The Ride of the Valkyries

The Hueys are not just equipped with rockets and guns, but an elaborate sound system linked to a reel-to-reel tape machine that can blare out the beginning of Act III of Die Walkyure, by Richard Wagner, “The Ride of the Valkyries”. Dolar’s point is to illustrate how the aesthetics of voice can be heard in a way distinct from any message it might convey. The aesthetic dimension of the helicopter attack is more complex because, again, it operates cinematically in excess of its purely operatic context in an assemblage of audio-visual elements. The effective use of music as a psychological tactic was decisively confirmed for the US military by the success of Operation Just Cause in Panama in 1989, where it was used as both a barrier to President Manuel Noriega’s communications with the outside world and a powerful incentive for his removal by the local residents of and around the Vatican consulate.