ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we explore the role films play in geographies of war-making and peacebuilding. In particular, we examine the uncanny ways the military-entertainment complex works to shape how the U.S. military role overseas is seen by the U.S. public via films. Using Ridley Scott’s film Black Hawk Down as the primary focus of inquiry, we analyze the contrast between what is told against what is not told within its cinematic frame. We rely on critical feminist geopolitics to examine the overlooked within the film’s storyline. To do so we use the concept of empathetic encounter to engage empathetically—with care and compassion—with invisible war causalities whose names are not named and whose stories are not told. In so doing, we hope to draw attention to such invisible acts of violence visited upon unsuspecting people, and make their stories heard. More specifically, we note two actions: (1) the film’s sanitization of any negative impacts of the U.S. mission on Somali civilians and (2) the Pentagon’s intervention during the production of the film Black Hawk Down to remove U.S. Army Ranger John Stebbins’s name from the film after he was convicted of child rape and molestation. Altering Stebbins’s name to Grimes demonstrates the extent to which the military-entertainment complex works to whitewash violent realities of warfare and to silence the voices of those who are victimized by U.S. military actions—not only in the battlefield but also beyond the actual warfare spatially and temporally. If films can be used as a tool of fostering support for military actions, they can also be used to nurture peacebuilding efforts. For them to do so, we argue, films must portray how war impacts lives of different individuals equally, not just from the geopolitical vantage of and for the interest of the U.S. military complex.
