WAR ON TERROR

REPRESENTATIONS IN AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE

AND IMPACT ON PUBLIC RECEPTION OF THE POLICY

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the

POST GRADUATE DIPLOMA IN

CONFLICT TRANSFORMATION AND PEACE BUILDING

DIKSHA PANDEY

B.A. POLITICAL SCIENCE (HONOURS)

LADY SHRI RAM COLLEGE FOR WOMEN

2015-2016

WAR ON TERROR

REPRESENTATIONS IN AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE

AND IMPACT ON PUBLIC RECEPTION OF THE POLICY

Submitted by DIKSHA PANDEY

Supervisor Dr LESLIE K KUMAR

CONFLICT TRANSFORMATION AND PEACE BUILDING

Aung San Suu Kyi Centre for Peace

Lady Shri Ram College for Women

University of Delhi

New Delhi – 110024

Contents

Declaration i

Acknowledgments ii

Introduction 1

Chapter 1

Popular Culture – Meaning and Relevance 6

Popular Culture and War on Terror 10

Chapter 2

Hollywood for Propaganda 12

From DC to LA, with Censorship 16

Chapter 3

Political Mood and Box Office 20

The Box Office Bombs 24

Conclusion 27

References 29

Bibliography 31

Appendix - Tables and Figures 33

i

Date:12th April 2015

Declaration

I declare that the dissertation titled ‘War on Terror: Representations in American Popular

Culture and Impact on Public Reception of the Policy’ submitted by me in partial fulfilment of

the requirements for the award of the Diploma in Conflict Transformation and Peace Building

at Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi is my own work. This dissertation

has not been submitted for any other degree of this University or any other University.

……………………..... …………………………...

Name of the Candidate Signature of the Candidate

Certificate

We recommend that this dissertation be placed before the examiners for evaluation.

……………………….

Name of Supervisor Dr Suman Sharma

Principle, Lady Shri Ram College

ii

Acknowledgments

To begin with, I am indebted to the institution of Lady Shri Ram College for Women for all

the experiences and opportunities it provided me with in my 3 years here. LSR helped me

define myself as well as make sense of the world around me. I am grateful to our Principal, Dr

Mrs Suman Sharma, all professors of the Department of Political Science, LSR and my

classmates from batch of 2013-2016 for the invaluable learning processes and exchange of

thoughts. I would like to extend my gratitude to my mentor, Dr Leslie K Kumar and our course

supervisor, Dr Siddharth Tripathi, for their precious time and constant guidance. I also thank

professor Mahesh S Panicker who convincingly conveyed a spirit of adventure in regard of

education and research with his vast knowledge on any and all subject matters.

I must mention my friends - my family here in New Delhi – because they demanded a mention

but more importantly because they keep me sane enough to undertake projects such as these.

Finally, I owe the completion of this dissertation to my mother Rashmi Pandey, my father

Binay Prakash Pandey and my brother - also my personal ball of happiness - Raj Pandey, who

provide me with enthusiastic encouragement, unconditional love and incessant reminders of all

pending work from miles away.

1

Introduction

“Terrorism is theatre.” – Brian Jenkins

9/11 Attack and Post 9/11 Bush Doctrine:

Pope John Paul II referred to the dreadful terrorist attacks of September 11, 20011 on the United

States of America as an “unspeakable horror” and that is precisely how the events of 9/11 and

thereafter have been immortalised in human history. (La Santa Sede) The attacks penetrated

the blanket of security that the world seemed to be under since the end of the Second War

World in 1945 in spite of violence in various forms occurring in different parts of the world all

along. Such was the bearing of the attacks that there was a dramatic increase in the salience of

death related concerns amongst not just the Americans but people across the globe.

(Pyszczynski) Tom Engelhardt powerfully described 9/11 as ‘mass grave into which significant

aspects of American life as we knew it have been shovelled’.

Seen as an act of unprovoked ‘war’ against the very idea of ‘freedom’ and ‘civil society’,2 the

attacks marked unconventional changes in the field of global politics and sharply altered the

nature of discourse around security and defence. An attack which accelerated peace process in

one part of the world (Northern Ireland), undermined it almost completely in another (Israel),

brought about important modifications to US relations with almost all countries and led to one

of the biggest US military build-ups for over 20 years is certainly of more than just passing

interest to students and scholars of international relations.3 More importantly, post 9/11 we saw

1 19 terrorists took control of four planes, flew two into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, hit the Pentagon

with a third, and crashed the fourth in a field in Pennsylvania after passengers resisted and made it impossible for

the terrorists to complete their malevolent mission. More than 3,000 innocent people, mostly Americans, but also

people from 115 other countries in total were killed. 2 Rudy Giuliani in his opening remarks to the United Nations General Assembly’s Special Session on Terrorism

delivered on 1 October 2001 in New York city, referred to the 9/11 attack as “not just an attack on the City of

New York or on the United States of America but an attack on the very idea of a free, inclusive, and civil society.”

“It was a direct assault on the founding principles of the United Nations itself.” (American Rhetoric - Online

Speech Bank) 3 A lot of academic literature was generated soon after the attacks. As traced by Michael Cox, the two quickest

books have been Fred Halliday, Two Hours That Shook the World: September 11, 2001 – Causes and

Consequences (2002) and Strobe Talbott & Nayan Chanda, eds, The Age of Terror and the World After 11

September (2002). The proposition of course does not go unchallenged with some authors discrediting the attacks

as a minor event in world history. It presupposes that academics in the field of IR should always respond to major

international events, another assumption that some would dispute on the grounds that academics have the right to

be irrelevant. Finally, of course, it takes for granted that which many would dispute: the notion that theories in

general, and IR theories in particular, are in turn influenced and shaped by what happens outside the heads of

theorists. According to one school of thought, this not only denies autonomy to theory, but also assumes that

2

the entry of terrorism into the everyday vernacular, making it a part of both political and

popular dialogue. One is left wondering what was so unconventional about these attacks that

can possibly explain the extent of its impact. With a symbolic destruction of the twin towers

which stood for the might of not just the USA but the entire ‘west’ in the era of capitalism and

globalisation, a non-state actor such as the al-Qaeda, previously on the side lines in the global

political scenario, made its presence felt. The ‘geography of war’ changed, as explained by

Dalby (2004, 67), along with the assumption that America, the ‘world leader’, itself was

relatively immune to terrorism, despite the earlier 1993 bomb in the basement of the World

Trade Center, and the Oklahoma bombing of 1995.

What followed in the USA post the attacks was to determine events worldwide for a long time

to come. The attacks shook the national psyche and the conscience of every American and the

political leadership used these very feelings of shock and grief to unite the nation in a ‘war’

against the terrorists. President George W. Bush had a powerful message to deliver post the

attacks and history is proof that his iconic address to the nation on September 11 efficaciously

reassured the American spirit and garnered uncritical and unconditional support for the US

military in their proposed course of action thereafter. The declared ‘war’ was unprecedented

and created a strong ‘us’ versus them’. This ‘war’ against terror came across as a global effort,

being provided direction and momentum by the USA, pitting a decentralised network of

terrorists against an abstracted ‘west’, making it all the more asymmetrical in nature. President

George W. Bush was quoted saying

"We are supported by the collective will of the world. The attacks took place on

the American soil and the world has come together to fight a new and different war,

the first, and we hope the only one, of the 21st century. A war against all those who

seek to export terror, and a war against those governments that support or shelter

them.”

The USA engineered an international coalition for war on terror, as the policy would be referred

to since, and, ironical as it might be, went ahead to include in it Syria and Iran, identified to be

terror sponsoring regimes. In this context, it might be stimulating to quote George Bush’s

speech before the United Nations General Assembly wherein he attempted to bring home the

theories are merely a reflection of – rather than a means of explaining and understanding – that entity we call the

real world. (Cox)

3

point that this coalition is against terrorism as such and not only against those who actually

undertook the 9/11,

“We must unite in opposing all terrorists, not just some of them. In this world, there

are good causes and bad causes, and we may disagree on where that line is drawn.

Yet there is no such thing as a good terrorist. No national aspiration, no

remembered wrong can ever justify the deliberate murder of the innocent. Any

government that rejects this principle, trying to pick and choose its terrorist friends,

will know the consequences.”

The American foreign policy got a makeover, shifting from the defensive to the offensive, and

destroying leadership and organizations which threatened the integrity and freedom of the USA

became the emphasis. As The Guardian reported on the tenth anniversary of the attacks, “It

turned an administration with quasi-isolationist tendencies into one committed to robust

intervention overseas.” (The Guardian ) The ‘Bush Doctrine’ expanded the use of American

military force to allow for a unilateral preventive war, and not just pre-emptive war, when need

be to thwart the potential of another significant attack on the nation.

Ever since its declaration, war on terror continues to occupy the center stage and more so in

the light of rise of the ISIL.4 It became the most politically powerful phrase of the twenty first

century and a political rhetoric so commonplace yet demanding sensitivity while usage. It is

said to be the most important ‘frame’ in recent history, an organizing principle that was socially

shared and was persistent over time and that worked symbolically to meaningfully structure

the world around and create a favourable political climate. (Reese) National anxiety and a

widespread pro-Bush fervour amongst the Americans contributed to war on terror growing

beyond its original policy usage and ‘taking a life of its own’. (Lewis) War on terror has been

explained as a ‘macro level cultural structure’ that functions in its scope as an ‘ideological

expression’. (Thompson)

In the period soon after its launch, the policy was received predominantly in two ways. First,

there was criticism of the policy based on anti-colonial and anti-imperial grounds as it was seen

as a revived attempt to extend an imperialist agenda. However, this criticism of the policy as

an imperialistic project did not resonate among the masses, nor was it found across the political

spectrum. This view came from the circle of scholars and academicians around the world, small

4 Post-9/11 policies in the Middle East has often been blamed for the establishment of the Islamic State’s

“caliphate” in parts of fractured Iraq and Syria and a movement of almost unparalleled extremism that has

successfully “franchised” itself out from Libya to Nigeria to Afghanistan

4

in proportion and smaller within America.5 Scholars like Max Boot traced the use of American

power in military adventures aboard under the project of war of terror and suggest how the

pattern of violence might best be explained as ‘imperial wars’. War on terror, in this sense,

does not come across as a new type of war but instead as ‘counter-insurgency warfare at the

fringes of imperial control’ which has been witnessed several times in the history of several

nation states. (Dalby) It was argued that all events that dominated the global political scenario

post the events of September 2001 needed to be explained using an alternative geopolitical

narrative, a narrative in terms of ‘empire’. This ‘empire’ has been best described in the

following words,

“It is an empire without a consciousness of itself as such, constantly shocked that

its good intentions arouse resentment abroad. But that does not make it any less of

an empire, with a conviction that it alone, in Herman Melville’s words, bears ‘the

ark of liberties of the world’.” (Cox)

Secondly, and the rhetoric more relevant for thesis undertaken, there were the proud Americans

who after the declaration of the doctrine assumed that by taking up the onus of dealing with

terrorism on itself, the USA had now acquired a moral supremacy over other countries. The

USA pitched its aggressive military strategy of war on terror to the masses as a fight of the

‘good against evil’, ‘civilization against barbarism’ or ‘democracy against tyranny’. The world

was showcased as an ‘Hobbesian chaos’, in need of a ‘good war’ on the basis of patriotic ideals

against those who threaten the freedom of common man. “US saw itself as the embodiment of

a new and higher kind of civilisation, a trend observed in the colonial history as well, with a

mission of holding back the barbarians, or in this case the terrorists.” (Cox)

Despite this, several personalities from research and news as well explained the political

statements on ‘war on terror’ by referring to Joseph Goebbels’s statement on the Nazi Germany

which sums up the minor anti-war on terror group’s position well,

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to

believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the

people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. The

truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest

enemy of the state."

5 It is important to remember here that this criticism was not widespread only in the years immediately following

the launch of the policy. The change in the public reception of the policy and the mass resonance of the criticism

of the policy after certain realisations that followed the invasion of Iraq will be discussed at a later point.

5

The absence of critical reception of the war on terror by the masses in the immediate years

following its launch is credited to the construction of this particular narrative which conceals

the ‘lie’ and led to popular acceptance of an ‘option’ as the only ‘solution’. It is often said that

owing to the ‘image making’ by the state, Americans failed to grasp the horrific magnitude of

the policy of war on terror, neither did they realise its staggering human toll. They were

captivated by a powerful narrative constructed by the state and consumed by a patriotic fervour.

This ‘success’ of state agenda is almost entirely credited to the nature of cultural reproduction

of the doctrine.

The proposition that is discussed in the subsequent sections is that the cultural representation

of the policy of War on Terror was used as a propaganda vehicle by the US Military and the

Pentagon to suppress public scrutiny of the policy. Factors which contributed to strengthening

of popular culture as the propaganda arm of the government and the military are explored. An

attempt is made to ascertain the nature and extent of military influence in popular culture and

how popular culture generated crucial ideological support for the military. Changes and trends

in the popular acceptance of the open-ended War on Terror are also traced.

6

Chapter 1

Popular Culture – Meaning and Relevance

‘Culture’ is an exceptionally value laden term. It has been called by theorists such as Raymond

Williams as “one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language”.

Everything from customs and traditions to political ideologies and technological systems is

dealt with under the cover of culture. The study of culture and cultural trends has always been

an important field of assessment and analysis. The dominant culture at any period of time is

both derived from the wider social, political and economic context and shapes it as well.

Culture is produced keeping in mind several human realities and is at the same time used to

reflect upon the realities.

Culture is a social process in itself, defined best as constant succession of social practices.

(Fiske) ‘Culture Industry’, a term first used by Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer from

the Frankfurt school, is used to refer to the system that is put into place by these processes

which is uniform and is sustained by mechanical reproduction. A discussion on the Marxist

understanding of culture which considers the relationship between ideology, hegemony and

culture becomes indispensable to the thesis under consideration here. As is explained in

Marxist theory,

“Culture is an important way that the social relations of a class are structured and

shaped. But culture is also the manner in which those structures are experienced,

understood and interpreted.”

A Marxist understanding of culture sees it as an important factor in determining relations within

a society and thus culture becomes invariably involved in determining the distribution of power

within society. It is this which makes culture political in nature. Such as understanding of

culture also highlights the fact that it is dynamic and not static. The dynamism of culture

enables the understanding of flexible political moods of the masses and provides an explanation

for the amendments in cultural trends that such a flexibility propels. Here, culture gains

relevance majorly as a collective process that more often than not holds sway over purely

personal processes.

Seen as a collective process then, the compilation of ‘lived’ culture and cultural practices is

known as popular culture. Defining popular culture becomes a complex theoretical undertaking

as it involves the interplay between the various definitions of the terms popular and culture

7

which themselves are highly contested. Popular culture, if defined in the simplest manner, is

culture consumed by the masses in a large amount, the ‘popular’ measured by figures of sale

and other market research figures. But attempts have constantly been made to move beyond

this quantitative dimension towards a conceptual definition of the term. A theoretical definition

of popular culture always emerges in relation to various other terms such as mass culture, folk

culture, dominant culture, high culture etcetera. As a result, it has often been suggested that

popular culture is an ‘empty conceptual category’. As Tony Bennett points out,

“Popular culture is virtually useless, a melting pot of confused and contradictory

meanings capable of misdirecting inquiry up any number of theoretical blind

alleys.” (Bennett)

The above claim cannot be refuted wholly and as a result of lack of conceptual framing around

the term, popular culture is still in the process of getting absorbed into the educational

curriculum. The past decades however, have marked increased attention being given by

theorists, researchers and analysts to the emergence of popular culture and how it has

consolidated itself as a relevant area of study for all social sciences.6 Matt Davies, for example,

has written about the ‘pedagogical’ potentials of utilising popular culture in the study of IR.

Yet another example can be derived from the TV series Game of Thrones, exceedingly popular

and laden with political themes, being used to explain theories of Realism and securitisation.

Similarly, the famous comic book series Captain America explains to us identity construction

processes and the importance of popular geopolitics.

In the present times, popular culture, for all relevant theoretical and practical purposes, is best

understood as mass production for mass consumption. Such an understanding demands popular

culture to be studied critically within the larger political climate. It also best explains the

manipulative power of popular culture. Popular culture functions as a “resource” that can be

mobilised to further your cause in a mass mediated society.

“Popular culture is made by various formations of subordinated or disempowered

people out of the resources. The resources - television, records, clothes, video

games, language - carry the interests of the economically and ideologically

dominant. They have lines of force within them that are hegemonic and that work

in the favour of the status quo.” (Fiske)

6Dan Drezner’s Theories of International Politics and Zombies and Cynthia Weber’s

International Relations Theory: A Critical Introduction are just two of the most prominent examples

of how popular culture is being utilised in theorizing IR.

8

The main reason behind the increasing relevance of popular culture as a topic of enquiry is the

magnitude of influence popular culture holds over the lives of people in present day capitalist

societies which makes its manipulative power possible. The volume of popular culture

produced and consumed on a daily basis, not just in the western set up but worldwide, is

shockingly significant, be it in the form of films, TV programs, comics or video games.

Coupled with the volume of production is the easy, universal access that enables mass

consumption and its omnipresence in our everyday environment.

More importantly, the production of popular culture does not take place in vacuum, neither is

it only fiction that forms the basis of all popular culture. Popular culture is also derived from

the various truths that shape relationships between humans to nations. All the production of

fictional popular culture is also grounded in reality with an aim to deliver a subtle, implicit

message or showcase reality or a particular narrative of the reality which is acceptable and

bearable.

“Just as fiction serves to push reality forward, reality often gives fiction something

to portray.” (Strinati)

The furthering of your cause or agenda by the creation of such narratives through popular

culture is precisely what is explored here, how popular culture is used as an instrument to

narrate and forward scripts that serve the interests of the dominant. The construction of scripts

that mould common perception of political events using popular culture is possible because it

invokes passion that can guide our thoughts as well as actions. Due to this, popular culture also

plays an important role in pushing forward the internationalization of one’s national identity

and the position and role of their nation in the broader geopolitical scenario. It paints the picture

of a particular global order by constructing narratives through which this role is legitimized.

To understand this phenomenon completely, we need to bring into use the concept of

hegemony.

The hegemony of the USA in particular and the west in general has been sustained in many

ways by the one-way flow of all forms of cultural production – television programs, films,

news as well as music which ensures the reproduction of those cultural and political norms

which are favourable to the hegemon. The unidirectional flow of information in particular

from the west to the rest of the world, especially to the ‘Third World’, is explained under the

framework of several theories such as Wallerstein’s world systems theory, Frank’s dependency

9

theory or theories highlighting center-periphery relations and cultural imperialism.7 Theorists

have blamed this poor and one sided information flow for reinforcing the domination of the

western powers as well as further marginalizing already marginalised communities by

reinforcing stereotypes and generalizations in cultural reproduction of events. America

deployed the use of the technique of controlled flow of information and the strategic

communication approach to justify and popularise its take on terror as well.

7 These traditional theories of international information flow do not go unchallenged. Several opposing theories

and results published from several applied research — both quantitative and qualitative - state that international

information flow is far more complex than is suggested by those theories. Today, several developing countries

are producing and exporting media materials, including films from India and Egypt, and television programs from

Mexico and Brazil. (Sreverny)

10

Popular Culture and War on Terror

‘‘We’re all New Yorkers now’’ (Allis 2001)

War in the present context is fought not only on the battlefield but across cultural and

institutional terrains. Cultural practices coupled with technological advancements and time-

space compression owing to the forces of globalization has altered the very nature of modern

day combat. The ‘war’ on terror is itself unconventional and unprecedented as it does not fit

under the ‘state-to-state conflict model’, the ‘Second World War model’, or even the ‘1991

Gulf war model’ as these traditional models severely limit the understanding of warfare to a

matter of pitched battles between large armies. (Dalby)

This being said, the destructive capacity of violence and war remains and the casualties, both

human, environmental and material, have grown multiple times in magnitude. It has often been

said that power grows in direct proportion to violence. To conceal this ugly face of state led

war machineries, it is demanded of the media and popular culture to structurally and

ideologically fit into the state’s agenda as propaganda tools. ‘Selling’ these wars require the

state to utilise cultural institutions and practices to convince people to be less suspicious or

sceptical of any orchestrated agenda behind the war.

In cases of violence and war, facts have always been manipulated by the authorities to serve

political purposes. Figures of death toll and estimation of damage to property is almost always

underreported so the state does not carry heavy baggage from the incidence of violence in

public glare. For example, the U.S. tracks its own military deaths and physical injuries in

Afghanistan and Iraq. Unsurprisingly, there are no conclusive government statistics on

casualties and deaths among enemy combatants and civilians. This omission is by design and

therefore, there has been a trend of mistrust in official bearings.

Similarly, the role of controlled information in sustaining the war on terror as well is

highlighted by Miller and Sabir and they describe the extensive government machinery for

producing propaganda in both the United Kingdom and the United States, citing the US Office

of Global Communications responsible for fabricating the connection between Saddam

Hussein, weapons of mass destruction and Al Qaeda as a particularly relevant example.

Strategic communication approach to terrorism involves spread of misinformation to the public

11

and deception. This pattern ties in with a recent study by Adam Hodges who believes that

‘sound bites’ of information provided by government, for instance President Bush’s speeches

after September 11, 2001, form a discursive narrative which ‘regulate how the issue of 9/11

and terrorism can be meaningfully discussed in American society’. As an official statement by

the Ministry of Defence in 2002 read,

“Maintaining moral as well as information dominance will rank as important as

physical protection.”

The culture industry run by America not only subverted any critical analysis of the doctrine for

the longest time from within the nation but also from several other nations caught up in

empathetic feelings for Americans. Cultural reproduction of war on terror went beyond

‘transmitting’ the label as shorthand for administration policy, to ‘reify’ the policy as

uncontested, and ‘naturalize’ it as a taken-for-granted common-sense notion. (Lewis) Despite

the costs and inefficacy of Washington’s military interventions, support for the use of force has

grown. Carl Boggs has pointed out how the culture industry has degenerated into a

“cheerleading chorus” behind every military venture Washington undertakes and how the

creative autonomy is in fierce need of protection. The people who ‘run’ this culture industry

are no longer bothered by a need to conceal this truth as explained by Theodore Adorno,

“Movies and radio need no longer pretend to be art. The truth that they are just

business is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberately

produce. They call themselves industries; and when their directors’ incomes are

published, any doubt about the social utility of the finished products is removed.”

Writers such as Klaus Dodds and Francois Debrix have contributed heavily to the emerging

sub-subject in this regard termed as ‘popular geopolitics’. Francois Debrix while writing about

popular geopolitics as a sub-set of critical geopolitics has the made the case for a “tabloid form

of geopolitics” that underwrites contemporary American popular culture with its emphasis on

sensationalism and calls for national unity. Popular geopolitics is heavily concerned with

geopolitical representations sustained by audience interpretation, consumption and attachment.

Geopolitical meanings are constructed by audiences themselves as they consume popular

culture produced with a similar end. How Hollywood served this end is explored in the

following chapter.

12

Chapter 2

Hollywood for Propaganda

“The events of 9/11 were about political theatre, dramatic gestures.’’

Propaganda is socially determined and its success is determined by the factors that are present

in that particular context, time and environment. The story being told makes sense in front of

an audience only in a favourable social context which allows for existence and success of

propaganda. The state of mind in which society is becomes an important factor for the

accomplishment of discourses being spread. The feelings of fear and suspicion by the use of

instruments of popular culture were instilled in the public for these very purposes.

As the Greeks before anyone else recognised, gripping drama is provided through the actions

of human beings. The entertainment industry as a whole in the past decade has given to the

masses countless films, dramas, documentaries, docudramas, musicals etcetera explicitly

around the theme of the USA’s war on terror and its aftermath. All traditional forms of

entertainments reinvented themselves as a consequence of 9/11, it was no longer ‘business as

usual’. (Spigel) This was mainly because the era of the war on terror both necessitated and

demanded a security imagination that both justifies a gigantic national security state its security

practices and policies and this imagination was best built by utilising the screen.

In the heat of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, Vladimir Lenin when asked which propaganda

tool would be the most important to the new Soviet regime answered that, according to him,

the potential of movies has just started to manifest itself and that this medium would probably

become more important than any other. Providing validation to his hypothesis, films, an

immensely popular component of entertainment, have captured the events of 9/11 and

everything that followed till date in innumerable iconic ways making it an immortal event in

human history. Some notable ones, across genres, include war films such as Redacted (2008);

surveillance/spy films such as The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), action-thrillers including Kill

Bill, Syriana (2005), The Kingdom (2007), Rendition (2007); allegorical accounts such as

Good Night and Good Luck (2005) and War of the Worlds (2005) which portray jihadic

violence as something so alien as a wave of killers from outer space; historical futuristic

fantasies mainly 300 (2007), Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), The Last Samurai, Lord of the

13

Rings, The Matrix Reloaded (2003), The Alamo, Master and Commander, Terminator 3 and

The Dark Knight (2008); techno-thrillers including Iron Man (2008), dramas representing the

invasion of Iraq such as Occupation and Generation Kill; war comedies such as Gary, Tank

Commander; romantic comedies such as Mr. and Mrs. Smith, documentaries such as the

BBC Panorama’s coverage of the September 11th attacks in popular series such as CSI: New

York, Showtime’s TV series Sleeper Cell around the familiar plot of Islamic extremists trying

to destroy American cities and many others including Charlie Wilson’s War (2007), Where in

the World is Osama Bin Laden? (2008).

The emergence of post 9/11 cinema has been discussed both in popular and academic literature

greatly. Post-9/11 cinema highlights the age old intimate connection between politics and film

which has often been attempted to be concealed by political authorities. Films with their unique

ability to reproduce images, events and movements in an extremely ‘real’ and ‘lifelike’ manner

have for most of history been strong tools of state propaganda. This is so because films possess

a sense of immediacy and are capable of creating the illusion of reality and can often be taken

as accurate depictions of real life. Movies arouse social consciousness like no other form of

entertainment. While having the capability to depict reality most powerful, films are also

capable of distorting reality and historical events. This other side to films make it persuasive

and thus also untrustworthy sources of knowledge. Both attributes of cinema remain equally

powerful and political in nature and increasingly relevant in the twenty first century.

Films are said to be the most effective in grabbing the attention of masses since they have

proven to be capable of providing to the masses the right mixture of glamour for eyes and food

for thought. They can prove useful in indoctrinating the public with different views and values.

For example, During the Second World War, for example, Reich officials commissioned the

film Ich Klage or I accuse to persuade German citizens to accept the practice of

euthanasia. (Cody) Siegfried Kracauer’s concept of cinema as a “mirror” of society explains

how the “terror years” since 2001 have been captured and reflected upon by US

cinema. Kracauer explains,

“They (films) stir our awareness of the intangible, and they reflect the hidden courses of

our existence. They point out situations that are often difficult to grasp directly but show,

under the surface, what we think about ourselves.” (Von Moltke)

The idea of seeing films, in particular, and popular culture, in general, as a ‘mirror’ or the

society has been contested by theorists such as Matt Davies who believe that such an

14

understanding denigrates popular culture to something imaginary while infusing seriousness

only in reality. He demonstrates how, alternatively, popular culture and real world politics can

be understood better as being in a symbiotic relationship with each other wherein popular

culture exploits political events for its narratives and world politics utilises popular culture as

a source of tropes, narratives, imagery and language. As summed up by Cahir O’Doherty,

“If we take it that culture function not merely as a mirror in which political events

are narrativised and enacted in popular imaginations, but as a medium that itself

influences the way world politics is constructed, presented and conducted, then we

begin to open up really interesting avenues of understanding and research.”

Deriving from the above, true power of films lies in their ability to capture and create

understandings of real time events with the right dosage of ubiquity and dramatics. Matthew

Gault points out how filmmakers have exploited the memories of 9/11 among Americans and

have been successful at doing so because films are a “comfortable way of talking about

uncomfortable subjects”. Hollywood was the main cultural apparatus for coping with 9/11,

which had left Americans struggling in the “desert of the real”. (Žižek)

Despite this, there has been a certain degree of social denigration of movies as an educational

medium mainly due to the celebrity glamour quotient on rise and increasingly unbelievable

storylines, heavy on entertainment and serving no other purpose. Theorists have analysed how

filmic contexts have led people to engage with several foundational theories in IR such as

realism, idealism and constructivism. But, as Cynthia Weber has noted, there are large areas of

mainstream IR that considers popular culture to be marginal to the analysis of war, diplomacy,

statecraft and international politics. It remains increasingly important to attach political

significance to the content of movies primarily because they get passed on from generation to

generation as ‘classics’ and ‘evergreens’ thus having the capability to remain etched in the

public memory for a long time.

The impact which the attacks had on the Americans translated into American audiences

flocking to see war films, which glorified American soldiers as heroic individuals capable of

overcoming tremendous odds thus making film audiences the main active consumers of

representations of political realities. Hollywood directors and script writers addressed 9/11 and

the subsequent declaration by President Bush that the nation was engaged in a war on terror in

ways so as to not alienate this audience. Hollywood gave to the audience propaganda films

which attempt to rewrite history, whitewash the sins of the past and dehumanises the ‘other’ to

15

legitimise repetition of similar activities in the future. Speaking on the role of Hollywood as

propaganda tool, the Middle East Eye reported,

“Today, Hollywood and the motives of the imperialist US state are inextricably

entwined. These days it’s almost impossible to tell where one begins and the other

ends.” (MEE)

The weight of an aggressive foreign policy, expanded surveillance, extravagant Pentagon

spending, a harsher law-and-order regimen has been felt not just by Hollywood but across the

culture industry. Hollywood, however, has always been seen to promote a culture of militarism.

The process of militarisation itself has a long history in the United States involving a shift in

general societal beliefs and values in ways necessary to legitimate the use of force.

Militarisation is come to be deeply rooted in the culture industry.8 Not just Hollywood but

video games as well as children’s toys, popular culture as a whole is increasingly laden with

militarised values, symbols, and images. Such processes have deeply influenced the shaping of

national history of the USA in ways that glorify and legitimate military action. With the

backing of the culture industry, these processes are capable of determining the entire social

order, legitimising military values and making them a central and not peripheral aspect of

public life through a wide variety of pedagogical sites and cultural venues. As pointed out by

Jorge Mariscal,

“In twenty-first century America, no one is exempt from militaristic values because

the processes of militarisation allow those values to permeate the fabric of everyday

life”.

8 Militarization is intimately connected not only to the obvious increase in the size of armies and resurgence of

militant nationalisms and militant fundamentalisms but also to the less visible deformation of human potentials

into the hierarchies of race, class, gender, and sexuality. As the military becomes dominant in American life, its

underlying values, social relations, ideology, and hyper-masculine aesthetic begin to spread out into other aspects

of American culture. Citizens are recruited as foot soldiers in the war on terrorism, urged to spy on their

neighbours’ behaviours, watch for suspicious-looking people, and supply data to government sources in the war

on terrorism. As permanent war becomes a staple of everyday life, flags increasingly appear on storefront

windows, lapels, cars, houses, SUVs, and everywhere else as a show of support for both the expanding interests

of empire abroad and the increasing militarisation of the culture and social order at home. (Giroux)

16

From DC to LA, with Censorship

As Mark Lacy has noted, ‘The cinema becomes a space where ‘‘common sense’’ ideas about

global politics and history are (re)-produced and where stories about what is acceptable

behaviour from states and individuals are naturalised and legitimated’. (Lacy) It is for this

reason that the state administration and all its apparatus used Hollywood as their prime

propaganda tool to shape the public discourse in a manner suitable to their interests.

The Pentagon has always been increasingly sensitive and careful about how the U.S. military

presence around the world is depicted to public. The deep involvement of military and the

administration in the film industry can be traced back to the Silent Era with the war on terror

only giving a new life to this partnership. The Vietnam war has been put on screen time and

again, the most legendary being the Top Gun (1986).9 In 1917, when the United States entered

World War I, President Woodrow Wilson’s Committee on Public Information (CPI) enlisted

the aid of America ’s film industry to make training films and features supporting the

cause. George Creel, Chairman of the CPI believed that the movies had a role in “carrying the

gospel of Americanism to every corner of the globe.” Bush himself has also used films such as

Kandahar (2001) to explain and legitimate his decision to intervene in Afghanistan. Several

theorists such as Todd Schack in his Perpetual Media Wars talk about this ‘critical nexus of

propagandistic function’ that exists between Washington and Hollywood and how the movie

industry has been utilised as an instrument by the US Military and the Pentagon to shape public

perceptions about the former and its overseas operations.

This nexus is no longer sustained by a temporary ad-hoc arrangement previously in place but

by full-fledged liaison offices in Los Angeles occupied by the Army, the Navy, the Air Force,

the Coast Guard and the Department of Defence. The summit held at Beverly Hills in the

aftermath of 9/11 by Karl Rove, then special advisor to the George W Bush administration was

with the representatives of the entertainment industry who joined him to consider how they

might contribute to the war on terror and this summit despite garnering no media attention

remains in public record nonetheless. (Dodds) CNN was seen reporting in November 2001

about President Bush's top political strategist’s plans to meet with an array of entertainment

executives Sunday to discuss the war on terrorism and ways that Hollywood stars and films

9 In 2003, President George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” moment featured Bush landing a jet fighter onto

an aircraft carrier in order to deliver a speech about the supposed triumph in Iraq. This dramatic moment, which

cost over a million dollars, was nearly identical to visual sequences of the Tom Cruise Top Gun.

17

might work in concert, in ways both formal and informal, with the administration's

communications strategy. It is common knowledge today that several organizations including

the CIA, have military public relations offices and report rooms in Hollywood and the purpose

of such establishments is not hard to understand. All the way back in the 1930s, the FBI set up

an office to shape and police its image in film, radio, and television shows and FBI has sought

since then to mystify the workings of the Bureau by encouraging fictional depictions that

glorify its activities. (Kundnani) David Robb’s Operation Hollywood portrays how the US

Department of Defence works at scripting the portrayal of its component services.

The tightest control over Hollywood comes from the Pentagon itself with the biggest clout over

Hollywood. The influence over the content of films which address, overtly or subtly, the

military operations undertaken as war on terror, is carried out using leverage over the producers

of the film. One way of doing this is by either providing or refusing soldiers, uniforms, military

equipment including the most expensive weapons, stock footage, explosions, bases, technical

advisors and expert consultation for the purposes of shooting the film, all of which play a key

role in bringing authenticity to the film. ‘Pentagon correctness’, thus, allows access to facilities

of the military just like membership to high-end club. (Robb) The war film production is also

subjected to direct censorship by the Pentagon. The personnel occupying the offices in

Hollywood ‘watch over’ the progress of the film, giving regular inputs and instructions to keep

the filming in check. Once the film is complete, it is played out in the Pentagon headquarters

and any final edits as desired by the top officers in Washington is considered before a final nod

to its release. The US government thus relishes the control of its military image and enters into

a mutually exploitative relationship with filmmakers. Hollywood works to put forward a

conception of historical truth shaped by omission of facts unfavourable to the Pentagon’s public

relations goals.

It is not very often that filmmakers in Hollywood are seen complaining or being critical of this

‘sell out’ of Hollywood to the military. The toll this has on artistic freedom and scope of

creativity is dangerous. To understand how this military-entertainment alliance works, we need

to examine what they give and get in return. There are several ends which the administration

hoped to achieve using Hollywood as a means. First of course was to create the image of the

USA as a ‘special nation’ with ‘unique responsibilities’. Artefacts of popular culture served to

reconstruct the meaning of America. (Dittmer) In this context, theorists such as Klaus Dodds

explain how such an exercise in image making has been central to the war on terror. America

intended to send out a message that peace and stability in the world required the USA to assert

18

its primacy in world politics. (Jervis) It tried to convince the larger audience that the current

world order requires, almost needs, an active dominant power or a hegemon. (Cox) The

extraterritorial deployment of US military power was shown as something essential to securing

the USA and international order more generally. The second purpose the Pentagon tries to

establish by constructing a popular narrative is that undertaking a war on terror was not a

choice, it was a state that America found imposed upon it. Such a script was furthered with the

intention of proving American innocence and fairness. A dominant reason for refusing to

provide backing for a movie script was because it didn’t represent the ‘core values’ of the US

military according to Pentagon officials such as Coons. The Pentagon was firm,

“We’re not going to support a program that disgraces a uniform or presents us in a

compromising way.”

Apart from the above, the war films are made with an intention to glorify the military itself.

This is done so as to make military seem an attractive career option for American youngsters

and shoot up the rates of enrolment. Phil Strub, long-time chief of the Pentagon's liaison office,

himself has said that "any film that portrays the military as negative is not realistic to us,"

adding that war-themed movies ought to meet three basic criteria, depict military life as

"realistically" as possible, inform the public about U.S. military prowess, and assist in

recruitment, summing up the Pentagon agenda. (Boggs) Thus, The entertainment industry

offers a stamp of approval for the Pentagon’s war games and the Defence Department provides

an aura of authenticity for corporate America’s war-based products. One particularly

controversial implementation of this agenda was the film around events of the night the USA

declared Osama Bin Laden dead, Zero Dark Thirty, which was made in collaboration with the

CIA, a proposition now more or less accepted as a fact, and then rebuffed by the US Senate

Committee members themselves. Drawing from his personal experience of having worked at

the CIA, John Rizzo writes,

“The CIA has long had a special relationship with the entertainment industry,

devoting considerable attention to fostering relationships with Hollywood movers

and shakers – studio executives, producers, directors, and big name actors. There

are officers assigned to this account full-time, which is not exactly a dangerous

assignment but one that occasionally produces its own bizarre moments.”10

10 By its own admission, the CIA, unlike the Pentagon, is unable to exert strong influence over entertainment

productions, since it does not have the expensive equipment to offer film crews in return for script and production

control. As Chase Brandon notes, the only thing the CIA can really barter with is its access to technical consultants

and to CIA headquarters for filming.

19

The number of films which have deviated much from the ideological consensus fostered by the

state administration along the lines of patriotism, a virtuous U.S. military, glorification of

battlefield exploits and masculine heroism have definitely been less than those who have

maintained an intimate collaboration. A few noted examples of films which were strongly

opposed by the Pentagon and refused all assistance include Memphis Belle, Courage Under

Fire, A Few Good Men, and Oliver Stone's Vietnam trilogy.

The success of this propaganda mission of Pentagon explained by David Robb in Operation

Hollywood: "Allowing the world's most powerful military to place propaganda into the world's

most powerful medium, unchecked and unregulated, for over 50 years has certainly helped the

Pentagon get more recruits for the armed forces”. (Boggs) It has worked in favour of both

partners with the Pentagon’s accelerating military budget and the entertainment industry’s

annual revenue of approximately $479 billion. (Giroux)

So is the nature of this complex network between media, culture, government and military that

it manages to remain invisible to citizens emotionally diverted from the harsh realities. Often

theorists themselves are seen rebuffing this nexus by stating that,

“Deep patriotic and militaristic content of most combat pictures, however, is rarely

determined by stringent Pentagon controls over how producers, writers, and

directors do their work, but flows from the larger political and media culture that

is the repository of imperialist ideology. So attached are many Hollywood

filmmakers to the combat spectacle with its enduring assumptions of superpower

benevolence that they rarely wander far from the "bipartisan" foreign-policy

consensus.” (Boggs)

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Chapter 3

The Mood of the Public and Box Office

Following is a succinct summation of Hollywood’s immediate reaction offered by Wheeler

Winston Dixon,

“In the days and weeks after 9/11, Hollywood momentarily abandoned the hyper-

violent spectacles that dominated mainstream late 1990s cinema. Films were

temporarily shelved, sequences featuring the World Trade Center were recut, and

‘family’ films were rushed into release or production.11 Predictably, however, this

reversal of fortune did not last long, and soon Hollywood was back to work on a

series of highly successful ‘crash and burn’ movies.” (Dixon)

The terrorist attacks gripped all players at the box office with oversensitivity and anxiety. They

were faced with the challenge of not alienating the audiences, most of which has witnessed the

World Trade Center and Pentagon devastation in reality. This audience was not ready to watch

any horrid reminder of 9/11 on screen and it continues for Americans to be an emotionally

taxing experience to watch footage of WTC collapsing. The result was a host of with movies,

particularly pictured in New York locale being rescheduled or even cancelled altogether.12

“Almost all received the magnifying glass, some had surgery performed, with the WTC either

being digitally erased from Manhattan shots to being tossed to the cutting room floor.” The

public was still adjusting to the unforgiving reality and the fact that the collapse they witnessed

was, in fact, not a movie. As explained by Laurent Firode, "After a major catastrophe, one sees

resonance wherever one can. I'd say that right now there's a much greater need for irrational

thought, like religion or astrology or simply a belief in the goodwill of fate". Hollywood was

left to deal with this real life massive act of violence and strike a balance between fictional

narratives and the real world around. Such a national tragedy of cataclysmic magnitude altered

the ‘cultural DNA’ of America and because popular culture at large reflects the mood of the

public, the business of Hollywood was looking for significant changes.

11 The strongest performers were comedies, fantasy fare and action movies with no reference to terrorism. Harry

Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was 2001's top grosser, at $267.8 million. The other top films were the

cartoon Shrek, $267.7 million; the actioner Rush Hour 2, at $226 million; another animated feature, Monsters,

Inc., at $220 million; and The Mummy Returns, at $202 million. Other winners were the movie version of J.R.R

Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, and Training Day, a raw police drama set in Los

Angeles, also was a winner. 12 For example, The Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Collateral Damage, about a Los Angeles fire-fighter who

goes to Colombia to avenge a terrorist whose act killed his family, was moved from October 2001 to February

2002. Its original tag line "The war hits home," was tossed out.

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This phase in the weeks immediately following the attacks marked by ‘confusion’ and

‘overriding emotions’ quickly gave way to a new trend. The fact that during the first months

after 9/11 films like Die Hard and True Lies were rented by Americans three times more safely reads

out the political mood of the public at large. (McCorkle) The masses wanted to cure their anxieties

and insecurities as well as deal with the post attack trauma by indulging in films that re-affirmed their

faith in the might of their country and its service men. As explained by Lisa Purse, “Heroism as a

cultural idea gained renewed currency in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, stories abounding

about people who had risked their lives or died trying to rescue others”. Reflecting upon such a

public temper, US box office charts were topped by war movies like Black Hawk

Down (2001)13, Behind Enemy Lines (2001), and We Were Soldiers (2002). “There’s a greater

understanding now of how you would feel if your country was under attack,” a director commented

on the reasons for this trend. (Andson) Thus, the trend between the years 2001 and 2003 was to

produce pro-war on terror for mass consumption and cash upon the need for moral guidance and a

sense of unity among the masses. Hollywood incorporated any dissent that might have arisen in

the process of digesting the post 9/11 activities of the administration and military. In the couple

of years immediately after 9/11, the audience was not ready and did not accept films that were

critical of the military and its services abroad.

Attempts made in that period to reflect upon certain practices of the military which might

tarnish its image such as drug dealing or sexual crimes even after managing to escape the

Pentagon screening did not do well at the box office. For example, in 2007, we see the release

of Redacted, by director Brian De Palma, which showcased the story of the US soldiers

committing gang rape of an Iraqi girl and then killing her family. This war film did not make

any attempts to display military heroism but bring to the light certain ugly truths of the forces.

The film tried to make an emotional appeal to the audiences to recognize the evils of the Iraq

invasion by ending the movie with frames of pictures of Iraqi civilians, innocent, killed during

the military operations. It was ordered to the filmmakers to blacken or blur these images on

legal grounds but it is often speculated that administration could not risk allowing such an

emotional appeal to influence the public. The film was allowed only limited releaser and did

not do well at the box office. An important factor here is also that Americans were still not

13 Ridley Scott's intense and suspenseful combat film Black Hawn Down (2001), released only a few months after

9/11, recreated and captured the visceral tension of a bloody, disastrous, and tragic American helicopter mission

in the war-torn city of Mogadishu. Somalia in October, 1993.

22

ready to accept whatever little truths were out in the open about Iraq. Speaking on the issue De

Palma was quoted saying,

“It’s terrible because now we have not even given the dignity of faces to this

suffering people. The great irony about Redacted is that it was redacted.”

While the earliest post-9/11 movies approached the war on terror and the USA’s standing in

the world either allegorically or obliquely, this changed in the final years of the Bush

administration. Speculative fictional movies produced after a gap of around 5 years from the

beginning of the war did well. For example, The Star Trek into Darkness (2013) is about the

war on terror in a very obvious way. It’s war with the Klingons, referring to the terrorists, is

portrayed as something inevitable. The movie can be seen as providing a basis for justification

of war on terror. The parallels between the tactics deployed by the Federation and the American

government are too obvious to miss. It is for this reason that it is often said that Star Trek

exploited the memory of 9/11 with a flair that no other movie did. The only other fictional

movie that comes close to Star Trek is probably The Dark Knight (2008) where Batman,

analogous to Bush himself, has to use means which cannot in itself be justified to fight an

ideological terrorist and faces the ire of the public for the same. When Iron Man (2008) hit the

screens and cleaned up at the box office, the movie was reviewed by the American media in a

manner which furthered the aim of this masterpiece. A popular media outlet was reported

saying,

“The world needs another comic book movie like this one like it needs another

Bush administration.”

Prior to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon,

President Bush’s popularity among the American people was tenuous.14 This changed

overnight and in the long term, Hollywood made the reminders of vulnerability and mortality,

widespread after 9/11 attacks, highly salient and this directly translated into support for Bush.

Opinion polls also showed overwhelming support for Bush’s handling of the terrorist crisis,

the restriction of civil liberties, the military action against the Taliban in Afghanistan, and at

least initially, the war on Iraq. (Dworkin) President Bush’s appeal lay in his image, build as

part of Pentagon’s agenda, as a protective shield against death, armed with high-tech weaponry,

14 A collection of national public opinion polls by PollingReport.com (2004; including Fox News, CNN/USA

Today/Gallup Polls, and ABC News/Washington Post Polls) indicate that President Bush’s approval ratings

hovered around 50% in the weeks preceding the terrorist attacks. He had lost the popular vote in the 2000 election

and won the presidency after a narrow victory in the Electoral College that was ultimately decided by the Supreme

Court after a highly controversial near-draw in the critical electoral state of Florida.

23

patriotic rhetoric, and the resolute invocation of doing God’s will to ‘rid the world of evil’.

(Purdum)15

Slight changes in public attitude became noticeable since potentially damaging allegations

began coming to light post 2003 invasion of Iraq, including the reliance on faulty intelligence

information regarding links of Iraq to 9/11 bombings, the presence of weapons of mass

destruction, claims that initial discussion of plans for war on Iraq appeared to have been held

soon after 9/11, and protracted fighting that lasted long after the war was declared won. By

mid-2004, the approval rates of Bush Doctrine began falling to pre-9/11 levels. (Landau)

15 To reiterate my point, I would like to include here extracts from a highly favourable opinion of the measures

taken by President Bush with regard to 9/11 and the Iraqi conflict: “It is essential that our citizens band together

and support the President of the United States in his efforts to secure our great Nation against the dangers of

terrorism. Personally, I endorse the actions of President Bush and the members of his administration who have

taken bold action in Iraq. I appreciate our President’s wisdom regarding the need to remove Saddam Hussein from

power and his Homeland Security Policy is a source of great comfort to me. It annoys me when I hear other people

complain that President Bush is using his war against terrorism as a cover for instituting policies that, in the long

run, will be detrimental to this country. We need to stand behind our President and not be distracted by citizens

who are less than patriotic. Ever since the attack on our country on September 11, 2001, Mr. Bush has been a

source of strength and inspiration to us all. God bless him and God bless America.”

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The Box Office Bombs

The cultural construction supporting the political rationale of war on terror laid the groundwork

for the invasion of Iraq. As with all wars, the U.S. military invasion of Iraq in 2003 needed to

be portrayed as a ‘just war’ by the establishment in an attempt to garner support and legitimacy

both domestically and internationally. The United States had imperatives and tools in creating

the argument for a just war and acted extraterritorially by diffusing a message of moral right.

However, soon enough, arguments of morality and immorality were raised along with

opposition to hegemonic extraterritorial influence into territorial sovereign spaces raising on

grounds of territorial sovereignty.

Five years after the start of war in Iraq, roughly since the spring of 2007, a change in public

evaluation of the war on terror policy was observed. The proportion of American public seeing

the decision to go on war with Iraq as wrongful increased.16 The human costs as well as

economic costs could no longer be justified. Despite the warning from Bush that the war on

terror would be long and the positive results of the war might be hard to recognize and trace,

war weariness grew amongst the public and by the 2006 elections many rejected the Bush

foreign policy. The Americans between 2001 and 2003 were encouraged to see the Taliban

virtually driven from power by 2002 and hoped for the processes of state-building in

Afghanistan to gain momentum. But soon they were struck with the realisation that the invasion

of Iraq was draining resources away from Afghanistan, allowing the Taliban to become

resurgent. (Jones)

In fact, the apparent link between the Iraq’s invasion and the policy to deal with the 9/11

attacks which the state stressed upon now seemed vague and hollow. The image making project

of USA seemed to take a hard hit. The flaunting of international law, the happenings in Abu

Ghraib and Guantanamo, the rendition and torture of prisoners and the erosion of civil liberties

at home affected America’s moral authority and credibility. Anti-Americanism seemed to be

on an increase globally and more so in the Muslim world. There emerged a great deal of

16In the period around 2007-2008, the scenario can be summed up as follows; the Bush administration had failed

to capture the top leadership of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, the governments in Iraq and Afghanistan remained

weak, Iraq was in the midst of a civil war and Hamid Karzai’s government in Afghanistan did not have control

outside of Kabul, the violence and terror, death and casualty rates in Iraq were on the rise, people of Iraq are were

less safe, less prosperous, had less access to everyday necessities like electricity, food and education than before

the American led invasion. America was being seen as part of the problem not the solution. (Esposito)

25

literature from the Middle East criticising the American-led war against global terrorism in

strong words as a war against Islam and the Muslim world. (Esposito)

The war in Iraq, thus, with every passing year became more and more difficult to capture on

screen and paper. Reflecting upon the new political mood, there emerged movies such as

Shooter (2007), Vantage Point (2008) and Salt (2010), amongst others were the ‘just war’

against terror with the aim of maintaining national security is portrayed on screen as a dirty

and corrupt business. The ‘hero’ in these films, previously embodying the pride of the

Americans in their army men, was now showing attacking the government agenda, feeling

distraught with the mission abroad.

The series of flops set in a realisation amongst film makers that the war on terror cannot be

captured from any angle so as to hide its negativity. Both Hollywood and Pentagon were now

aware that they can no longer engage the audience with, forget sell them, such a hugely

unpopular war. The audience is well equipped today to engage in a moral critique of the film

being served to them. People are more aware of the consequences of the war of terror in terms

of human loss and have overcome what John Pilger refers to as ‘cinematic oblivion’. Previous

war films such as those on World War II and the Vietnam war managed to be box offices hits

because the public was convinced throughout that they were ‘fighting the right people over the

right issues’. Such a strong conviction eroded soon after the Iraq war and become non-existent

in a couple of years. The audience was confused and in a flux. There were feelings of having

been misguided about the intentions of the war in Iraq and its necessity. The ‘complicity of

Hollywood in the epic crime of Iraq’ is how the turn of events is now explained. As explicated

by Steven Bochco,

“Iraq films remain a difficult sell for audiences because of the swirl of confusion

surrounding the rights and wrongs of the conflict.”

The attention the movie The Hurt Locker garnered after its release brings home several points.

The film has commonly been understood as a pro-U.S. Army propaganda film. The film aimed

to generate empathy for the military men fighting the Iraq war by showing the paranoia, rage,

and brutal recklessness of soldiers trapped in the downward death spiral of the Iraq war and

also boost the recruitment which was the need of the hour. The film was made with the perfect

formula for success with right amounts of thrill, heroism, drama and violence. But the film did

shockingly bad at the box office and did not resonate with the general feelings of the public

26

about the Iraq War. This is further fuelled by military veterans who themselves attacked the

movie for being extremely detached from reality, some even calling it a ‘parody’. It was

stressed by the screenwriters and producers of the film that The Hurt Locker was made with

complete independence from the administration but these claims found no buyers.

Another similar venture in this regard is The Kingdom, directly addressing the intricacies,

tensions and pressures of the real post-9/11 context. The protagonist in the film is found saying

the following to declare his allegiance to the US mission,

“I find myself in a place where I no longer care about why we are attacked. I only

care that one hundred people woke up a few mornings ago and had no idea it was

their last. When we catch the man who murdered these people I don’t care to ask

even one question. I want to kill him.”

The phrases ‘I no longer care about why’ and ‘I don’t care to ask even one question’ explicitly

reflect the real life, immediate response to terrorism which resonated across America. The

film’s revenge trope is in line with the most dominant criticism of the policy of war on terror,

that thought and analysis were rejected in favour of violent retribution and the state

manipulated the public into believing this is the only way to fight terror. It is due to the above

reasons that the masses couldn’t connect to the film which was trying to point away from the

real-world realities of anti-terrorist strategies.

27

Conclusion

The policy of war on terror was more than a policy label, it was a powerful organizing principle

and played a crucial role in structuring the world. In the period that immediately followed 9/11,

the policy of war on terror was quickly accepted by the masses as well as by those in power

across the political spectrum. Popular culture played an important role in furthering the

internalization of policy as hoped for by the state. Particularly vivid and impactful in this

propaganda mission of the administration has been the cinema industry of the west or

Hollywood. Such an internalization and naturalization of the policy allowed little or no space

for public debates and scrutiny. The initial cultural reproductions of the policy also created a

favourable climate for military action in Iraq.

However, few years down the lane, with the deconstruction of the policy of war on terror and

all its underlying assumptions, the policy become politically controversial with strong criticism

emerging from all quarters. The consensus over war on terror that the state managed to build

amongst the masses eroded in the recent past with the public questioning several assumptions

which previously sustained their support to the policy. The uncritical acceptance was

challenged only after its credibility tarnished post the events in Iraq. The public could not

accept the military ventures in Afghanistan and Iraq under the policy usage of war on terror.

Iraq remained a crucial component of the policy execution and the happenings in Iraq made

the earlier criticism proof policy of the USA vulnerable. As summed up by Stephen D. Reese

and Seth C. Lewis,

“The policy frame of war on terror was acceptable or neutral but the faulty

‘execution’ in Iraq brought into disrepute the frame that made Iraq possible in the

first place.” (Lewis)

All representations of war on terror since have been more careful and critical, adjusting to the

new tone of discussions of the policy among the public. The representations of the policy in

popular culture now took into account the critical awareness of the masses of the

administration’s interest in propagating only a particular nature of discourse around war on

terror. The connotations of ‘propaganda’, ‘amorphous’, ‘vague’, ‘too broad’, and ‘problematic’

came to be used frequently in reference to war on terror. This was reflected in the box office

failure of several Hollywood projects which aimed to build support for the policy even in the

face of harsh realities of the war on terror becoming commonplace.

28

The Hollywood, military and Pentagon alliance continues to live on with Hollywood as an

industry still on a mission to portray America as the “leader of the free world” fighting “evil”

around the world. The interlocking of Hollywood and national security apparatuses remains.

The above nexus makes it all the more relevant to critically and academically discuss popular

culture keeping in mind the predominant political environment.

An attack with such a measure of tragedy has not been replicated since 9/11 and much of this

can be owed to international intelligence cooperation. The mission of ‘global jihad’ advocated

by Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri has failed to materialize. Despite this, the question raised in

October 2003 by then US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld continues to be relevant

today: “Are we capturing, killing, or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than

the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training, and deploying against us?”

29

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Bibliography

1. 9/11 in Perspective by Richard N. Haass

2. 14 Years After 9/11 by Tom Engelhardt

3. Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror by R.A. Clarke

4. An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture by Dominic Strinati

5. Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation After 9/11 by Evelyn Alsultany

6. Captain America’s Empire: Reflections on Identity, Popular Culture, and Post-9/11

Geopolitics by Jason Dittmer, Annals of the Association of American Geographers

7. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture by John Storey

8. Defining the Enemy: Myth and Representation in the War on Terror by Jack Boulton

9. Deliver Us from Evil by Mark J Landau and others

10. Empire, Imperialism and the Bush Doctrine by Michael Cox, LSE

11. Failures of Just War Theory: Terror, Harm, and Justice by F.M. Kamm, Chicago Journals

12. Film and Propaganda: The Lessons of the Nazi Film Industry by Gary Jason

13. Framing the War on Terror: The internationalization of policy in the US press by Stephen

D. Reese and Seth C. Lewis, University of Texas, USA

14. Hollywood and the ‘War on Terror’: Genre-Geopolitics and ‘Jacksonianism’ in ‘The

Kingdom’ by Sean Carter and Klaus Dodds

15. Hollywood and the Popular Geopolitics of the War on Terror by Klaus Dodds

16. Hollywood and the War Against Terror by Jack Valenti

17. Is the War on Terror Over? Long Live Unconventional Warfare by David S. Maxwell

18. Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World by Jean

Bethke Elshtain

19. Mirroring Terror: The Impact of 9/11 on Hollywood Cinema by Thomas Reigler

20. Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies by David L.

Robb

21. Pentagon Strategy, Hollywood and Techno-war by Carl Boggs

22. Politics and Popular Culture by John Street

23. Popular Culture, Geopolitics and Identity by Jason Dittmer

24. Popular Geopolitics and the War on Terror by Klaus Dodds

25. Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies by Chandra

Mukherjee and Michael Schudson

32

26. The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception by Theodore Adorno and Max

Horkheimer, Frankfurt School

27. The Propaganda Era: Film is a Political Tool by Tina Cody

28. The War on Terror and American Popular Culture: September 11 and Beyond by Andrew

Schopp and Matthew B. Hill

29. The War on Terror: Post-9/11 Television Drama, Docudrama and Documentary by

Stephen Lacey and Derek Paget

30. Terrorism and Just War by Michael Walzer

31. Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror by M. Danner

32. Understanding Popular Culture by John Fiske

33. US Foreign Policy after 9/11 by Steve Jones

34. War, Cinema and Moral Anxiety by Mark Lacy

35. War on Terror by Henry A. Giroux, Third Text

36. How Hollywood Helped Sanitise War on Terror by Rachel Shabi

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/07/hollywood-helped-sanitise-war-terror-

top-gun-150705071807698.html

37. Why Hollywood Can’t Make a Good Movie About the War On Terror by Matthew Gault

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/why-hollywood-cant-make-a-good-movie-about-the-

war-on-terror-f2cccf982990#.9rni5sf82

38. Iraq Films Fail to Attract Audiences in US http://www.dawn.com/news/275249/iraq-films-

fail-to-attract-audiences-in-us

39. Iraq War Atrocity Film Redacted Bombs in US

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1570815/Iraq-war-atrocity-film-Redacted-

bombs-in-US.html

40. http://83.223.124.158/magazine/why-iraq-war-films-fail/#.VwvpmaR97IU

41. https://www.prio.org/Publications/Publication/?x=2780

42. http://unitedexplanations.org/english/2011/10/10/looking-back-at-91101-and-its-

implications-on-international-relations/

33

Appendix

Tables and Figures

Table 1: Public Evaluation of Iraq War Source: http://www.pewresearch.org/files/old-assets/publications/770-1.gif

Table 2: Public Evaluation of Iraq War

Source: http://www.pewresearch.org/files/old-assets/publications/770-1.gif

34

17 In the Valley of Elah (2008) concerns the search by a former Vietnam vet (played by Tommy Lee Jones) for

his son who recently returned from Iraq after a deployment. Having been told that the Army authorities were not

aware of his location at his home base, the former soldier discovers his son’s mobile phone in his room within the

barracks. Grainy images of video, taken via the phone, suggest that his son may have been involved in prisoner

abuse and photographs taken in the country show at least one dead Iraqi body by a roadside. With the help of a

sympathetic police officer, his son’s body is eventually recovered and the film concludes with their struggle to

discover what happened to his son. It becomes apparent that he was killed by one of his comrades and then

mutilated and dumped on waste ground, which is itself caught up in a jurisdictional struggle between military and

civilian police authorities. In a poignant final section, the father returns to the family home and turns the US flag

upside down on a nearby flag pole in order to signal distress. 18 The film Lions for Lambs (2007) addresses the viability of the war on terror. It is based around three distinct

geographical encounters—one based in the office of a college professor (Professor Malley), another in the office

of a US Senator (Senator Irving) and the final featuring the experiences of a small party of US troops based in

Afghanistan. Robert Redford’s professorial character is seen to be discussing with a student the latter’s options

after university, including the possibility of serving in the armed forces. In the senatorial office a journalist (Janine

Roth) talks to an ambitious Senator about how the war on terror might be ‘won’ and in Afghanistan we witness

(in part via satellite imagery) the fate of a party of soldiers landing at a high point in Afghanistan. Shortly after

their landing, they are confronted by fighters and eventually perish, despite the use of American airpower.

Table 3 – War on Terror Films and Box Office Collection (Domestic)

Black Hawk Down (2001) $108 million

In the Valley of Elah (2007)17 $6.7 million

Lions for Lambs (2007)18 $15 million

The Kingdom (2007) $47 million

The Hurt Locker (2008) $17 million

Source - www.boxofficemojo.com as on 20 June 2008