The banality of militarism in the late “War on Terror”

Abstract

This chapter outlines the emergence of a new formula for the “war story” in audiovisual representations post-9/11. Key features of the story include: the depiction of war-fighting as routine (“just another job”); an overemphasis on the Special Forces; the use of melodrama to depict soldiers as suffering subjects ripe for empathy (indeed, the only subjects worthy of empathy); and the on-screen depiction of optical targeting devices (night/infrared vision, gunsights, grids, crosshairs, etc.) to circumscribe our perspective. Coupled with a lack of contextual cues—both in real life, where news about war is increasingly marginalized or suppressed, and on screen, as questions of motivation (why we fight) and social impact (who really suffers and how much) are omitted from the new war story—the effect of this formula is to render war banal, so banal as to be incontestable.