Scene 11 Post-11
From the book Theatres of Capitalism
By David M. Boje
December 12, 2001
Act 2, Scene 11, Post-11
9-11 is the postmodern megaspectacle. We have turned war into celebratory mass entertainment. Leaders have speech and dialog coaches. Time, Space, and Causality are shattered in the events of the September 11th devastation of World Trade Center (WTC) and Pentagon. Post-11 is a postmodern war and it is theatrical. The post-11 spectacle that emerged from the events of September 11, three months hence, continue to send shock waves throughout capitalism and popular culture. Spectators are educated, terrified and entertained by the theatrics of post-11. The education is a means of social control, manipulation of spectator feelings of pity and fear, used to reinvoke the Cold War. The new antagonists and protagonists struggle to dominate the global center stage, and the media extravaganza. The terror of the extravaganza has a dark side, the repeated terror of seeing the collapse of WTC towers, sent American audience into post-11 traumatic stress syndrome. Post-11 as entertainment draws more audience than the OJ Simpson trial, the funeral of Princess Dianna, and the Survivor TV sequels. This chapter is a systematic analysis what makes post-11 an “Event” of postmodern war.[1] After explaining what is postmodern about post-11, the chapter is organized into post-11 (and pre-11) trilogy: spectacles of power, carnivals of resistance to the war, and festive respites from the war.
Why is the war of post-11, postmodern? Just using the word “postmodern” does not add anything to our exploration of Theatres of Capitalism. We must be quite clear about what makes post-11 a postmodern war, as opposed to just one more high-tech modern war, with the usual spectacle of business and state propaganda to enlist spectator support for war. Postmodern war is defined, by philosophers Best and Kellner (2001), as the implosion of human and machine in cyber and bio technology.
The Gulf spectacle was “postmodern” in that, first, it was a media event that was experienced as a live occurrence for the whole global village. Second, it managed to blur the distinction between truth and reality in a triumph of the orchestrated image and spectacle. Third, the conflict exhibited a heightened merging of individuals and technology, previewing a new type of cyberwar that featured information technology and “smart” weapons (Best & Kellner, 2001: 73).
To this definition I will contribute an analysis of theatrics of postmodern war, and extend the analysis to include the post-11 war. We will examine theatrics of post-11 as postmodern war, which makes military confrontation and collateral damage (civilian casualties), mere digital abstractions.
Postmodern war combines theatre of operation with new cyberwar digital theatre technologies, the media megaspectacle of instant replays, interactive simulations, and all the theatrics necessary to conduct and legitimate the carnage and commerce of war. Postmodern war also revitalizes and continues the co-construction of science, technology, state, and military capitalism that is the very “madness of modernity” we experienced in the Cold War era since 1945 (Best & Kellner, 2001: 60). Except that in post-11, the War on Terror, our new Cold War is a rivalry between post-modern western capitalism and eastern 13th century premodern tribalism (opposed to modernity and postmodernity). Best and Kellner’s definition goes beyond other attempts to define postmodern war, since it focuses on what is different about the relation of humans and technology, in this versus other wars, such as the Vietnam War (actually, I was told it was an insurgency, hours before I boarded a TWA troop plane).[2]
Frederick Jameson (1991: 45), on the other hand (and many who cite his critique), asserts that Vietnam is the first of the postmodern wars since it is a “breakdown of all previous narrative paradigms” in ways that promote a “whole new reflexivity.” Actually, I don’t think the issue is reflexivity or narrative, it is theatrical, and the infusion of cyber tech that makes a war postmodern. Theatre (and narrative) has been radically reflective about modern wars. For example, the WWI movie, The Eagle and the Hawk staring Frederick March and Cary Grant has reflexivity and theatrical irony. March, playing the part of Captain J. H. Young, an ace pilot, is being showered with medals, as a way for the war office to motivate and recruit youngsters to enlist in the war (so they to can become heroes). Consider March’s critical reflection, during a festive celebration of the spectacle of his heroic adventure. He turns the festive and spectacle occasion into carnival, then goes off stage to commit suicide. His monologue at the event brings the gore of war to the fore.
They set me up as a shining tin god. A hero! An ace! They expect me to act like a hero. So you can all play at being heroes. So you can go and shoot other kids down, burning, and get killed yourself. They’ll decorate you for it; give you medals just like they did me. I got these for killing kids. They’re all chunks of torn flesh and broken bones and blood. And for what? I give you war!
Cary Grant develops a cover story for Captain Young’s (March’s) suicide, and the closing shot of the tombstone reads, “Captain J. H. Young who gallantly gave his life in aerial combat to save the world for democracy - June 14, 1918.”
There is more than narrative going on in The Eagle and the Hawk; this is a radical critique of the theatrics of war that substitutes heroic romanticism for the tragedy of war; it is critical of our hegemonic enrollment into heroic adventure via theatrics. But, this alone does not make a war postmodern.
My contribution to the on-going debate, between Best and Kellner versus Jameson, over what is and is not a “postmodern war” lies in exploring the new theatrics of war. To be postmodern war, I think the theatrics must be decidedly different than prior wars. The difference I see between the new Eagle versus Hawk War and prior wars is more than the breakdown of narrative or the insertion of critical reflection. I shall argue that it is new technologies (cyber and biotech) that transform the theatres of capitalism in ways that make post-11 a postmodern war. The new technologies of cyber war infect and thereby controls and disciplines the social body, transforming its commerce and life style.
Technological innovations in warfare from biotechnology, cyber war, and infotainment have fused with state, military, and corporate capitalism to transform the theatrics of capitalism into a social corporeality more postmodern than Vietnam or WW1 and WWII.
What is postmodern, is the materiality of the interactive cyber theatrics affects our social corporeality, to the extent of turning soldiering into a more robotic and cyborg performance directed on digital battlefields, and selling spectators via interactive participation in digital infotainment. Here we explore these and other postmodern theatrical transformations, particularly, virtual technologies of simulation, hyperreal, and cyborg warriors that are related to the business, technologies, and disciplines of war. I have a name for this.
“McWar” - I will call this nexus of postmodern war and megaspectacle theatrics simply “McWar.” McWar is also a term used by the military, a reference to the Marine Corps War College (or McWar College).[3] McWar, here will mean the McDonaldization, Las Vegasization, and Disneyfication theatrics that transform war through cyber and biotech into something postmodern infecting the social body. McWar incorporates some aspects of the theatres of capitalism we have explored in previous chapters; it is also more. It is not the first McWar; Kosovo and Gulf wars were also postmodern. Post-11 is just one more McWar that relies upon the Disneyfication-theming of good and bad on the global and digital stage, the McDonaldization-scripting of the mechanistic-scripting of war as romantic, and the Las Vegasization-disciplining of individual passions, the management and control of spectators and actors (or just spect-actors) by directors.
The chapter is organized into main sections of spectacle, carnival, and festival. These definitions are our starting points.
Spectacle (and megaspectacle) can be total manipulation of meaning-making processes through theatrical events to serve the production of power and managerial needs to control spectator and actor emotions and behaviors.
Carnival refers to strategies of theatric-resistance to spectacles of power and hegemony; carnivals postmodern form is culture jamming, street theatre, and varied forms of parody and satire of state, military, and capital forms of power.
Festival is respect for all species, all life; it is the ultimate Ahimsa (practice of non-violence). Festival is also a respite from the spectacle of power and the sideshow of carnival resistance.
Behind interactive trilogy of spectacle, carnival, and festival, just off stage is the methodology of theatrics. For spectacle it is a repertoire of illusions, for carnival it is the task of bringing the back stage on stage, and for festival, life is theatre.Post-11 is a multiplicity and hybridity of spectacle, carnival, and (here and there) festive theatrics.
PART I: Megaspectacle
Spectacle can be total manipulation of meaning-making processes through theatrical events to serve the production of power or just entertainment for sale. Sometimes these spectacles celebrate the benevolence and progress of power with affirming theatrics and other times the spectacle theatrics sells us on the idea that technological, humanistic or ecological progress is being realized.
Megaspectacles sensationalize war and patriotism in media extravaganzas (Best & Kellner, 2001). Beneath Megaspectacles is the rest of the iceberg, the other three types of spectacle (concentrated, diffuse & integrated). Pst-11 Megaspectacles are interactive, with media competing to provide websites where cyber-spectators can replay simulations on the new stage of the spectacle.
Spectacle is based on the work of Guy Debord (1967, Society of the Spectacle) who has something important to say about how spectacles of production and consumption relate to war. Megaspectacle goes a step further. The postmodern theatrics of the Gulf, Kosovo, and post-11 wars are glaring expression of the megaspectacle. Megaspectacle is the means of control in previous war, but it was done with different technologies.
Theatre began as a “place for seeing,” with spectators seated on a hillside overlooking a hollow, or in a circle of some sacred forest. During war, theatre is a tool for motivating, correcting, controlling, and mollifying the social body. We purge the body of all tragic flaws; in the megaspectacle of war, all dissent is a tragic flaw.
In the Middle Ages, clergy and nobility tightly controlled theatrical production. During World War I and WWII, theatre counter to the interests of the state and wealthy interests or governing classes would not get produced (Boal, 1985:54). The Eagle and the Hawk is therefore an interesting exception (see introduction). Mash, was the first exception to that rule in Vietnam. Though staged in Korea, its release during the Vietnam War, made the film highly controversial. I recall, as Nam survivor, being in Saigon (now Ho Chi Min City), and told that Mash would not be shown in Vietnam. But finally, in 1969, the military command gave up its resistance, and a sheet was nailed to the back of our supply building, and we watched the movie, as real tracer bullets flew above our “place for seeing” and puffs of strange smoke mingled with the gun smoke and other strange smoke in Mash. The juxtaposition was surreal and absurd, but not entirely postmodern.
During postmodern megaspectacle wars, such as Kosovo, Gulf, and post-11, theatre and its establishment celebrities (in movies, sports, and Broadway) are recruited to fight the war on terror, but the technologies uniting actors and spectators is quite different. For example, the line between military combat and entertainment gets blurred:
During the Gulf War the commentary of military and football analysts -- and the methods deployed to illustrate and explain sports and the war -- became almost indistinguishable. During ABC's broadcast of Super Bowl XXV, an important part of the rhetorical [I’d say theatrical] strategy was to turn the event into much more than a game in order to justify playing the contest. Indeed, the Super Bowl and its viewers became important--even essential--participants in the war effort.[4] [additions in brackets, mine].
This McWar continues the trends of fusing technology and human with sanitized media that characterized the Gulf and Kosovo wars identified by Best and Kellner (2001). We can contrast the sanitized images of the spectacle of McWar, played as a video game, or football spectacle, with hard reality of collateral damage (chunks of civilian torn flesh, bones broken by shrapnel, and the blood mist:
What the U.S. public does remember from the Persian Gulf War is a just and successful military operation with few casualties -- a sanitized, quickie technowar in which laser-guided missiles destroyed buildings not bodies. In his October 2, 1997, letter to the UN Security Council, however, Ramsey Clark offers the sobering reminder that U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq "have now killed more than 750,000 human beings, perhaps twice that many, the great majority, infants, children, older persons and those who suffered serious chronic illnesses." [5]
During the Gulf War, the sanitized media coverage became complicit in the killing by adopting an uncritical, self-censored position toward the conflict which facilitated the slaughter of Iraqis and the destruction of Iraq's infrastructure (including the leveling of the historic city of Baghdad).