a modified form of imperial warfare, subjecting a third world country to their colonial gaze. Everybody is looking on, following protocol as they move forward, referring “up” when necessary (similar to the dark cold war satire by American director Stanley Kubrick in Dr. Strangelove (1964) where the American war room is distracted by polite bantering why the entire world is about to be destroyed by nuclear bombs.) Colonel Powell needs to push hard to convince everybody involved in her vision, ultimately asking her subordinates to execute the commands. The final command can only be given because some of the data has been manipulated to build in a higher than realistic chance for Alia to stay outside the epicenter of the drone kill. In reality, two missiles are launched. Alia survives the first aerial attack but dies in the second bombing. While the drone operators and the members of the different war rooms cannot hear the explosion of the drone, hitting its targets, the viewers of the movie, similar to the outset of the film when they were able to listen to Alia talk to her father, are fully involved in the audio assault. The drone operators look up close as the target is being hit. But they watch in silence from above, hundreds of thousands of miles away. The film director is undermining this somewhat detached and clinical gaze: the audience members of the movie are exposed to the full sensory impact of the war attack. Even though there is some resistance to launching the missile that extends the suspense of the movie, ultimately the drone pilots engage the missile; making it look as if it is a necessary intervention.

The Role of Women in the Military Killing Mission The two female protagonists, who are ultimately in charge of the kill mission in both movies, have to not only fight their terrorist targets but also have to convince their Western military male superiors that they are right in their decision to execute the kill. They are waging war on

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two fronts: at home in their military headquarters when facing arrogant, patronizing and hesitant male superiors and abroad when they are embedded with the predominantly male actual combat troops. Contrary to such action thriller franchises as James Bond, the Bourne action film series, or the “Has Fallen” trilogy with secret service agent Mike Banning, played in all three films by Gerard Butler, the female warriors are not facing the enemy or ally in the bedroom. Banning leaves a pregnant wife behind in London Has Fallen (directed by Babak Najafi, 2016) who might deliver their first child while he fights Muslim terrorists in an ambush on the British government. He returns as a hero to the United States and continues his mission as the secret service protector of the US President. In the rationale of the trilogy, Banning is fighting for freedom to also protect his family from terrorists. Eye in the Sky and Zero Dark Thirty are devoid of any romantic subplot. Helen Mirren is supposedly in her sixties and lives with her husband who is shown sleeping next to her at the outset of the movie but then does not play any role again; the young Jessica Chastain has no partner and no personal life. The involvement of women in combat zones as part of the American military in the past ten years has offered new potential for plot lines in war films. The new more female oriented super hero franchise such as Wonder Woman and its 2020 sequel, follow a predictable pattern but ultimately conservative plot line: the warrior women are involved in a heterosexual relationship. While the super heroines are similar to female soldiers who are now shown in roles other than bystanders who wait for their husbands to return from the battle field, they are still cast as depending on a man for gratification. Agent Maya operates on her own. This is why she is ultimately so successful: her tenacity and ability to focus on one target with precision allow her to take out Osama Bin Laden. The female protagonists in these two terrorist movie plots have no sexual significance. In Kathryn Bigelow’s award-winning preceding war film The Hurt Locker (2008), the male protagonist, Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner), is unable to live his civilian life with wife and an infant son daughter: he decides to return to the war front, back into the lethal battlefield of Iraq. The film suggested that James is attracted to the thrill of his dangerous profession, disposing bombs. He is unable to balance his military with civilian life. In Zero Dark Thirty, Maya is similar to the male protagonist in The Hurt Locker in that she is supposedly married only to the war theatre. In the logic of the movie, Maya cannot find a balance between personal and military life: she has to give her undivided attention to the man hunt,

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neglecting her personal well-being. The only other significant female agent in Zero Dark Thirty, Maya’s friend Jessica (Jennifer Ehle), a soldier with a family and three children, is supposedly too soft: she gets trapped in an ill-fated intelligence mission in Afghanistan where she is killed by a deceiving suicide bomber she solicited as an informant. Maya’s motivation to keep hunting Osama Bin Laden is also linked to the loss of her friend whom she tries to avenge. However, there is no gratification at the end. Maya does not return home to a doting husband and child as a war hero. Neither does Colonel Powell.

Women in War Combat Zones The representation of prominent female combatants relates to the reality of modern warfare where women have been admitted into the combat zone since 2013. They are no longer “only” witnessing but are turned into main operators. Whereas previous battlefields excluded women and children and there were areas where armies confronted each other in faceto-face combat, women are now accepted and admitted in the US army in the active war theatre. Of course, women and children are also part of the threat of terrorism when they act as suicide bombers, a theme that is addressed, for example, in the independently made war film 1000 Times Good Night (Erik Poppe, 2013). In traditional Western war genre films, women are often denigrated to the role of mothers and nurses, in supporting roles, not depicted as fighting side by side with their male colleagues, or even being in charge. A main part of the narrative appeal of both films is the role of the two female protagonists as the leaders of the killing missions. The access to technology and their calm and composed way of analysing digital images and information allows the female protagonists to show endurance and success in their hunting of targets. They are more skilled in this warfare, especially if cast as isolated from other family obligations and disengaged from compassion. Maya does not operate with drones from above to get her information. Contrary to Eye in the Sky, where the opening sequence starts with a segment of Alia and her father and mother in their courtyard and then we see the camera zoom to a wide shot that displays the entire neighborhood from above, Maya does not have access to this kind of technology. However, she studies military intelligence, suggesting that her “female gaze” when enduring endless hours of playing video recordings, ultimately gives her a lead that others

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have not seen.14 As film scholar Robert Burgoyne argues on war in the twenty-first century, Eye in the Sky brings both perspectives on contemporary warfare into close proximity, conveying the extraordinary technological resources of networked war, in which precision optics from several different locations converge to provide an impression of overarching control, while at the same time creating an unprecedented close-up perspective of familiarity.15

He also points out that combat is changed into a form of hunting: “The body of the terrorist carries its own mobile zone of hostility with it.” The “kill box” can be drawn just around a single body and turns it into a hostile battlefield. Burgoyne observes that drone war changes the role of the traditionally male soldier who is no longer cast as a hero who sacrifices his own body when killing somebody else. The drone operators are impacted by the military strikes, they facilitate. “In the figures of the ambivalent pilots of Eye in the Sky, ordered to release a missile that will almost certainly kill an innocent bystander, a young girl, this older conception of eyewitness experience as negative revelation, as a confrontation with the truth of war, comes into relief.”16 The bodily risk is absent, Burgoyne argues, and the success of the mission, the traditional, authorizing mythologies of war has thereby receded into the background. Media scholar Lisa Parks calls this kind of warfare against terrorists “vertical mediation,” so-called “practices of communication and materialization that occur dynamically through the vertical field.”17 The drone warfare from a distance is nevertheless tactile and sensory and immediate. It turns into a “hunting ground.” The ones most successful in this persistent hunt of terrorists are women in both films because both female protagonists deal with digital and analog technology, video tapes and audio, to succeed in their hunt. Agent Maya is able to track a telephone signal sent by a courier to Osama Bin Laden. In a scene the many telephone cables are being depicted; although this search is similar to looking for a needle in a haystack, Maya’s persistence pays off and her people on the ground in Pakistan can isolate the signal and the courier who leads them to the compound. Colonel Powell is from a different generation: her war room in her shed at home still deals with printed out mug shots and wool thread. Her ability to ultimately connect the dots needs to be assisted by the modern technology of drone war. She is able to translate her findings into the highly complex war theatre, the war

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room where men are at her service. This may come as a surprise for the viewer who initially got introduced to Powell in her bedroom, an intimate space. The fact that Powell is most determined and unemotional in calling in the missile to fulfil her manhunt, depicts a woman who is devoid of compassion. Contrary to Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, one of the few women in the war room in real life, who covered her mouth while witnessing the capture of Osama Bin Laden, Powell has no such reactions.

Drone Warfare: War from Above How does the drone war change the rules of combat? Since the combat does not require force or bodily sacrifice, males are no longer the main drivers of action in these two films. This is a distinct change of the typical and established war genre narrative of the male lone ranger who defies all odds to win. By showing that even women are able to execute kill missions, it could be suggested that both movies legitimate this kind of war. It is a clean war. It is a war that protects the aggressor more than the victim of the drone attack. However, the target in drone warfare is more ambiguous and moving than in traditional trench warfare. It requires that the strike be more planned out. Drone warfare is like laparoscopic surgery, very precise. It raises questions of ethics that are not as clearly geared towards male heroism. I would like to argue that the war strategy that is depicted in both films is showing women being exceptionally well equipped to succeed in this new war theatre.18 The drone has no physical presence. The plane flies across territory that does not indicate national borders. Its eye can focus on specific buildings, supposedly sparing more civilians from death. It can be flown from a great distance. However, the tactile engagement of the soldiers who fly the drone make them be intimately involved with the targets. They are not part of the carnage but watch it from their chairs. The gaze plays a major role. Everybody is “witnessing” the actions but does not get personally or physically affected. One of the two soldiers, a Corporal, who fly the deadly drone from the Nebraska desert is female (Gabriella Pinto). She cries when the missile is launched. Agent Maya cries at the very end of the movie in Zero Dark Thirty, when her mission has been successful and she is on her own, being flown back to the United States in a war plane. This is the only time when she shows weakness and emotion other than anger. It is as if she does not have to see clearly anymore because her mission has been executed with success. In this way, crying and looking

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are linked as feminine traits. In order to succeed in the American military and in the international war theatre, there is the added benefit of drawing on women’s expertise but they have to be willing to reject any kind of emotional involvement with the targets. The two women featured as the leaders of the kill missions are shown as being unattached to roles of motherhood. Colonel Powell has the power to take somebody else’s child in the course of executing the kill mission. As viewers we do not know how they value life. They do not have to risk their own bodies when making the decision to kill or even witness the antagonist. Colonel Powell is not associated with any children or grandchildren. Her office/domestic war room is adjacent to her kitchen: she just has to walk a few steps to the shed where her computer allows her to access military intelligence. With a simple finger ID, she has access to classified information in her home. She accesses not only the regular news feed where she learns about having lost a military ally on the ground in Nairobi, killed by Al-Shabaab terrorists, but she is also working on the larger map with pictures of her targets. Agent Maya is devoted to hunting Osama Bin Laden and claims in one part of the film that “I believe I have been spared to finish the job.” Neither one of the women actually uses a weapon or operates the machines/drones/bombs. They execute orders. Colonel Powell’s male counterpart at the COBRA station, played by late Alan Rickman, is framed as a family man who buys a doll for his granddaughter when we first “meet” him on screen. In the logic of this film, male military personnel can separate their private lives from war, even if they prioritize their duty over family life. Women, however, have to devote their entire being to the war cause: they have to choose between being strong and having a family. Both Maya and Colonel Powell have to convince the military and government agents of their successful strategy. They use blunt intimidation and coercion to achieve their goal. They cannot use physical force but convince the members of the combat troop that their strategy of hunting was justified and qualifies for the kill option. Neither one seems to doubt the use of military force despite the scepticism of their superiors. Emotion does not get displayed until the end of the lethal attacks. Colonel Powell is not ever seen grieving. However, in both cases, the protagonists turn into unemotional executioners who no longer give life but successfully take it away.

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Other Female Combatants Several other female roles are present in Eye in the Sky. Most prominently is the second drone operator in Nebraska, a young woman with large brown eyes who assists in the launching of the drone, once the kill mission is cleared. She is looking on compassionately. In the narrative of the film, she is in favour of halting the mission to calculate the likelihood of Alia being killed, but she is unable to stop the attack. The other female player who actually tries to intervene when the mission is changed is Angela. But her argument is more consumed with the PR fall-out of killing citizens on friendly soil. The woman is doing the ID scans in Hawaii is female; the collaborator of the agent on the ground who operates digital screens in a truck that is camouflaged in Nairobi as a service van, also has easy control of the equipment. The fact that women can operate the military equipment is drawing them as combatants into the war zone. The two drone operators have the same access to the technology and there is no gender discrimination in launching the missiles. Another level of engagement is the visceral experience of watching and witnessing. Everybody in the war rooms as well as the film’s audience watches the narrative unfold and creates their own story of what is happening. However, the viewers have the additional sensory experience of sound that is lacking for the drone operators. From the different control stations in Eye in the Sky, the different human subjects can be enlarged with a tactile touch of the screen. The drone operators are watching their prey. They will distance themselves from the terrorists who are plotting the suicide attack but are also connecting emotionally to Alia who is “collateral damage” as an innocent civilian. Contrary to American Sniper about terrorists in Iraq where a boy is handed a grenade by his mother, Alia is an innocent bystander who happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. The director supports this narrative from the very outset of the film by focusing a close-up on Alia playing in her courtyard. One could ask how the imagery is differentiated between the witnessing of combat on the ground and removed on the digital screens that connect the various war rooms overseas? What are the visual and auditory strategies employed to involve the viewers into the visceral and sensory vocabulary of warfare? What is the role of the child as a symbol of collateral damage? The main strategy of distinguishing between experiencing the explosion of the drone on the target on screen or from below

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is the execution of sound. The screens do not transmit the sound, nor the sense of smell or blood. Even so, the male drone operator (Tylan Wray) closes his eyes when the bomb hits the roof of the terrorist hide-out. He does not want to witness the impact. He stays distant from the danger of the battlefield. The mission is seemingly out of his control once he pulls the trigger on the remote control. As viewers we are drawn into the aftermath of the attack, experiencing the consequences. This is contrary to the drone operators and the other military and government officials who are no longer watching any screens since the mission is completed and the terrorists have been killed. The trauma of having launched the drone and the murder of the terrorists and Alia is represented when the two drone operators leave their station in Nebraska and are being told to go home and rest. The drone operators leave their station defeated and exhausted. As Burgoyne argues, the symbolic language of war film is thereby rewritten because the soldiers do not walk away from the cyber-battlefield in triumph or as heroes. In the narrative, the two young American drone operators are more compassionate towards Alia than Colonel Powell. As Burgoyne argues, Eye in the Sky emphasizes the psychological as well as physical costs of war. He states that “cutting back to the perspective of the drone pilots, the film also suggests the psychic wounding that drone warfare inflicts on the agents of war, plainly registered in the faces of the drone operators.”19 This lack of bodily contact is contrasted in the final scene of the film where Alia’s parents caress her lifeless body in a Kenyan hospital. They value her body; they touch and feel her. She is not simply a blip on the screen but their child who died from the attack in the sky. Eye in the Sky suggests that each life matters but that Alia is sacrificed for a larger cause. This creates a sense of discomfort. In Zero Dark Thirty, Maya actually identifies the body of Osama Bin Laden. She opens the body bag, watches his blood drenched face (only the nose and beard are shown to the audience) and closes the bag while nodding to the other soldiers that it is indeed her target (see Fig. 12.4). The killing of Osama Bin Laden is framed as a successful hunt. His life, similar to the shredded bodies of the dead terrorists who are depicted with the drone images in Eye in the Sky, is dispensable. In the axis of power, the targeted terrorists lose their right to live when the military and governmental allies decide. The way the military commanders and government officials are being depicted in Eye in the Sky is very civilized. The COBRA team is in a

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colonial looking war room with panelled walls and tea cups. Whereas the terrorists in Nairobi sit on the floor and plot their suicide mission with a taped, clandestine suicide video message, the plotting of the Western kill mission is framed as being sanctioned from above (despite moments of chaos). Once the technology is deployed, it seems to be justified and “right.” The weapons are accessible to the powers of the West. Even though the kill chain is halted for a short while to make sure that the powers all approve of the mission, ultimately there is a reached consent of all witnessing entities. Particularly the drone operators are shown as being not just “cold eyes” but compassionate towards the children. Many of the moral issues are not resolved in these two films. They remain ambiguous which is more challenging than creating a traditional us-versus-them, good guy/bad guy scenario with clear winners and clear losers. The rules of engagement are no longer taken for granted and the film’s visual storytelling echoes this ambiguity. Still, the message seems to be that as long as there is some form of caring, the military action can be executed. Even women will consent to the killing if the war against terrorists demands personal sacrifices. Acknowledgements I would like to thank my friend Chez Liley who has helped me understand this topic of the “female gaze” and drone warfare.

Notes 1. For more literature about post 9/11 cinema, see David LaRocca (ed.), The Philosophy of War Films (University of Kentucky Press, 2015); Paul Petrovic, Representing 9/11: Trauma, Ideology, and Nationalism in Literature, Film, and Television (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015); Stephen Prince, Firestorm: American Film in the Age of Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009); Karen A. Ritzenhoff and Jakub Kazecki (eds.), Heroism and Gender in War Films (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); David Seed, US Narratives of Nuclear Terrorism Since 9/11. Worst-Case Scenarios (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019); Clémentine Tholas, Janis L. Goldie and Karen A. Ritzenhoff (eds.), New Perspectives on the War Film (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019); Kevin Wetmore, Post-9/11 Horror in American Cinema (New York: Continuum, 2012); Timothy Corrigan (ed.), American Cinema of the 2000s: Themes and Variations (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012); and Tony Shaw, Cinematic Terror: A Global History of Terrorism on Film. (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2015).

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2. “Remarks” by President Donald Trump. National Security and Defense, January 3, 2020. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/ remarks-president-trump-killing-qasem-soleimani/ (Accessed January 4, 2021). This site is no longer available. 3. For more discussions on drone warfare, please see the sophisticated research of Lisa Parks, Rethinking Media Coverage: Vertical Mediation and the War on Terror (London/New York: Routledge, 2018). Lisa Parks and Caren Kaplan (eds.), Life in the Age of Drone Warfare (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017) as well as Caren Kaplan, Aerial Aftermaths: Wartime From Above (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018). Additional resources about drone warfare for this article were drawn from Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone (New York: The New Press, 2013) and Aaron Tucker (Virtual Weaponry: The Militarized Internet in Hollywood War Films (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). 4. Anand Gopal. “Clean Hands. In Raqqa, U.S. Bombs Killed Many Syrians. No Americans Died. Is This Moral?” The New Yorker (December 21, 2020): 74–77. 5. See Evelyn Alsutany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media. Race and Representation After 9/11 (New York: New York University Press, 2012). 6. For more information on the depiction of torture in films, please see Hilary Neroni, The Subject of Torture: Psychoanalysis and Biopolitics in Television and Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015); Bob Brecher, Torture and the Ticking Bomb (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007); Michael Flynn and Fabiola F. Salek, Screening Torture: Media Representations of State Terror and Political Domination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). 7. One can actually still Google the images as part of “Google Maps” online that are based on CIA intelligence reports. 8. Linda Williams, “‘Cluster Fuck:’ The Forcible Frame in Errol Morris’s Standard Operating Procedure.” Jump Cut, 52 (2010): 29– 67. https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc52.2010/sopWilliams/index. html (Accessed on January 16, 2021). Translated into German in Angela Krewani and Karen A. Ritzenhoff, “Leiden, Trauma, Folter: Bildkultures des Irakkriegs.” Augenblick. Marburger Hefte zur Medienwissenschaft, No. 48/49 (2011): 90–114. 9. Anan Gopal, “Clean Hands: In Raqqa, U.S. Bombs Killed Many Syrians. No Americans Died. Is This Normal?” The New Yorker Magazine (December 21, 2020), 74. 10. Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone (New York: The New Press, 2013), 14. 11. See also Jason Sperb, Flickers of Film. Nostalgia in the Time of Digital Cinema (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2016) and Libby

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Saxton, Haunted Images: Film, Ethics, Testimony and the Holocaust (London: Wallflower Press, 2008). http://scienceandfilm.org/articles/2686/dr-peter-asaro-on-drone-tec hnology-in-eye-in-the-sky. BBC News, “Westgate Attack: Two Jailed over Kenyan Shopping Mall Attack,” October 30, 2020. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa54748341 (Accessed on January 15, 2021). Charles Antoine Courcoux, “There’s Something About Maya: On Being/Becoming a Heroine and the ‘War on Terror.’” In Karen A. Ritzenhoff and Jakub Kazecki (eds.), Heroism and Gender in War Films (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 225–243. Robert Burgoyne, “Intimate Violence: Drone Vision in Eye in the Sky”, 2. Also see, “The Violated Body: Affective Experience and Somatic Intensity in Zero Dark Thirty.” In David LaRocca (ed.), The Philosophy of War Films (University of Kentucky Press, 2015), 247–260. I am thankful for his insights in two chapters for a future publication on Eye in the Sky and Zero Dark Thirty that Robert Burgoyne has allowed me to access. The working title of the new book is War and Cinema in the 21st Century. Robert Burgoyne, “Intimate Violence: Drone Vision in Eye in the Sky,” 3. Lisa Parks, “Drone Matters: Vertical Mediation in the Horn of Africa.” http://cmsw.mit.edu/event/lisa-parks-drone-matters-verticalmediation-in-the-horn-of-africa/ (Accessed April 28, 2017). To learn more about the changing role of violent women in American screen culture see Melanie Waters, Women on Screen: Feminism and Femininity in Visual Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) as well as Hilary Neroni, The Violent Woman: Femininity, Narrative, and Violence in Contemporary American Cinema (New York: State University of New York Press, 2005). See Robert Burgoyne, “Intimate Violence: Drone Vision in Eye in the Sky,” 23.

Works Cited Alsultany, Evelyn. Arabs and Muslims in the Media. Race and Representation After 9/11. New York: New York University Press, 2012. Bateman, Robert. “Why so Many Americans Support Deadly Aerial Warfare.” Esquire Magazine, April 13, 2017. http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/ politics/news/a54446/what-is-moab-bomb/ (Accessed April 28, 2017). Burgoyne, Robert. “Intimate Violence: Drone Vision in Eye in the Sky.” In Robert Burgoyne, War and Cinema in the 21st Century, Book in Progress.

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———. “The Violated Body: Affective Experience and Somatic Intensity in Zero Dark Thirty.” In David LaRocca (ed.), The Philosophy of War Films. University of Kentucky Press, 2015: 247–260. Brecher, Bob. Torture and the Ticking Bomb. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007. Chamayou, Grégoire. A Theory of the Drone. New York: The New Press, 2013. Corrigan, Timothy (ed.). American Cinema of the 2000s: Themes and Variations. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012. Courcoux, Charles-Antoine. “There’s Something About Maya: On Being/Becoming a Heroine and the ‘War on Terror.’” In Karen A. Ritzenhoff and Jakub Kazecki (eds.), Heroism and Gender in War Films. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014: 225–243. Flynn, Michael and Fabiola F. Salek. Screening Torture: Media Representations of State Terror and Political Domination. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. Gopal, Anand. “Clean Hands. In Raqqa, U.S. Bombs Killed Many Syrians. No Americans Died. Is This Moral?” The New Yorker, December 21, 2020: 74–77 (Accessed January 5, 2021). Gregory, Derek. “Geographical Imaginations: War, Space and Security.” https:// geographicalimaginations.com/2013/07/29/theory-of-the-drone-3-killinggrounds/ (Accessed May 1, 2017). Hood, Gavin. “Interview with Gavin Hood,” December 6, 2017. http://www. huffingtonpost.com/zaki-hasan/interview-director-gavin_b_9605436.html (Accessed April 28, 2017). Jackson, Richard, Lee Jarvis, Joreoen Gunning, and Marie Breen-Smyth. Terrorism: A Critical Introduction. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Kaplan, Caren. Aerial Aftermaths: Wartime from Above. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018. Krewani, Angela and Karen A. Ritzenhoff. “Leiden, Trauma, Folter: Bildkulturen des Irakkriegs.” Augenblick. Marburger Hefte zur Medienwissenschaft, No. 48/49, 2011. LaRocca, David (ed.). The Philosophy of War Films. University of Kentucky Press, 2015. Neroni, Hilary. The Violent Woman: Femininity, Narrative, and Violence in Contemporary American Cinema. New York: State University of New York Press, 2005. Neroni, Hilary. The Subject of Torture: Psychoanalysis and Biopolitics in Television and Film. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. Palmer, Lindsay. Becoming the Story: War Correspondents Since 9/11. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018. Parks, Lisa. Rethinking Media Coverage: Vertical Mediation and the War on Terror. London/New York: Routledge, 2018.

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Parks, Lisa and Caren Kaplan (eds.). Life in the Age of Drone Warfare. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017. Parks, Lisa. “Drone Matters: Vertical Mediation in the Horn of Africa.” http:// cmsw.mit.edu/event/lisa-parks-drone-matters-vertical-mediation-in-the-hornof-africa/ (Accessed April 28, 2017). Petrovic, Paul. Representing 9/11: Trauma, Ideology, and Nationalism in Literature, Film, and Television. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015. Prince, Stephen. Firestorm: American Film in the Age of Terrorism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Ritzenhoff, Karen A. and Jakub Kazecki (eds.). Heroism and Gender in War Films. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Robinson, Janet S. “The Gendered Geometry of War in Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker (2008). In Karen A. Ritzenhoff and Jakub Kazecki (eds.), Heroism and Gender in War Films. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014: 153–171. Saxton, Libby. Haunted Images: Film, Ethics, Testimony and the Holocaust. London: Wallflower Press, 2008. Seed, David. US Narratives of Nuclear Terrorism Since 9/11. Worst-Case Scenarios. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Shaw, Tony. Cinematic Terror: A Global History of Terrorism on Film. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2015. Sperb, Jason. Flickers of Film. Nostalgia in the Time of Digital Cinema. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2016. Tholas, Clémentine, Janis L. Goldie and Karen A. Ritzenhoff (eds.). New Perspectives on the War Film. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Tucker, Aaron. Virtual Weaponry: The Militarized Internet in Hollywood War Films. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Waters, Melanie (ed.). Women on Screen: Feminism and Femininity in Visual Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Williams, Linda. “‘Cluster Fuck:’ The Forcible Frame in Errol Morris’s Standard Operating Procedure.” Jump Cut, 52 (2010): 29–67. Translated into German in Angela Krewani and Karen A. Ritzenhoff. “Leiden, Trauma, Folter: Bildkultures des Irakkriegs.” Augenblick. Marburger Hefte zur Medienwissenschaft, No. 48/49, 2011: 90–114. Wetmore, Kevin J. Post-9/11 Horror in American Cinema. New York: Continuum, 2012.

Films American Sniper. Directed by Clint Eastwood. USA, 2014. Dr. Strangelove. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. USA/UK, 1964. Eye in the Sky. Directed by Gavin Hood. UK, 2015.

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The Hurt Locker. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. USA, 2008. London Has Fallen. Directed by Babk Najafi. USA, 2016. 1000 Times Good Night. Directed by Erik Poppe. Norway, Ireland, Sweden, 2014. Wonder Woman. Directed by Patty Jenkins, 2017. Zero Dark Thirty. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. USA, 2012.

CHAPTER 13

Afterword: Will I Dream of Terror, Again? Stacy Takacs

Lately I’ve been obsessed with the HBO television series Lovecraft Country (2020). It may not have been the terror tale Americans wanted in 2020, but it definitely proved to be the terror tale America needed at the tail end of the Trump presidency. Lovecraft Country insists, as one of the characters writes, that the past cannot and should not be forgotten. “The past is a living thing,” and it must be owned.1 Characters owe a debt to the past, and the entire series is about redeeming this debt. The machinations of this redemption, however, are nothing like the typical Hollywood fantasies of regeneration through violence. In those fantasies, white communities are threatened by dark forces, and those forces are always embodied by dark folk. People of color—whether native, black, or Chinese—attack Anglo communities, who then have no option but to use violence to save themselves. As American Studies scholar Richard Slotkin notes, this tale of “regeneration through violence” is the ur-myth of the United States’ popular and political cultures.2 This narrative of reluctant, but necessary violence was precisely the narrative President George W. Bush invoked in his 2001 declaration of War on Afghanistan. “We’re a

S. Takacs (B) Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 E. Caoduro et al. (eds.), Mediated Terrorism in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73511-1_13

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peaceful nation,” the President said. “Yet, as we have learned, so suddenly and so tragically, there can be no peace in a world of sudden terror. In the face of today’s new threat, the only way to pursue peace is to pursue those who threaten it. We did not ask for this mission, but we will fulfill it.”3 Essentially, this is the tale mainstream Anglo-American media are still telling about the War on Terrorism. About half of the essays in this volume address the standard Hollywood-esque contributions to the public discourse on terrorism and counter-terrorism. Through close textual analysis, these authors (Wasser, Courcoux, Ritzenhoff, Schweitzer, and Avissar) demonstrate how media wrap violence in a glow of enchantment that virtually ensures its persistence. After 9/11, a raft of films, comic books, TV series, and video games emerged to narrate the nation’s struggles with political violence. Very quickly a formula developed. Early attempts to grapple with the complexities of the War on Terrorism (such as Showtime’s Sleeper Cell ) gave way to stock plots (the incitement, the hunt, the exorcism, and the return to status quo), stock characters (the [white] patriot hero, the terrorist mastermind, the feminized bureaucracy, and the [Islamist] villain who manages to hide in plain sight), stock settings (Washington, DC, the murky “Middle East,” the rhizomatic, reticulated, and networked cityscape), and stock outcomes (the cycles of violence accelerate as complex human motivations get repeatedly over-simplified and misinterpreted). Such mediated “terrorscapes”—the original title of this volume—merged with and largely abetted the state’s depiction of terrorism as an environmental threat, or natural disaster, requiring constant vigilance of a militarized sort.4 As Sean Redmond reminds us, however, “terror is … contextual” and “implicated in the circulation of power and control.” Representations of terror emanating from our cultural capitals “ensure that certain subjects, … are … identified as the transmitters of terror” while others are identified as its victims. Indeed, the very function of terror discourse is to “other the Other.”5 What makes Lovecraft Country so refreshing is the way it completely re-contextualizes the history of state violence, seizing the tools of representation and using them to “other” white America. Episode one, “Sundown Town,” opens with a fever dream of monstrous terror and heroic redemption that might have been taken straight from the pulps. The protagonist, Korean War veteran Atticus “Tic” Freeman (Jonathan Majors) is dozing on a bus heading to Chicago out of the Jim Crow south. In his dream, Tic, dressed in his military uniform, fights his way

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through a gauntlet of Korean enemies, only to emerge into a full color spectacle of monsters, aliens, and spaceships taken from the pulp novel he is currently reading—Edgar Rice Burrough’s Princess of Mars. Just as he is about to be done in by a giant tentacled beast (called a Chthulu in Lovecraft’s mythology), a magical bat-swinging Jackie Robinson (Robert Hamilton) arrives to save the day. The image is inspired by family legend of a bat-wielding stranger who saved Tic’s father, mother, and uncle from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre (in a later episode we learn that the stranger is a time-traveling Tic!) and news stories of Jackie Robinson’s baseball heroics. Just as Robinson intones “I gotcha, kid,” Tic is jolted awake, and the camera pulls back to reveal him seated in “the colored section” at the back of the bus. Tic bids “ole Jim Crow” a fond farewell at the border of Kentucky—flipping the bird out the bus window—only to be abandoned at the side of the road by a racist bus driver when the bus breaks down. Clearly the North will offer no respite to the weary black traveler. While the voiceover makes clear that Tic’s dream of enchanted violence is a “truly American dream,” the realities of segregation depicted in the opening let us know right away that such dreams of heroic action are not so easily available to “little negro boys from the southside of Chicago.” Indeed, as Tic explains to the bus’s only other black passenger, the appeal of pulps is that they permit adventures of the mind in a world that insists black bodies remain “in their place.” Issues of mobility—physical, social, symbolic, and psychological—are at the forefront of Lovecraft Country’s narrative. In “Sundown Town,” Tic, his friend Letitia (Jurnee Smollet), and Tic’s uncle George (Courtney B. Vance), editor of The Safe Negro Travel Guide, set off for Ardham, Massachusetts, aka “Lovecraft Country,” to find Tic’s father Montrose (Michael Kenneth Williams), who has gone missing. Along the way, they are hunted by a racist mob, trapped and nearly killed by racist police officers, and forced to flee from flesheating monsters from another world, all of which they do successfully. Of the two categories of monsters—racist whites and supernatural predators—the supernatural predators turn out to be the lesser of the evils the Freeman crew must contend with. Lovecraft Country understands what it means when terror suffuses an environment. The slow, almost Hitchcockian pacing whenever our heroes encounter white folks provokes a physical feeling of unease in the audience designed to mimic the tension black citizens often feel when navigating white society. In one memorable scene, a racist Sheriff bids the

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travelers good luck getting out of the county before sundown. However much they would like to speed away, they can’t because the Sheriff is just waiting for them to violate the speed limit. Thus, they proceed at a glacial pace as the sun slowly sets. The music, the looming image of the Sheriff’s vehicle, the pacing of the edits, the frantic terror in the backseat, and the preternatural control exhibited by Tic, the driver, all combine to ensure audiences understand the meaning of the word terror. Along with the whiplash-inducing shifts to action and supernatural adventure—as monsters burst from the ground to disrupt racist routine—the atmospherics of Lovecraft Country ensure audiences will understand the precarity of black existence in white America; they will feel it in their bones.6 The program also reckons with the reality that some people’s fears are more culturally sanctioned than others. The white citizens of Chicago have the ability to strike out at what terrifies them, namely their black neighbors. They unleash all manner of dehumanizing violence—rhetorical, symbolic, and physical—upon their black compeers in order to make themselves feel better, superior, safe. The black citizens do not have that luxury. In episode three, “Holy Ghost,” Leti is taken to jail for protecting her property from a racist white mob, and in episode five, “Strange Case,” a young boy who accidentally runs into a white woman is nearly beaten to a pulp by an irate police officer, who happened to witness the mishap. Even Tic, for all his heroic aspirations, must abase himself to survive his encounter with the small-town sheriff of “Sundown Town.” The kneejerk resort to counter-violence—so celebrated in mainstream American culture—is just not available to the protagonists of Lovecraft Country. It is a luxury they cannot afford. And their frustration and anger, too, are made palpable. For all that Lovecraft Country begins with a fantasy of “enchanted violence,” then, it ends with the reality of structural racism, rooted deep in the American soil. White Americans are the terrorists in this show, and black citizens, the heroes and victims with whom the audience is supposed to identify. However fantastic the plots may seem—and they do make liberal use of science fiction and horror tropes like time travel, ghosts, monsters, curses, cults, body horror, and magical spells of protection— they are always also about the precarity of black existence in America. Very real human acts of horror, like the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, Emmett Till’s bloody death at the hands of white supremacists, and even Eric’s Garner’s last gasp (“I can’t breathe”), are woven into supernatural tales of life and death struggle. As Alan Sepinwall of Rolling Stone puts

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it, the characters are regularly confronted “with the inescapable reality that any or all of them can be killed at any moment, without any justification, in a society that still considers them something less than human due to the color of their skin.”7 The arc of the series bends, not toward enchantment, then, but toward “disenchantment,” the “active stripping away of [the] idealizing principles” attached to terrorist violence and the insistence “that the violated body is not, a magical site for the production of culture.”8 It is just a gooey, pulpy, bleeding mess at the limit of signification. There is nothing redemptive about the violence and counter-violence unleashed in the series; indeed, all of the violence is so over-exposed, so over-done, that it simply sickens. Nowhere is this clearer than in episode eight, which features our heroes paying their respects at Emmett Till’s funeral.9 The smell of Till’s rotting corpse on a hot day in summertime Chicago is not a thing to be elevated into symbol, the episode suggests; it is an ugly reality that needs confronting. Lovecraft Country may seem to have little to do with tales of mediated terrorism and counter-terrorism at the heart of this volume, but I would argue that, in fact, it encapsulates some of the salutary trends studied here. For one thing, it exposes and undercuts the “truly American dream” of regeneration through violence, which has for too long dominated the Anglo-American media industry’s approach to the subject. For another, it shows precisely how declaring “war” on terror and unleashing preemptive violence against one’s “enemies” exacerbates the blood-letting. It is also a reminder that, as Sean Redmond says, terror is not equitably or evenly distributed in our societies. Those with cultural power, “the power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming and emerging,” as the postcolonial theorist Edward Said once put it, have the capacity to incite and direct terroristic violence.10 If we learned nothing else from the white nationalist terror unleashed during the recent siege of the US Capitol, we should have learned this lesson: representations do not reflect or describe reality; they produce it. The US and its western allies remain relatively safe from the threats of political violence and counter-violence unleashed by the global war on terrorism. The US, in particular, has exported political violence to the Middle East, Northern Africa, and parts of Asia so as to protect its own citizenry at home. Yet, the stories Hollywood tells about terrorism are still overwhelmingly about US vulnerability and heroic acts of retribution. These representations do not just passively mislead; they actively obfuscate. They exaggerate the relative prevalence of terrorist acts (in most

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countries, terrorism accounts for less than .01% of annual deaths); they mislabel the threat (since 1994 in the US, right-wing groups have been responsible for the majority of terrorist events, and since 2014, the rates of such violence have exploded); and they misidentify militarism as an effective mode of redress.11 The War on Terrorism has not decreased the number of global terrorist attacks; on the contrary, it has been a terrorismmultiplier. By injecting violence into already vulnerable societies, it has exacerbated the conditions that lead to radicalization. As Karen A. Ritzenhoff’s discussion of Eye in the Sky (2015) demonstrates, the militarization of counter-terrorism has come at the expense of the safety and security of the citizens of those countries forced to host the United States’ war games. We lack narratives that speak the truth of this power imbalance. Which brings me to my final point, Lovecraft Country does not tell a typical tale of state-sanctioned violence and counter-violence. It names such violence “terror” and examines it from the perspective of its dehumanized and degraded victims, rather than its perpetrators. Like Gauri Gill’s photo narrativization of the Punjabi horrors of 1984 or Fatih Akin’s In the Fade (2017), Lovecraft Country demands that we reckon with— rather than recuperate—past terror. While it offers some spectacular moments of black vengeance—most notably, Ruby’s (Wunmi Mosaku) brutal attack on her morally degenerate boss, an act so brutal it disenchants—the characters usually come to realize that vengeance brings no peace.12 Instead, the show makes a case for love, understanding, and sacrifice as the keys to community resilience. “We have a choice,” as Tic says, “We can be monsters or heroes.” In the end, the series is more interested in the question of “what happens to the subject and [the] world when the memory of such [traumatic] events is folded into ongoing relations.”13 It expresses the characters’ frustrated desires for power and revenge— “sometimes I just, I wanna kill white folks,” one character admits — but it expresses these desires mostly to exorcize them.14 What matters in the end is not what white people do, but how the black community rallies together in response. Compassion, understanding, tradition, love, family—these are the magical tools that will protect the community. Lovecraft Country ultimately offers a lesson in owning the past. “The past is a living thing,” as Montrose put it. You can either let it haunt you, or you can confront it and work through the trauma it has caused. Trauma is often described as an unincorporated memory, that recurs cyclically in the form of flashbacks or nightmares. The structure of Lovecraft Country mimics this circularity, beginning and ending in Ardham, Massachusetts,

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the ground zero of white racism in the story. In the end, however, the characters manage to highjack Christina Braithwaite’s (Abbey Lee) spell and steal magic from the whites. Tic must be sacrificed (Christ-like) in order to resolve the trauma, but in the process of reaching this point, the family has revisited its past and made peace with their respective demons. They have learned from their ancestors how to be both resilient and powerful. Evading the trauma of America’s racist past has clearly not diminished the cycles of violence and counter-violence, so the show offers reckoning as a different way forward. We need to work through the trauma to defeat the cycle of terror. If, as Redmond reminds us, “cultural mediation is not separate from ‘reality’ but constitutive of it,” then we need new stories, stories like Lovecraft Country, 1984, or In the Fade, which teach us how to incorporate the past, rather than be devoured by it. This volume began with a “terror dream.” For twenty years now, the US has been locked in a singular dream of violent redemption. That dream has not served us, and it certainly has not served the world. It has only multiplied the terror and made the least of humanity more vulnerable. Perhaps it’s time we learned to work through that dream and toward another future, one where the past can be owned and incorporated into everyday life, disenchanted but remembered as the root of our resilience.

Notes 1. Lovecraft Country, season one, episode one, “Sundown Town,” aired August 16, 2020, on HBO. 2. Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973). 3. “Announcement of Strikes Against Afghanistan,” CNN.com, updated October 7, 2001 (Accessed November 12, 2009). http://archives.cnn. com/2001/US/10/07/ret.bush.transcript/. 4. See Frederick Wasser, “Spielberg and Terrorisms: Munich and War of the Worlds,” Chapter 3 in this volume. 5. See Sean Redmond, Foreword, “Will I Dream of Terror Tonight?” in this volume. 6. For more on how this feeling is generated, and what it might mean, see “Lovecraft Country: Negotiating Humanity and the Black Body,” Charlie’s Toolbox, Medium.com (January 31, 2020), https://charliestool box.medium.com/lovecraft-country-negotiating-humanity-and-the-blackbody-306f9e951908.

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7. Alan Sepinwall, “‘Lovecraft Country’ Recap: The Past Is Never Dead,” Rolling Stone (October 4, 2020), https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tvrecaps/lovecraft-country-recap-episode-8-jig-a-bobo-1069922/. 8. Sarah Cole, The Violet Hour: Modernism and Violence in England and Ireland (Oxford University Press, 2012), 42. 9. Lovecraft Country, season one, episode eight, “Jig-a-Bobo,” aired October 4, 2020, on HBO. 10. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), xiii. 11. For statistics on global terrorism, see “Terrorism,” Our World In Data, updated November 2019, https://ourworldindata.org/terrorism (Accessed January 31, 2021) and Megan Smith and Sean M. Zielgler, “Terrorism Before and After 9/11—A More Dangerous World?,” Research and Politics (October–November 2017), https://jou rnals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2053168017739757. For data on terrorism in the US, see “CSIS Brief: The Escalating Terrorism Problem in the United States,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, updated June 17, 2020, https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalating-terror ism-problem-united-states (Accessed January 31, 2021). 12. Lovecraft Country, season one, episode five, “Strange Case,” aired September 13, 2020, on HBO. The one exception to this rule of disenchantment may be Diana’s (Jada Harris) murder of Christina Braithwaite (Abbey Lee) in the last act. We do not know how that will ripple across the Freeman’s lives. Lovecraft Country, season one, episode ten, “Full Circle,” aired October 18, 2020, on HBO. 13. Veena Das. Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007) quoted in Harveen Mann’s essay in this volume 14. Lovecraft Country, season one, episode seven, “I Am,” aired September 27, 2020, on HBO.

Works Cited “Announcement of Strikes Against Afghanistan.” CNN.com, Updated October 7, 2001. Accessed November 12, 2009. http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/ 10/07/ret.bush.transcript/. Cole, Sarah. The Violet Hour: Modernism and Violence in England and Ireland. Oxford University Press, 2012. “CSIS Brief: The Escalating Terrorism Problem in the United States.” Center for Strategic and International Studies, Updated June 17, 2020. Accessed January 31, 2021. https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalating-terrorism-pro blem-united-states.

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“Lovecraft Country: Negotiating Humanity and the Black Body.” Charlie’s Toolbox. Medium.com, January 31, 2020, https://charliestoolbox.medium. com/lovecraft-country-negotiating-humanity-and-the-black-body-306f9e 951908. “Our World in Data.” Our World In Data, Updated November 2019. Accessed January 31, 2021. https://ourworldindata.org/terrorism. Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books, 1993. Sepinwall, Alan. “‘Lovecraft Country’ Recap: The Past Is Never Dead.” Rolling Stone, October 4, 2020. https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-recaps/lovecr aft-country-recap-episode-8-jig-a-bobo-1069922/. Slotkin, Richard. Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973. Smith, Megan, and Sean M. Zielgler. “Terrorism Before and After 9/11— A More Dangerous World?” Research and Politics (October–November 2017), 1–8. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/205316801 7739757#articleCitationDownloadContainer.

Films and Television Eye in the Sky. Directed by Gavin Hood. UK and Canada, 2015. In the Fade. Directed by Fatih Akin. Germany, 2017. Lovecraft Country, Season one, episode one, “Sundown Town.” Aired August 16, 2020, on HBO. Lovecraft Country, Season one, episode five, “Strange Case.” Aired September 13, 2020, on HBO. Lovecraft Country, Season one, episode seven, “I Am.” Aired September 27, 2020, on HBO. Lovecraft Country, Season one, episode eight, “Jig-a-Bobo.” Aired October 4, 2020, on HBO. Lovecraft Country, Season one, episode ten, “Full Circle.” Aired October 18, 2020, on HBO. 1984. Directed by Michael Radford. UK, 1984.

Index

A Abolition of Article 370, 146 Acharya, Satish, 169, 172, 173. See also Political cartoons, in response to Charlie Hebdo shooting AfD (Alternative for Germany), 207 Agamben, Giorgio, x, xi Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (creat. Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen), 15 Akin, Fatih, 10, 202–204, 206–208, 210, 212, 214–216, 274 al-Gaddafi, Muammar, 244, 250 capture of, 244, 250 Alliance, 185, 223, 229 European-American, 251 Al-Qaeda, 59, 62, 65, 69, 71–73. See also Bin Laden, Osama Al-Shabaab, 245, 246, 253, 260 American Sniper (dir. Clint Eastwood), 248 Anarchist movement, 25 Archetti, Cristina, 110, 122 Augè, Marc, 185

AUMF (Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorism), 60, 71. See also 9/11, American response to; Bush, George W.; War on Terror Avengers, The (dir. Joss Whedon), 80, 240 Azoulay, Ariella, 130, 132, 139, 145, 152, 153, 155. See also 1984 (creat. Gauri Gill) B Baudrillard, Jean, viii, xi, 24, 34, 85, 94, 95 Bauman, Zygmunt, 163, 166, 176 Begin, Menachem, 194 Bell, Steven, 169, 170, 172. See also political cartoons, in response to Charlie Hebdo shooting Benveniste, Meron, 19 Betz, David, 110, 122 Bezanson, Mary Elizabeth, 161, 162, 175 Bhagat, H.K.L., 142

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 E. Caoduro et al. (eds.), Mediated Terrorism in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73511-1

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280

INDEX

Bhindranwale, Jarnail Singh, 140 Bin Laden, Osama, 12, 50, 53, 62, 69, 73, 86, 244, 245, 248–251, 256–260, 262 capture of, 244, 245, 259 Blacklist, The (creat. Jon Bokenkamp), 82 Black September Organization, 41, 51, 245. See also Munich massacre Bodies of Lies (dir. Ridley Scott), 236, 240 Body as a weapon, 18. See also Embodied violence; Human bomb; Suicide bombing Bomb, vii, viii, 4, 6, 10, 18, 20–22, 24–27, 30, 43, 119, 166, 202, 203, 205, 207–210, 213–215, 229, 245, 248, 250, 254, 255, 262 homemade, 203, 207, 214 see also Human bomb; Suicide bombing Border, 4, 14, 28, 47, 61, 65, 85, 151, 253, 259, 271 American/Mexican, 65 Böse, Wilfried, 184, 185, 187–190, 194, 195 Bouko, Catherine, 160, 168, 169, 175, 176 Breivik, Anders Behring, 4, 208 Brooks, Peter, 221 Bureaucracy, 60, 67, 68, 70, 74, 270 Burgoyne, Robert, 6, 13, 17, 258, 262, 265 Bush administration, 73, 168 post-9/11, 168 Bush, George W., 3, 5, 40, 54, 60, 61, 71, 73, 80, 86, 93, 95, 96, 168, 269. See also 9/11, American response to; War on Terror

C CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act), 146, 155. See also Muslims, in India Camera shots amateur, 160, 209 close-up, 24, 30, 32, 250 drone, 4, 244, 250, 252, 257 long, 31, 52 low angle, 231 off-angle, 45 portraiture, 32 reverse, 28, 29, 231, 235 shaky, 45 tracking, 32, 222 wide, 29, 231, 257 zoom, 45, 252, 257 Campfire (dir. Joseph Cedar), 190 Capitalism, x, 72, 235 Captions, 116, 133–136, 150, 161, 165, 166, 185 Carr, David, 92, 100 CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery), 52 Chamayou, Grégoire, 253, 264 Charlie Hebdo, xi, 8, 9, 159–169, 171–173, 175 anti-Muslim cartoons, 168 terrorist attacks on, 8, 163, 166 Charlie Hebdo shooting, 163 media response to, 173 see also #JeSuisCharlie; Political cartoons, in response to Charlie Hebdo shooting Checkpoints, 19, 20, 154. See also Occupation, life under; War zone Chute, Hillary, 160, 167, 173, 175–177 CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), 7, 12, 61–63, 65, 68, 72, 73, 80, 245, 248, 249, 264

INDEX

Cold War, ix, 7, 52, 62, 79–82, 84, 94, 255 nostalgia, 7, 80–82, 84, 94 Cole, Sarah, 17, 25, 26, 33, 34 Collective memory, 188, 193, 195 of Operation Entebbe, 188, 193 of the Holocaust, 193, 195 Color Purple, The (dir. Steven Spielberg), 40 Counter-narratives, 8, 108–110, 119, 120 see also Cyberwarriors; Nahdlatul Ulama (NU)/Revival/Awakening of Ulama to Islamic radicalism, 109, 119 Counterterrorism, 5, 63 networks, 7 COVID-19 pandemic, vii, 3 Criminal justice system, 210 Cyberterrorism, 5, 231, 232 Cyberwarriors depiction of kyai/ulama, 8, 108, 109, 111–113, 118–121 see also Counter-narratives, to Islamic radicalism; Nahdlatul Ulama (NU)/Revival/Awakening of Ulama social media accounts of, 111, 113, 118 D Dark Knight, The (dir. Christopher Nolan), 11, 223, 240 Joker vs. Batman, 223, 227 Das, Veena, 130–132, 134, 138, 139, 145, 152, 153, 155, 276 David, Saul, 182, 183, 196 Deleuze, Gilles, 83, 95, 96 DHS (Department of Homeland Security), 61, 62

281

Dikshit, Sheila, 142 Douglas, Kirk, 188, 190 Drone warfare chain of command in, 255 civilians in, 253 ethics of, 259 kill box, 254, 258 psychological effects of, 262 see also Modern warfare use of concurrent screens in, 246 Dr. Strangelove (dir. Stanley Kubrick), 255, 267 Dyer, Richard, 111, 113, 122, 123 E “Echad Mi Yodea”, 184 Editing sound, 187 use of news clips/documentary footage, 184 Elsaesser, Thomas, 92, 99 Embodied violence, 17–19, 26 concept of, 18 see also Human bomb; Martyrdom; Suicide bombing Enchanted violence, 6, 17, 18, 28, 33, 271, 272 see also Human bomb; Martyrdom; Suicide bombing Ensaaf, 141, 149, 154 see also 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms, accountability for Eye in the Sky (dir. Gavin Hood), 11, 245–247, 267 F Far-right movement, 210 FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), 7, 60, 63, 70–72, 74, 80, 89 Fiala, Andrew, 50, 55 Fierke, Karin, 21–23, 33, 34

282

INDEX

Fihril, Kamal, 118. See also Sketsa Islam Kita (Our Islam Sketches) Flashforward (creat. Brannon Braga and David S. Goyer), 15 Foucault, Michel, 115, 123 Freedom of expression, 160, 166, 167 free speech, 167 Fringe (creat. J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman, and Roberto Orci), 88 G Galloway, Alexander R., 75, 82, 94–96, 99 Gana, Nouri, 22, 30, 33, 34 Gandhi, Indira, 8, 127, 129, 141, 144–146, 151 assassination of, 8, 146, 151 Gandhi, Rajiv, 129, 142, 144 Gates, Robert M., 81, 94 Gender roles, 243 female, 243 in modern warfare, 243 Gender stereotypes female, 189, 244 in war narratives, 244 Genre action, 209, 211, 259 crisis fetish, 11, 13, 45, 46, 80. See also Television narratives, post-9/11 docudrama, 46 dramadoc, 46 gangster/vigilante, 222 melodrama. See also Meeuf, Russell; Williams, Linda revenge, 46 see also War films vox pop, 47 Ghosh, Amitav, 127, 128, 149 Gill, Gauri, 8, 128–130, 133–137, 139, 141, 143–145, 150–156, 274

photography, 139 see also 1984 (creat. Gauri Gill); “Jis tann lãgé soee jãné” (writ. Gauri Gill) Globalization, 82, 225, 228, 235 Goldberg, Michel, 195 Golden Dawn Party, 210 Gopal, Anand, 245, 252, 264 Gregory, Derek, 19, 33 Grid, The (creat. Tracey Alexander and Ken Friedman) Grief, 10, 203, 210, 212, 214, 217 female, 10, 203 Guantanamo Bay, 51, 71. See also Torture; War on Terror Guattari, Félix, 83, 95, 96 Guha, Ramachandra, 145, 146, 155. See also (CAA) Citizenship Amendment Act Gus Dur (Abdurrahman Wahid), 113, 115–117 Gus Mus (Mustofa Bisri), 107, 108

H Habib Luthfi (Habib Luthfi bin Yahya), 118 Hall, Stuart, viii, xi Hardt, Michael, 18, 33, 85, 95, 96 Hartuv, Ilan, 195 Helium (writ. Jaspreet Singh), 136, 149, 153 Hirsch, Marianne, 130, 131–133, 140, 145, 152. See also Postmemory, concept of Hollywood classic/old, 37, 49 domestic terrorism portrayal in, 208 New, 39 political narratives in, 39 post-9/11, viii, 11, 73 Holocaust (dir. Marvin Chomsky), 191

INDEX

Holocaust, The, 41, 134, 167, 187, 188, 190–195 as a reference frame, 191, 194 selection, 190, 192–195 Homeland (creat. Alex Gansa, Gideon Raff, Howard Gordon), 240 Human bomb female, 250 in Palestinian context, 21 see also Martyrdom; Suicide bombing symbolism of, 6, 18, 22 Hundal, Sunny, 148 Hurt Locker, The (dir. Kathryn Bigelow), 256, 268 I IDF (Israel Defense Forces), 132 Sayeret Matkal, 183 Independence Day (dir. Steven Spielberg), 51 Indian Partition of 1947, 131 Indonesia Muslim-Christian relations in, 113 Inhofe, James, 81, 94 Intergenerationality, 230 In the Fade (dir. Fatih Akin) cinematography, 204 good/evil binary in, 62 soundtrack, 206 Iraq War, 244 media coverage of, 11 ISIS, 5, 96, 108, 112 recruitment, 108 Islam, 8, 21, 66, 67, 72, 107, 108, 110–113, 117–120, 146, 154, 155, 163, 166, 168, 171, 246 interpretations of, 110, 117, 118 J Jaws (dir. Steven Spielberg), 38, 39

283

Jenkins, Henry, 91, 98, 99 #JeSuisCharlie, 160, 167. See also Charlie Hebdo shooting, cartoons in response to Jihad, 21, 26, 32, 110, 112, 118 jihadi cool, 8, 108, 121 “Jis tann lãgé soee jãné” (writ. Gauri Gill), 135, 139. See also 1984 (creat. Gauri Gill); Gill, Guari Joker (dir. Todd Phillips), ix, 240

K Kaur, Nirpreet, 135, 153 Khosrohkavar, Fahrad, 23 Kimmelman, Michael, 172 Kleinman, Arthur, 145, 155 Kouachi brothers, 164, 171. See also Charlie Hebdo shooting Kruger, Diane, 10, 202, 210, 213, 216 Kumar, Sajjan, 135, 142, 150 Kushner, Tony, 6, 41, 53–55. See also Munich (dir. Steven Spielberg) Kyai, 8, 107–109, 111, 112, 115, 119–121. See also Cyberwarriors, depiction of kyai/ulama

L Landsberg, Alison, 152 Laqueur, Walter, 62, 74 London Has Fallen (dir. Babak Najafi), 256, 268 Lovecraft Country (creat. Misha Green and Matt Ruff), 269–275

M Martyrdom Christian, 25 in Palestinian context, 21 martyr ritual, 23

284

INDEX

psychology of, 33 Shia Muslims on, 21 Sunni Muslims on, 21 symbolism of, 18, 22. See also Enchanted violence; Human bomb; Suicide bombing Masculinity hegemonic, 225, 234 hyper, 12, 223 in hero/villain narratives, 11, 226, 234 in relation to age, 220 in relation to technology, 228 toxic, 2 Mass media good/evil binary in, 62 identity in, 202 post-9/11, 73 safe surfing campaign, 226 Massumi, Brian, 38, 51, 55 Mayes, Malcom, 171, 172, 173, 177. See also Political cartoons, in response to Charlie Hebdo shooting McDonald, Kevin, 25, 32, 34, 165 Media environment, 91 contemporary, 5, 25. See also Television, networks Meeuf, Russell, 211, 217 Melodrama, 10, 182, 202, 209, 211, 214, 221, 236 masculine, 221, 236 narrative, 18, 27, 191, 211, 221. See also Genre, melodrama Merantzas, Christos D., 25, 34 Military, 3, 9, 12, 19, 21, 22, 43, 47, 51, 59, 71, 86, 127, 181, 182, 184, 189, 191, 194, 234, 236, 243–251, 253–258, 260–263, 270 women in, 255, 256

Minority Report, (dir. Steven Spielberg), 6, 50, 53 Mittell, Jason, 87, 97–100 Modern warfare. civilians in, 11, 248 lack of physical body in, 262 women in, 243, 257. See also Drone warfare Modi, Narendra, 129, 146–148, 155, 156 Morag, Raya, 23, 34 Morris, Nigel, 47, 48, 50, 54, 55 Motherhood, 10, 201, 203, 260 Movement, 8, 20, 26, 38, 108, 121, 127, 135, 140, 190, 231, 247, 253 anarchist, 25. See also Propaganda by deed Khalistan, 127, 135, 140, 153 Munich (dir. Steven Spielberg) critique of, 46 genre of, 45, 46 modes of address in, 46 references to 9/11 in, 52 Munich massacre, 41. See also Black September Organization Muslim ban, 72. See also Trump, Donald Muslims in India., 146, 147. See also Abolition of Article 37; CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act); NRC (National Register of Citizens) intra-debate, 110 Mustamar, Marzuqi, 112 N Nahdlatul Ulama (NU)/Revival/Awakening of Ulama, 109. See also Cyberwarriors

INDEX

Nanavati Commission Report, 133. See also 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms Narrative, viii, 5, 7, 8, 11, 20, 24, 27, 29, 30, 39, 46, 47, 49, 61, 62, 64, 65, 84, 87–93, 95, 97, 98, 110, 119–121, 129, 131–134, 139, 152, 153, 156, 168, 174, 183–185, 188, 190–193, 195, 203, 209, 211, 213, 215, 219, 221, 222, 224, 230, 232, 234, 238, 243, 254, 257, 259, 261, 262, 269, 271, 273, 274 hero-victim, 232 Nath, Deeksha, 133, 153 National Guard (American), 2 Negri, Antonio, 18, 33, 85, 95, 96 Neoliberalism, 120 Neo-Nazi, 3, 10, 201–203, 205, 207–209, 211, 213, 214 Netanyahu, Yonatan, 160, 189–191, 195, 196 Network logic linear, 83 non-linear, 83 rhizomatic, 85 see also Network Society, the Network Society, the, 82, 84, 85, 87, 90–92. See also Network logic Newby, Richard, 225, 226, 238 NF (National Front), 207 9/11, 2, 5, 7, 11, 39, 41, 46, 50–52, 59–62, 66, 68, 71, 73, 80, 81, 86, 87, 94, 154, 167, 220, 244, 253, 270. See also Bush, George W.; Patriot Act; War on Terror American response to, 39 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms, 8, 127, 128, 131, 150 accountability for, 127 Orwellian response to, 128, 129, 139, 156

285

1984 (creat. Gauri Gill), 8, 129, 130, 134–138, 143, 144, 150, 151, 153, 155. See also Gill, Gauri 1984 (writ. George Orwell), 128, 156 NRC (National Register of Citizens), 146. See also Muslims, in India NSA (National Security Agency), 7, 61–63, 73, 74 NSU (National Socialist Underground), 10, 202, 207, 214, 215. See also Terrorism, far-right O Occupation, 19, 29, 40, 185 life under, 19. See also Checkpoints; War zone Operation Blue Star, 128, 144. See also Gandhi, Indira; 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms Operation Enduring Freedom. See War on Terror Operation Entebbe/Entebbe hostage crisis, 182, 193, 194, 195 Holocaust framing of, 10, 182. See also Collective memory, of Operation Entebbe; Holocaust, The, as a reference frame Operation Freedom’s Sentinel. See War on Terror Operation Thunderbolt (dir. Menahem Golan), 189, 190 Holocaust references in, 189, 190 P Padilha, José, 9, 10, 182, 184, 200 Palestine, 20–23, 25, 31 Israeli-Palestinian relations, 196 see also Palestinian-Israeli conflict Palestinian-Israeli conflict, 185. See also Palestine, Israeli-Palestinian relations

286

INDEX

Paradise Now (dir. Hany Abu-Hassad), 17 Parks, Lisa, 258, 264, 265 Patriot Act, 40, 60. See also Bush, George W.; War on Terror Patriotism, 61 PELP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), 9, 181, 185, 193 Pentagon, The, 7, 59, 63, 73. See also 9/11 Peres, Shimon, 186, 191, 194 Photography civil duty of photographer, 132, 139, 145 relationship between photographed, photographer, viewer., 132, 133, 145. See also Azoulay, Ariella see also Gill, Gauri, photography Political cartoons good/evil binary in, 168 in response to Charlie Hebdo shooting, 160 post-9/11, 165, 167 satire in, 165 terrorists depicted in, 161, 169. See also #JeSuisCharlie Politics of exceptional authority, 112, 113, 115 of inspiration, 112, 115, 116 of threat, 65, 112, 113, 116 Postmemory, 130–133, 136, 140, 152 concept of, 131. See also Hirsch, Marianne; Verma, Rita Postmodern, 235 Powell, Kimberly, 163, 175 Propaganda by deed, 25, 26. See also Anarchist movement Proud Boys, 2, 3, 216. See also White supremacy

Q Queerness, 224 in hero/villain narratives, 224

R Rabin, Yitzchak, 186, 191 Racism in America, 272 Radicalism, xi, 7, 8, 108–110, 113, 118, 120, 121 in Indonesia, xi RAF (Red Army Faction), 184, 201. See also Terrorism, left-wing Raiders of the Lost Ark (dir. Steven Spielberg), 39 Raid on Entebbe (dir. Irvin Kershner), 182, 200 Redmond, Sean, 12, 270, 273, 275 Religious authority, 8, 108, 109, 113, 115, 120, 121 inter-dialogue, 8, 108, 117, 120 inter-tension, 112, 113 inter-violence, 8, 108, 120 tolerance, 117 Revolutionäre Zellen (Revolutionary Cells), 9, 181 Rich, Paul B., 207, 208, 216 Rove, Karl, 73 Roy, Arundhati, 133, 148, 150, 151 Rubicon (creat. Jason Horwitch) Cold War nostalgia in, 7, 82, 84 Rumsfeld, Donald H., 71, 75. See also Guantanamo Bay

S Sahib, Nishan, 148 Said, Edward, 17, 18, 20, 21, 23, 24, 27–33, 156, 273, 276 Sareen, Hemant, 147, 150

INDEX

Schindler’s List (dir. Steven Spielberg), 40, 41 Second Intifada of 2000-2005, 132. See also Palestinian-Israeli conflict Segev, Tom, 193, 194, 197, 198 Self-sacrifice, 6, 18, 20–23, 27, 28, 228 political, 6, 18, 20, 22 politics of, 18 see also Human bomb; Martyrdom; Suicide bombing Self, Will, 164, 174, 176, 177 Sepinwall, Alan, 272, 276 Setting, 10, 21, 23, 25, 28, 115, 140, 184, 185, 202, 204, 211, 230, 270 non-place, concept of, 186 7 Days in Entebbe (dir. José Padilha), 9, 182, 200 cinematic space in, 10, 182, 188 Sikh diaspora, 139, 140 in India, 140 Sikh Genocide Memorial, The, 142. See also 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms Singh, Jaspreet, 133, 136, 145, 149, 150, 153, 154. See also 1984 (creat. Gauri Gill); Helium (writ. Jaspreet Singh) Singh, Manmohan, 142 Sketsa Islam Kita (Our Islam Sketches), 118. See also Counternarratives: to Islamic radicalism: Fihril, Kamal; Zubair, Maimun Skyfall (dir. Sam Mendes), 11, 234 Slotkin, Richard, 269, 275 Social media, 1, 4–6, 8, 9, 108–110, 112, 118–121, 128, 140, 141, 148, 151, 156, 162, 164, 166, 172, 175, 213. See also Cyberwarriors, social media accounts of Spiegelman, Art, 152, 167

287

Spielberg, Steven filmography, 6, 39 film style, 38, 45 Star text, 111, 112, 115, 117, 119 concept of, 111 see also Cyberwarriors, depiction of kyai/ulama; Technologies of the self Storming of US Capitol, 2 social media response to, 2 Strenski, Ivan, 22, 26, 34 Suicide, 4, 6, 11, 12, 18–20, 22–24, 26, 27, 29, 30, 32–34, 50, 148, 164, 202, 203, 205, 206, 212, 248, 250, 257, 261, 263 attempt, 205 female, 206 Suicide bombing in Palestinian context, 26 psychology of, 20 see also Human bomb; Martyrdom; Self-sacrifice; Suicide resistance symbolism of, 6, 18 Suicide resistance, 20, 22 concept of, 6 Surveillance, 38, 50, 139, 225, 226, 228, 247, 253 cyber, 243 electronic, 226 Survivor, 5, 8, 10, 128, 129, 131– 134, 139, 141, 145, 150, 153, 154, 187–193, 195, 202, 203, 208, 214 of terrorist attacks, 10

T Takacs, Stacy, 12, 73–75, 269 Tartici, Ayten, 204, 206, 215 Taylor, Elizabeth, 188, 197 Technologies of the self, 115–117, 119, 120

288

INDEX

concept of, viii. See also Foucault, Michel Technology effeminizing effects of, 220 in hero/villain narratives, 234 use by women, 229 Television, 2, 4, 6, 7, 41, 42, 46–48, 60, 61, 63, 65, 66, 73, 79, 80, 84, 87, 88, 90–92, 95, 97, 99, 128, 188, 226, 227, 244, 269 networks, 79, 87, 92. See also Media environment, contemporary Television narratives of Middle Eastern vs. Western women, 61, 66 post-9/11, 80 serial vs. episodic, 87, 88 Terrorism American response to, 38. See also Massumi, Brian as an environmental threat, 51, 54, 270 defining, 85 depicted in American film, 37 depicted on television, 86, 88 domestic, 2, 3, 5, 14, 163, 207, 209, 210 far-right, 10, 207, 208, 210, 214–216 German, 10, 188, 189, 194, 196, 201, 202 global, 7, 9, 40, 63, 79, 86–88, 97, 181, 251, 276 left-wing, 201 liberalism against, 6, 50 media coverage of, 163 narratives, 7, 29, 39 postmodern, 62, 74 recruitment, 108 reported on television, 162 transnational, 210 Terrorist attack

aftermath of, 8, 40, 168 in Europe, 5 in Indonesia, xi, 108 Terrorist networks, 82, 85, 87–89, 92, 96, 251 as rhizomatic, 85 Terrorist threat, 79, 82, 84, 85, 90, 95 Thacker, Eugene, 82, 94–96, 99 Till, Emmett, 272, 273 Torture, 248, 249, 253, 264 Trauma of America post-9/11, 59 of drone warfare, 251 of Jewish people, 193. See also Holocaust, The;Operation Entebbe/Entebbe hostage crisis of Sikh diaspora. See also 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms; Indian Partition of 1947 of terrorist attacks, 5, 229 Trump, Donald on American/Mexican border, 65 on Charlie Hebdo shooting, 162, 163 on killing of Qasem Soleimani, 244 on terrorism, 3, 4, 162, 163 see also Muslim ban Tulsa Race Massacre, 271, 272 2020-2021 Indian farmers’ protest, 147 2021 inauguration of Joe Biden, 2 22 July (dir. Paul Greengrass), 208, 218 Tytler, Jagdish, 142 U Ulama, 8, 108, 109, 111, 113–115, 118–121. See also Cyberwarriors, depiction of kyai/ulama Urbanity, 221, 227, 233

INDEX

as otherness, 221 Utøya–July 22 (dir. Erik Poppe), 208, 218 V Vengeance (writ. George Jonas), 41. See also Munich (dir. Steven Spielberg); Munich massacre Verma, Rita, 140, 153. See also Postmemory Victim of terrorism, 163, 202, 205 of terrorism narratives, 163, 274 Victory at Entebbe (dir. Marvin Chomsky), 182, 190, 200 Holocaust references in, 189 Violence anti-Sikh in America, 154 anti-Sikh in India, 131 W Waisbord, Silvio, 61, 74 Walker, Michael, 49, 55 Walmesley, James, 161, 165. See also political cartoons, in response to Charlie Hebdo shooting War film gender roles in, 243 men in, 259 post-9/11, 11 see also Eye in the Sky (dir. Gavin Hood); Zero Dark Thirty (dir. Kathryn Bigelow)

289

women in, 256 War of the Worlds (dir. Steven Spielberg), ix, 6, 41 references to 9/11 in, 39 War of Worlds (writ. H.G. Wells), 51 War on Terror, 3, 5, 40, 61, 80, 84–86, 92, 168, 253, 265, 270 see also Bush, George W.; Guantanamo Bay; Patriot Act weapons of mass destruction, 63, 73 War of the Worlds (dir. Byron Haskin), 16 War zone, 4, 19, 248, 261 West Bank, 17, 19, 28 Westgate Attack, 254, 265. See also Terrorist attack White supremacy, 3, 55 Williams, Linda, 211, 217, 221, 237, 250, 264 Wonder Woman (dir. Patty Jenkins), 256, 268

X Xenophobia, 207, 210

Z Zero Dark Thirty (dir. Kathryn Bigelow), 12, 244, 248, 268 Zubair, Maimun, 119