Disappearing War: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Cinema and Erasure in the Post 9/11 World

Christina Hellmich; Lisa Purse

Published by Edinburgh University Press 2017

Disappearing War

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Cinema and Erasure in the Post 9/11 World

Christina Hellmich and Lisa Purse

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474416573

Overview
Contents

About this book

Illuminates the extent to which people, images and experiences are erased from cultural representations of contemporary warfare

The battles fought in the name of the ‘war on terror’ have re-ignited questions about the changing nature of war, and the experience of war for those geographically distant from its real world consequences. What is missing from our highly mediated experience of war? What are the intentional and unintentional processes of erasure through which the distortion happens? What are their consequences?

Cinema is a key site at which questions about our highly mediated experience of war can be addressed or, more significantly, elided. Looking at a range of films that have provoked debate, from award-winning features like Zero Dark Thirty and American Sniper, to documentaries like Kill List and Dirty Wars, as well as at the work of visual artists like Harun Farocki and Omer Fast, this book examines the practices of erasure in the cinematic representation of recent military interventions. Drawing on representations of war-related death, dying and bodily damage, this provocative collection addresses ‘what’s missing’ in existing scholarly responses to modern warfare; in film studies, as well as in politics and international relations.

Contributors

Jessica Auchter, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Robert Burgoyne, University of St Andrews
Shohini Chaudhuri, University of Essex
Cora Sol Goldstein, California State University, Long Beach
Thomas Gregory, University of Auckland
Janet Harris, award-winning documentary producer/director
James Harvey-Davitt, Anglia Ruskin University and University of Greenwich
Christina Hellmich, University of Reading
Agnieszka Piotrowska, award-winning documentary filmmaker and theorist
Lisa Purse, University of Reading

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Figures Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Notes on the Contributors Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	xii
1. Introduction: Cinema and the Epistemology of War Christina Hellmich and Lisa Purse Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. Good Kill? US Soldiers and the Killing of Civilians in American Film Cora Sol Goldstein Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	16
3. ‘5,000 feet is the best’: Drone Warfare, Targets and Paul Virilio’s ‘Accident’ Agnieszka Piotrowska Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	34
4. Post-heroic War/ The Body at Risk Robert Burgoyne Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	56
5. Disappearing Bodies: Visualising the Maywand District Murders Thomas Gregory Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	73
6. The Unknowable Soldier: Ethical Erasure in The Master’s Facial Close-ups James Harvey Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	92
7. Visible Dead Bodies and the Technologies of Erasure in the War on Terror Jessica Auchter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	111
8. Ambiguity, Ambivalence and Absence in Zero Dark Thirty Lisa Purse Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	131
9. Invisible War: Broadcast Television Documentary and Iraq Janet Harris Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	149
10. Nine Cinematic Devices for Staging (In)visible War and the (Vanishing) Colonial Present Shohini Chaudhuri Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	170
11. Afterword: Refl ections on Knowing War Christina Hellmich Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	195

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 216
Illustrations
- Other: 25 B/W illustrations
Keywords: Film, Media & Cultural Studies

eBook

Published: February 3, 2017
ISBN: 9781474416573