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Hollywood and the Popular Geopolitics of the War on Terror

Klaus Dodds a a Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey, UK Online Publication Date: 01 December 2008

To cite this Article Dodds, Klaus(2008)'Hollywood and the Popular Geopolitics of the War on Terror',Third World Quarterly,29:8,1621

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Third World Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 8, 2008, pp 16211637

Review Article

Hollywood and the Popular Geopolitics of the War on Terror

KLAUS DODDS
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In the past couple of years several Hollywood lms have been released which have explicitly addressed the USA and its varied involvement with the war on terror. They include war lms (eg Redacted, 2008), surveillance/spy lms (eg The Bourne Ultimatum, 2007), action-thrillers (eg Syriana, 2005; The Kingdom, 2007, Rendition, 2007), allegorical accounts (eg Good Night and Good Luck, 2005; War of the Worlds, 2005), historical futuristic fantasies (300, 2007; The Dark Knight, 2008), techno-thrillers (Iron Man, 2008) and those that blur a number of generic categories including comedy and drama (eg Charlie Wilsons War, 2007; Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?, 2008).1 While some have been more commercially successful than others,2 these lms and others provide opportunities for people to watch and reect on contemporary international politics.3 As an immensely popular form of entertainment, lms are highly eective in grabbing the attention of mass audiences.4 The power of lm lies in not only in its apparent ubiquity but also in the way in which it helps to create (often dramatically) understandings of particular events, national identities and relationships to others. As Mark Lacy has noted, The cinema becomes a space where commonsense ideas about global politics and history are (re)-produced and where stories about what is acceptable behaviour from states and individuals are naturalised and legitimated.5 Image making has been central to the war on terrorfrom the burning towers of the World Trade Center to the mission accomplished moment of May 2003 and, more recently, the exposure of prisoner abuse and rendition in a variety of locations around the world. Indeed, in the aftermath of 9/11, Karl Rove, then special advisor to the George W Bush administration, held a summit at Beverly Hills where representatives of the entertainment industry joined him to consider how they might contribute to the war on terror.6 While pledging their artistic independence from the Bush administration, directors such as Oliver Stone (who had made lms critical of US foreign
Klaus Dodds is in the Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, UK. Email: k.dodds@rhul.ac.uk. ISSN 0143-6597 print/ISSN 1360-2241 online/08/08162117 2008 Third World Quarterly DOI: 10.1080/01436590802528762

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policy such as Salvador, 1986) participated in productions like World Trade Center (2006), which lionises the bravery of several New Jersey Port Authority police ocers trapped in the collapsed building. As part of the lms narrative it naturalises the response of other Americans either to the role of heroic rescuers (men) and/or to anxious yet loyal wives and children waiting at home for news of their trapped menfolk. It also, at the start of the lm, uses a satellite image of the burning towers to convey an explicitly geographical sense that this event is more than simply a localised tragedy. Its sheer visibility has, it is inferred, a global potency.7 The lm does not, however, consider the wider context for such attacks or previous foreign policies of the USA that might have contributed to what has been called blow-back by the American writer Chalmers Johnson.8 As David Holloway concluded, the lm displayed a conventional Hollywood preference for stories about individuals caught up in contentious historical events, rather than stories about historical events themselves.9 The purpose of this review is to explore a number of themes germane to both lm and the war on terror. In the rst section a popular geopolitical approach to lm is articulated with explicit reference to the generic actionthriller. This generic type has been selected precisely because it addresses human extremes; as the Greeks recognised, gripping drama is provided through the actions of human beings. One consequence of such dramatic manifestations is that aspects of the war on terror, such as the ubiquity of militarisation are manifestly neglected in favour of pathos and moral retribution. Thereafter the following four lms are considered: The Kingdom (2007), Lions for Lambs (2007), In the Valley of Elah (2007) and Rendition (2007). As part of this lmic investigation the paper considers themes such as American masculinities and national security, extraterritoriality, and the geographical representation of Central Asia and the Middle East. Finally, the paper oers some conclusions about lm, the war on terror and generic categories, including the documentary, which have arguably explored the darker contours of the war on terror more convincingly. Film, genre and popular geopolitics Geographers, alongside colleagues in International Relations (IR), have become increasingly interested in popular culture and in particular lm.10 But, as Cynthia Weber has noted, there are large areas of mainstream IR that would still consider popular culture to be marginal to the analysis of war, diplomacy, statecraft and international politics.11 Over the past decade this literature has grown, even if the intellectual focus has been diverse, ranging from representational analyses of particular events and processes to studies that explore how lmic contexts might be used to illuminate foundational theories in IR such as realism, idealism and social constructivism. The focus here is on a literature called popular geopolitics, which is a sub-set of critical geopolitics and complements recent scholarship by international relations writers such as Francois Debrix, who has the made the case for a tabloid form of geopolitics that underwrites contemporary American popular culture 1622

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with its emphasis on simple media punditry, sensationalism and calls for national unity.12 In this context attention is devoted to how lm might be used to consider not only the representational politics of depicting spaces, power and identities but also to investigate their creation, articulation, negotiation and contestation. The latter is particularly signicant because this research is concerned with considering how and with what consequences particular understandings of place become embedded in wider discussions about identity politics and relationships with others, whether they be states, religions or regions. Films continue to have a capacity to shape and mould public debates and opinion. A hugely popular lm such as Valley of the Wolves (2006) in Turkey was deeply controversial in the USA and other parts of the world.13 On the one hand, the lm depicts a Turkish secret agent determined to restore the honour of some Turkish soldiers captured by US forces in Northern Iraq by confronting the commander responsible for the action. The agent eventually does so and actually kills the US ocer in question. Turkish audiences were largely enthusiastic because it reversed the Hollywood norm, which usually witnesses US gures triumphing over foreign others. The lm stimulated a strong internal debate in Turkey about the role of the country in the Middle East and Europe and the relationship between Turks and Kurds in the region. On the other hand, the lm was condemned in the USA for being anti-American and even anti-Semitic for its depiction of a Jewish doctor involved in the medical export of kidneys to patients around the world. The lm presents a very dierent view of the USA, Turkey and Iraq from that currently on oer in US lms. It shows US soldiers killing wedding guests in northern Iraq, it reects on prisoner abuse and extrajudicial killings and suicide bombings. The lm is unrelentingly critical of US activities in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. It also draws inspiration from a deeply resented incident involving US forces capturing and hooding Turkish Special Forces operating in northern Iraq in July 2003.14 Just as the USA has been publicly traumatised by hostage crises (eg the 1979 US Embassy crisis in Tehran15), the Valley of the Wolves oers a geographically and culturally cathartic viewing experienceTurkish forces avenge the humiliation by killing the US commander (the appropriately named Sam Marshall) in question and the violence provides a form of individual and collective redemption. It also implicitly rearms Turkeys role as a key geopolitical player in the Middle Eastan issue that has been the topic of some considerable debate in the post-cold war era. What the Valley of the Wolves also demonstrates, however, is the importance of understanding the generic qualities of lms in general. As with the Hollywood action-thriller, this production outlines character position, allocates good and evil qualities and uses suspense and violence to secure the denouement. Strikingly, for Western viewers versed in Hollywood generic traditions, it reverses the usual political order of things. The Americans suer a defeat and the Turkish secret agent prevails.16 It turns upside down the 1980s and early 1990s trend in American lms to celebrate the white male hero overcoming tremendous odds in desperate, often Third 1623

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World, locations.17 One only has to think of lms involving Clint Eastwood (Heartbreak Ridge, 1993) Chuck Norris (Missing in Action, 1986), Sylvester Stallone (the Rambo series) and, of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger in productions such as Commando (1985) and Predator (1987). The lms considered here are, like the Valley of the Wolves, action-thrillers and thus an important element of the analysis presented here is generic. Genre is used not only by Hollywood (and other cinematic traditions) to dierentiate movies from one another but also to ag likely plotlines, narrative structures and emotional eect. Within lm studies it is generally agreed that the following generic characterisations can be identied: the action-thriller, the western, the war lm, the comedy, the romance and the horror movie.18 These categories, however, are uid and overlapping. Film producers can and do borrow from dierent generic traditions and dierentiate within genres such as the actionthriller and the western. In the case of the latter, one could identify traditional westerns set in the proverbial Wild West (eg High Noon, 1952) and so-called frontier westerns such as Full Metal Jacket (1987), where the frontier is transposed to Vietnam and Southeast Asia.19 Steve Neale has also noted that generic traditions can shape the expectations of audiences and producers and even allow audiences to anticipate and expect certain denouements.20 This can be true not only of plots/narrative structures but also of places. One obvious example would be the James Bond lm series, where most if not all Bond fans expect the British secret agent not only to save the world from possible destruction but also to accomplish his mission in dicult (both spatially conned such as tunnels and challenging such as mountainous environments) and even exotic places.21 The recent Bond lm Casino Royale (2005) witnessed Bond thwarting the activities of a transnational terror network whose presence stretched from southern Africa/Madagascar to the USA and southeast Europe. The newest lm Quantum of Solace (2008) involves Bond in a new global intrigue partly lmed in Bolivia and Italy. As a consequence, generic movies can in a sense be pre-sold to audiences in terms of viewing expectations. But, as Scott Higgins has insisted, the action-thriller does not sacrice a sense of narrative at the expense of spectacle.22 Rather than assuming that the two are in opposition to one another, it is helpful to consider how the plot itself advances through spectacular action. Melodrama is used routinely to stake out moral oppositions, suspenseful races or tense movements, emotional intensication and sensational endings. This type of lm (the action-thriller) frequently uses stand-os, races against time and hostage-type situations to advance the plot and maintain a sense of the melodramatic.23 Almost invariably the lms concluding section is secured through the use of drama (often violent in nature) to achieve a resolution often victorious for the individual (or small group) encoded as good, often a police ocer or soldier. The ending is invariably conservative as the political and cultural status quo frequently prevailsthe USA/UK (in the case of Bond) and the existing system of government are saved, for example. An understanding of genre and generic categories (alongside lmic structures) is an important supplement to the existing literature on popular 1624

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geopolitics and allied literatures in disciplines such as IR. Films help to sustain social and geopolitical meanings and are, as we shall see, capable of reecting but also challenging certain norms, structures and ideologies associated with US foreign and security policies and the ongoing war on terror. The role and representation of places is critical to this creative process: the battleelds of Iraq, the mountains of Afghanistan, the detention centre in North Africa, the political oces in Washington, the military bases in the USA and elsewhere and, nally, the domestic spaces of US and foreign homes play a critical role in shaping the identities of the protagonists and the events associated with the war on terror. Iconic buildings such as the White House frequently stand for certain assumed understandings of the USA (as homeland) and values such as freedom and liberty.24 Places are not simply backdrops to the development of lm narratives, rather they perform a critical role in the making of these lms and their subsequent engagement by viewers. Allegory lite: Hollywood and the lming the war on terror There has been a great deal of commentary, both popular and academic, about the emergence of what has been called post-9/11 cinema.25 Some lms planned for release in the immediate aftermath were directly aecteda lm about Columbian terrorists attacking Washington, DC had its release delayed on grounds of sensitivity (Collateral Damage, 2001) while others were brought forward because it was believed (rightly) that American audiences would ock to see war lms, which gloried American soldiers as heroic individuals capable of overcoming tremendous odds (Black Hawk Down, 2001; Behind Enemy Lines, 2001). Other lms, such as Bualo Soldiers (2003), which dealt with the activities of US servicemen in late cold war Berlin, opped, because the national mood was not in favour of productions that were critical of the behaviour of service personnel and that suggested that servicemen were involved in drug production and dealing. Given the scale of the shock of the attacks on the USA, Hollywood producers have addressed, albeit in dierent ways, the subsequent declaration by President Bush that the nation was engaged in a war on terror. According to David Holloway, one response has been to deploy what he calls allegory litea commercial aesthetic so packed with dierent hooks pitched at dierent audience groups that a degree of aesthetic and narrative fragmentation has become intrinsic to the way Hollywood tells stories today, particularly the block-buster.26 In other words, the intention is to avoid alienating audiences by addressing a concrete event such as 9/11 by association rather than directly.27 Audiences are thus left to work contemporary political parallels into the lm. Movies such as War on the Worlds (2005) and The Alamo (2004) might be two such examples which confront in dierent ways the threat posed to the USA from aliens and foreign others respectively. Generic lms such as the action-thriller and the war movie have provided opportunities to reect on the post-9/11 world indirectly. They include We Were Soldiers (2002) and Tears of the Sun (2003), 1625

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which not only sought to revisit the legacy left by Vietnam but also concentrated on developing a sense of the US soldier as an ethical warrior who is committed to completing the mission and leaving no man behind.28 The extraterritorial deployment of US military power is also seen essential to securing the USA and international order more generally. The USA as special nation with unique responsibilities is writ large in many of the post9/11 productionsas Tears of the Sun demonstrates it is only through the courageous action of a small group of US soldiers (accompanied by US air power) that vulnerable refugees could be safely transferred across a West African border to safety.29 One notable exception was the Michael Moore documentary Fahrenheit 9/ 11 (2004), which deliberately targeted the Bush administrations failure to address the mounting threat to the USA and highlighted the geopolitical and geo-economic signicance of the USSaudi relationship.30 Moores selfdeclared mission was to use the lm to inuence the 2004 presidential election and in this he and other critics of Bush failed. Bush himself has also used lms such as Kandahar (2001) to explain and legitimate his decision to intervene in Afghanistan on the basis of seeking, among other things, to improve the condition of women under the repressive Taliban administration.31 This attempt, using the First Lady as well to appropriate a lm about a womans search for a sister in Afghanistan, has earned the derision of many feminist commentators who poured scorn on the claim that gender relations were a key element in the post-9/11 military strategy for this Central Asian state. While the earliest post-9/11 movies approached the war on terror and the USAs standing in the world either allegorically or obliquely, this had changed with the release of a number of lms in the nal years of the Bush administration. While this review concentrates on the action-thriller, it is worth noting that the documentary has been used to considerable eect in terms of charting the more egregious qualities of the Bush administrations counter-terrorism strategies. Examples include Road to Guantanamo (2006) and Taxi to the Dark Side (2007), which chart the experiences of those who have endured rendition and subsequent torture on the basis of a highly awed policy of capturing and interrogating so-called illegal combatants. In the case of the rst lm, the experiences of the so-called Tipton Three (British citizens of Pakistani origin) is re-created and interspersed with interviews with the victims concerned, who were eventually released because the British police were able to conrm to their US captors that they could not have been in Afghanistan (any earlier then they had claimed) because they were in prison in the UK for petty criminal oences. The four lms examined here are explicit in their consideration of the war on terror as opposed to being allegorical. A summary of each lm is briey oered in order to help contextualise the identication of those themes. The table below oers an indication of the commercial successfulness of each of the four lms in question with reference to the North American and global markets (see Table 1). Commercially, the most successful has been The Kingdom (2007) in terms of both overall box oce receipts but also in terms 1626

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TABLE 1. Box oce receipts

Film In the Valley of Elah (2007) Lions for Lambs (2007) Rendition (2007) The Kingdom (2007) Source: www.boxocemojo.com, accessed 20 June 2008. Box oce receipts $6.7 million domestic and $21 million overseas $15 million domestic and $47 million overseas $9 million domestic and $16 million overseas $47 million domestic and $39 million overseas

of the North American market. One reason for this might that it is arguably the most straight forwardly action-thriller of the selected quartet and arguably provides the simplest resolution to the plot concernedthe terrorists are killed and the FBI ocers concerned return to the USA. In the Valley of Elah (2008) concerns the search by a former Vietnam vet (played by Tommy Lee Jones) for his son who recently returned from Iraq after a deployment. Having been told that the Army authorities were not aware of his location at his home base, the former soldier discovers his sons mobile phone in his room within the barracks. Grainy images of video, taken via the phone, suggest that his son may have been involved in prisoner abuse and photographs taken in the country show at least one dead Iraqi body by a roadside. With the help of a sympathetic police ocer, his sons body is eventually recovered and the lm concludes with their struggle to discover what happened to his son. It becomes apparent that he was killed by one of his comrades and then mutilated and dumped on waste ground, which is itself caught up in a jurisdictional struggle between military and civilian police authorities. In a poignant nal section, the father returns to the family home and turns the US ag upside down on a nearby ag pole in order to signal distress. The lm Lions for Lambs (2007) addresses the viability of the war on terror. It is based around three distinct geographical encountersone based in the oce of a college professor (Professor Malley), another in the oce of a US Senator (Senator Irving) and the nal featuring the experiences of a small party of US troops based in Afghanistan. Robert Redfords professorial character is seen to be discussing with a student the latters options after university, including the possibility of serving in the armed forces. In the senatorial oce a journalist (Janine Roth) talks to an ambitious Senator about how the war on terror might be won and in Afghanistan we witness (in part via satellite imagery) the fate of a party of soldiers landing at a high point in Afghanistan. Shortly after their landing, they are confronted by ghters and eventually perish, despite the use of American airpower. The practice of extraordinary rendition is the primary subject matter of Rendition (2007), which portrays the detention and removal of chemical engineer Anwar El-Ibrahami to a North African location. While the lm is careful to simply designate his location as North Africa, his apparent disappearance (after a business trip to South Africa) provokes his American wife (Isabella) to seek assistance from a senatorial aide. After his rendition 1627

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El-Ibrahami is confronted with apparent evidence of suspicious cell phone calls after the earlier death of a CIA agent via a suicide bombing. The rest of the lm gravitates between Washington, DC, where Isabella confronts a CIA director over his case, and North Africa, which depicts the unwilling involvement of a local CIA agent in the torture methods used by North African ocials to extract information from the suspect. Unable to countenance any further torture, the CIA agent arranges for his release and eventual return to the USA, where the lm concludes with a reunion with his family. The lm oers no explanation for the evidence apparently provided by cell phone usage but does confront the absurdities inherent in extracting information via torture when El-Ibrahamis character in desperation recounts the names of the Egyptian football team when asked to provide information about possible accomplices. After a short, almost documentary, overview of post-1945 USSaudi relations, The Kingdom (2007) is essentially concerned with a team of FBI agents sent to Saudi Arabia to investigate a massacre of expatriate American citizens at a compound. After a series of jurisdictional and cultural clashes, they eventually secure the co-operation of a senior Saudi police ocer and begin to track down the perpetrators of the atrocity. The lm culminates with the confrontation between the FBI team and the terrorist mastermind who is shot in his family home. As with The Siege (1998), the FBI team is led by an African American ocer (Ronald Fleury) and composed of three other white men and women. As an action-thriller dealing with terrorism the lm is interesting because, although it distinguishes between good and bad Saudis, it also oers a portrayal of Saudi domestic life and in particular the role of Islam as a religion which is embedded in everyday life. The gure of Colonel Al-Ghazi, a Saudi police ocer, is critical in the lm as he is shown to be sympathetic to the FBI team and a devout family man. He is later killed while assisting the team in capturing the terrorist mastermind. Masculinities and the war on terror Feminist writers such as Cythnia Enloe and Sarah Whiteld have oered insightful accounts of the relationship between certain types of masculinities and the military, whether American or in the form of UN peacekeepers.32 The constituting of a soldier is not just a matter of training, it also involves the promotion of an ideology of manliness, with the individual being asked to conform to certain codes and expectations in return for a sense of community and individual robustness. Through violence and the denigration of others, including the places in which they reside, soldiers help in part to consolidate their militarised identities and institutions. For Hank Deereld in The Valley of Elah (2007), Iraq is a shit hole and, precisely because his son has served in that place, he assumes that his missing son is entitled to be treated honourably. Each of the lms considered here is deeply implicated in the production of masculinities and the gendered division of space both in the USA and elsewhere. As Matthew Hannah has noted, cultural representations of 1628

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masculinity have been hugely important in post-9/11 America. The ideological role of manhood has been fundamental in the light of a tendency within American culture . . . to conceive of conicts as tests of strength between two combatants playing by the same rules, as in the stereotypical western gunght.33 However, as the 9/11 attacks demonstrated, the use of airliners as weapons of mass destruction was indicative not only of so-called asymmetrical warfare but also denied Americans an opportunity to confront their adversaries in a proverbial show-down. Despite the legacy of the frontier and manifest destiny in US culture, American men were denied the opportunity to demonstrate uninching resolve and courage in the face of danger, with the partial exception of those who attempted to resist the hijacking of United Airlines ight 93 (Lets roll) as it ew towards Washington, bound either for the White House or Congress.34 The lm United 93 (2005) explicitly addresses that episode and attempts to visualise the nal moments of the ight and the resistance of the passengers. In the aftermath of 9/11 Americans were urged by their president to support the country and the popular media and political leaders lionised particular types of men such as soldiers and re ghters. The 9/11 attacks denied the opportunity for a showdown and henceforth Americans would have to restore their dignity and virility in dierent arenas. When President Bush declared that the war on terror was in part a struggle over civilisation itself, this brought into play a sense of masculine assertiveness which was expressed in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq. By doing this, the so-called conicted masculinity of the Clinton era gave way to the brash belligerence of the Bush epoch.35 In many ways this was reminiscent of the Reagan administration, which placed heavy emphasis on a strong militaristic foreign policy alongside a domestic economy and set of values associated with hyper-masculinity, fatherhood and family life.36 Under the Bush administration cultural commentators spoke approvingly of women who had returned to family life and men who were anxious to serve the military and assert themselves in the workplace.37 While a lm such as In the Valley of Elah (2007) explores the consequences of this hyper-masculine and nationalistic evocation of US manhood, it also reinforces specic gendered divisions of space. Former Vietnam veteran Deereld not only possesses mobility (via his truck) compared with his housewife (quite literally because she only leaves the house to briey view her sons remains at the US army base) but he is also empowered through his gender and past working experience to enter and engage with military personnel attached to the base. When he is joined in his search for his son by a female police ocer, Detective Sanders, she is able to enter and engage on the basis of her jurisdictional authority. Apart from her character, all the other women in the lm are employed in low-paid service jobs and the female police ocer is frequently undermined and ridiculed by her fellow male ocers. Public space, whether it is in the oce environment or at the military base, becomes a stage for men to demonstrate their authority and rugged determination. While reinforcing rather stark gendered distinctions between private and public space, In the Valley of Elah does probe the problematic nature of US 1629

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masculinities that resides within the military and how that might be expressed in places such as Iraq. As part of Deerelds investigations the grainy lm contained on his sons cell phone becomes a crucial piece of evidence not only of the latters experiences but also of prevailing attitudes towards Iraqi civilians. Although fragmentary, it becomes clear that the missing soldier was responsible for killing a young child because it is US military policy that forbids soldiers from stopping their vehicle unnecessarily on a public road for fear of being attacked by insurgents. The child in this case was a victim of standard operating procedure. It is also apparent that he has been involved in abusing at least one wounded Iraqi citizen. His fellow soldiers called him Doc because he liked to ask his victim(s) about whether it hurt when he deliberately poked their injuries. As Deerelds investigation unfolds, it is apparent to viewers that his son has been killed by one of those fellow soldiers and the others in the party have helped to dismember his body. The perpetrator eventually admits that, after killing him, he and his colleagues used the dead mans credit card to purchase a meal before returning to their base. The casual nature of their violence is startling and one of the men commits suicide, apparently unable to deal with the aftermath of the killing. Alongside a murder of a woman in the nearby town the lm confronts, but does not in any substantial way seek to resolve, how and why men turn to violence, not only killing themselves but killing others, including women and children in the USA and Iraq. Broader questions pertaining to the militarisation of American society and the gendered roles of men and women are addressed in part through the gure of Deereld. Here, the lm suggests, is a Vietnam veteran who not only carried out his military service with valour but also demonstrates that it is possible to be both an honourable solider and a patriotic citizen, one who is also able to be a surrogate father gure to the policewomans young son. In earlier and possibly simpler times, the lm suggests, a soldier could perform on the battleeld and then return home and be a good husband and father too. Extraterritoriality and the Jackson tradition of US foreign policy In his analysis of US foreign policy in the post-Independence era, Walter Russell Meade suggested that there were four main traditions, as named after inuential US statesmenJacksonian, Hamiltonian, Jeersonian and Wilsonian.38 For the purpose of this analysis the Jacksonian tradition is the most germane as it refers to the belief that the rst priority of US administrations is the physical security and economic well-being of the domestic population. While this tradition tends to be cautious about international interventions, it embodies a belief that, if America is engaged in a conict, then it should do so with the explicit purpose of securing a complete and overwhelming victory. The approach is uncompromising towards adversaries and places considerable merit on being self-reliant and not being dependent on international networks and institutions. President George W Bush is widely believed to be the living embodiment of Jacksonian values and this development has been enabled greatly by the impact of the 1630

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9/11 attacks on the USA and by the inuence of a neoconservative cabal, which advocated a strong America.39 One lm that embodies the Jacksonian approach to foreign policy is The Kingdom (2007), which addresses the role of four ocers attached to the FBI and their small-group investigation of a massacre of US expatriates living in Saudi Arabia. The opening section of the lm is uncompromising and shows the victims, who have been playing baseball and enjoying a barbecue, being massacred by two men dressed in Saudi security services uniforms. After some survive the initial onslaught, a huge bomb is exploded inside an ambulance, killing further people, Saudis and Americans alike. It is clear that the mastermind behind the attack is watching from a nearby high-rise building and is accompanied by his grandson, who is made to watch the massacre. The very thing that initially hampers the response by the FBI is that which the Jackson foreign policy tradition fears most of allinternal and international jurisdictional wrangles that prevent rm action. The key question becomes whether the Saudis and senior State Department ocials will allow the FBI to enter the Saudi Kingdom in order to investigate the killings. Speed and mobility are of the essence. A senior ocer is nally able to leave with his other team members for Saudi Arabia, where their initial investigations are hampered by Saudi obfuscation and sensitivities over jurisdictional authority. Time also matters, as the FBI team are anxious to get to the crime scene as quickly as possible. The second segment of the lm deals with the investigation and charts the IFBI ocers frustrations with a country and culture that none of the team understands. The one female member of the team is reprimanded for attempting to investigate the body of a Muslim man (who also happens to be one of the initial assassins) in the morgue. Another is angry that the Saudi investigative team is not willing to investigate all potential leads. After securing the support of a sympathetic and Westernized Saudi police ocer (Colonel Al-Ghazi), the team is eventually able to carry out its investigation and even persuades the authorities that it must be allowed to investigate other potential sites, including the high-rise building. This eventually leads them to track down the identities of the bomb makers and of the evil genius gure who is responsible for unleashing violence on Americans and Saudis alike. The nal part of the lm culminates in the teams hunt for the perpetrator. The FBI team and its convoy are attacked on a highway and the assailants kidnap one of its members. In a desperate race against time the others follow the kidnappers into a dangerous part of the capital city. The victim is taken to a small room and it is clear that the extremists will lm the capture and beheading of the FBI ocer. After a violent confrontation involving other residents, the team eventually secures his release and they enter the home of a family. In order to calm the fears of the residing family, the female FBI ocer oers some sweets to a small girl. In return she oers a marble and it is apparent that the said marble is exactly the same as one found in the remnants of the previous bomb attack on the American expatriates. The Saudi ocer accompanying the FBI ocers identies the terrorist mastermind 1631

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within this home, a deed visually conrmed when he literally sees the evidence embodied by the damaged appearance of this mans hands. He appears, so the lm suggests earlier, to have lost some parts of his ngers as a consequence of previous bombing accidents. Another young family member shoots the Saudi ocer and, in order to save themselves, the FBI shoot not only the young assassin but also the terrorist mastermind. The climax to this lm is signicant because the dying terrorist whispers to his young grandson that he must now kill them all. A generational shift of hatred is presented at the same time that the lead FBI ocer (Ronald Fleury) admits that he told a grieving colleague that he was going to kill the assassins before departing for Saudi Arabia. Fleury and his team end their stay in Saudi Arabia by telling the young son of Colonel Al-Ghazi that his deceased father had been a brave man who had died in the course of duty. Having honour and being prepared to pay the ultimate price are judged in this lm to be critical when confronting those who are determined to kill without remorse and who implicate their children and grandchildren in their murderous operations. In this way it also marks a crucial dierence between the two sides. The FBIs use of violence, while deadly, is also supplemented by a concern for the victims of terror. As with Denzel Washingtons character in The Siege (1998), Jamie Foxxs African American character is sympathetic, gentle (at least with his family and colleagues) but also conscientious and willing to use violence in order to secure justice for those American victims.40 Critically the extraterritorial intervention of the FBI has been shown to workthe perpetrators were killed and no one in this multicultural FBI team was left behind. By way of brief contrast, Lions for Lambs (2007) provides a more dialogical interpretation of the Jackson foreign policy tradition, particularly via the conversation between the Republican Senator Irvine and a liberal (in American terms) journalist. The use of maps is critical in helping the Senator to explain to that journalist (and viewing audiences) the apparent dangers facing the USA. As Senator Irving asserts with reference to those cartographic representations, they are proof that there really is a new axis of evil and that You do not respond to an attack by using diplomacy. As the conversation continues, the journalist is berated by the Senator and asked whether she wants to win the war on terror or not. According to the Senator, a new type of strategy is needed in order to secure that victory, to do whatever it takes to address a shattered Iraq, hopeless Afghanistan and nuclear Iran. Their conversation ends awkwardly with the Senator urging the journalist to report the new story but unlike, The Kingdom (2007), the lm oers a more nuanced ending involving the death of two soldiers in Afghanistan juxtaposed with the journalist driving past the Arlington Cemetery (where US soldiers from previous conicts, including World War II and Vietnam, are buried) close to Washington, DC. The nal moment of the lm depicts another university student contemplating his options (and perhaps the countrys options) for the future. Strikingly The Kingdom (2007) was commercially a more successful lm than Lions for Lambs (especially in the USA); perhaps one reason why this 1632

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might be so is that it oers an unambiguous conclusion. Violence is shown to have resolved not only the kidnapping of one of the team but also justice has been secured in the sense that the proponent of the deadly assault on US citizens living in Saudi Arabia has been eliminated. What it does not address, despite the opening segment covering the USSaudi relationship in the post1945 period, is what the USA might do with regard to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and how other massacres in the future might be avoided. In that sense it is suitably ambivalent about a war which, unlike past conicts (such as World War II), does not seem to have an obvious closure date and is unquestionably more nebulous.
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Ambivalent places: Afghanistan, Iraq, North Africa and Saudi Arabia The global South featured in these lms is conceived of in deeply ambivalent ways. On the one hand, lms such as Charlie Wilsons War (2007) draw our Western attention to the precarious condition of humanity in the refugee camps that litter the AfghanPakistan border. It is on the basis of seeing these camps that Representative Wilson (after an earlier visit himself) persuades a senior Congressional chairman to act in terms of granting more aid and armaments to Afghan resistance forces operating against Soviet forces in the 1980s. Indeed, the lm leaves the viewer in no apparent doubt that the chairman has been visibly moved by the plight of these refugees and their basic living conditions. On the other hand, places such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia are depicted in unattering terms. They are shown to be, at various times, too hot, too cold, too dangerous and too socially conservative. While the lms do distinguish between good and bad foreign others, the overall impression is that these places would not be considered worthy of interest had they not been implicated in the war on terror. As Edward Said and a host of other authors have recognised, Oriental discourses are long-standing and well rooted in popular culture, including lm.41 Hollywood is no exception to this rule and in recent decades has provided egregious examples of place depiction, suggesting that the inhabitants of Middle Eastern and North African cities are untrustworthy, dangerous and prone to extreme violence.42 Films such as Delta Force (1985) and Iron Eagle (1986) are among the most notorious but more recent oerings, such as Terms of Engagement (2000), also suggest that even Arab children are willing to pick up weapons and shoot at US soldiers. If there are good Arabs then they generally have to be taught and or guided by their American counterparts in order to behave or perform in the appropriate manner. In The Kingdom (2007) it is the FBI ocers who encourage the Saudi police ocer to take the initiative in order to get results. The Middle East in this lm is not only an incubator for terrorism but also a site for US personnel to demonstrate their superior skills and technical expertise. Performing such deeds is all the more demanding when one considers how the characters have to endure the dangerous spaces of the Arab city. As Steve Graham has noted, Arab cities, moreover, have long been represented by Western powers as dark, exotic, labyrinthine and structureless places that 1633

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need to be unveiled for the production of order through the ostensibly superior scientic, planning and military technologies of the occupying West.43 Films such as Rendition (2006) visually address the enclosed spaces of the Arab city in order to generate a sense of claustrophobia and fear. Narrow alleys, dark spaces and confusing street plans not only facilitate the terrorists and their supporters but also complicate still further the task of law enforcement agencies. Inside the city a religious school provides the backdrop to one scene, which shows a young men being indoctrinated and encouraged to bomb and kill both Americans and those apostates and their representatives who oer support to the USA and its war on terror. The young men are encouraged to see their bodies and mobility as weapons. Meanwhile the American torture of the chemical engineer continues without apparently delivering any useful information about terrorist networks. The sting in the tale is provided by the fact that the young man chosen to kill the Chief of Police responsible for the torture of the engineer is in a relationship with his daughter. The young man is seeking revenge for the death of his brother. Unlike the local CIA ocer, who consummates his relationship with a local woman, the audience is never shown any intimacies involving the other couple and the North African chief police ocer is depicted as a domineering gure who bullies or coerces female family members. As Rendition suggests, these nameless places in the Middle East and North Africa not only provide a base for the generation of terrorists in the rst place but also paradoxically enable the USA to remove terror suspects to be questioned and tortured by regional accomplices. Even if an American CIA ocial later secures the release of the suspect when it becomes clear that he does not have any links to known terror groups, the lm does not resolve the question of whether the exported practices of rendition and torture should be allowed to happen on behalf of the US government. Instead the focus is squarely placed on the eventual return of this green card-holding US resident to his heavily pregnant white wife and small child. Interestingly the lm never identies the North African place in question, even though it will be obvious to many viewers as Marrakech in Morocco. Conclusions Film provides a rich medium for exploring the kinds of moral geographies that Michael Shapiro has identied as being so important in marking out territories, identities and states.44 Film audiences are active producers of meaning, even while the patterns of engagement can be strongly shaped by, among other things, the generic qualities of movies. As noted in this paper, the action-thriller, with its use of melodrama, spectacular action, just-in-time moments and frequently dangerous places, helps to depict and represent political space in frequently stark terms. Space is never simply a backdrop in these movies because it provides a series of interconnected settings for the unfolding action and eventual resolution of the stories. The action-thriller, despite the emphasis on action and spectacle, is nonetheless capable of generating a range of responses to the cultural appropriation of the war on 1634

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terror by the entertainment industry. Even if lms are judged to be better at representing than explaining, they nonetheless provide resources for critique as well as simply telling citizens what feels right to do (cf Lions for Lambs). Rendition, for example, underscores the point that the victim involved was a green card holder who was married to an American citizen. Dick Cheneys so-called dark side (his euphemism for rendition) is brought to the wide screen in a manner not envisaged by him. Indeed, the DVD release of the lm provides additional resources at http://www.renditionmovie.com. As discussed, this appropriation is varied as the lms considered here engage the war on terror in dierent ways and their foci vary geographically and thematically. Collectively these lms remind us that the geographies of the war on terror remain widespread and encapsulate a range of public, private and secretive spaces such as the university, the military base, the family home, the ghost plane and the airport. Finally, the lms involve specic national places varying degreesmost notably the USA, Afghanistan, Iraq, North Africa and Saudi Arabia. Overwhelmingly it is the agency of the USA and sanctioned individuals that is privileged by these lms and viewers are left with little doubt in the case of The Kingdom that it is right and legitimate for the countrys law enforcement ocers to use extreme violence in the face of an enemy that shows little inclination to desist from its attacks on US citizens and infrastructure. If Mark Lacy is right that Cinema provides the West with moral comfort food, the geopolitical feel-good factor, then this paper suggests that the four action-thrillers considered here do so in complicated and, at times, deeply ambivalent ways. Despite its reputation for roller-coaster entertainment, the action-thriller is not only capable of thrilling but also of providing resources for critical reection on what Judith Butler has termed the precariousness of human life.45 Notes
The help and support of Jason Dittmer, Mark Lacy and TWQ editor Shahid Qadir are gratefully acknowledged. 1 This list is in no way exhaustive and could include other recent releases such as Standard Operating Procedure (2008) and Stop-Loss (2008), which address prisoner abuse and the war experiences of a group of Texan soldiers in Iraq, respectively. The agitprop of Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) and the puppet-based satire of Team America (2004) oer further evidence that post-9/11 Hollywood cinema is not easily summarised. For one reective piece, see B Rich, After the fall: cinema studies post 9/11, Cinema Journal, 43, 2004, pp 109115. 2 For details on box oce receipts, see http://www.boxocemojo.com 3 A Light, Reel Arguments, Boulder, CO: Westview, 2001. 4 US presidents have self-consciously deployed movie references such as Ronald Reagan referring to Rambo and George W Bush recreating a so-called Top Gun moment when he landed a plane on a US aircraft carrier and then emerged later to declare that combat operations were over in Iraq in May 2003. For one analysis of that lmic inspired spectacle, see F Rich, The Greatest Story Ever Sold, London: Penguin, 2008. 5 M Lacy, War, cinema and moral anxiety, Alternatives, 28, 2003, pp 611636. 6 For a larger discussion of the militaryindustrialmediaentertainment complex, see J Der Derian, Virtuous War, Boulder, CO: Westview, 2001. 7 On the iconography of the global, see D Cosgrove, Apollos Eye, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. 8 C Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004. 9 D Holloway, 9/11 and the War on Terror, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008, p 86.

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KLAUS DODDS 10 There is a growing and intellectually diverse literature exploring the role of popular culture within the discipline of International Relations. See, for example, R Gregg, International Relations on Film, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998; C Weber, International Relations Theory, London: Routledge, 2001; and Weber, Imagining America at War, London: Routledge, 2005. 11 See, for example, Weber International Relations Theory. 12 For one overview, see M Power & A Crampton (eds), Cinema and Popular Geo-Politics, London: Routledge, 2006. An early example of popular geopolitics involving magazines was J Sharp, Condensing the Cold War, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. The most important book length exposition on critical geopolitics remains G Toal, Critical Geopolitics, London: Routledge, 1996. On tabloid geopolitics, see F Debrix, Tabloid Terror: War, Culture and Geopolitics, London: Routledge, 2008. 13 For one analysis of the lm and its impact on USTurkish relations, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ entertainment/4700154.stm, accessed 16 June 2008. 14 For more information on the 4 July 2003 incident (the so-called bag aair) involving US special forces and Turkish forces, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3049590.stm, accessed 16 June 2008. 15 Various lms, such as the Rambo series, arguably not only address the issue of missing POWs in Vietnam but also, alongside others such as Missing in Action (1986), suggest that hostage/captivity crises can be resolved successfully. Later variants on this theme would include Behind Enemy Lines (2001), which deals with the successful rescue of a naval airman in Serb-occupied Bosnia. 16 The lm is also signicant in terms of USTurkish cinematic engagements, given the unpopularity in Turkey of Midnight Express (1978), which dealt with the jailing of an American citizen after he was found to possess drugs while in the country. For a brief discussion, see Z Sardar, Orientalism: Concepts in the Social Sciences, Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 2000, pp 105106. 17 On 1980s Hollywood and Reagans America, see J Valantin, Hollywood, the Pentagon and Washington, London: Anthem, 2001; and, for the aftermath, T McCrisken & A Pepper, American History and Contemporary Hollywood Film, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005. 18 R Maltby, Hollywood Cinema, Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. 19 M Anderson, Cowboy Imperialism and Hollywood Film, London: Peter Lang, 2007. 20 S Neale, Genre and Hollywood, London: Routledge, 2000. 21 K Dodds, Screening geopolitics: James Bond and the early cold war lms 19621967, Geopolitics, 10, 2005, pp 266289. 22 S Higgins, Suspenseful situations: melodramatic narrative and the contemporary action lm, Cinema Journal, 47, 2008, pp 7496. 23 E Anker, Villains, victims and heroes: melodrama, media and the 9/11, Journal of Communication, 55, 2005, pp 2237. 24 C Collins, Homeland Mythology, College Park, PA: Penn State Press, 2007. 25 On post-9/11 cinema and television, see W Dixon (ed), Film and Television after 9/11, Carbondale, IL: University of Southern Illinois Press, 2004. On Hollywood in recent pre- and post-9/11 times, see B Dickenson, Hollywoods New Radicalism, London, IB Tauris 2006. 26 Holloway, 9/11 and the War on Terror, p 83. 27 Maltby, Hollywood Cinema. 28 See S Dalby, Warrior geopolitics: gladiator, Black Hawk Down and the Kingdom of Heaven, Political Geography, 27, 2008, pp 439455. 29 Ibid. 30 C Weber, Fahrenheit 9/11: the temperature where morality burns, Journal of American Studies, 40, 2006, pp 113131. 31 C Weber, Not without my sister: imagining a moral America in Kandahar, at http:// www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-resolution_1325/kandahar_3006.jsp, accessed 16 June 2008. 32 On masculinities and hegemonic forms, see R Connell, Masculinities, London: Allen and Unwin, 1995. For a feminist approach to gender and militarization, see C Enloe, Does Khaki Become You?, London: Pluto, 1983; and Enloe, The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999. On masculinity and UN peacekeepers, see S Whiteld, Men, Militarism and UN Peace-Keeping, Boulder, CO: Lynne Riener, 2008. 33 M Hannah, Virility and violation in the US war on terrorism, in L Nelson & J Seager (eds), A Companion to Feminist Geography, Oxford: Blackwell, 2005, pp 550564. 34 On US national mythologies including the frontier, see R Slotkin, Gunghter Nation, New York: Athenaeum, 1992. 35 B Malin, American Masculinity under Clinton, London: Lang, 2005. 36 S Jeords, Hard Bodies, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994. 37 S Faludi, The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post 9/11 America, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007.

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HOLLYWOOD AND THE WAR ON TERROR 38 W Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How it Changed the World, London: Routledge, 2002. 39 On neoconservative thought and the Bush administration, see, for example, D Frum & R Pearle, An End all Evil, New York: Random House, 2003. For a dissenting view from a former neo-conservative supporter, see F Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. 40 For one persuasive reading of The Siege (1998), see M McAlister, Epic Encounters, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006. 41 E Said, Culture and Imperialism, New York: Vintage, 1994. On Hollywood and oriental representations, see L Khatib, Filming the Modern Middle East, London, IB Tauris, 2006. 42 See, for example, J Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs, New York: Olive Branch Press, 2001. 43 S Graham, Cities and the war on terror, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 30, 2006, p 256. More generally, see D Gregory, The Colonial Present, Oxford: Blackwell, 2004. 44 M Shapiro, Cinematic Geopolitics, London: Routledge, 2008; and Shapiro, Violent Cartographies, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. 45 Lacy, War, cinema and moral anxiety, p 634. See also J Butler, Precarious Life, London, Verso 2004.

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