Alienation, Insecurity, and Violence in Post-2008 Hollywood War Cinema
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A War Over Uncertain Privileges: Alienation, Insecurity, and Violence in Post-2008 Hollywood War Cinema A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Fine Arts of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts Paul D. Peters August 2020 © 2020 Paul D. Peters. All Rights Reserved. 2 This thesis titled A War Over Uncertain Privileges: Alienation, Insecurity, and Violence in Post-2008 Hollywood War Cinema by PAUL D. PETERS has been approved for the Film Division and the College of Fine Arts by Ofer Eliaz Assistant Professor of Film Studies Matthew R. Shaftel Dean, College of Fine Arts 3 Abstract PETERS, PAUL D., M.A., August 2020, Film Studies A War Over Uncertain Privileges: Alienation, Insecurity, and Violence in Post-2008 Hollywood War Cinema Director of Thesis: Ofer Eliaz This Master’s thesis is a structural analysis of the new semantic and syntactic patterns in the Hollywood war genre after 2008 and how its nearly exclusive depiction of straight white working-class and middle-class male heroes reflects social, political, and economic anxieties among Americans who share a similar background. The war genre has found renewed critical and financial success starting with The Hurt Locker through the trends that depict a soldier protagonist as estranged from his domestic lifestyle before leaving for war, editing producing an alienating experience for audiences, and how violence could potentially confront and resolve a series of perceived anxieties among audience members. 4 Acknowledgments I would like to thank my family, friends, and colleagues for their constant support throughout this project and my degree. I am also indebted to my committee’s and department’s wisdom, patience, and commitment to helping me throughout my research, writing, and revising. This work is a product of all of my past and present education. Thank you to anyone who sat down to watch any of these movies with me, read my drafts, and talk about my perspectives. 5 Table of Contents Page Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... 4 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 6 Chapter 1 The Estranged Soldier Protagonist: .................................................................. 23 How New Soldier Protagonists Defy Straight White Men’s Expected Domestic Roles .. 23 Structural Changes in the History of the War Genre .................................................. 26 The Biggest Transformation in the War Film? ........................................................... 31 2008 and a Hunt for Fulfillment in the Hollywood War Film .................................... 35 Confronting Transforming Levels of Opportunity and Privilege ............................... 44 Chapter 2 Alienating the Movie-Going Experience: ........................................................ 50 How Fragmented and Ambiguous Editing Instills Audience Anxiety ............................. 50 I Can See You, Can You See Me? .............................................................................. 55 Fragmenting the Viewer’s Experience........................................................................ 72 Visual Identification in Hollywood War Cinema ....................................................... 82 Chapter 3 Mutilating the Perceived Threat: ...................................................................... 85 How Melodramatic Violence Brings Pleasure to Alienated Genre Audiences ................ 85 Resolving Ambiguity by Defining an Enemy ............................................................. 91 Eliminating Threats though Mutilating Violence ..................................................... 102 Conclusion: ..................................................................................................................... 117 “You Can’t Hold a Man Down Without Staying Down with Him” ............................... 117 References ....................................................................................................................... 129 Filmography .................................................................................................................... 134 6 Introduction The Hollywood war genre undergoes a major shift in 2008 that portrays war as an extension of troubles that white masculine soldiers experienced in American domesticity. The prior war films depict the American home as an extension of the solider’s combat experience using camera movement that stresses the soldier’s subjectivity and their inability to shake their violent experiences upon their return to America.1 By contrast, the post-2008 movies depict soldiers leaving unfulfilling domestic situations for war while cutting with increased fragmentation to perspectives that extend beyond the American’s knowledge and providing genre pleasure by stylizing mutilating violence against clearly- defined enemy forces. This depiction of the estranged soldier protagonist, anxious editing, and melodramatic ultra-violence develop as syntactic patterns in the genre from a series of contemporary issues in the nation, such as the financial crisis, receding employment opportunities, stagnant incomes, and limited raises while several Americans felt displaced by the expansion of federal programming, universal health initiatives, and the election of America’s first black president. The creation of the Hollywood war film coincides nearly with the creation of cinema, with Edison films depicting American armed forces in the Spanish-American war in 1898.2 Contemporary combat pictures — like The Hurt Locker (Bigelow, 2008), American Sniper (Eastwood, 2014), and Hacksaw Ridge (Gibson, 2016) — include many 1 In the Valley of Elah (Haggis, 2007) and Stop-Loss (Peirce, 2008) depict extended combat sequences within America when Hank (Tommy Lee Jones) pursues an AWOL soldier and Sgt. King (Ryan Phillippe) attacks a couple of car thieves. These sequences use the same formal aesthetics as combat scenes in the Middle East, such as quick editing and hand-held cameras. 2 Wetta and Curley, Celluloid Wars, 96. 7 of the same generic elements from their predecessors while their critical and financial success has brought them recognition among moviegoers across the nation. Film scholarship evolved in the nineteen-sixties with the influence of Christian Metz and his treatment of film as a language system. While much of his essay, “The Cinema: Language or Language System,” identifies complications in interpreting film from a semiotic approach, his work laid the foundations for understanding cinema as a series of conventions that have been normalized by filmmakers and adopted by audiences.3 Metz asserts that these conventions are codes that create specific expectations within the audience.4 Genre studies, such as writings on the Hollywood war film, look at films with the understanding that they comprise a series of repeated generic norms and conventions. While film and genre studies have come to understand cinema as a series of repeated conventions, one should also remember that cinema is not static. Christian Metz shows that, like language, the codes in cinema have the potential to evolve: filmmakers can alter their patterns, audiences can interpret conventions in a different way and studios can alter the methods by which they market a film. “At any given moment, the code could change or disappear entirely, whereas the message will simply find the means to express itself differently.”5 Genre studies thus developed to categorize what makes up a genre, how it evolves, and what purpose it might serve for audiences. 3 Metz, Film Language; a Semiotics of the Cinema, 47–48. 4 Metz develops such claims based on the structural studies of linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure, which can be found in his book, Course in General Linguistics. 5 Metz, Film Language; a Semiotics of the Cinema, 47. 8 Rick Altman asserts that even the most established genres never truly remain consistent and that they evolve over time. Critics have consistently developed categories by which to classify these genre changes, such as the “classical” Western and “platonic idealism” in musicals.6 Altman argues, in “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre” and his book Film/Genre, that these classifications can be defined by identifying a genre’s repeating attributes and separating them into either film “semantics” or film “syntax.” Similar to their use in verbal and written languages, he defines semantics as content elements and syntax as the ways in which the film arranges the content. He argues that semantic attributes — such as certain “attitudes, characters, shots, locations, sets” — repeat in movies and can be classified into genres based on these characteristics while syntactic elements — such as how the film is organized with employment, story- structure, and editing — can identify the structures in which they are arranged.7 Applying this use of semantics and syntax to the war genre provides an effective method for genre theorists to both define and explain the group of films within a greater context. Jeanine Basinger exemplifies the usefulness of using semantics to define the WWII combat film in her pivotal The World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre. Like Altman’s