‘War in Pieces’
In her new book, Assistant Professor of Communication Renée Pastel examines one of the most fateful, and controversial, post-9/11outcomes—the War on Terror—through its representation in the media, notably fiction and nonfiction films, television shows, and online videos.
Focusing on the period of 2001-2013, War in Pieces: “War on Terror" Media and the Fracturing of American Identity points to four central figures in depictions of the conflicts: the war journalist, the active-duty service member, the veteran, and the military family. As consensus about America’s response to 9/11 ebbed, and as Americans sought to deal with various post-9/11 cultural anxieties, explains Pastel, these four main narrative figures helped uphold a continued sense of unified national identity—even as different audiences came away with divergent understandings of the war and its ramifications.
“When you look at any significant period in American history, the question is: What stories do we tell ourselves about this event and its point in time?” said Pastel, who joined the BC faculty in 2020. “A good way to go about that is to examine the various forms of popular media and what narratives they offer, and which of these seem to resonate with people and why.
“The American public was simultaneously fascinated by the War on Terror, yet also very disassociated from it, and in many respects we’ve had difficulty dealing with the legacy of the war. In the book, I’m suggesting that the repeated narratives centering these four figures helped to mask the fracturing of a sense of unified American national identity—fracturing exacerbated by the dramatic cultural shifts created in the exponential growth of Internet access.”
Pastel examines how documentaries like “Control Room,” miniseries like “Generation Kill,” and the feature film “1,000 Times Good Night”—all released during the first decade of the war—explored but did not necessarily resolve questions around the United States government’s policy of embedding journalists in fighting units. This new practice might, in theory, give reporters access they’d lacked in previous wars, she explains, but it also blurred the line between traditional journalistic objectivity and documentary subjectivity.
At the same time, Pastel notes, the expansion of digital and social media meant soldiers could assume the role of journalist-documentarian and offer their own perspectives on the war, alongside those given by traditional or entertainment media. Yet the leap forward in war-related technology—such as drones and mine-defusing robots—often provided a disjointed, incomplete view of soldiers’ experiences as did scenes of their downtime activities, like reenacting or lip-synching to popular music videos, which they shared on social media. Still, in portraying soldiers fighting the War on Terror, some films and TV shows continued to rely on familiar dramatic tropes.
The combat veteran’s reintegration into civilian and family life has been a longtime staple of popular films, such as “The Best Years of Our Lives” and “Coming Home,” and TV shows and commercials, says Pastel. But as awareness of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and moral injury has grown, this narrative has likewise become more complex, she adds: Being home may not provide the feelings of safety and comfort for some veterans. Yet the abundance of videos on YouTube and other platforms showing War on Terror veterans reuniting with their loved ones (including pets) created a genre unto itself, she notes—all following the traditional melodramatic model of a safe return to home and hearth.
The active-duty soldier’s family has historically been portrayed (such as on the “Army Wives” TV series) as brave, loyal, and steadfast, says Pastel, and ideally supported by friends, neighbors, and the community at large. Unlike a potentially emotionally-distanced public, however, such families also tend to stay as fully informed as possible on the war in which their loved one is fighting, she adds, and in doing so “occupies the gap” between the military and the civilian population—which can add to their stress, especially if a war is unpopular, as the War on Terror turned out to be.
“It’s not that there was an absence of thoughtful, informative media coverage of the War on Terror per se,” said Pastel. “But to a great extent, the inclination was to package the war for future cultural memory even as the conflicts continued.
“September 11 was such a flashpoint of trauma, both national and personal, and 25 years ago still seems so immediate to many of us. But it’s in the history books now, and I have students in my classes who weren’t even born yet in 2001. So, I feel it’s very important for Americans to look deeply into the period following 9/11, to think about what we believed about ourselves and what we told ourselves—and how we told it.”