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The Hero Industry: Spectacular Pacification in the Era of Media Interactivity

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The Hero Industry: Spectacular Pacification in the Era of Media Interactivity Occam's Razor Volume 10 (2020) Article 5 2020 The Hero Industry: Spectacular Pacification in the Era of Media Interactivity Braden Timss Western Washington University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://cedar.wwu.edu/orwwu Part of the Social Influence and oliticalP Communication Commons Recommended Citation Timss, Braden (2020) "The Hero Industry: Spectacular Pacification in the Era of Media Interactivity," Occam's Razor: Vol. 10 , Article 5. Available at: https://cedar.wwu.edu/orwwu/vol10/iss1/5 This Research Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the Western Student Publications at Western CEDAR. It has been accepted for inclusion in Occam's Razor by an authorized editor of Western CEDAR. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Timss: The Hero Industry: Spectacular Pacification in the Era of Media I THE HERO INDUSTRY Spectacular Pacification in the Era of Media Interactivity By Braden Timss INTRODUCTION: THE SPECTACLE, SITUATIONS, AND THE VIRTUAL CITIZEN-SOLDIER n Ben Fountain’s 2012 novel, Billy Lynn’s Long Half- Entangled in the complex inter- time Walk, the titular US soldier and the Bravo squad play between war, mass media, and Ibecome canonized Iraq War heroes when their rescue capitalism, the process of American attempt is captured on digital video. In recognition of hero commodification undergone by their bravery, their tour of duty is halted for an American figures like Billy Lynn can be demy- media stint that culminates in their participation during stified with consideration for Guy the 2004 Dallas Cowboys Thanksgiving halftime show. Debord’s theory of the spectacle. De- This celebratory return allows the proud American public veloped in the 1960s, the spectacle to interact with the heroes from the video, subsumed, describes the worldview necessarily however they may be, by the militarized media spectacle produced by capitalism: a transfor- and abstracted into icons of precious, simplified mean- mation of social values into general ing. Commodities like War Hero Billy Lynn are a neces- equivalence with the values of the sary product when images of postmodern warfare do not economy and the emergence of a new bring a nation’s culture any grounding, pacifying sense of social reality subsumed by symbol- meaning. Better than a mere screen, Billy is alive; he can ic commodity logics (Society of the be touched. Endowed with the experiential knowledge of Spectacle sec. 4-6, 40). Moreover, soldier subjectivity, he becomes a ready vessel brought Debord argues that the spectacle close for an American public to inhabit . has become “the main production of Published48 | OCCAM’S by Western RAZOR CEDAR, 2020 1 Occam's Razor, Vol. 10 [2020], Art. 5 present-day society”—when the “satisfaction intervention likewise lies in “manipulating the of [basic] human need” is replaced by the interests,” or pseudo-needs of social groups in or- capitalist “necessity for boundless economic der “to render a culture in [the self-perpetuating] development,” capitalism must (re)produce image [of war]” (qtd. in Mirzoeff, 1738). the spectacle which “[fabricates]” the “pseu- Preliminary traces of this military intervention do-needs,” desires, and subjective positions of culture litter battlefields, movie theatres, and required for the system’s maintenance and living rooms with material artifacts. Army com- expansion (Society of the Spectacle sec. 15, bat training simulators sold as commercial video 51). The spectacle is, in effect, total ideolog- games and unmanned drones piloted with Play- ical subjugation through cultural hijacking, Station 2 controllers attest to the existence of a as social institutions, mass-media, modes of veritable military-entertainment complex with organization, and recreation become the very image, means, and ends of capitalist econom- ics. Furthermore, in the twenty-first-century COMMODITY: context, overlapping relations between capi- For economists, commodities are manufactured objects talist globalization, global warfare, and infor- with an equivalent value, namely commercial products to mation technology have produced a hybrid be sold. In Debord’s Marxist critique, however, capitalism reorganizes personal consumption to conform to the militarized-capitalist spectacle in which “cul- commercial principles of market exchange; commodity ture” becomes the new “means, location, and fetishism transforms a cultural commodity into a product object of warfare” (Mirzoeff 1737). with an economic life of its own that is independent of the As visual theorist Nicholas Mirzoeff volition of the commodity’s producer. Guy Debord argues observes, the ongoing assimilation of the that, in modern society, intimacies of intersubjectivity non-Western world by a globalized capitalist and personal self-relation are commodified into discrete economy remains largely an imperialist proj- experiences that can be bought and sold and every human ect wherein “modern technologies of informa- relation becomes viewable as a (potential) business transaction. tion and war” instrumentalize the concept of counterinsurgency, a revolutionary strategy COUNTERINSURGENCY: of waging an “explicitly cultural war, to be fought in the United States as much as it is Codified into a field manual by retired US Army general [overseas]” (1737-8). Aiming to reproduce David Patraeus, this military tactic seizes the manipulation and production of culture as a means to preempt the rise “[its own regime] in thought and deed,” this of insurgent forces in occupied foreign regions or in the war culture, in essence, legitimizes global homeland. It has transformation the way wars are fought in capitalism’s imperialist campaign overseas by the early twenty-first century. pacifying citizens with “progressive applica- tions of techniques [that manufacture con- MILITARY-ENTERTAINMENT COMPLEX: sent] under the imperative ‘culture must be defended,’” (Mirzoeff, 1738). Just as Debord A continuation of the logic of the cold war’s military- industrial complex, this term describes how the US Military, theorized that the spectacle produces inces- defense technology, and entertainment sectors have sant economic growth by making capitalism formed a material, collaborative network wherein each the simultaneous justification for and goal of can benefit from the research, commercial successes, and social existence, the goal of modern military sociopolitical influence of the other. https://cedar.wwu.edu/orwwu/vol10/iss1/5 BRADEN TIMSS | 492 Timss: The Hero Industry: Spectacular Pacification in the Era of Media I SITUATIONIST INTERNATIONAL(SI): an acculturating influence (Lenoir; Stahl,112 & 116). In the consumption of artifacts like military-themed video A group of avant-garde artists and political games or films, the military-entertainment spectacle ma- theorists active in Paris from 1957-1972 who are famous for their contributions to anti- nipulates the subjective position of the citizenship into capitalist theories such as Unitary Urbanism, the image of the soldier embedded within the ranks of Situations, and Derive. SI considered a culture of war. Roger Stahl calls this phenomenon the architecture, especially that of cities, as virtual citizen-soldier, a “symptom of the recoding of the a major factor in both the oppression or social field” by counterinsurgency “with military values liberation of people under capitalism. and ideals,” which assures the apolitical function of the soldier subsumes and impinges on the democratic role of AMBIANCES: the citizen (125). As deployed under a Situationist context, In such ways, the overwhelming, enveloping media ambiances are the sum effect of various environment of the twenty-first century—enabled by au- environmental factors that can be dio-visual, information, and simulation technologies— appreciated as the kind of mood certain virtually surrounds, penetrates, and defines the social architectural features and structured field and subjective positioning more than ever before. activities influence people to adopt. Basic And yet, simultaneously, the level of spectator interac- examples include the Gothic cathedral that inspires gloominess or the office cubicle that tivity and involvement in the emerging media landscape affirms focus and isolation. arguably increases (albeit in a limited capacity) the vul- nerability of hegemonic top-down social control. It has always been false to portray spectators simply as overde- termined consumerist receivers without any form of ex- changing interactivity, social agency, or creative industry. As recent phenomenological and post-structuralist theory asserts, the always-already active spectator can poten- tially manipulate, subvert, and construct—or/even play with, as it were—the social world which produced them and which, through their collective everyday actions, is reproduced and, thus, might be reproduced differently. For Debord and the Situationist International (SI), the exploitation of the vulnerable sociocultural mechanisms enabling the spectacle is precisely the goal of their rev- olutionary theory of the situation: a mobilization of so- cial life against capitalism in “the creation of new forms and the détournement [hijacking] of previous versions of architecture, urbanism, poetry and cinema” (12). Play is a revolutionary act that can disrupt spectacular “pas- sions, compensations and habits” of capitalist culture. The creative construction of new channels, architecture, ambiances, and images can “condition new behaviors” or desires and “provoke
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