War-On-Terror across Media: the New Bestialisation of Human

 

The course examines popular screen media representations of global terrorism and the war on terror in particular in its contemporary framing.  To that end, the course seeks to focus on the ways  media constructs and circulates iconographies of terrorism and the terrorist. Students will learn to critically assess and contextualize such representations and to comment on the ways they relate to and inform real-life public anxieties, agency, and policy making. They’ll gain familiarity with pertaining concepts in regards to global safety, conflict, territory, violence, and they’ll also gain insight into basic concepts and methods of screen studies.

 

 

 

 

Learning Outcomes: 

 

Knowledge

The course examines popular screen media representations of global terrorism and the war on terror in particular in its contemporary framing.  To that end, the course seeks to focus on the ways  media constructs and circulates iconographies of terrorism and the terrorist. Students will learn to critically assess and contextualize such representations and to comment on the ways they relate to and inform real-life public anxieties, agency, and policy making. They’ll gain familiarity with pertaining concepts in regards to global safety, conflict, territory, violence, and they’ll also gain insight into basic concepts and methods of screen studies

 

 

Skills

Skill outcomes will entail critical engagement with and mastery of concepts, challenges and central issues across various screen contents. Students will get hands-on experience with mapping out the ways the relations between these factors can be engaged with both at local and international levels. The realia studied and examined will include documentary realism (films for action); fiction (literary and moving image media from feature films to television); social media.

 

Requirements:

Regular attendance and active participation in class discussions (30%)

In-class test (30%)

Final paper (40%)

 

Syllabus

1 Defining ‘War on Terror’: the post-9/11 destabilization of meanings and the critique of ‘us vs. them’ 

Film: The Kingdom 

Reading: from Kant: Perpetual Peace. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kant/kant1.htm; 

from Derrida, Jacques, and Giovanna Borradori. 2003. Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides - a dialogue with Jacques Derrida. In Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 85-136.

 

2 Producing the ‘terrorist’: bestialization, autoimmunity and the iconography of fear

Film: The Hurt Locker; 

Reading: Terence McSweeney. ‘Introduction’. The War on Terror in American Film: 9/11 Frames per Second. Edinburgh University Press, 2014.

 

3 Self, identity, territory: a new form of perpetuated violence

Film: Body of Lies 

Reading: Zizek, Slavoj: Violence. Six Sideway Reflections. New York: Picador. 2008. Violence: Subjective and Objective [pp 9-15]; The Politics of Fear [pp. 40-46].

 

4 Hollywood politics and the WoT 1 (fighting the good fight)

Film: 13 Hours

Reading: Elaine Martin: “Films about Terrorism, Cinema Studies and the Academy.” Terror, Theory and the Humanities. Open Humanities Press. 2012, 135-154.

 

5 Hollywood politics and the WoT 2 (cloning terror)

Film: Green Zone

Reading: Mitchell, WJT.: Chapter 2: Cloning Terror. In Cloning Terror: The War of Images. 9/11 to the Present. Chicago UP, 2011, 16-25.

 

6 Documentary ‘realism’? 

Film: The Hornet’s Nest

Reading: Introduction. The ‘War on Terror’: Post-9/11 Television Drama, Docudrama and Documentary. Eds. Stephen Lacey, Derek Page. University of Wales Press, 2015.

 

7 Disembodied, de-personalized: drone culture

Film: Eye in the Sky

 

8 Immersive wars: the WoT in video games and the gamification of war

Case Study: Medal of Honor vs. Act of Valor

Reading: Marcus Schulzke: “The Virtual War on Terror: Counterterrorism Narratives in Video Games.” New Political Science. Vol 35. Issue 4. 2013, 586-603.

 

9 Seriality and terrorism

TV Series: Homeland (Season 3, ep 1)

Readings: Stephen Harper: “Doing Whatever it Takes: Complicit, Our Girl and the ‘War on Terror’ in TV Drama.” http://cstonline.net/doing-whatever-it-takes-complicit-our-girl-and-the-war-on-terror-in-tv-drama-by-stephen-harper/; 

 

10 The ‘spectacle of disintegration’ and post-9/11 TV drama

Case Study: Homeland (cont’d)

Reading: James Castonguay: “Fictions of Terror: Complexity,

Complicity and Insecurity in Homeland”. Cinema Journal 54 No.4. 2015, 139-145.

 

11 WoT and the Anthropocene: scarcity and the militarization of society

Film: Sand Castle (2017)

Reading: Zizek, Slavoj: “In the Wake of the Paris Attacks the Left Must Embrace Its Radical Western Roots” http://www.lacan.com/actuality/2015/11/slavoj-zizek-in-the-wake-of-paris-attacks-the-left-must-embrace-its-radical-western-roots/

 

12 In-class test

 

 

Readings: 

- Excerpts from Kant: Perpetual Peace. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kant/kant1.htm

- * excerpts from Derrida, Jacques, and Giovanna Borradori. 2003. Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides - a dialogue with Jacques Derrida. In Philosophy in a Time of Terror: dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 85-136.

- * Mitchell, WJT.: Chapter 2: Cloning Terror. In Cloning Terror: The War of Images. 9/11 to the Present. Chicago UP, 2011, 16-25.

- The ‘War on Terror’: Post-9/11 Television Drama, Docudrama and Documentary. Eds. Stephen Lacey, Derek Page. University of Wales Press, 2015.

- * Zizek, Slavoj: Violence. Six Sideway Reflections. New York: Picador. 2008. Violence: Subjective and Objective [pp 9-15]; The Politics of Fear [pp. 40-46]

- -- : “In the Wake of the Paris Attacks the Left Must Embrace Its Radical Western Roots” http://www.lacan.com/actuality/2015/11/slavoj-zizek-in-the-wake-of-paris-attacks-the-left-must-embrace-its-radical-western-roots/

- Nail, Thomas: A Tale of Two Crises: Migration and Terrorism after the Paris Attacks. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism. Vol 16. No.1. 2016. 158-167.

- * Terence McSweeney. ‘Introduction’. The War on Terror in American Film: 9/11 Frames per Second. Edinburgh University Press, 2014.

- Elaine Martin: “Films about Terrorism, Cinema Studies and the Academy.” Terror, Theory and the Humanities. Open Humanities Press. 2012, 135-154.

-* Stephen Harper: “Doing Whatever it Takes: Complicit, Our Girl and the ‘War on Terror’ in TV Drama.” http://cstonline.net/doing-whatever-it-takes-complicit-our-girl-and-the-war-on-terror-in-tv-drama-by-stephen-harper/

- * James Castonguay: “Fictions of Terror: Complexity, Complicity and Insecurity in Homeland”. Cinema Journal 54 No.4. 2015, 139-145.

- * Reading: Marcus Schulzke: “The Virtual War on Terror: Counterterrorism Narratives in Video Games.” New Political Science. Vol 35. Issue 4. 2013, 586-603.