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SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND THE U.S. MILITARY: THE MELODRAMATIC MYTHOS OF WAR AND RHETORIC OF HEALING HEROISM Valerie N. Wieskamp Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Communication and Culture, Indiana University April 2015 Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Doctoral Committee _________________________ Chair: Robert Terrill, Ph.D. _________________________ Purnima Bose, Ph.D. _________________________ Robert Ivie, Ph.D. _________________________ Phaedra Pezzullo, Ph.D. April 1, 2014 ii © Copyright 2015 Valerie N. Wieskamp iii Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without the help of colleagues, friends, and family, a few of which deserve special recognition here. I am forever grateful to my dissertation advisor, Dr. Robert Terrill. His wisdom and advice on my research and writing throughout both this project and my tenure as a graduate student has greatly enhanced my academic career. I would also like to express my gratitude to my dissertation committee, Dr. Robert Ivie, Dr. Phaedra Pezzullo, Dr. Purnima Bose, and the late Dr. Alex Doty for the sage advice they shared throughout this project. I am indebted to my dissertation-writing group, Dr. Jennifer Heusel, Dr. Jaromir Stoll, Dave Lewis, and Maria Kennedy. The input and camaraderie I received from them while writing my dissertation bettered both the quality of my work and my enjoyment of the research process. I am also fortunate to have had the love and support of my parents, John and Debbie Wieskamp, as well as my sisters, Natalie and Ashley while completing my doctorate degree. Last but not least, I would like to thank Kathy Teige for her assistance in helping me navigate the bureaucratic waters of graduate school. iv Valerie N. Wieskamp SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND THE U.S. MILITARY: THE MELODRAMATIC MYTHOS OF WAR AND RHETORIC OF HEALING HEROISM In this project, I examine the rhetorical patterns that silence or expose wartime sexual assault in U.S. culture from World War II, the Vietnam War, and the contemporary War on Terror. Through rhetorical analysis of military rhetoric, film, journalism, and photography, I argue that institutional narratives deploy rape as a political trope by exploiting narratives of sexual abuse in ways that promote war and inhibit justice for survivors. These narratives are patterned by a “melodramatic frame,” which emphasizes feminine vulnerability and racialized villainy to construct a heroic national identity. By depicting sexual violence as a crime committed by inherently deviant individuals rather than a byproduct of institutionalized patriarchal norms, the melodramatic frame privileges individualism over collectivity. I then juxtapose this institutional discourse with resistant voices found personal narratives, dissent, and advocacy efforts that counter the melodramatic frame. Not only do these narratives further critique melodrama by demonstrating its inadequacy in capturing the complexity of material experiences, but they also provide effective rhetorical models that invite us to see the cultural and systemic factors that exacerbate wartime sexual violence. These resistant discourses demonstrate what I call a “healing heroism,” which challenges melodramatic tendencies toward caricature and polarization. In doing so, they unsettle harmful gender and racial norms by reimagining notions of vulnerability, heroism, and villainy. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1 – The Melodramatic Mythos of War: How Rape is Deployed as a Trope of Militarized Public Discourse ........................................................ 1 Chapter 2 – Damsels in Distress: The Role of Feminized Vulnerability in U.S. War Rhetoric ................................................................................... 52 Chapter 3 – Massacring Notions of Heroism: Sexual Assault at My Lai ......................... 97 Chapter 4 – Melodrama Marches On: Sexual Abuse within the Contemporary U.S. Military ............................................................................................ 154 Conclusion – Ideals of Chivalry: Just Who and What Does Traditional “Heroism” Protect? ....................................................................................... 219 Selected Bibliography ..................................................................................................... 244 Curriculum Vita vi CHAPTER 1 – THE MELODRAMATIC MYTHOS OF WAR: HOW RAPE IS DEPLOYED AS A TROPE OF MILITARIZED PUBLIC DISCOURSE During a carefully orchestrated rescue mission conducted under the cover of darkness, Marine forces distracted enemy soldiers as Navy Seals burst into an Iraqi hospital with the assistance of Army Rangers who secured grounds around the area. “There was not a firefight inside of the building,” Brigadier General Vincent Brooks told reporters, “but there were firefights outside of the building, getting in and out.”1 Hustling through the hospital the Seals restrained doctors and patients alike. They swiftly found their target: Private Jessica Lynch, a white, “fresh faced,” “teenager,” from a “farming community” in West Virginia.2 Lynch had been transported to the hospital just over a week prior, after the Iraq army ambushed her convoy, killing eleven members of her company and capturing five others. The U.S. combat soldiers “hustled Lynch via stretcher onto a waiting helicopter, all of which was filmed with a night-vision camera.”3 Lynch was rescued from the evil hands of the enemy and delivered to safety by the heroic action of the U.S. Special Forces team. According to General Brooks, “Some brave souls put their lives on the line to make this happen.” These men were heroes. While reports of the bravery of her heroes during this rescue mission appeared in the media immediately in the days after her rescue, narratives of the treachery of the enemies who captured her came fully to light roughly seven months after her rescue. News stories that Lynch had been anally raped during her time behind enemy lines began to circulate in November 6, 2003, just days before the release of her autobiography, I Am a Soldier, Too, co-authored by Rick Bragg. Within her autobiography, it was reported that although Lynch had no recollection of being raped, medical records revealed that 1 “she was a victim of anal sexual assault.” The autobiography continues, “The records do not tell whether her captors assaulted her almost lifeless, broken body after she was lifted from the wreckage, or if they assaulted her and then broke her bones into splinters until she was almost dead.”4 In either scenario, the narrative of the sexual assault of Lynch indicates the cruel, animalistic nature of her enemy captors. _________________________________ Popular accounts of the rescue and violation of Jessica Lynch, summarized above, evoke a dramatic structure that exploits feminine vulnerability in order to enforce a Manichean worldview. Lynch’s youth, femininity, and whiteness granted her tale wide circulation because it fits within a hegemonic narrative structure so common that it is at once pervasive and taken for granted. The violation, or potential violation, of young white women by brown, savage men remains a common theme throughout U.S. public address. This narrative form structured the relationship between natives of the Americas and its colonizing settlers, who justified violence by accusing indigenous people of kidnapping white women.5 Similarly, public imaginings of the lecherous brown man fueled many slavery and Jim Crow-era lynchings and other unjust violence against African Americans.6 The story of the raping enemy has existed as a common theme of U.S. war discourse since the nation’s inception. As Hahn and Ivie observe, during the Revolutionary War, colonists spoke of British soldiers as rapists.7 In short, the Lynch rescue fits within a legacy of narratives that recur throughout history with a different cast of characters for each conflict. While the continuous repetition of this basic rape myth causes it to appear a natural consequence of gender differences, a closer examination of the Lynch rescue 2 demonstrates that it, indeed, relies upon contorted rhetorical maneuvers. The many factual inaccuracies told in the earliest public stories about Lynch reveal the degree to which this narrative constructs the identities of both U.S. soldiers and the Iraqi people. The extraction mission was portrayed as extremely dangerous and Lynch as highly vulnerable in order to emphasize the bravery and heroism of the soldiers. One of the Iraqi doctors among the medical staff—whom Lynch reported treated her kindly—described the hyperbolic nature of the rescue, which occurred in an innocuous hospital already empty of Iraqi soldiers. According to Dr. Anmar Uday, “It was like a Hollywood film. They cried, ‘Go, go, go’, with guns and blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show – an action movie like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan, with jumping and shouting, breaking down doors.”8 The combative nature of the rescue was not a fitting tactic for entry into a hospital that was not guarded by the Iraqi military. It was, indeed, a show, a display carefully designed to capture public attention. Accounts of Lynch’s sexual assault functioned as a trope to rebuild public support for the war by demonstrating the villainy of the Iraqi people. Her alleged rape was part of the

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