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Abstract
This paper will use the concept of time-image discussed by Gille Deleuze in Cinema 1 and Cinema 2 as a heuristic tool for thinking about the Internet films of the Islamic State (ISIS). By considering that ISIS films primarily operate on two different axes: a time-image that presents a recollection of a mythic past, and a movement-image that reverses roles of power and sovereignty with a Western antagonist through mimesis, I discover that although we are unable to consider the ISIS films strictly as documentary, they are nonetheless not representational either. Within this context, I will argue that ISIS films may be experienced as actualizations of a global schizophrenic delirium. The ISIS films demonstrate what Deleuze describes as the “powers of the false.” They show a reality that is unbearable to witness. In the same way that the Marquis de Sade exhibited in life and fiction a physical violence and perversion that were symptomatic of the chaotic and brutal realities of the French Revolution, ISIS itself, and not only its film productions, becomes the foci of a symptomatic and cinematic realization of the failures of our globalized society in the post-Cold War/Arab Spring era. We experience the unbearable violence in the form of schizophrenic delirium, as if this violence is being performed somewhere else, by someone else, to someone else. These forms of spatial and temporal shifts, detachments, and interchanges are emphasized by the arrival of war refugees to the Western world from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. In this process of becoming the Other, there is no escaping the delirium of Otherness.
Notes
1. “[R]eading a text is never a scholarly exercise in search of what is signified, still less a highly textual exercise in search of a signifier. Rather it is a productive use of the literary machine, a montage of desiring-machines, a schizoid exercise that extracts from the text its revolutionary force” Deleuze also remarks elsewhere that for him, “It is not a question of commentating on the text by a method of deconstruction, or by a method of textual practice, or by other methods; it is a question of what use it has in the extra-textual practice that prolongs the text”.
2. ‘[A] theory is exactly like a box of tools … It must be useful’ (Foucault, 1977, p. 208).
3. It may be worth noting that US Military’s Central Command (Centcom) continues to maintain a YouTube channel with multiple videos showing precision bombings, target destruction, etc., using military thermal camera footage. The channel also shows propaganda-type videos (like Eagle Resolve 2015) that promote operations by Centcom with dramatic music and heroic action that seem to be somewhere between live-action and documentary. These videos do not defer much technically from those of ISIS. Also, Military.com is a military support organization/website (that boasts a membership of 10 million) that features an endless number of war videos that are no less gory and graphic than those promoted by ISIS. A video entitled Syrian Rebel Shot in Face shows a gun battle during which a fighter’s face explodes from a direct hit while a background music of A Fistfull of Dollars plays. Other videos are titled Tank Destroyed with Burned Bodies, Shell Turns Rebel Fighter to Dust, and the series titled: Top 10 Sniper Hits. There is almost no substantial difference in the violence and brutality between these videos and those of ISIS.
4. Check out one seemingly ‘usual’ short ISIS video showing the execution of four Kurdish Peshmerga fighters by CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/30/middleeast/isis-iraq-hawija-executions-video/.
5. The Canadian Center for Research and Globalization (CRG) posted an article on September 14, 2014 that says, “questions arise after experts say Foley ISIS video likely ‘staged.’” http://www.globalresearch.ca/isis-beheadings-of-journalists-cia-admitted-to-staging-fake-jihadist-videos-in-2010/5399345. The same findings were published by the British Telegraph around the same period. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/bill-gardner/11054488/Foley-murder-video-may-have-been-staged.html.
Fox News quoted Hollywood horror film director and NYU Film Professor Mary Lambert as saying, “[t]he shot that seems really tampered with is the one with the really tall Jihadists and the dwarf Christians … [t]he close-ups of Jihadists on the beach are most likely green screen.” http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/02/21/isis-army-7-footers-experts-say-video-copt-beheadings-manipulated/. A headline for the Christian Science Monitor in early 2015 also questions the authenticity of an ISIS video showing the execution of a Japanese hostage. It asks: “ISIS video: Is this Japanese beheading real or fake?” http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2015/0124/ISIS-video-Is-this-Japanese-beheading-real-or-fake-video
6. Almond links to the following sources in his original text: Milton (Citation2013), Sledge (Citation2014), and Parry (Citation2013).
7. A CBS News/New York Times poll released shortly after Donald Trump’s call to ban Muslims from entering the US, shows an immediate increase of 13 points to a total of 35% support among Republicans. The same poll shows that 43% of all adults do not oppose the Muslim ban, and that “40% of Republicans believe Trump is ‘telling it like it is’” (Struyk, Citation2015). In other words, there are more adults that do not oppose the Muslim ban (only 57% oppose it) than actually those who either already supported Trump or decided to support him after his Muslim ban proposal.