Security Disarmed: Critical Perspectives on Gender, Race, and Militarization

Chapter 14: Militarizing Women in Film: Toward a Cinematic Framing of War and Terror

What is most disturbing to me about Paul Greengrass’s  film United , which dramatizes the events of September  aboard the doomed titular flight, is the way it begins. The opening bears an uncanny resemblance to the first scene in the horror classic The Exorcist (Friedkin ), which starts off ominously with the sounds of an Islamic chant before we witness a scene of an archaeological dig in Iraq, where we first encounter the ancient presence of the devil. Although United  shows no desert landscape filled with mysteriously veiled women and turbaned men, it evokes the same racialized otherness in its opening shots by depicting Middle Easterners (the infamous September  hijackers) who prostrate themselves in prayer before an open Koran that historic morning. When we consider that both movies are concerned with the overwhelming forces of evil—the unforeseen terrorist attacks in the  film and the grotesque scare tactics of the devil in the horror film—it is difficult to overlook the demonization of Islam, which has become such an acceptable trope in Hollywood cinema. When we move away from “First World” cinema and its various “tropes of empire” to assess oppositional narratives in what Ella Shohat and Robert Stam term post–Third Worldist cinema, we encounter different worldviews and aesthetics “often rooted in non-realist, often non-Western or para-Western cultural traditions featuring other historical rhythms, other narrative structures, other views of the body, sexuality, spirituality, and the collective life” (Shohat and Stam , ). In this chapter, through an exploration of such cinema, I assess how themes of war and terror unfold beyond Eurocentric or U.S.-centric discourse. Further, as a way of showcasing the pervasiveness of militarization and its impact on everyday life, I examine how women become central to these narratives. Unlike Cynthia Enloe, who mostly focuses on the mundane effects of daily militarization in women’s lives—from buying a can of soup to buying clothing that copies the camouflage attire of soldiers (see Enloe )—the 231 14 Militarizing Women in Film Toward a Cinematic Framing of War and Terror JANELL HOBSON ——————————————————————— ——————————————————————— CH014.qxd 5/29/08 10:26 AM Page 231 makers of post–Third Worldist films often explore the immediate effects of war violence. Because of these global North–South differences, I use critical race and postcolonial feminist theories to address embodiment issues in the context of war and terror; I then analyze how women’s bodies come to the fore in films and function as sites for national, cultural, and sexual struggles. My film analysis is grounded in a theoretical framework on embodiment that helps to advance decolonized understandings of women’s embodiment in relation to militarized violence. I start with a discussion on embodied resistance before delving into analysis of the selected films: Nelofer Pazira’s Kandahar (Makhmalbaf ), Mani Ratnam’s () Dil Se, and Santosh Sivan’s () The Terrorist. All precede the September  events and thus illuminate how late twentieth-century post–Third Worldist concerns of war and terrorism predate American interests in these global issues. The politics of global film distribution have prevented these films from receiving wider circulation in the United States and, hence, from finding a transnational audience that could weigh in on global debates from an alternative cultural viewpoint that is not dependent on state rhetoric. To that end, I conclude this chapter by considering the viability of cinema for addressing foreign policy issues. Embodied Resistance Somewhere between “war” and “terror” lies resistance. By resistance, I refer to theories and practices that challenge institutional power, often upheld by stateinitiated violence, and that function beyond the extremist operations of antigovernment and guerrilla units, which fail to envision nonviolent means to social change. The resistance that occupies the space between war and terror questions systems of violence without normalizing one form while demonizing another. As Neloufer de Mel explains, we condemn acts of “terrorism,” versus acts of “war,” because the former is perceived as operating outside the mainstream “legitimate” violence unleashed by a military force. That “legitimate” violence, which includes set battles and strafing that cause enormous destruction of civilian life and livelihoods, is not regarded as immoral in the course of war points to how normalized these forms of violence have become through the process of [militarization] in which fashions of camouflage dress to merchandising of toy weapons, advertising, and popular culture [glamorizing] military images, film, and literature play their part. (de Mel , –, emphasis in original) By refusing to distinguish between war and terrorism, a resistance...