Gasping for war drama: the “about to die moment” of the Osama bin Laden assassination

ABSTRACT

This essay reads iterations of Pete Souza’s “Situation Room” photograph across media contexts as an effect of an overdetermined public desire for U.S. redemption in the War on Terror. I argue that repetitions of the photograph's “about to die moment” invite a visceral identification between citizen-subjects and militarized state action through the subjunctive tense. The image’s tension reflected through the public interpretation that Hillary Clinton gasps in the photograph, speaks to a collective excitability about war victory’s imminence. If legitimacy for war builds through emotional ties staged by visual tenses and tensions, a crucial task for media criticism is opening possibilities to decathect from cycles of war drama.

KEYWORDS:

• Visual media
• identification
• war on terror
• Osama bin laden
• affect

Acknowledgement

The author thanks Joshua Gunn, Diane Davis, Jaishikha Nautiyal, David Register, Christopher Thomas, and the two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable input on earlier drafts.