P
RECARITY AND
P
OST
-‐9/11
O
RIENTALISM
Narratives of Terrorism in Post-‐9/11 Film, Television and Literature
Fien Veldman 5881323
University of Amsterdam Thesis rMA Literary Studies Supervisor: Dr. Jaap Kooijman Second Reader: Dr. Esther Peeren 7 July 2015 Word Count: 23.000
Introduction: Orientalism, Precarity, Terrorism 3
Edward Said’s Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism 3 Post-‐9/11 Precarity: Ettlinger, Butler, and Berlant 6 Case Studies and the Structure of this Work 8
1 Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper: Imagined Dichotomies and the
Benevolence of the War on Terror 10 1.1 Imagined Dichotomies and the Illusion of Benevolence in The War on
Terror 11
1.2 The Economy of Emotion in American Sniper 16 1.3 Levinas’ Face of the Other and Post-‐9/11 Precarity in American Sniper 20 1.4 American Sniper in the Genre of Post-‐9/11 Culture 24
2 Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa’s Homeland: Post-‐9/11 Orientalism and Precarity in “The Drone War” 26
2.1 Background, Reception, Criticism: Homeland’s Place in Post-‐9/11 Culture 27 2.2 “Us” and “Them”, Islam, the War on Terror and Post-‐9/11 Orientalism 30
2.3 The Drone War: Knowledge, Power and Technology in Homeland 36 2.4 Levinas’ Face of the Other, Drone Warfare and Dimensions of Post-‐9/11 39 Precarity
3 Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist: Resisting the “Us
Versus Them” Narrative 43
3.1 “Us” and “Them” After the Attacks 44 3.2 Your Country, My Country: Identity and Culture 49 3.3 Post-‐9/11 Precarity in The Reluctant Fundamentalist 53 3.4 Pushing the Limits of Post-‐9/11 Culture 56
Conclusion 60
Works Cited 63
INTRODUCTION: ORIENTALISM, PRECARITY, TERRORISM
In an interview with The New York Times, filmmaker Mira Nair talks about the financial difficulties of her 2012 film adaptation of Mohsin Hamid’s novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist. She recounts that a prospective investor offered to invest two millon U.S. dollar in the film, to which she replied the budget had to be much higher. The investor stated: “You have a Muslim as protagonist. Two
million is all it’s worth” (Kaplan). This reaction to a Muslim protagonist sums up quite succinctly Hollywood’s position in the genre of post-‐9/11 fiction, a genre that came into existence after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. There is barely space for a Muslim lead character in Hollywood films, though Nair followed through with her work and tried to create this space by adapting Hamid’s story about a conversation between a Pakistani and an American in a Lahore café.
However, whereas the novel focuses on the life story of Changez Khan and his experiences as a Pakistani man in the U.S. after 9/11, the film turns his
narrative into a political thriller where CIA officers try to capture Khan: they see him as a (potential) terrorist. Hollywood simplifies Hamid’s subtle storytelling and turns it into a portrayal of the good versus the bad, with Khan as an anti-‐ American manipulator and his American conversation partner as a fair-‐minded journalist. Nair’s version of The Reluctant Fundamentalist makes a suitable example of the uncritical way an orientalist “us versus them” narrative with regard to the East and the West is laid out in many post-‐9/11 works, which will be thoroughly analysed in this thesis.
Edward Said’s Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism
In the following, I will argue that after 9/11, a new variation of Edward Said’s concept of orientalism emerged in film, television, and literature. This can be called post-‐9/11 orientalism, and has been influenced by the use of an “us versus them” narrative with regards to the aftermath of 9/11, especially concerning the discourse on terrorism and the War on Terror. I argue that precarity is the basis for, and distinctive feature of these orientalist narratives in post-‐9/11 works of
fiction. To explore this subject, I analyse three of these works: a film (Clint
Eastwood’s American Sniper (2014)), a television series (Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon’s Homeland (2011-‐present)) and a novel (Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007)). I have chosen to analyse multiple types of objects, because the genre of post-‐9/11 fiction spans a broad range of media. I analyse these works as texts. This is especially notable in the analysis of dialogue: naturally, cinematic elements will be considered as well, yet my main focus will be on conversations between characters. This focus corresponds with the
questions and objectives of this research: in post-‐9/11 works, who decides what is told, and in what way are characters portrayed? As a consequence, my
methodology will predominantly consist of close reading.
This selection is furthermore a result of an extensive exploration of the genre of post-‐9/11 cultural objects, the result of which can be found as a supplement to this thesis1. These three works are relatively recent, Hamid’s
2007 novel being the “oldest” one, which is important to my analysis because of the ongoing developments regarding the post-‐9/11 genre. Furthermore, the reception of these works has been very positive: American Sniper was nominated for six Academy Awards (it won one), Homeland won two Golden Globes and one Emmy Award, and The Reluctant Fundamentalist was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and was an international bestseller. The reception of these works is of value to one of the aims of this project, namely to tie the representation of terrorism in fiction to political and social developments in society.
A postcolonial framework is an important one in this work, as I develop my arguments with Said’s works Orientalism (1978) and Culture and Imperialism (1994) as a starting point. I am aware of the critical debates Said’s work spurred, with reactions such as Bernard Lewis’ conviction that the study of Islam does not relate to imperialist power structures (Islam and the West (1993)); James
Clifford’s and Homi Bhabha’s critique of Said’s use of Michel Foucault’s notion of discourse (respectively The Predicament of Culture (1988) and The Location of Culture (1994)); and to refer to a critique written after 9/11, Ibn Warraq’s rather
1 See: rMA Research Project Literary Studies: Annotated Bibliography of Post-‐9/11
Culture.
islamophobic work in which he tries to prove that, in contrast to the East, the West has always been forward-‐looking, by using the works of Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare (among others) as examples of Western “rationalism” (Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said (2007)).
Whereas Orientalism as well as Said’s other works are by no means flawless, the dichotomies Said identifies do provide a solid analytical framework with regards to post-‐9/11 fiction. However, an important theoretical angle in Said’s work is that the concept of orientalism is discussed in the light of
European colonial domination (Said, Orientalism 41). Although the case studies Said employs mainly consist of nineteenth century literature, the “heyday of imperialist expansion” (Bertens 162), his concept of orientalism is a valuable tool in analysing post-‐9/11 works for two reasons. Firstly, as Said articulates in his later work Culture and Imperialism, his analysis of nineteenth century literature is highly relevant to this day:
Yet lest we think patronizingly of Conrad as the creature of his own time, we had better note that recent attitudes in Washington and among Western
policymakers and intellectuals show little advance over his views. What Conrad discerned as the futility latent in imperialist philanthropy – whose intentions include such ideas as “making the world safe for democracy” – the United States government is still unable to perceive, as it tries to implement its wishes all over the globe, especially in the Middle East. (Said, Culture and Imperialism xix)
Said shows that the ideas about the relationship between East and West in Orientalism as well as Culture and Imperialism prove to be an appropriate point of departure to support an analysis of the representation of the War on Terror in fiction, as the United States government still “tries to implement its wishes all over the globe, especially in the Middle East” (xix). Secondly, in “Orientalism, Once More”, a 2003 lecture, he states that “Orientalism is very much tied to the tumultuous dynamics of contemporary history”, referring to “the events of September 11 and their aftermath in the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq” (Said, “Orientalism, Once More” 870). He compares the situation in Europe with that of the U.S., and states that with regards to the latter country, “the hardening of attitudes, the tightening of the grip of (…) triumphalist cliché, [and] the
dominance of crude power” cause the Middle East to still be a site of a form of Western imperialism. The “illegal and unsanctioned imperial occupation of Iraq”
serves as an example (871).
As Malreddy Pavan Kumar shows in his article “Orientalism(s) After 9/11” (2012), Said’s work is still immensely relevant, possibly especially with regards to 9/11 and its aftermath. Kumar distinguishes recent forms of
orientalism of which “Military Orientalism” and “American Orientalism” (Kumar 235) are the two that pertain closest to the subject of this thesis. Military
orientalism sees “war as a site of Orientalism” and concerns itself with “strategies of war; the construction of the ‘wild east’ by which western fears, identity and survival are constantly measured and reassessed” (Porter qtd in Kumar 235). American orientalism is “borne out of indirect colonial contact” and involves “multicultural anxieties” and “geopolitical interests in the Middle East” (235). Furthermore, Stephen Morton identifies a relationship between the discourse of terrorism and orientalism in “Terrorism, Orientalism and Imperialism” (2007). Morton states the narrative of counterterrorism
corresponds with that of orientalism, which will be examined thoroughly in this work.
Post-‐9/11 Precarity: Ettlinger, Butler, and Berlant
These theories about, and forms of orientalism are all very useful with regards to the aim of this project. However, in this thesis, I hope to add a new element to the definitions of post-‐9/11 orientalism(s), namely the element of precarity as a basis for the orientalist “us versus them” narrative in post-‐9/11 works. Precarity can be defined as social or economic insecurity. As Nancy Ettlinger points out in “Precarity Unbound” (2007), it is often associated with economic vulnerability with regards to the casualization of labor and late capitalism in the U.S. (post-‐ Fordism) and Europe (Ettlinger 320). This concept, however, has been used as well with regards to a heightened state of vulnerability after the fall of the World Trade Center, which generated a sense of everything and everyone being open to (a terrorist) attack (321).
To understand this concept and its implications, Ettlinger’s article is a useful point of departure. She writes:
Terrorism itself (…) can be expanded if we interpret it broadly as physical and nonphysical violence that invokes fear. From this vantage point, while feelings of vulnerability may be new to many privileged people in the United States, they are old news to disadvantaged minorities in the United States and around the world who live under formal and informal constraints imposed by the majority (…). Precarity lies in the unpredictability of terror, which can emanate from a wide range of contexts (…). Precarity spares no one, haunting even privileged persons, who, like everyone else, cannot escape the terror of disease. (322)
Ettlinger makes clear that after 9/11, the scope of precarity is broadened.
Whereas in a post-‐Fordist society, only the economically vulnerable experience a sense of precarity, in a post-‐9/11 society, everyone shares this vulnerability. She furthermore highlights that precarity is “old news to disadvantaged minorities in the United States and around the world”: even though I acknowledge her
assertions, I will argue that after 9/11 the precarious situation of minorities is extremely intensified.
Judith Butler’s work Precarious Life (2004) is a collection of essays that are written “in response to conditions of heightened vulnerability and aggression that followed from [the] events [of 9/11]” (Butler xi). In Frames of War (2009) she argues that war is framed in such a way to keep a distinct difference between grievable, fully human, lives, and non-‐grievable, unimportant ones. Both these works provide a critical framework with regards to post-‐9/11 precarity and the War on Terror which is very useful to this research. Butler’s reference to
Emmanuel Levinas’ theory of ethics has furthermore opened up a space in this thesis for a philosophical inquiry on the structures of humanization and
dehumanization in the War on Terror.
Another work that has been very influential to this research is Lauren Berlant’s Cruel Optimism. “[C]ruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing” (Berlant 1). Berlant argues that people still try to achieve “the good life”, whereas these “fantasies” of “upward mobility, job security, political and social equality” are fraying in this era (3). Precarity has taken the place of these earlier fantasies. With regards to critical discourse, I adhere to Berlant’s standpoint that argues to “mov[e] away from the discourse of trauma (…) when describing what happens to persons and populations as an effect of catastrophic impacts” (9), such as, in this work, the attacks of September 11. She writes that
in critical theory and mass society generally, “trauma” has become the primary genre of the last eighty years for describing the historical present as the scene of an exception that has just shattered some ongoing, uneventful ordinary life that was supposed just to keep going on and with respect to which people felt solid and confident. (10)
I agree with Berlant’s assertion that “[c]risis is not exceptional to history or consciousness but a process embedded in the ordinary that unfolds in stories about navigating what’s overwhelming” (10). This navigation of crisis – and thus the reaction to a state of precarity – leads, as I will show in this research, to a sharp binarism and clear use of orientalist dichotomies in a post-‐9/11 discourse. In the following chapter, I do not often refer to Berlant’s work directly, but as shown above, it has provided a philosophical and theoretical substructure of great importance to my research.
Case Studies and the Structure of this Work
This thesis consists of three case studies which are analyses of, as earlier
mentioned, Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper, Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon’s Homeland, and Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. In these objects, the “us versus them” narrative plays a significant part in framing the East and the West. Furthermore, the concept of precarity is foregrounded in different ways, dependent on the object. In American Sniper, precarity is made visible through the American protagonist’s anxiety. In Homeland, a heightened sense of
vulnerability is shown with regards to the United States as well as to Pakistan. Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist is the only work in this thesis that has a non-‐American narrative standpoint. In this novel, the Pakistani
protagonist’s viewpoint is not just foregrounded, but portrayed to the exclusion of other narratives. It highlights the precarious situation that non-‐Americans (in the U.S.) find themselves in after 9/11.
With regards to the “narratives of terrorism” that I examine, they occur in these objects in different ways. In American Sniper, the protagonist serves in Iraq to fight terrorism: remarkably, the search for weapons of mass destruction and even the name of Saddam Hussein are never mentioned in the film. The Iraq War,
then, is portrayed as part of the War on Terror. Homeland concerns itself with this war very straightforwardly, as its main character deals with
counterterrorism. The Reluctant Fundamentalist does not show this war or terrorism directly, but considers the “breeding ground” for terrorism, as its protagonist ultimately becomes a “reluctant fundamentalist”. “Terrorism” itself is a debatable term: my denomination of terrorism in this work is wholly based on the use of the term in the objects I analyse. The geographical area of Pakistan is a focal point in the second and last chapter: this materialized quite naturally, as many post-‐9/11 works deal with Pakistan and/or Pakistani. Moreover, Pakistan is a region that challenges orientalist assumptions of “us” and “them” with regards to the West and the East: Pakistan is an ally of the U.S. while at the same time Al-‐Qaeda’s leadership was or still is located “somewhere along the Pakistani tribal belt”, as Isaac Kfir writes in “Pakistan and the Challenge of Islamist Terror” (2008). In this region, a dichotomy is then fortified through terrorist organizations, but challenged at the same time by global political structures. Furthermore, this emphasis on Pakistan has helped to retain a manageable framework with regards to the analysis of terrorism.
In the following, I will examine what role precarity plays in post-‐9/11 culture and what implications this precarity has concerning the use of orientalist stereotypes. Which dichotomies are reinforced, which ones are challenged, and how? How does precarity relate to post-‐9/11 binarism? In the arrangement of the case studies, I have chosen to start with an object that shows these
stereotypes quite rigidly, to follow up with an analysis that demonstrates how these dichotomies can be challenged, and finally, to end with an analysis of a work that acknowledges yet withstands this orientalist narrative.
1. CLINT EASTWOOD’S AMERICAN SNIPER: IMAGINED DICHOTOMIES AND THE
BENEVOLENCE OF THE WAR ON TERROR
Clint Eastwood’s film American Sniper (2014) is based on the book by the same name, written by U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle. The biographical narrative revolves around Kyle’s responsibilities and struggles as a sniper, serving in Iraq during the War on Terror. The film portrays his heroic status – with a tangible patriotic sentiment – as a result of his successful career in the army. However, it also shows the bleak effects of war by portraying soldiers with post-‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other war injuries. Its protagonist is the most lethal sniper in U.S. history, as the film’s tagline states. Kyle has a rather black-‐and-‐white view on good (America) and bad (Iraq) and thus performs his job without questioning the war he is part of. In his adaptation of Chris Kyle’s story, Eastwood adds a layer of contemplation on the effects of war to Kyle’s own, rather simplistic war narrative.
In this chapter, the binary oppositions that are used to portray the War on Terror are analysed in light of Edward Said’s works Orientalism (1978) and
Culture and Imperialism (1994). In the latter, Said defines culture in the following
way:
[T]o see yourself, your people, society, and tradition in their best lights. In time, culture comes to be associated, often aggressively, with the nation or the state; this differentiates “us” from “them,” almost always with some degree of
xenophobia. Culture in this sense is a source of identity, and a rather combative one at that (…). (Said, Culture and Imperialism xiii)
This aggressive differentiation of “us” and “them” is eminently visible in Eastwood’s work. America is titled “the greatest country on earth” (American
Sniper 16.16), whereas Iraq is “dirt” (1.00.55) filled with “savages” (56.51).
As Said notes: “[t]he one idea that has scarcely varied is that there is an ‘us’ and a ‘them,’ each quite settled, clear, unassailably self-‐evident. As I discuss it in
Orientalism, the division goes back to Greek thought about barbarians” (Said, Culture and Imperialism xxv). The methodological aspect of this creation of
culture lies in the structuring of narratives, as Said states: “The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming and emerging, is very important to
culture (…)” (xiii). This power to narrate – and, more specifically, who is in possession of this power – is particularly relevant to Eastwood’s work. The American perspective of patriotism is laid out in this film, whereas the representation of Iraq and its inhabitants is offered no subtlety or nuance. It shows Hollywood’s power to narrate the War on Terror and touches upon other narratives, such as that of the soldier suffering from PTSD, but ultimately keeps the critical, painful or distressing ones from forming. Said’s notion of culture as a combative source of identity is used to examine American Sniper’s relationship to dichotomies between East and West, “us” and “them”, and their effects.
First of all, these dichotomies in American Sniper will be located and examined, in order to be able to examine them and identify their effects on the narrative of the War on Terror and especially the prevailing idea of benevolence regarding this war. Secondly, American Sniper’s recurring motif of “us versus them” and the associated notion of patriotism is discussed in the light of Sara Ahmed’s theory of affective economies. Ahmed describes how emotions are not based in the psychology of the individual, but exist between the individual and the collective. In this part, Said’s notion of orientalism is elaborated upon through an analysis of the underlying emotions that constitute, in the case of Chris Kyle, a patriotic perspective. Thirdly, the concept of post-‐9/11 precarity will be discussed as theorized by Judith Butler and Nancy Ettlinger, taking into account Emmanuel Levinas’ theory of the face of the Other. It will be argued that this precarity is why a clear-‐cut, orientalist “us versus them” narrative is
reinforced in American Sniper, in order to hold off the sense of anxiety and vulnerability generated by the 9/11 attacks. Finally, American Sniper’s place in the genre of post-‐9/11 fiction will be addressed and evaluated.
1.1 Imagined Dichotomies and the Illusion of Benevolence in The War on
Terror
Before Chris Kyle joins the U.S. army, American Sniper’s protagonist is a rodeo rider: a cowboy. In the portrayal of Kyle’s Texan roots, the epitome of a
conventionalized image of American culture is put forward: he is a patriotic, masculine, religious family man whose chief values are abridged by his motto
“God, country, family” (1.00.15). The film shows that Kyle’s “all-‐American”
attitude constitutes the basis of his personal justification for participating in war. First of all, his religion justifies the act of killing, as he points out in a
conversation with a counsellor after his last tour in Iraq, and the therapist asks him about the high number of people he put to death. Kyle responds: “I’m willing to meet my creator and answer for every shot that I took” (1.56.55). Secondly, his patriotism, “country”, is why he joins the army, as will be discussed in more detail later. Thirdly, his family is the reason he is convinced the War on Terror needs to take place: he tells his wife he “[does] it to protect [her]” (1.31.53), which will be elaborated later upon as well. What is important to note at this stage, is that American culture, signified by “God”, “country”, and “family”, is a consequential basis of the viewpoint American Sniper represents.
With regards to specifically American culture and imperialism, Said states that
[m]uch of the rhetoric of the “New World Order” promulgated by the American Government since the end of the Cold War – with its redolent self-‐
congratulation, its unconcealed triumphalism, its grave proclamations of responsibility – might have been scripted by Conrad’s Holroyd: we are number one, we are bound to lead, we stand for freedom and order, and so on. (xvii)
These “proclamations of responsibility,” as Said puts it, are markedly present in Kyle’s objectives. He decides to join the army when he sees a news report on attacks on the American embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi. The reporter states: “Those explosions, set to go off at the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, were clearly a part of someone’s war against the United States. More than eighty dead, more than seventeen hundred injured in two bomb blasts (…)” (09.50, emphasis mine). Even though “most of the dead and injured are not Americans”, as the reporter states, Kyle responds to this news item by addressing his brother Jeff while saying: “Look what they did to us” (10.01, emphasis mine). This remark, with its distinction between “they” and “us”, is crucial, because it is a key element in American Sniper’s representation of and justification for the War on Terror. The Americans are portrayed as virtuous heroes, with Kyle, “The Legend”, as their representative, whereas the Iraqis are savages, with the figure of “The Butcher” as the epitome of barbaric evil, which
will be discussed in more detail in the following. With regards to the news item, “they” are members of Al-‐Qaeda, as this item refers to the (non-‐fictional) 1998 bombings of these U.S. embassies. However, that is not known to Kyle at this point: the identity of the other party remains unclear and is only defined by the term “someone’s” war. In the same sense, “us”, referring to the group Kyle belongs to, would be the Americans, even though the victims of the attack are mainly non-‐American.
What becomes clear is that these attackers do not have an established identity. The terrorist remains unknown, incomprehensible and inhuman, which makes it easer to hate and fear them. The other party is constituted as Other through an ontological instability of, as Said states, the East as well as the West: the “Orient (…) has been made and re-‐made countless times by power acting through an expedient form of knowledge” (Said, “Once More” 871). But whereas in American Sniper American cultural tropes are reinforced, the Iraqi remains unintelligible. This unclear identity – in the sense that there is no recognizable or relatable individuality to the Iraqi characters – establishes the core of all
representation of the Other. Because the Iraqis in American Sniper are not regarded as individuals, they are subject to drastic stereotyping, which will be discussed later in this chapter as well. This stereotyping is done exhaustively, and the resulting dichotomy between “us and them” is prevalent, even if it is a mythical one, such as the one in the news item about the attack, where the American “us” is highlighted even though there are many non-‐American victims, and “they” are seen as evil even though their identity is unknown.
This imagined dichotomy, then, serves for Kyle as a reason to pay a visit to the Armed Forces Career Center. The dialogue with the man working there is as follows:
Moore: So, you’re from Texas. Kyle: Yes sir.
Moore: You’re a patriot. Kyle: Yes sir.
Moore: And you’re pissed off.
Kyle: I’m looking to be of service. (10.21)
Kyle wants to be of service to his country because he feels a responsibility towards the United States and his fellow Americans, as he confirms he is a
patriot. However, whereas the employee of the Career Center is quite rigourous in assuming Kyle’s motivation is anger (“you’re pissed off”), Kyle phrases his career move as an act of assistance (he wants to be “of service”), not resistance. Kyle’s incentive is patriotic as well as personal. As Sally Haslanger writes in “Gender, Patriotism and the Events of 9/11” (2003), “[t]he patriot puts
country before self (so much that death in battle, or even in a suicide attack, is honorable), the nation before the individual” (Haslanger 459). She furthermore defines the patriot as “the nation’s good son, the protector and inheritor of father-‐right” (460). In the opening scenes of American Sniper, Kyle is seen as a young boy, killing a deer. His father remarks: “That was a hell of a shot, son. You got a gift. You’re gonna make a fine hunter someday” (American Sniper 04.12). It immediately becomes clear Kyle’s father has a significant influence on his life, and his approval is of pivotal importance to Kyle. Haslanger ties the concept of masculinity to patriotism, arguing that nations are masculine entities (Haslanger 459). This becomes clear in American Sniper, where the figure of the son grows into the father-‐figure, which in turn becomes the patriot who takes responsibility for his country. Patriotism is then coupled with nationalism, which is the basis of a (conservative) political perspective as well.
However, Kyle’s motivation is, as earlier mentioned, personal too. Just before his leaves for his fourth tour in Iraq, his wife Taya objects to him leaving. He tells her, as is earlier (partly) cited: “Babe, I do it for you, you know that. I do it to protect you” (American Sniper 1.31.51). She responds by saying “I’m here. Your children are here” (1.31.57). Kyle then reverts back to his patriotic motive: “I have to serve my country” (1.32.02). This protection of his family as justification for going to war brings back Kyle’s essential principles of God, country, and family.
Kyle has a nobler way of stating his motives than his colleagues – a fellow trainee in the SEAL drilling, for example, says: “I came here to kill terrorists” (11.25). The protagonist’s grounds are framed in a more subtle and general way. What the motivations of Kyle as well as his colleague have in common, though, is a basis in what Said calls an “illusion of benevolence” (xvii). Said states, as a follow-‐up to the aforementioned citation about America’s “New World Order” rhetoric: “No American has been immune from this structure of feeling (…) the
rhetoric of power all too easily produces an illusion of benevolence when deployed in an imperial setting” (xvii). This idea of benevolence already is
recognizable in the general way of phrasing an enlistment in the army: Kyle does not say he wants to enlist, he wants to fight, or he wants to engage in conflict, but, as is common, he states he wants to serve his country. Implied is a certain type of benevolence: he wants to help, assist, and be beneficial to his country. The feeling of benevolence, in Kyle’s case, only pertains to his own country: he wants to protect America from harm by going to Iraq. The Iraqis, from Kyle’s perspective “savages” and thus inhuman, are indirectly deemed as unworthy of protection. His fellow trainee would reason that they are terrorists and need to be killed. In the political rhetoric of the War on Terror, this “illusion of benevolence” is eminently present as well, although it applies to America as well as Iraq, which is illustrated by former President of the United States George W. Bush’s speech on waging war in Iraq in March 2003: “[H]elping Iraqis achieve a united, stable and free country will require our sustained commitment,” he states, ending his speech: “We will defend our freedom. We will bring freedom to others. And we will prevail” (Ehrenberg et al. 114). In these fragments, what Said calls “grave proclamations of responsibility” are shown in Bush’s mention of “help” and “bringing freedom.” An “unconcealed triumphalism” is made visible in the final sentence, “we will prevail.” It is demonstrated that this idea of
benevolence that helps to set this war in motion works on two levels: the first level pertains to the U.S. and is that of the American citizen (Kyle) who joins the army under the assumption he is serving his country; the second level concerns peace in general (or “freedom to others”) and is made up of the American government, and thus the army, convinced they are “helping Iraqis” when waging a war on distant soil. This “illusion of benevolence” is consequently an important component of the narrative of the War on Terror in Eastwood’s film. This political benevolence is sustained by a conviction of personally doing the right thing, as American Sniper stresses. At the funeral of Marc “Biggles” Lee, Kyle’s friend, Lee’s mother reads a letter her son wrote, critical of the war:
Glory. Something some men chase, and others find themselves stumbling upon, not expecting to find it. Either way it is a noble gesture that one finds bestowed upon them. My question is, when does glory fade away and become the wrongful
crusade? Or an unjustified means by which… consumes one completely, I… I’ve seen war, and I’ve seen death. (1.27.24)
Lee juxtaposes “glory” and the “wrongful crusade,” making known to his mother that he does not support the war he participates in. When asked by his wife Taya what he thinks about the letter, Kyle states that Lee’s loss of confidence with regards to the cause they are fighting for is what actually killed him. When they drive back from Lee’s funeral, the following conversation ensues:
Taya: Marc wrote that letter two weeks ago. Did he say any of that to you?
Kyle: …
Taya: Chris, I wanna know what you thought of his letter.
Kyle: An AQI informant had called in a tip, and Biggles had just been shot. We were operating out of emotion and we just walked right into an ambush. But that’s not what killed him. That letter did. That letter killed Marc. He just… He let go and he paid the price for it. (1.29.23)
Next to the idea of benevolence with reference to the condition of one’s country, the strong conviction of personally doing the right thing is required, according to Kyle. This feeling of righteousness, the certitude of fighting for a cause, and the removal of any doubt are necessary in order to survive and in order to win the war: even admitting of thinking about the war as a “wrongful crusade” could end your life. Lee “let go” of these beliefs and “paid the price for it”, ergo: you call anything into question, you lose. Emotions, feelings and faith of the soldiers thus need to be aligned with the bigger political picture of a benevolent military intervention. With regards to the “us versus them” binary that constitutes for a great part the War on Terror narrative, it can be said that critique on the strucure you are a part of, in this case the army, immediately signifies you are not “one of us” anymore. As Kyle’s reaction to Lee’s letter shows, in this war, there is no space for doubt or nuance.
1.2 The Economy of Emotion in American Sniper
This idea of benevolence on a political level, then, incorporates the – necessary – idea of doing the right thing on a personal level, as Kyle’s reaction to his friend’s doubts show us. People that go into service need to be convinced they are
fighting for a good cause. This emotional component of Eastwood’s portrayal of Kyle’s character can be explored taking into account Sarah Ahmed’s theory on affect and the economy of emotions, which also pertains to the “us versus them” dichotomy and its underlying structures. In “Affective Economies”, Ahmed investigates how “emotions move between bodies” (117). She states that
emotions play a crucial role in the “surfacing” of individual and collective bodies through the way in which emotions circulate between bodies and signs. Such an argument clearly challenges any assumption that emotions are a private matter, that they simply belong to individuals, or even that they come from within and
then move outward toward others. It suggests that emotions are not simply
“within” or “without” but that they create the very effect of the surfaces or boundaries of bodies and worlds. (117)
Emotions thus do not exist or are established on merely a personal level, they are rather distributed, taken in, projected, readdressed, et cetera. They exist
between the individual and the collective, and “between the psychic and the social” (119). Ahmed describes this circulation of emotion alluding to the works of Karl Marx: “[E]motions work as a form of capital: affect does not reside positively in the sign or commodity, but is produced only as an effect of its circulation” (120). She elaborates:
Another way to theorize this process would be to describe “feelings” via an analogy with “commodity fetishism”: feelings appear in objects, or indeed as objects with a life of their own, only by the concealment of how they are shaped by histories, including histories of production (…), as well as circulation or exchange. (121)
These feelings gain, as Ahmed puts it, “a life of their own”. They do not reside exclusively in the subject, as is commonly assumed, nor do they exist solely outside of the individual: affect is produced by the circulation of emotions. The more they circulate, “the more affective they become” (120). She states that the subject “is simply one nodal point in the economy [of emotion], rather than its origin and destination” (121). With regards to American Sniper, Kyle is part of this economy, which furthermore incorporates institutions like the army, the government, his fellow Navy SEALs, his family, and so forth.
Ahmed sets out a theory of “economies of hate”, as she calls them, and shows that “figures of hate circulate, and (…) accumulate affective value,
precisely because they do not have a fixed referent” (123). This is shown in the representation of Iraqis in Eastwood’s work. A concept, rather than an individual or a group of individuals is hated: Ahmed uses the example of the “bogus asylum seeker”, but this could easily be replaced by an undefined Other. She states: “The impossibility of reducing hate to a particular body allows hate to circulate in an economic sense, working to differentiate some others from other others, a differentiation that is never ‘over,’ as it awaits for others who have not yet arrived” (123).
When reflecting on the “us versus them” dichotomy, there is a clear parallel to draw between Ahmed’s theory of the economy of emotions and the orientalist, vague distinctions that make up the foundation of one’s sense of right and wrong, as are visible in an analysis of Kyle’s emotional motifs in American
Sniper. Ahmed refers to “others who have not yet arrived”: this sounds akin to
the earlier referred to scene in which Kyle sees a news report on a terrorist attack in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and tells his brother to pay attention: “Look what they did to us” (American Sniper 10.01). “They” are undefined, as the reporter states that it is unclear who is behind the attack, yet the differentiation of “some others from other others” works, as Kyle’s reaction shows.
Ahmed’s example deals with the emotion of hate, though it is possible to broaden her theory to other emotions as well, for example that of nationalistic sentiment. This nationalism, taking the shape of – in different order, at different moments in the film – patriotism, xenophobia, and orientalism, constitutes emotions that circulate between the subject, Kyle, as well as institutions such as “the government”, “the news”, and “common knowledge”. A straightforward case of the circulation of emotions in American Sniper would be the fear of the
(unknown) terrorist. This is shown when Kyle becomes emotional (angry) when watching the news; it is made visible in the way the news is reported and the attacks are carried out by an unknown evil. The circulation of emotions also becomes clear when the government decides a War on Terror is necessary to root out evil and suddenly in ordinary human interaction statements as “I came here to kill terrorists” or “being a pissed off patriot” are relatively normal
motivations to join the army. These emotions are however complicated because they seem to stem from the same root – more or less definable as nationalism –
but “sprout” differently, to maintain the metaphor. For some this nationalism becomes patriotism, for others it manifests in an evident fear of the Other. Often it comes to be a combination of these things. However, what they share is the lack of a fixed referent. The terrorist, the evil, the Other: they are all ill-‐defined, and thus it is easy to hate them.
Ahmed states:
The emotion of hate works to animate the ordinary subject (…), precisely by constituting the ordinary as in crisis, and the ordinary person as the real victim (…). The ordinary or normative subject is reproduced as the injured party: the one ‘hurt’ or even damaged by the ‘invasion’ of others. (Ahmed 118)
This is shown in the sequence of events of Kyle watching the Twin Towers fall down, seeing the news report on terrorist attacks in Africa, and ultimately telling his wife that he’s “doing it for [her]” (1.31.51), as was mentioned before. The invasion Ahmed brings up would then be the attack on Americans, the “ordinary in crisis” can be seen as personified in Kyle, the all-‐American cowboy, and his reaction to the news item: “Look what they did to us” (10.01).
These emotions, then, are again based on the presupposed dichotomy of “us versus them”: victims versus perpetrators. This occurs on a broad scale with regards to political narratives, with George W. Bush’s speech on terrorism in 2001 as a prominent example: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” (20 Sept. 2001, CNN). Furthermore, it is seen in the recurring idea of benevolence with regards to policymaking and what Said calls an “unconcealed triumphalism”, which always need a “them” for “us” to triumph over.
These emotions also materialize on the level of the subject. Iraqis are the “Other” and are inhuman; joining the army is a noble and benevolent gesture; and the “personal triumphalism” lies in almost nonchalant patriotism, with the U.S. being called “the greatest country in the world”, for example. In addition to these “real world examples” are Kyle’s “us versus them” remark; the Iraqis being portrayed as savages; the idea of joining a war far away to protect your own country; and the ending of American Sniper, with its documentary style and an extremely patriotic sentiment.
The cultural phenomena of patriotism and nationalism (with a side effect of xenophobia) that result in this line of “thinking in dichotomy” then produces
