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Abstract
This essay examines how the film Black Hawk Down functions rhetorically to reconstruct the legitimacy of political and military institutions and policy, and the possibilities for efficacious, responsible citizen agency within the post-September 11, 2001 context of increasingly unconventional warfare. Black Hawk Down reconstitutes popular perceptions of war and the appropriate response of citizens to it. It continues a pattern of contemporary war films established by Saving Private Ryan in 1998, reducing the patriotic purpose of war to surviving and protecting one's fellow soldiers. This pattern is developed through a hyperreal spectacle of war that both encourages audiences to empathize with the dominant “pro-soldier” message and discourages critical public discourse concerning justifications for and execution of military intervention policy.
An earlier version of this essay was presented at the 2002 National Communication Association Convention.
An earlier version of this essay was presented at the 2002 National Communication Association Convention.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Heidi E. Hamilton, Sonja K. Foss, William J. Waters, and the editor and anonymous reviewers of Critical Studies in Media Communication for their assistance.
Notes
An earlier version of this essay was presented at the 2002 National Communication Association Convention.
1. Other war films released in this period include Behind Enemy Lines: a U.S. pilot struggles to survive in war-torn Bosnia, released 2001; Hart's War: a U.S. officer in a Nazi German PoW camp leads a daring, unconventional escape, released 2002; We Were Soldiers: a heroic Army colonel leads one of the first U.S. divisions in Vietnam into and out of a brutal battle, released 2002; Windtalkers: a U.S. Marine during World War II is assigned to ensure that Navajo “codetalkers” do not fall into enemy hands alive, released 2002; Tears of the Sun: a U.S. Navy SEAL, assigned to rescue a physician in war-torn Nigeria, struggles with his orders to remained disengaged from the conflict when the lives of refugees are at stake, released 2003.
2. Incidentally, Mark Bowden revealed in a January, 2002 National Public Radio interview that the soldiers involved in Mogadishu see the decision to withhold AC-130 Spectre gunships from the battle as a primary reason for the debacle. The gunships, unlike the slower, smaller Black Hawk helicopters, would have been impossible for the militia to shoot down and would have provided superior firepower to cover the raid (Edwards & Chadwick, Citation2002).
3. All textual references to and quotations from the film Black Hawk Down refer to the theatrical release DVD of the film (Scott & Bruckheimer, Citation2001).
4. In his book Bowden reviews the debate over the Clinton administration's decisions to deny requests for an AC-130 gunship, Abrams tanks, and Bradley fighting vehicles. He explains that Garrison never actually requested “light armor,” as the film suggests, and that legitimate concerns over the possibilities for civilian casualties justified Secretary Aspin's decision to withhold the gunship. Bowden does establish, though, that the administration tried to negotiate a peaceful settlement of the conflict while U.N. efforts to apprehend Aidid were in place: “Many of the men who fought in Mogadishu believe that at least some, if not all, of their friends would have survived the mission if the Clinton administration had been more concerned about force protection than maintaining the correct political posture” (1999, p. 335). Garrison's statement in the film, then, while factually inaccurate in part, implies a policy critique made by veterans of the actual battle.
5. Bowden (1999) more fully explains the point made by Durant's captor when recounting the aftermath of the battle in his book. This explanation is provided from the perspectives of two Somalis, who apprehend the context of chaotic violence, power-shifting, and instability as an inherent fact of life, one that U.S. forces failed to grasp. While describing the relative obscurity of post-battle Somalia on the global stage, Bowden claims, “Rightly or wrongly, they stand as an enduring symbol of Third World ingratitude and intractability, of the futility of trying to resolve local animosity with international muscle. They've effectively written themselves off the map” (p. 334). Bowden claims the battle ended Westerners’ assumption that international tribal violence can be ended easily by removing dictators by military force, because the people living in such global hot spots want, as an anonymous State Department official said, victory and power more than peace. The film oversimplifies this context in a single statement from a Somali who has already been depicted as a monstrous enemy prior to his exchange with Durant.
6. This shift in emphasis in the film reflects the shift in U.S. priorities from capturing Aidid to safe withdrawal of U.S. troops in October 1993. Bowden (1999) notes: “News of the casualties and images of gleeful Somalis abusing American corpses prompted revulsion and outrage at home, embarrassment at the White House, and such vehement objections in Congress that the mission against Aidid was immediately called off” (p. 333), despite the fact that Aidid was still in place.
7. The centrality of enemy construction and vilification in war rhetoric, as well as in political discourse more generally, has been amply studied (e.g., Ivie, Citation1980).
8. “Liberal” is here used in the classic sense of the philosophical tradition of individual autonomy and rationality, and not the current sense of American “Liberalism” (understood as a rationale for the government's active involvement in economic and social welfare issues).