“He has been turned”
-
Constructions and representations of American national identity, gender, and
ideology in Homeland
A thesis presented in part fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of ‘MA Media
Studies: Film Studies’ from the University of Amsterdam in the 2013/2014 academic year.
Fiona Maria Müller
10619070
diebuergschaft@gmx.net
19’921 words
Supervisor – Dr. Maryn Wilkinson
Table of Content
Acknowledgements 7
Introduction 9
1 Paranoid and Heroism – Carrie and the blurring of boundaries 19 1.1 Heroism and gender complicated
1.2 Paranoid zeitgeist and mental illness
1.3 Witnessing trauma via the media – issues of guilt and responsibility
2 Fragments of Masculinity – Brody as embodiment of different discourses 35 2.1 Fragmentation of masculinity
2.2 Sexuality, Torture, and symbolic castration
2.3 The returned veteran - performing fatherhood in the ruptured nuclear family 2.4 Religion – the White Anglo Saxon Muslim
3 American Fathers and Terroristic Patriarchs – Figures of Power in Homeland 51
3.1 The liberal – Saul, exclusion from power
3.2 The conservative – corrupted Vice-President Walden
3.3 The terroristic other – Abu-Nazir and stereotypes of otherness
4 Conclusion 63
Appendix 1 – Season one list of episodes 65
Biliography 67
Acknowledgements
First of all I have to thank Maryn Wilkinson from the Film Studies department at the UvA
Amsterdam for her constant support and constructive criticism during the supervision period,
and for her enthusiasm in shaping my analytical thoughts. I could not have asked for a better
supervisor during this academic period. Further I thank Dorothee Kilz for her assisting and
critical input and detailed proofreading. Finally this paper could have not been made possible
without the constant aid and support from my family, who not only believed in my abilities,
but also pushed me into following my Carrie-like ‘gut instinct’ with this MA program.
Introduction
When the two planes, American Airlines Flight 11, and United Airlines Flight 175, crashed into the Twin Towers in New York on September 11th, an ‘impossible’ scenario took place. Most people could not have imaged such an action, not only against a nation, but more against their people to ever happen. So is it just as impossible to image that an American prisoner of war could be ‘turned’ into a suicide bomber by the same kind of people who were responsible for 9/11 a decade before, planning to attack his own nation? The recent and acclaimed TV series Homeland illustrates exactly that. The filmic legacy of the new age of terrorism has been dealing with this tragedy for the past ten years, but few reach as far as Homeland does in terms of questioning their own actions and counter reactions that followed the events and that have shaped the way Americans see themselves and want to be seen since then.1 The series is based on an Israeli TV series named Hatufim (Prisoners of War), that was released in 2010 and so far has broadcasted two seasons with in total 24 episodes. This ‘transnational viewing position’ that changed the political discourse from Israel and Palestine to the United States of America, is one that I will - due to the limited extent of my paper – not be included in my research.2 Homeland on the other hand is produced by the American production companies Showtime Networks Teakwood Lane Productions, Fox 21, Keshet Media Group, and Cherry Pie Productions since 2011 – exactly a decade since 9/11 - and is broadcasted in the US by Showtime.3 So far three seasons have been released, and the series will broadcast the fourth one in the coming fall 2014. Homeland is widely acclaimed and has won eight Emmy’s and five Golden Globe awards since its release.4
The series centers around female intelligence agent Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) who works for the counterterrorism department of the CIA, and secretly investigates whether prisoner of war (POW) and Iraq War veteran Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) is secretly a ‘turned’ terrorist getting instructed by al-Qaeda. While she believes him to be a national threat, her superiors and the rest of the American people see him as a national hero, and a symbol of American
1 For further reading see Prince (2009).
2 It would be an interesting additional exploration to compare how the focus has been shifted from the original to the adaptation, and how certain discourses might be lightened in the one series, and diminished in the other.
3 For further information see Internet Movie Database: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1796960/ (last accessed on 11.06.2014)
4 State of affairs June 2014.
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values post Iraq War. Over the first season Carrie explores on her own whether Brody poses a menace, and if so whether she can prevent another terrorist attack on American soil. Homeland’s opening sequence combines this problematic situation, and functions in some way as a mosaic of a post-Bush America in the Obama-administration. Fragments of news footage show American Presidents from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama who all address the threat terroristic activities pose while additionally highlighting America’s strength and political position in contrast, they are linked with fictional images of a little girl growing up and transforming into the heroine Carrie. Furthermore, some images of surveillance footage, a maze in which the two lead characters are positioned, and Jazz musicians are embedded to embody the series' shifting character by constantly changing the point of view and thus broadening the viewer’s mental position whether he sees something intimate or something that was broadcasted by the media. Hereby the theme of media and surveillance culture is made prominent and politicized. Carrie’s voice is heard in the background saying “I’m just making sure we don’t get hit again”, and “I missed something once before”, while images of the fuming Twin Towers are shown and a Jazz melody plays a restless, eerie, and slightly destabilizing tune. A male voice is heard answering “Everyone missed something that day”.
Illustration5 1 shows the logo of the series; Illustrations 2 to 15 show juxtapostitions in the opening sequence that are of political and private content.
5 The illustrations are to be viewed from left to right and top to bottom. This approach also concerns all the following illustrations that are included in the essay.
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The double layers of facts and fiction demonstrate that Homeland works with juxtaposition of media and politics, with a focus of the legacy of the Bush-era in all its nation shaping mindset. In my point of view it is important to emphasize here briefly on the opening, since some recent TV series of that quality introduce via the opening sequence some of the contextual discourses in a strong synthesized way.6 The discourses in Homeland’s opening are displayed as the political aftermath of the Bush-administration, and are all linked in some way to the national American identity. This term addresses the identity that is presented in Homeland as solely American, and all the ideological, political, and cultural elements that are attached to it. Susan Jeffords, on whom I will elaborate later, connected the national identity to visibility. She states that a nation images itself, and constructs itself as “something to be seen” (Jeffords, 6). One media to show this visible identity is film, whose discourse in the US is mostly shaped by Hollywood. Since the recent quality development of TV shows, that have worldwide influence and success in what some scholars call the Third Golden Age of Television, Hollywood’s top position of influence now has to compete with TV.7 Therefore Jeffords statement about visibility of a national identity can also be applied onto current television series. The national identity in the context of the show is a construct(ion) for a certain philosophical, political, or ideological conviction, and will be the main emphasis of my thesis. My research question therefore is what kind of national identity Homeland presents, and what statement the series consequently makes about the political aftermath of the Bush-administration and its legacy, and thus marks the current real-life American identity.
6 Similar contextual openings are presented in House of Cards (2013 - ? ), True Detective (2013 - ? ), Dexter (2006 – 2013), Vikings (2013 - ? ), American Horror Story (2011 - ? ), The Walking Dead (2010 - ? ), Six Feet Under (2001 – 2005), Orange Is The New Black (2013 - ? ), Game Of Thrones (2011 - ? ), True Blood (2008 – 2014), Masters Of Sex (2013 - ? ).
7 For further reading see Brett (2013).
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Illustration 16: George Walker Bush 43rd President of the United States of America (Republican) Illustration 17: Barack Hussein Obama II 44th President of the United States of American (Democrat)
In this field of what some scholars call Quality Television some literature has been published, but as for the themes and arguments I will make, the existing research is surprisingly small and rather little has been written on representation and television.8 Therefore I will use mostly film theory for my argumentative skeleton and apply my findings onto the presented television discourses. Starting with the term of the national identity that Susan Jeffords elaborated on in her book Hard Bodies (1994), I will analyze and apply her discussion onto the current representation of nationalism, gender, and media presented visibility in the discourses that Homeland introduces. By using her method of connecting political ideologies with the way they are displayed on film the deconstruction of what the series shows and what it exactly represents is more theoretically grounded. Questions of femininity, masculinity, militarism, patriotism, and the value and importance of the American family are some topics that can be viewed through Jeffords approach. In terms of questions and the paradigms of
8 The definition of quality television is a tricky one, since scholarship is divided what that term entails and what not. I will use is here to describe fictional television series that have the high standards in subject matter and production value like HBO’s The Sopranos (1999 – 2007), which partially ‘pushed’ the demand for higher value television series into the Third Golden Age of Television. Quality television can in terms of aesthetics be more compared to class A Hollywood productions than to regular TV shows. Those series usually consists of about ten to thirteen episodes per season and 45 up to 60 minutes per episode. The total amount of seasons is about five or more, with each year broadcasting the new episodes over the span of several months. (Although online streaming platform Netflix made for their TV series House of Cards (2013 - ) the complete season at once available to watch and download it on the Internet) There is also some difference between US and UK quality television series. The BBC drama series Sherlock for example has three episodes per season, but each is about one and a half hours long, and the broadcasting between seasons has taken up to two years. For further reading see Thompson (2011).
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representation, I will also refer to Douglas Kellner’s and Michael Ryan’s Camera Politica (1988). They use a method of transcoding filmic text by the example of ideological demand for conservatism in their analysis about the Hollywood films in the 1970’s, by revealing certain filmic paradigms and analyzing them. By doing so they deconstruct what kind of political ideology these films represent, and what function for example the American family on film is displayed to have under a certain political administration like Jimmy Carter’s liberal one. Kellner also developed this method further in Cinema Wars (2010), where he analyzed Hollywood films of the 2010’s and the problematized conservatism that the Bush administration presented. By referring to both texts of representation and political ideology, I am able to decipher what statement Homeland makes about the legacy of the Bush administration and the soon to be ceasing Obama administration, in linking with Jeffords visible national identity. The thereby created sub-questions aim at the display on issues of gender, the American family, the role of authorities and power, that are all in relation to the Obama administration and their legacy in politically shaping an America that is post 9/11 and post-Bush. What value does Homeland present the American family to have, and how is a military family like Brody family displayed? How are figures of political or governmental power introduced, and are they presented to be complicated, given the facts that military tactics like the US drone program are highly controversial? Is the way that masculinity and femininity are shown, set in a known paradigm, or does the series break existing ones by creating new and possible even more complicated figures?
Examining the question represented by gender and sexuality further I will quote Laura Mulvey’s feminist film theory’s Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975). Mulvey uses lacanian psychoanalysis and critical theory, which will be used to help analyzing issues of displayed surveillance and voyeurism. Her critique about the male gaze and its gaze-object are presented to be reversed in the TV show. Mulvey’s active voyeur-figure is male and the passive object of the gaze female, which presents a gender and power paradigm that has been established in film theory for most of the media’s existence. In Homeland though the voyeur is not a man, but a woman and the masculine object of the gaze presents itself unknowing to the gaze/surveillance. The double layering of intimate sexual voyeurism and political motivated surveillance that the series presents, is an aspect of representation that has yet to be analyzed. Turning from the voyeuristic gaze to the actual object on display in terms of performance of sexuality, masculine sexuality has been researched by Richard Dyer. His article about Male Sexuality in the Media (2002) focusses on the way how masculinity connected with sexuality are shown on film. Dyer’s argument concerns the particular construction of the phallus as the sole representational form of masculine sexuality. Concerning my argument how masculinity and sexuality are shown in Homeland, Dyer makes a strong point regarding the one-sided dimensionality of this imagery and addresses the representational consequences if this form of constructed sexuality display should fail to perform. Why masculine sexuality may be presented to be
complicated, is in the series tightly linked with trauma created by torture. With the figure of Brody, a soldier who experienced torture during his imprisonment, and who is presented to be traumatized, I will refer to Elaine Scarry and The Body in Pain (1985). Scarry’s interdisciplinary approach entails philosophical theory about the body and the objectification of the person who is tortured. She also questions terms like power and value and relates them to the torture-scenario and the consequences by it. How does Homeland display trauma that was created by torture, by simply showing a sex scene on screen? And how does this scene become political by indirectly referring to the Iraq War and Brody’s former status as a prisoner of war?
Another sub-question of mine is linked to female mental illness in Vera Chouinard’s Placing the Mad Woman (2009). Her critical discourse analysis about the representation of female hysteria in Girl, Interrupted (1999) opens my argument about the portrayal of mental illness in Homeland. The way of stigmatizing women who are presented to be mentally ill is closely connected to the way they are placed in society. Chouinard does so by framing terms like belonging and non-belonging into the filmic text, that shows such a problematized representation. The linking to the national identity gets resumed when the heroine Carrie is presented to have such an illness. What statement about gender does the series make, by applying a socially stigmatized illness onto its main character? The earlier mentioned quote from the opening sequence “I missed something that day”, leads to the legacy of the 9/11 trauma and its representation in Homeland. Neil Narine, who focusses in Global Trauma and Narrative Cinema (2010) on the problem of experiencing trauma in the 21st century that has a close link to the new media. His main arguments is, that tragedies that have been seen and experienced via the new media (television, Internet) can also create a new form of trauma. He makes a close link with the cataclysm of 9/11, and introduces the term of vicarious trauma as something that decouples a present day trauma victim from the physical presence to the location of the trauma itself. In reference to the series this vicarious trauma is presented as something that drives the heroine forward. What statement therefore does the series make about dealing with trauma in this new media age? Homeland further introduces a very specific fear of a terrorist attack on American soil, another reference to 9/11 and its legacy for the American people, by presenting the political enemy to be a radical Muslim terrorist. An imagery that is both of factual and fictional making. Kineret Guterman discussed in his article about The Dynamics of Stereotyping (2013) how this type of villain is used in a stereotyping way, to evoke fear and repulsion for its otherness. Another linking with the national identity, and what elements are excluded from it. He also presents the ignorance with which Western media create a fictional image that in most representations is not correctly placed into a certain political discourse, and that therefore is shown to be just ‘evil’ without an agenda that goes beyond ‘bombing America’. I will evaluate in what way the national identity presented in Homeland makes use of this Middle-Eastern-terrorist as a construction of otherness and its political context. My combined methods of analysis therefor consist of critical discourse analysis, feminist film theory, and studies of representation, with an emphasis on political representation. The filmic text that the series offers
allows this trinity to strengthen, rather than weaken each other in their context.
A still ongoing television series confronts academic research with different challenges than a single film. A choice of objects has to be made, and other aspects that the medium offers have to be ignored. It is impossible to address every episode, therefore I will focus my main analysis on selected episodes from the first season (broadcasted in 2011). Since my research includes aspects of political nature, I had to make a decision for episodes and their entailed discourses that represent this open or subtle political-ness and a complicated national identity. With this choice I hope to present a more focused and framed analysis, than if I had included the second and third season as well. Nonetheless I will give a small outlook where suitable at how certain discourses develop over the next seasons.
This paper will be divided into three chapters, that each focus on a different display of national identity. The first one will address the question of femininity in connection with the series lead character and hero Carrie Mathison. I will cover the issue of female gender in relation to heroism, mental illness and the portrayal of this ‘weakness’ or stigma in the series, and finally the question of vicarious guilt that is coupled with gender portrayal. The second chapter will then illustrate how masculinity is shown in the series by an analysis of the male lead Nicholas Brody. Depicting the different fragments that establish this figure, enables me to enter various filmic discourses like the American father, the veteran, the national hero, and the possible religious and political threat of fundamentalism. The last chapter will focus on the different figures that are connected to authoritarian power. First I will examine the figure of Carrie’s mentor at the CIA, and symbolical father-figure Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin), who presents a form of powerless non-corruption inside the ‘pragmatic’ organization.9 Furthermore I will analyze how the figure of the series Vice-President William Walden (Jamey Sheridan) presents a ruthless political pragmatism that can be linked with former Vice-President Dick Cheney and his political ideology. The last element in this chapter will be dealing with the figure of fictional terrorist leader Abu-Nazir (Navid Negahban) and the political-ness of presenting an Arab-Muslim-terrorist as a national threat and the series main villain. All these chapters follow the recurrent theme of the question about the kind of national identity Homeland displays and redefines. By dividing this main question into sub-questions of femininity, masculinity, and figures of power, the visibility that Jeffords saw as a key element of the national identity can be thoroughly analyzed.
Concluding I will have established how the series breaks certain paradigms of filmic representation and creates new ones, like the mentioned female voyeur. It can already be said, that Homeland with its focus on juxtaposition of the political and the private double layers questions
9 With pragmatic I address actions like the US military drone-program, that is presented to have a controversial emphasis inside of the CIA during the first season of the series. The term is deliberately not connoted as positive or negative, but directs more the juxtaposition of authoritarian perspectives I want to address.
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identity in the legacy of 9/11, the Bush-administration, and the still ongoing Obama administration that had mainly to deal with the political consequences of the former one. With those methods Homeland represents a contemporary TV Show that very critically deals with political questions regarding its own country and addresses not random people and figures, but a specific group: its nation.
1. Paranoia and Heroism – Carrie and the blurring of boundaries
In this chapter I will address how Homeland deals with concerns of gender, stability and destabilization of the mind (knowledge), including the conflations that are presented as conflicted between professionalism and private emotions, as well as traumatic issues connected with the guilt of (active) failure. The figure of embodiment in this context will be Homeland protagonist Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), an intelligence officer working for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) with an expertise in Middle Eastern terroristic activities. I will argue that Homeland breaks certain paradigms of female gender portrayal, while also rewriting classic masculine roles like Laura Mulvey’s voyeur. How relevant is the gender of the voyeur for the power of the gaze and its targeted object? And is female voyeurism equal to the masculine one? Additionally the complicated co-existence of gender and mind centralizes aspects of rational knowledge and emotional behavior, to the point that decisions traced back to gender, emotions and desire complicate analytical thoughts. Is the early presented blurring of boundaries – e.g of profession with pleasure - an indication of this compromised analysis? And if so, what is Homeland indicating with that? And finally, traumatic events in the 21st century can be experienced as guilt of failure, even though events like 9/11 were witnessed through the media (vicarious guilt) and not by physical presence. Does the series present an escape out of this constant guilt that is created via the media? And how is the guilt placed into the series?
1.1 Heroism and gender complication
The leading character in Homeland is introduced in the first scene: Carrie Mathison, a female CIA intelligence agent. With a close-up to her face, the first impression the viewer gets of her is a delicate appearance, a skinny blonde with big eyes and long hair, who would fit the physical description of an Audrey-Hepburn like girl-woman: a woman that seems fragile. However, this misleading impression is soon put to right, when Carrie is forcefully driving a car throughout Baghdad while arguing with her superior on the phone about the death warrant that an imprisoned terrorist and important source is about to receive. Her mission is to stop that execution and collect more intelligence regarding a secret plan about the next terroristic attack. By the juxtaposition of physical appearance and action, the delicate woman who would be assumed to need protection transforms into a driven and devoted
intelligence agent. The mission though fails as Carrie illicitly sneaks into the prison and interrogates her source, whom she cannot save from his death warrant due to administrative affairs. Before the prison guards pull her away from him, he informs her that an American prisoner of war has been turned into a terrorist, and is planning an attack on American soil. The mission ends with Carrie being send home to the US. When Nicholas Brody is pulled out of a prison cell in a forgotten place in Northern Iraq about half a year later, Carrie believes him to be the national threat. Therefore her future mission is presented as to find out whether Brody presents an actual threat to the nation.
Illustration 18: First scene with at Homeland’s hero Carrie in Baghdad
This first scene already blurs the boundaries of gender and profession, as Homeland introduces Carrie by her actions as the series hero-figure. The series presents a devoted patriot who would give her life for the protection of her country. The physical appearance and actions make questions of gender portrayal an issue within the first minutes of the Pilot. With the construction to make its hero a woman – including transferring general male characteristics - Homeland breaks a classic paradigm of the male hero, thus asking the question: If the hero is female what does this contemporary construction tell us about femininity and masculinity in connection to the national identity?
Carrie is presented to act quite masculine, despite her misleading appearance. Living on her own in a house that shows photos of legendary Jazz musicians and a shelf full of white wine instead of feminine home-décor, Carrie’s house displays more the male bachelor than a female one. A steady
boyfriend or fiancée is also not existing, but instead she has one-night-stands with strangers where she pretends to be a wife, given the fake wedding ring that she only wears on these occasions. All of this adds up to the masculine way that femininity is posed here. An interesting part of this short display is a mind map in Carrie’s house which covers a whole wall with pictures and events and information about of al-Qaeda terrorists, with the infamous Abu-Nazir being the most important one. This part of the professional life is presented to be in the home space, thus showing how boundaries between private and professional are being blurred within the first ten minutes of the series.
Illustration 19: Carrie’s mind map on the wall of her living room
In their analysis about ideology and subject representation in the Hollywood film in Camera Politica (1988), Douglas Kellner and Michael Ryan dedicate a whole chapter about the “Politics of Sexuality” and their entailed representation of constructed femininity in American films. By comparing filmic paradigms with Homeland’s contemporary breaking, or disrupting of these, the ‘construction’ of the TV show demonstrated how paradigm shifts have altered the representation of womanhood. From the first filmic displays of subordinate and dependent subjects, who are in a constant state of need and support from men, to the pattern change and a more independent status of labor and modern representation. Still, most female narratives are centered around issues of personal matter than professional, the home space instead of work space, and aesthetic framing that is mostly showing their decorative side, thus transforming them into desirable objects for heteronormative maleness (Kellner and Ryan, 139).
Homeland breaks with this presentation and shows femaleness in an active work-related way, ‘re-placing’ woman from being a passive home decoration to protecting a country by their active practices. Carrie is first introduced as a CIA agent, and later as woman and private person. This order is (still) unusual, since professional life comes before private life, thus presenting a new paradigm of womanhood. The components that shape a hero figure, like determinism, driving the narrative by action, intelligence, professionalism and so forth, that were almost always exclusively male, were applied onto this representation of femininity. Therefore: Making the heroine masculine, is complicating and conflating issues of gender and sex. As formerly described by Kellner and Ryan, stereotypes are still intact and therefore masculine demeanor is coupled with defending, while feminine with nurturing and caring. A hero whose task it is to protect a whole nation from a terroristic threat thus cannot be portrayed caring and nurturing. Therefore the hero, regardless the sex, in Homeland has to be masculine. This decision for a masculine female can be linked to the question whether the paradigm also changed in the representation of men.10
I argue that in Homeland heroism can (only) be performed by a woman, because it is not connected to physical power. The focus of the series lies with counterterrorism and analytical strength. Even though the series portrays discourses like soldiers, the aim is not the strong body, but the strong mind. Therefore heroism that is not linked to a muscular body - one that most women do not possess due to their feminine physique - can be performed by a woman.11 But why is it important to point out that the hero is female? I argue that by making the hero female, Homeland applies characteristics like activeness. This activeness permits the hero to drive the narrative forward and not be rendered a ‘passive woman’ who rather just waits until the next terrorist attack has happened or is subordinated by her supervisors. One of the first ‘active’ actions Carrie takes, is illegally bugging the house of Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody. With this operation of surveillance, she goes against direct orders of CIA authority (and father-figure) Saul, and follows her 'gut instinct' of a possible threat. This act of surveying another (unknowing) person during the most intimate actions, in their home, thus putting the observed even more in a vulnerable state, produces the figure of the voyeur.12 Who is here being juxtaposed by linking the intimate look with the political function of surveillance.
Laura Mulvey addressed the figure of the masculine and active voyeur in her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975), in order to make objectification of women on screen more visible. The basis is a phallocentric view that addresses the normative perspective on everything as a heterosexual
10
This aspect will be examined in the coming chapter about masculinity.
11 The construction of Carrie is more like a clever Odysseus, instead of a robust Hercules
12 Definition of voyeur: A person who watches and observes another person for his sexual pleasure. The person
that is being watched is unaware of the voyeur and his sexual fetish and cannot defend themselves from the unwanted gaze and attention. The (male) voyeur is a filmic figure that has been recited throughout filmic history, with the most iconic being be Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960).
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masculine one. Women, as the Other 13, is looked at by a masculine point of view. The difference between women and men in this notion, is the lack of the former of masculine power, the lack of a phallus. Femininity is shaped and formed by the male gaze, who is in possession of the phallus. Mulvey speaks here of the castrated woman, whose lack of phallus attributes signification to the male phallus. In her essay she argues that the figure of filmic identification is the man. By looking at the woman, he becomes the active one, while she stays passive and is to be looked at. The active gaze is linked with power and control over the situation, the passive to-be-looked-at-ness as Mulvey describes this state, means weakness and impotence of not denying, or not being able to deny - due to unknowingness - the gaze. Something that is to be looked at becomes an object instead of staying a subject. The impotence of denying the gaze emphasizes this. In the Pilot episode the classic roles of male voyeur and female gaze-object are reversed, when Carrie observes with hidden cameras everything that goes on in at the Brody family house. On the first night after his return home, Brody and his wife Jessica engage in their first sexual activities after the eight years of his imprisonment and absence. While the two spouses assume to be in the safe and private space of their bedroom, Carrie is seen sitting on her sofa watching every movement and listening to every uttered word. The activity and power of the voyeuristic situation is with Carrie the woman, and the impotent object of bearing to be looked at while being in a vulnerable position is Brody the man.14 Therefore, here the phallus, the symbol of masculine power, is in possession of a woman who performs masculine connoted voyeurism. The scene starts with Carrie looking at all the various live streams that the cameras, which were previously hidden in the Brody house, display. Then the focus shifts towards the Master bedroom in which Jessica waits for Brody to join her. The first point of view and association with the situation is therefore Carrie; the spectator joins her as an additional voyeur. The sexual act that is being performed by Brody is beyond normative sexual behavior. While his wife lies beneath him he penetrates her animal-like in jerking motions and frantic movements. This humiliation shames his wife, as she ‘endures’ her husband’s actions. At the same time Jessica cannot bear to look at him while he ‘perverts’ this intimate act. At her home Carrie also cannot endure to look at this extreme failure of normative sexuality. Taking her headphones off she also has to look away (from the screen and the scene).
13
The Other (das Andere) is a psychoanalytical term, that first was first introduced by Sigmund Freud. Mulvey follows Jaques Lacan’s definition of otherness (l’Autre). The word here is used to describe a subject that is first of all different from oneself. The Other gives yourself a kind of structure in which articulation and movement is possible. Oneself is nothing without the Other, but the Other is also a sign of constant rebellion against.
14 Also his wife Jessica is the object of Carrie’s gaze, but since Jessica poses no threat, she is of no interest of the
CIA’s attention as political threat, or Carrie’s private gaze.
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Illustration 20 – 24: Surveillance and Voyeurism
What does this scene say about Mulvey’s voyeur in Homeland? Since the voyeur is in possession of power: the gaze; she controls the situation in which the object of her gaze (Brody) is positioned. Carrie cannot look at Brody, because she is emotionally compromised by the situation and her failure as a voyeur is also true to her male gaze. She cannot bear to look at this symbolical ‘castrated’ sexuality that is displayed before her eyes. It evokes emotions which blur the professional with the
private. This complication of performing voyeurism and activeness is already indicated by the function of the female to be displayed as the hero. The reversed gender roles that Homeland presents here, are a big step away from the classic model that puts women into a position of objectification. The view, that men as well can become the object of the voyeur is a postmodern breaking of a traditional paradigm, that associated men with being the only possessor of the phallus. Here masculine performance by a woman complicates issues like the phallus, which do not uphold any longer in these broken paradigms. The demeanor and behavior of the hero, who is sex-wise female but gender-wise masculine can only be read as active while it is coherent with masculinity. The view in Homeland towards issues of gender is still phallocentric, but woman here can adapt masculinity and become powerful, by shifting passive feminine to active masculine performance. The aspect that the voyeuristic situation did not occur out of personal pleasure, but surveillance creates a juxtaposition with questions of political nature. In Homeland watching for pleasure has evolved into watching for duty. This duty though shifts, when the gaze sees something intimate like sex. This conflation is, as I will later argue, part of a bigger argument between professionalism and private emotions.
Mulvey argues further that “the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification” and therefore “makes things happen throughout the narrative” (63). The 'male' in Homeland is female, who makes things happen and drives on the plot actively by acting instead of reacting, which leads to the next step of the voyeuristic look: the scopophilic gaze.15 The voyeuristic object is after some time transformed into the object of desire by extensive looking of the voyeur in Homeland. The constant looking has awakened an obsessive sexual gaze. In episode four of the first season (Semper I) after the surveillance of the Brody family house had to be shut down, Carrie continues to tail and observe Brody. I argue, that this comportment is not introduced only to illustrate a constructed form of duty linked with professionalism, but also to demonstrate the distant look of scopophilic desire, which simultaneously blurs the boundaries between private life and professional life, and also mind and gender even more. Scopophilia addresses the aspect of human sexuality that gains sexual pleasure by looking. The look is directed at another person and is “essentially active” (60). Mulvey also notes that the deprivation or losing of being able to look at the desired object brings the voyeur to actively seek contact with the formerly observed object (60 - 61). Thus making the voyeur even more active. Homeland presents scopophilia by driving the voyeur into a situation where the loss of the look cannot be endured and a coincidental meeting with the clueless object is arranged, thus further complicating gender (desire) and professionalism (rationality). After not being able to survey Brody any longer, Carrie first asks her trusted mentor Saul for permission to keep on looking and searching for clues that indicate a possible danger for the nation. After this request is denied, a 'coincidental' planned meeting between her, and the object of her desire takes place at a veteran support group. The
15
Scopophilia is a term that relates back to Sigmund Freud’s Schaulust, which Freud traced back to a person’s childhood and sexuality.
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active gender drive of the voyeur complicates representation of gender, and leads to loosing itself in the look. By this scene Homeland highlights to the spectator how interwoven former boundaries have become. Why is that of importance?
Illustrations 25 – 28: The scopophilic look complicates the professionalism.
Illustrations 29 – 35: Scopophilia has led to desire and gazes/looks are returned.
While disregarding authorities and reason for an end of the surveillance, here the sexual drive momentarily triumphs over the knowledge that this procedure is wrong and most of all forbidden, regarding the position of an intelligence agent. I argue, that Homeland introduces scopophilia to test the devotion that heroism in relation to new forms of gender portrayal requests in an America that deals with the political legacy of 9/11. By complicating the professional mission of exposing the
possible threat with the personal pleasure and desire, the hero has to make a choice either for or against her own emotions that ‘weaken’ her professionalism.
Gender is used in Homeland to complicate and disturb boundaries and paradigms. By presenting a female hero, the focus from passive woman transcends to activeness, that is performed among other things through the figure of the voyeur. This voyeur though is no longer bound to traditional representations, the gender determines who is the active observer and who is the to-be-looked-at (observed), thus breaking the paradigm of the male voyeur and freeing the female from a position of being an object. The show puts an emphasis on the struggle of emotions versus mission, and complicates the professional life with the private one. The masculine performing female voyeur then transcends her gaze into the scopophilic look that gains pleasure from looking. Homeland uses this scopophilia to complicate boundaries and test the will of the hero, by conflating professionalism with pleasure. The activeness of the heroine will save the country, but only, as I will elaborate later, if the authorities support and do not weaken her.
1.2 Paranoid zeitgeist and mental illness
As I have elaborated, the element that is placed at the forefront of heroism in Homeland, is the mind and the knowledge it represents. Carrie, as a CIA agent is presented to be highly intelligent, and uses her intellect to find and capture possible threats to the nation, as it is demonstrated many times throughout the season when her devotion and creative thinking drive various operations into the right direction. For example when a terrorist-couple – consisting of a young male Arab and a young female Caucasian American – was mission-wise driven forward by the woman and not the man, a scenario that nobody but Carrie even considered to be possible and plausible (The Good Soldier). But for this kind of professionalism and creativity the psychological mind has to be stable, in order to be a reliable tool. It is already shown in the first episode that Carrie secretly takes psychotropic drugs. Over the next couple of episodes it is further revealed that she suffers from bipolar disorder, and thus cannot stabilize her emotional state. The question that I am interested in here is: why does the show introduce these contradictory elements? Bipolar is a mental illness in which the concerned person cannot stabilize their emotions and mind on a balanced level. The affected person has different mood phases that are either manic or depressive.16 The filmic representation of mentally ill women is a social but
16 The manic phase features emotional highs, that are connected with a rush of energy and views of one’s own
abilities. Recklessness and delusion can also be experienced. The counterpart is the depressive phase, that entails no, or low self-esteem, sadness, and energy loss that can lead to physical immobility to leave the house or even the bed. The different phases can be influenced by factors like hormonal changes, outer influences and
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also political one, since female ‘hysteria’ portrays a certain constructed image of femininity.
The portrayal of mentally ill women has a long filmic history, that in a paradigm presented female mental illness with suffering, madness (hysteria), otherness, and exclusion from within the community. Vera Chouinard asks about the representation of this otherness through a filmic narrative (2009).17 She argues that the filmic narrative builds a certain kind of dispute regarding the illness itself. It becomes the problem of the storyline, instead of being an aspect of a person. She argues further, that the structural displacement of mentally ill people, “help[s] to render people in and out of place, as belonging and not belonging” (792). This constructed difference between 'normal' people and mentally-ill people is what politicizes portrayals of mental illness on film. The fear of the unknown mind of the Other, leads to stigmatization and projections of prejudice of those who do not 'belong' inside the mentally stable community, and therefore to exclusion. The term she uses to describe this exclusion and not belonging is The Monstrous. The embodied aspect of mental illness is its invisibility. Other than a physical visible disability, mental illness is internal. This leads to a projection of fear towards the 'Other', who is not stable, and could become instable and possibly threatening at any time.
In Homeland the question of belonging and non-belonging related to the stigma of the sickness is first divided between Carrie’s nuclear family, who is aware of her mental instability, and the professional family, who is unknowing. After a bomb explosion in episode ten (Representative Brody), in which Carrie is physically hurt, the traumatic experience triggers a manic phase in episode eleven (The Vest).
Illustrations 36 & 37: Carrie’s illness was ‘unkonwn’ to her mentor Saul.
traumatic events. Bi-polar disorder cannot be cured, but treated either with no control over emotional behavior or with psychotropic antidepressant drugs like Prozac or Xanax. In Homeland the latter aspect of treatment is presented.
17 Also for further readings into disability studies see Rosemarie Garland Thomson (2002).
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Succeeding this, the boundaries between professional family and private, in terms of 'knowing', including mentor Saul and superior David Estes, become blurred. The unmasking sadly does not lead to 'belonging', like in the nuclear family, but to punishment and exclusion. Even though Saul as the understanding mentor and father figure accepts this aspect of his protégée, and renders Carrie’s sickness as belonging (seeing her as a whole person for the first time), he does not have authority to protect her from superiors and is rendered impotent.18
Illustrations 38 & 39: Saul accepts his protégée as a ‘whole person’.
Estes’ reaction instead symbolizes a larger part of society: aversion, bias against, and prejudice towards mentally ill people. Since he presents a figure of authority as head of counter-terrorism department, he conducts the punishment in form of instant dismissal.19 One interesting aspect here is that he confronts Carrie about Abu-Nazir’s timeline of terroristic activities she made in her house with classified documents. His anger about her confusion between professionalism with private sphere shows him that she cannot divide between them anymore, and thus is a risk for the agency and herself. His reaction is to fire her for unprofessional behavior.
18
A point that I will elaborate on in the third chapter when I discuss the representation of authorities in Homeland.
19 Even though Estes first confronted Carrie about her inappropriate behavior towards Brody - the latter filed
for harassment - he questions Carrie’s sanity when he sees the mind-map and her unstable and over-emotional behavior, thus leading to the truth about her mental condition and the immediate dismissal.
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Illustrations 40 & 41: Estes fires Carrie for being a risk for the CIA.
In Chouinard’s argument, mental illness is used to drive the plot and place the affected figure in a place of non-belonging. The aspect of the actual bi-polar disorder retreats to the back, and the illness is used to de-place Carrie from her profession and stigmatize her as a mentally ill woman who portrays female hysteria, and therefore affects her role as hero in connection with masculinity. Linking this projection of invisible illness of the mind, to the figure of the hero, Homeland shows a construction of a flawed hero, as a postmodern statement. The hero (regardless if female or male at this point), as a symbol of representing the good and just, is constructed with an illness that through most of its filmic history was connected to madness, incredibility, and exclusion. By constructing the narrative in the last third of the first season around Carrie’s bi-polar disorder, Homeland makes its hero weak and puts her into a state of passiveness, where decision and credibility are not in her possession anymore and she is presented to be excluded from the mission to prevent a terroristic attack (and thus ultimately protect America). The discourses between hero and stigmatized Other, or to rephrase it: the hero who belongs, and the Other who does not belong (within the community), are now completely conflated. But why does Homeland present this blending of classic contrasts, and what does the series want to declare by it?
An aspect of the hero embodying a 'tainted' illness that is associated with craziness and a danger within the own body, is that these elements are still performed by the hero. A figure of identification and positive expectations. By 'weakening' the hero with a ‘fatal’ flaw, the step of identifying with what the hero stands for actually becomes closer. A perfect hero without flaws and struggles is morally too far away from any form of identification for the spectator and cannot function in a postmodern TV show of that quality and seriousness. By weakening the hero, showing an inner struggle for credibility and recognition, the hero is ideologically strengthened and made more accessible. Also to combine a construction of womanhood and mental illness that is kept secret triggers issues of guilt and responsibility. The arising problems of gender related to sexuality and the analytical mind are brought up in that construction. As I have illustrated, the issues of gender and mental illness refer to a broader question of what is part of a national identity in Homeland.
In episode six (The Good Soldier), Carrie and Brody engage in sexual activities with each other for the first time. After the end of the surveillance and the scopophilic look have fed the interests and desires of Carrie’s voyeurism, she and Brody meet in a bar. While being drunk, she informs him about classified information which concern him taking a polygraph test (lie-detector test) the next day. Homeland here shows the consequence of that slip, by first immediately rewarding (passionate sexual encounter), and then in the last episode (Marine One) making the hero suffer from the consequences of shortly giving up her professional role (electro-shock therapy), for conflating personal interests with her professional attitude.
Illustrations 42 & 43: Carrie lets classified information slip and gets rewarded for conflating professionalism with private emotions.
Illustrations 44 & 45: Carrie willingly erases the ‘flaw’ of her emotions for Brody.
The fact that Carrie ‘chooses’ to proceed willingly the electro shock treatment (the complete procedure takes sessions a couple of times a week over the period of two months) presents her as devoted to her profession. By erasing the flaw of her emotions for Brody, she transforms herself into the perfect soldier: without complicated and conflated feelings that could weaken her. Therefore heroism is presented here as something that is radical, because there is no choice between either professionalism or private feelings, if the latter influences the former it has to be eliminated. For the
questions of representation of national identity in an America that deals with the legacy of 9/11 via the Obama administration, this radicalness shows how far an American hero is willing to go in duty for her country and against her own feelings.
Also guilt, performed by mentor and father figure Saul, and condemnation, performed by former lover and chief Estes, are two aspects how embodiments of authority can react to this stigmatized issues in terms of belonging/non-belonging. Does Homeland show by this construction and reaction how mental health issues in the United States are still better be lived in private, because of the consequences they can entail if they are shown in public? The discourse that the show addresses and the way the illness is presented, indicates that Homeland also deals with a problem within the American society in relation to how people with mental illness are treated.
1.3 Witnessing trauma via the media – issues of guilt and responsibility
The focus on the impossibility of certain actions is what leads to my next argument about trauma in the 21st century. Carrie’s quote: “I missed something that day” refers to 9/11. The post-constructed thought of having missed a clue, that could have prevented the events from happening, is an element of traumatic experiences. The show connects Carrie with questions of guilt and responsibility, that I argue are linked with her role as the hero.
Neil Narine analyzed trauma culture in the 21st century (2010), which is in his opinion, the “visual horror of our century is bearing witness” (120). Via the New Media, information about traumatic events are spread in the fastest way around the globe. The ‘experience’ of these trauma through the Internet or television leads to guilt. The guilt is linked to either exploiting the seen images, because of the distance of to the 'spectacle' and the repetition through the media, or making an active effort to suppress the guilt. Since, as he continues, trauma is a shared social experience, a vicarious trauma, that is experienced from far away via the media is the trauma-experience of the 21st century (120 - 123). The physical presence, that used to be an indicator of being a trauma victim in the past, is replaced by an emotional presence of the present (120 – 123). Thus altering the definition of trauma victim in relation to 9/11.
Therefore the trauma of 9/11 is a trauma that was experienced by people all over the world, by the repetition and broadcasting of the media. Carrie’s quote therefore stands for a vicarious trauma, that is connected to the guilt of not being able to protect one’s own country and what it represents. Narine also relates his findings with Laura Mulvey’s psychoanalytical view on film. He explains, that
the issue of guilt is divided between masculine guilt and feminine guilt.20 According to Mulvey and the phallocentric view, the masculine is active and the feminine passive, as I have elaborated earlier. This might lead us to consider that traditional masculinity has actively failed to prevent the traumatic event from happening, while femininity is guilty for her constantly performed passivity. Regarding the masculine, the question of castration and impotence in a psychoanalytical viewing arises. The failure of preventing the event and the impotence of consuming it through the media instead are coupled with guilt. The construction of heroism in Homeland is, as I have shown, linked to masculinity.
Therefore the matter of content regarding guilt is also a masculine one, even though the vicarious trauma victim is a woman. The statement of 'missing something' and the implication of prevention of something similar impossible can clearly be read with issues of guilt, castration and impotence. The interesting aspect though, is the active performance of overcoming impotence and castration by finding the next impossible event. Homeland presents a solution, or 'medicine', for the vicarious traumatized victims of the United States of America: be constantly aware of the impossible threat.
All this leads back to the question of national identity. If Carrie is Homeland’s hero, what is the series' statement about representation of femininity and heroism? By breaking paradigms of filmic gender portrayal, the series mixes elements of masculine gender with female sex, and shows new consequences that arise from this new portrayal of female heroism. The created hero in this America, that is so tightly connected to questions of responsibility and guilt in relation to the whole legacy of 9/11 and the Obama administration, is one that is presented as flawed (mental illness), but that also eliminates these by willingly undergoing radical actions (electro-shock-therapy). This commitment is presented to be grounded in the ideological concept of American patriotism. Can it be stated, that the crisis that 9/11 left, created a new identity for filmic heroism? One that questions its responsibility and actions relating to that trauma, and whose determinism does not even stop at the most intimate a person can have: his own feelings. This new American warrior can be traced back to figures like Jack Bauer (24), who underwent torture and still remained strong and loyal to his mission, but I argue that Carrie Mathison is the next evolution of this patriotic fighter: she undergoes the ‘torture’ of electro-shocks willingly in order to get rid of her weakness and be a complete soldier in the service of the USA. This shows that strength, in linking to national identity, is something that has to be presented as all costs in this category of heroism.
20 Narine argues that the guilt is in the first place a psychological response to the male spectator, the same
spectator which was presented by Mulvey in her essay. The tragedy of this contemporary spectator though is, that while being a witness, he is still unable (impotent) to prevent or impede the traumatic incident from happening. Also according to the patriarchal symbolic order, women are the iconographic figures onto which hysteric guilt is applied to (122 – 124).
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2. Fragments of Masculinity – Brody as embodiment of different discourses
This chapter will examine the different discourses that the representation of masculinity in Homeland offers in Nicholas Brody, a Marine sniper who was held hostage by Al-Qaeda for eight years. In the first episode he is rescued, and brought back to the US, where he is reunited with his family. The themes I want to address in this chapter center around different discourses that all entail aspects of masculinity: the soldier and the veteran, the national hero/symbol, the American father, and the misguided patriot Other. I want to elaborate on how Homeland constructs these discourses and how the series complicates them in reference to national identity.
2.1 Fragmentation of masculinity
In the first episode of Homeland, protagonist Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) is presented as prisoner, veteran, soldier, father, national hero, and possible suspect/threat (terrorist). This display illuminates the different discourses that branch off from this figure, and show an off-balance and conflation between them. The first time Brody is introduced to the viewer is in a digital video, watched by the CIA’s counter-terrorism center of his extrication from an Al-Qaeda prison. His beard is long and the appearance gruff and unkempt. It is the image of a forgotten soldier, one that has been gone MIA (missing in action), imprisoned, and presumed dead for eight years, but it also shows figurative references to homeless people, hobos, or terrorists (the prominent beard). The first image therefore is one that positions Brody as not being a part of American society, but as an element that has been ripped out (or excluded from), and now has to be reintegrated. This reintroduction opens the different themes that Homeland addresses via this character which I will analyzes in their representation towards masculinity and national identity.
Illustration 46 & 47: Brody’s first appearance entertains the appearance of a person outside of (American) society.
Susan Jeffords investigated in her book “Hard Bodies – Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan Era” (1994) the different masculine discourse, that this decade engaged with in Hollywood film. Her argument is that the Hollywood masculinity of the 1980’s - presented by the hard bodies of white actions stars (Schwarzenegger, Stallone) - is to be traced back to President Reagans own masculine body and his conservative ‘masculine’ and forceful politics.21 She tried to pinpoint a method by which masculinity could be connected with politics, and their ideological meaning, and created the term of the national body. The national body is a filmic visualization of national discourses that are representative, for contemporary or past politics. Even though the type of national body which Jeffords found in her analysis, the hard masculine body of the 1980’s, is no longer valid, the concept of the national body is still relevant nonetheless. Jeffords notes that the hard body of the 1980’s shifted in the 1990’s to ”power through internal, personal, and family-orientated values” (13). Since in Homeland protagonist Brody embodies many different masculine American discourses, I will examine if these criteria are still valid, and if not what kind of national identity in connection to masculinity is presented now(adays) in the TV series.
The numerous masculine discourses that feature in the figure of Brody create different questions that position men in private, professional, and political context: the (American) father, the soldier/veteran, the national symbol/hero, and the political suspect. These aspects, however, do not stabilize the figure, but put it off-balance by interfering with each other. The soldier, who is first presented to be 'forgotten' in a prison cell, and who has been traumatized by torture for years, cannot steady the image of the national hero, the poster boy for the War against Terror. The absent father, who (re)lives family values again, cannot succeed if his corrupted political ideologies are in the secure space of the family. And the political activist, the ‘terrorist’, who defines himself as an American patriot, cannot 'rescue' the United States by the same method that the terroristic enemy uses. All these
21 Jeffords makes this argument in contrast to the quite ‘soft’ politics and body of Jimmy Carter.
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aspects complicate each other and blur the boundaries between them, thus destabilizing the central image of Brody. This leads to the observation that by representation of Brody as masculine American in a political context, these different discourses are presented as destabilized in the masculine national identity as well – as different fragments that form not a whole masculinity but a disrupted and unstable one. Fragmentation is the term I will use to describe this observation.
Illustration 48 – 51: different masculine discourses that branch off from the figure of Brody (soldier/veteran, national hero, father, possible terrorist)
These fragments are all presented in the first episode, and alternate especially rapid during the coming home sequence at the airport and the end of the episode. First, Brody the veteran who is physically sick on the plane ride home because of the unknown reality that awaits him in the US, then the national hero who was made a symbol of the War against Terror, (followed by) the returned father who does not recognize his children anymore due to his absence, and finally the ‘suspect’ who deliberately lies to CIA regarding information about infamous terrorists. Based on these interfering fragments Homeland transforms Brody into an anti-hero, who is presented to struggle with settling back into his old life.
The mentioned fragments of masculinity are furthermore all political in this context. Soldiers and veterans, as well as the image of the national hero are symbols that are closely bound to American militarism and patriotism, and have a strong ideological connotation. The emphasis of warrior-like features is mirrored with the anti-American terrorist who politically threatens everything that the United States ideologically stand for. The last aspect, the American father, can also be read in a broader context of the ruptured and abandoned American families that evolved when the Iraq war started. What does Homeland want to declare, by using fragments of masculinity and political discourses to frame its male protagonist? While it is a stylistic method to film women in a bodily fragmented way, to turn them into objects22, an objectification of masculinity is in this way harder to achieve (Mulvey 65). By fragmentation of different masculine discourses though, that are all in some way complicated, Homeland indicates that masculinity here can also embody objectification, which will be elaborated shortly by the example of the tortured body. Also, since Brody is displayed in a fragmented way, this crisis affects all different discourses in which masculinity is illustrated here: soldier, war veteran, American father. The fragmentation presents a complicated outlook towards national identity, since the displayed discourses are all presented as ruptured due to the political post 9/11 legacy. This questions what kind of masculine national identity Homeland presents in relation to the presented zeitgeist. In the following I will analyzes these different fragments and depict what Homeland wants to emphasize.
2.1 Sexuality, Torture, and symbolic castration
First I want to highlight how objectification and masculinity can be linked together by the tortured body. I argue that torture signifies objectification and leads to symbolical castration of normative sexuality.23 From the moment that Brody as POW (prisoner of war) has been introduced, the question whether he had been tortured during his imprisonment is implied. In the pilot episode, images of him beaten and bruised are displayed, and over the next couple of episodes more details about the exact imprisonment conditions are shown (isolation in a small and dark prison cell, brutal beatings (with sticks wrapped in barbed wire), humiliation (getting urinated on), and psychological trauma and abuse).24 This trauma is one, that is presented via flashbacks and focuses on the physical and mental pain. Since the context is political, in reference to the Iraq War under the Bush-administration, in
22
This fragmentation originating in the film noir ‘sees’ the female body through close-ups to the lips, the inviting eyes with long eyelashes, the hand on the champagne glass, long legs.
23
Castration here means not the actual removal of the testes, but the destruction and elimination of a masculine sexuality, so that sexuality itself can either not be performed at all, or only be performed in a way that directly links it to the state of loss-of-masculinity.
24 In the first episode the viewer learns that Brody had to beat his best friend to death, in order not to be killed
himself, by direct order of Abu-Nazir who was present. Brody did not share this information with the CIA during his hearing dues to various reasons.
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which Brody took part as a Marine, the displayed torture is not only political, it also transforms Brody into an object and political symbol of the US ideology that through torture was tried to be ‘destroyed’ and ‘broken’ by his torturers.
In “The Body in Pain” (1985) Elaine Scarry asks about the ‘invisibility’ of pain, also in connection with torture. Since pain itself is invisible and not able to be shared, it is to be represented and expressed in different visual ways. Additionally, an aspect of torture introduces the question of objectification, violability, and value of the person to be tortured. Scarry notes that the act of torture transforms a body, formerly a subject, into an object. This leads to the ‘damage’ or ‘destruction’ of the object which is easier to achieve than the destruction of a subject, since an object has less 'value'. (44). By showing forms of torture and positioning them in a political context, Homeland follows that statement: torture objectifies people and robs them of certain inter-human aspects, like sexuality. A point on which I will elaborate further on.
A scene that demonstrates different torture scenarios in different ideological spaces is found in episode five (Blind Spot). One of Brody’s former torturers has been caught by the CIA and is held hostage in a safe house in Washington DC. Brody is invited by Saul and Carrie to confirm the torturer’s identity, and assist with his knowledge about the details that his torture included. A scenario in which Brody has to face his past (objectification) and the actions he had to endure (confrontation about own humiliation). While Saul questions the prisoner, Brody is in the next room and fills in the gaps of the CIA’s knowledge about the torture scenario via headphone, in order to make the prisoner aware of his situation and what exactly is questioned of him. While this happens, flashbacks of torture moments of Brody’s past are presented. This demonstration about inhuman practices could easily shift the series focus towards a one-sided portrayal about torture, and therefore lead to a one-sided presentation of different systems and their practices towards political prisoners. Homeland though juxtapositions theses flashbacks with their own ‘American’ torture practices. Shortly after Brody left the safe house, Carrie supervises ‘white torture’ which is practiced on their new prisoner.25 Opposite to the practices that al-Qaeda uses in the series, the Americans have ‘civilized’ their system, with sensual over-stimulation (loud noises of a grindcore song) and sleep deprivation. On the next morning the prisoner (object) is willing to make a testimony, and seems ‘broken’ by the torture. Homeland illustrates by this juxtaposition of different torture systems on the one side how pain can be made visible, and objectification can be achieved, but also that there is no moral high ground between al-Qaeda and the CIA when it comes to person’s dignity and body in reference to violability. Since I have argued that torture means objectification, which is in both scenarios presented as to be traumatic, the demonstration that the US is as willing to torture people and use their own tortured citizens for
25 White torture is more fixated on the psychological aspects of torture. Therefore physical harm is not the aim
of this practices, but the breaking of a person’s will. For a detailed reading about torture in the 20th century: see Cesereanu (2006).
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‘important’ information, shifts the series focus in terms of national identity to the legacy of the Bush-administration. Places like Guantanamo prison come to mind, where prisoners are tortured without a demand of their basic human rights. Homeland addresses this issue here, but makes it clear that consequently these scenarios seem ‘necessary’ in order to protect the country from terrorists.
Illustrations 52 – 54: Torture practices of al-Qaeda
