To gain support for its militaristic,
unilateral response in the ‘War on Terror’
(WOT), the United States (U.S.)
government manufactured narratives of concern
for protecting the rights of Afghan
women (Hunt 2010: 116). The discursive
repackaging of 19th Century imperialist
stories, an appropriation of both
feminism, and women’s rights, will be
discussed here. This essay will examine
the
way the film, Zero Dark Thirty (ZD30),
reinforces gendered war stories, justifying
US foreign policy and the normalising of
militaristic responses to terrorism.
Using
a multidisciplinary analysis that draws
on feminist international relations theory,
feminist cultural studies and
post-colonial feminism, a deconstruction of the film
will be undertaken.
An examination of the representation of
Maya, the film’s leading protagonist, will
reveal the post-feminist concern of
ZD30. To unpack the problematic dominant
framing of the film, an intersectional
analysis will be undertaken, which examines
the connections between the film’s
representations of gender, race, nationality
and religion. Discussion will centre on the way binary
oppositions in, and across,
these identity categories construct a
liberated, white, American woman as
superior to a Middle-Eastern Other. This Otherness is primarily manifested
through the representations of the veil,
as a key symbol of the oppression of
Middle-Eastern women. While an in-depth review of the literature on
torture is
beyond the scope of this essay, it will
be argued that the film provides women’s
consent for militarism, by framing
torture as necessary in achieving equality for
women, further camouflaging other
agendas, policies and politics that underpin
war (Hunt 2010: 116).
'…images of burqa-clad Afghan women
represented as victims of
“barbaric, unshaven, cave-dwelling
fundamentalists” dominated the
media and provided the basis for the
Bush administration’s rhetoric
that this war would liberate Afghan
women' (Hunt and Rygiel 2006: 9).
Gendered war stories about the WOT
centre on the notion of Afghan, and other
Middle-Eastern, women being oppressed by
Middle-Eastern men (Hunt and
Rygiel 2006: 2-3). Feminists have
revealed the way these stories rely on binary
oppositions between masculine and
feminine, West and Other, Christianity and
Islam, Western and Muslim, etcetera
(Hunt and Rygiel 2006: 2-15). Hunt
(2010:
118) explains that these stories
position white, Western women as liberated in
comparison to Afghan women. The
‘gendered logic of protection’ and ‘concern for
the rights and dignity of women’ were
employed in these stories, in which
victimization was frequently signified
by the veil (Hunt and Rygiel 2006; 16;
Young 2003).
Many feminist theorists have recognised
the way gendered war stories since
September 11 have reproduced and
repackaged racist, colonial stories about
saving “oppressed” women from, both
their ‘backward’ culture and their
‘animalistic’ men (Hunt 2002: 117). These stories featured complex interactions
of race, gender, sexuality and religion,
and were used to justify imperial practices
of colonisation (Zine 2006: 27). As part of a mission to civilise, women from
colonising countries were positioned to
help rescue the victimized women of
colonised countries (Hunt 2006: 54).
Feminists have been critical in
revealing the way gendered war stories
camouflage both the reality of, for
example, attacks on women’s reproductive
rights in the U.S. and the increasing
threats to security for Afghan women through
U.S. attacks (Hunt 2002: 121; Ayotte and
Husain 2005: 112). While there is
insufficient space to deal with the
multitude of gendered war stories here, it is
worth emphasising that often these hide
other undisclosed reasons for war, such
as imperialist expansion (Hunt 2010:
119).
The film ZD30 tells the story of the
Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) decade
long search for Osama Bin Laden. The film is framed as a true story, opening
with
the screen caption, “The following
motion picture is based on first hand accounts
of actual events” (Bigelow 2012). The text, “September 11, 2001” (Bigelow
2012),
then appears on the screen, accompanied
by what seems like ‘real life’ dialogue
from various events surrounding the 2001
terrorist attacks in the U.S.. Hasian
(2013) argues that the film presents
itself as an authentic, historical
reconstruction. Binary constructions around gender becomes an
immediate
feature in framing the story, as the
film opens with voices of women screaming
and sounding hysterical. “I’m going to die aren’t I” (Bigelow 2012),
one woman
says.
In the same scene, men are heard performing technical tasks associated
with conventional masculinity. Like other mainstream Hollywood narratives,
the
complex interaction of various elements
of the film exemplified in the first few
minutes establishes and anticipates the
film’s overall meaning (Hasian 2013).
The film is largely a confusing
collection of names of people and locations, the
dialogue is fast-paced and the use of
abbreviations (for people, place names, and
intelligence operations) makes the plot
difficult to follow. The lack of
narrative
cohesion is counter to what is made more
obvious in the film, that the ‘real-life’
discovery of Bin Laden was the
consequence of one hardworking, liberated, white,
American woman named Maya. For about the
first hour, the film focuses almost
exclusively on the visual depiction of
terrorist attacks both in the U.S. and
overseas. These attacks are intertwined with scenes of
U.S. agents torturing and
questioning men of Middle-Eastern
appearance. Many argue that the film
presents torture as critical to locating
Bin Laden (Bush 2014; Rashid et. al. 2014;
Richter-Montpetit 2014).
The film emphasises the transition of
the lead protagonist, from a woman
associated with more traditional
femininity, to one that embodies characteristics
of a liberated, modern, white Western
woman. Gendered war stories rely on the
appropriation of feminism, with one
critic suggesting that ZD30, “puts a female on
the face of imperialism” (Eisenstein
2013, n.p.) and others arguing that torture is
used to provide a woman’s blessing for
going to war (Hasian 2014; Rashidi et. al.
2014).
The film ends with another iconic event in American memory, the storm
on the Abbottabad compound where Bin
Laden is located and killed (Rashidi et.
al. 2014: 132).
In deconstructing the film, ZD30, Laura
Shepherd’s (2013) three analytical
strategies: spoken language, body language, and
non-linguistic signifiers will be
used. Spoken language includes the
linguistic elements of the narrative, for
example, the script and captions
(Shepherd 2013). It includes linguistic
tropes, a
narrative device used as a cognitive
short-cut, to reduce the need for extra
explanation. These symbols carry mainstream accepted
meaning (Shepherd
2013: 8). Body language incorporates gesture and
expression, and other
elements such as where, and in relation
to whom, characters are physically
positioned (Shepherd 2013: 9). Non-linguistic signifiers include tropes,
i.e. icons,
where an abstract image stands in for
another concept. In the film, the veil
is a
symbol of the oppression of Middle-Eastern
women. These elements combine to
allow for detailed deconstruction of
narrative representations, and will be the
focus of the analysis that follows
(Shepherd 2013: 8-9).
The notion that cultural representations
are important in understanding
international relations, both shaping
and being shaped by them, provides
justification for the analysis of the
film (Rowley 2010: 309). Culture gives
meaning to experiences and shapes the
way individuals make sense of the world.
In the modern West, cinematic myths have
a lot of power (Ferber 2012: 64). A
number of theorists (Welch 2010; Bush
2014) have noted that American attitudes
toward torture became more permissible
after the September 11 attacks. 45% of
those surveyed in one poll said they would
not object torture, if it supplied
information about terrorism (Welch 2010:
132). Others have connected the U.S.
public’s support for torture to the
recent proliferation of spy movies and
television shows, which increasingly
depict torture as heroic (Bush 2014:93;
Cornell 2013). It is worth emphasising that collectively,
visual and textual
depictions of torture have normalised it
and presented it as effective and
appropriate (Bush 2014: 93), despite the
fact that; many would argue it is never
morally permissible, it is illegal in
U.S. and international law, and has been long
deemed ineffective by the agencies that
practiced it in the WOT (Hasian Jr. 2013;
Blakeley 2011).
Representations of the lead female
protagonist, Maya, are crucial to
understanding the way the film tells a
mainstream gendered war story. At the
start of the film, Maya is represented
as a woman who embodies the
characteristics associated with
traditional femininity. The first time
she is shown
in the CIA office, she is presented
doing ‘women’s work’ and being ‘obsessed with
cleanliness’, both tropes for
traditional femininity. When she arrives
at her desk,
she brushes a finger over the dusty
table and proceeds to clean it. Then,
she sits
in front of a computer looking
dumbfounded. These representations
demonstrate
both her lack of experience in the CIA
and her supposed lack of rationality.
Reinforcing her traditionally feminine
position, the first torture scenes show
Maya as relatively passive. Her body language is used to convey a sense
of shock,
discomfort and repulsion. She looks away
from the camera and from the torture
presented onscreen, often positioned in
the background of shots. Her fiery red
hair and her ultra pale skin are further
representative of her conventional white,
western femininity.
Maya’s femininity is reinforced by the
way she is treated by her CIA colleagues.
At
the start of the film she is
infantilised, dominated and humiliated.
In the first
torture scenes, her male colleague, Dan,
explains to her that there is, “no shame if
you want to watch [torture] from the
monitor” (Bigelow 2012). He adds that
she
“might want to put this on” (Bigelow
2012), in reference to a black hood to
conceal her identity from the suspect
they are torturing. Dan’s dialogue
affirms
his role as both ‘protector’ and ‘actor’
(torturer), to her ‘protected’ and being
‘acted on’ (dominated), largely playing
out conventional gender roles. Dan
assigns her a task, to get a bucket and
fill it up with water, for the waterboarding
he is about to commit. “Hurry up” and “come on give it to me”
(Bigelow 2012), he
instructs with impatience. She watches the sexual humiliation of a
prisoner and is
made to stay in the room alone, with him
naked.
The film’s focus of women’s clothing,
the veil becoming a major symbol of
Otherness. Maya’s Western-style clothing and her
individualistic adaptation of
Muslimesque head-coverings, are a
consistent reminder of both her freedom, and
the freedom of western women. Maya’s initial steps toward agency to become
a
more ‘liberated’ woman are accompanied
by both her appropriation of a range of
head coverings, and her complicity with
torture. The first scene that the viewer
sees her directly interrogating a
detainee, she adopts her first head covering.
Maya’s agency emerges from her
realization that the detainee she will be
questioning has been tortured the day
before. Her subsequent interrogation of
the tortured suspect leads to the name
of Bin Laden’s courier. It is here that
the
viewer sees Maya begin to accept torture
as a necessary method. The scene also
involves Maya becoming a more active
participant, and as a consequence, she is
taken more seriously by her colleagues.
A range of other scenes encourage the
viewer to remember mainstream gendered
war stories, including the veil, as a
symbol of oppression. Maya is dressed in
blue
throughout the film, the colour of the
veil worn by ‘the most oppressed women in
the world’, those from Afghanistan. In one scene, Maya is shown arriving at her
Pakistani residence in a black
abaya. The camera juxtaposes the abaya
with
tropes of freedom and choice: converse
shoes, and the canned drinks and the
lollies that she is consuming. When she participates in actual torture,
instructing
her assistant to strike the detainee a
number of times, she is again wearing a blue
headdress.
'Whether in the context of covering or
uncovering, collapsing
differences among Muslim women through
the use of the burqa as a
generalised symbol of female oppression
performs a colonizing
function. Under such assignment, women’s status as
objects remains
fixed since they are denied power to
speak of differences, their
placement in the existing
first/third-world imperialist order secured.
In contemporary U.S., as in European
colonial, discourses, “(t)he
domesticated, subjugated, unenlightened
Other as opposed to the
liberated, independent and enlightened
Western self was used as a
moral prop to legitimize colonial power
relations' (Ayotte and Husain
2005: 118).
Feminist analysis of gendered war
stories provides context to understand the
absence of voices of Middle-Eastern
women in the film. Ayotte and Husain
(2005)
explain that binary oppositions between
the West and the Other are both typical
of those used by colonising nations, and
more recently used in gendered war
stories.
Throughout the film, representations of gender, religion, race and
nationality reinforce one another. Islamabad streets (Pakistan’s capital) are
shown as mostly absent of women. The first women that are briefly shown are;
one in a black, and the other in a
white, abaya. Later, a woman in an
abaya, and
two women in burqas are shown on the
telephone, reinforcing gendered stories
that suggest that Muslims with
telephones are a security threat. Majed
contrasts
the film’s representations with the real
Pakistan where,
'you are as likely to see women with no
head coverings on the street as
you are to hijabis, and where chadris
and abayas are a rare
spectacle…the sky-blue chadris seen
multiple times in the movie would
normally only be observed in Afghanistan' (Majed 2013: n.p.).
It is significant that the film, almost absent
of any representations of non-
Western women, also features no speaking
roles for non-Western women.
Middle-eastern women are shown always
veiled. Freeman (2006: 181) points out
that narratives about the veil have been
used since colonial times, in an attempt to
prove Western superiority over Muslim
societies. Even when Muslim women
claim they are wearing the veil
voluntarily, they are viewed as passive, removing
agency for these women (Freedman 2006:
181).
Brittain (2006:92) argues that Iraqi
women were virtually absent from Iraq
invasion narratives because, “Arab femininity
only serves the imperialist project
as a silent figure of oppression in need
of rescue”. Hunt and Rygiel (2006: 1)
confirm that it is typical in gendered
war stories to exclude women altogether, or
when they are included, they shown as
passive and being acted upon. Hunt
(2006: 55) adds that these stories often
construct Western feminism as the
saviour of Middle-Eastern women,
speaking for and objectifying other women.
The failure to acknowledge the
differences and power equalities between women
of different backgrounds is typical of
the film. Marchand (2009: 932) points
out
that “…wearing a veil does not
necessarily mean that women are subordinated; it
may also signify an act of resistance of
a statement of identity”.
Shepherd (2006: 26) explains that the
veil is central to the construction of the
enemy as an irrational barbarian. This often includes subtle mockery and overt
vilification (Freedman 2006) and both
are recognisable in the film, through
Maya’s appropriation of the veil. Through its representations of the veil and
its
absence of voices of Muslim and/or
Middle-Eastern women, the film inaccurately
asserts that all Middle-Eastern women
are oppressed.
In the film, ‘exotic’ music (accompanied
by the sounds of Muslim prayer) and
shots of mosques are excessively used
tropes, connecting Pakistan to Islamic
fundamentalism and Otherness. On her first night in Islamabad, Maya is
shown
being woken up by Arabic sounding
music. On arrival at the U.S. Embassy,
Maya
is asked by her boss what she thinks of
Pakistan. “It’s kind of fucked up”, she
replies (Bigalow 2012). In another scene, Maya shakes her head, when
the sound
of Muslim prayer again accompanies the
‘exotic’ music. Throughout the film,
signifiers of Otherness are used in a
way that many critics have described as
Orientalist (Hasian Jr. 2013).
'The word “Orientalism” was first used by
Edward Said (1978) to
describe a Western perspective towards
Muslim populations that
assumes that all people associated with
Islam are fundamentally unable
to progress and adhere to Western
standards of morality and
civilization. The prejudiced assumptions include: that
Muslims are less
intelligent and incapable of learning;
that Muslim men are more violent,
controlling and hypersexualized than
Western men; that Muslim
women are more submissive and therefore
more helpless than Western
women; and that all Muslims are
religiously fundamentalist' (Gentry &
Sjoberg 2014: 123).
The film reinforces these Orientalist
assumptions about Muslims and relies on
stereotypes in constructing narrative
meaning. In one scene, Dan’s is told
that he
should inform a detainee that he has a
PhD. The only time the larger issue of
the
root causes of terrorism are discussed
in the film, the two lead females assume
terrorists are only motivated by greed
or extremist ideology. These
explanations
of the deeper causes of terrorism,
ignore respected literature on its root causes
(Sageman 2014). They adhere to Western ideas about
motivations for human
behaviour and Orientalist assumptions
about Middle-Eastern people being
irrational fundamentalists.
The film’s Orientalism is further
confirmed in a sequence where Dan is shown
feeding monkeys in a cage. In an American compound overseas, where
detainees
are taken to be tortured, deliberate
connection is made between animals and
detainees. While it could be argued that the film may be
asserting the animalism
of terrorists, it has been argued
throughout that the film frames race, religion,
nation and gender in ways that blur
boundaries between terrorism, religious
extremism, and popular colonial
narratives about ‘brown men’ oppressing ‘brown
women’.
Various elements of the film work together to confirm the Otherness of
Middle-Eastern men, reinforcing binary
oppositions between them and civilized,
white Western men from mainstream
gendered war stories.
McRobbie’s (2004) discussion of
post-feminism can provide a more sophisticated
understanding of the film’s binary
framing of the difference between the Western,
white female and its Other. Post-feminism is a term used regularly in
cultural
studies to describe the position of many
mainstream texts that appropriate
feminist discourses (Ferber 2012:
68). In post-feminist representations,
men and
women are seen to have achieved equal
opportunities and further steps toward
inequality are viewed unnecessary
(Ferber 2012:67; McRobbie 2004: 257).
Hasian Jr. explains,
'it should not be surprising that American
women take pride in their
role as drone pilots…the military seems
to provide just those types of
postfeminist, individualized
opportunities that might have been denied
to earlier generations of women' (Hasian
Jr. 2013: 327).
The film, Hasian Jr. (2013) argues,
asserts that men and women of the CIA are
equals.
Here, post-feminism should also be read as a particular exemplar of
modern, capitalist individualism, where
people play out their real lives as largely
economic actors. Marchand (2009: 924) explains how this
individualist
subjectivity has permeated lived
experiences, both in the international
development agenda and within nations,
through privatisation. For example,
elements of gender justice, now made
integral as part of the international
development agenda, have pushed a
neoliberal economic agenda, encouraging
individuals who adhere to economic
rationalism to be rewarded (Marchand
2009).
While an examination of the construction
of modern subjectivity, and its
intersections with modern capitalism, is
beyond the scope of this essay, it is worth
emphasising that women’s status in the
modern West is depicted as a product of
their own individual choices, and the
tropes of feminism are often used to
reinforce capitalist individualism
(Koivunen 2009: n.p.). Through the lead
character’s post-feminism; the
discourses outside of the film that reinforce the
value of capitalist individualism; and
the post-feminist subjectivities (of the
viewer of the film), a viewer of ZD30 is
encouraged to understand neoliberalist
individualism as a stand in for
democracy. Feminist theorists point that
that ideas
of freedom point to a neoliberal
economic agenda that promotes individualism
over democratic rights (Koivunen 2009:
n.p.; Marchand 2009).
A key scene that plays out the post-feminist
assertion that sexuality is an
individualist choice is one that
involves a discussion between Maya and her
female CIA colleague, Jessica, at dinner
at the Marriot Hotel in Islamabad.
Jessica
asks Maya if she is having sex with Dan
(her colleague at the CIA). Maya says
that
she is “not the girl who fucks”. It is worth recalling McRobbie (2004: 259)
here,
because like Maya, the individualist
woman “seems to be doing it [expressing her
sexuality] out of choice, and for her
own enjoyment”. This, the only direct
reference to Maya’s sexuality and the
discussion between the two women is
immediately followed by a terrorist
attack which destroys the hotel. Both
women
come out unharmed. Reading the film as a post-feminist text, the
viewer is
encouraged to think that Western women
do not need to be punished for
choosing to have a sexuality, something
which, typically, Middle-Eastern women
are seen to be denied.
In many gendered war stories, the
freedoms championed as ‘civilized’ values
often centre around freedoms of
individualist choice, rather than freedom; of
though, of the press, or of public
assembly, all vital to true democracy (Ferguson
2005: 28; Shepherd (2006: 31). The film does not examine institutionalised
discrimination in any significant way,
suggesting that discrimination can be
overcome through individualistic
solutions. For instance, although there
is some
sexism directed toward Maya, this is
shed when she becomes a more individual,
post-feminist woman. The film recalls Koivunen’s (2009: n. p.)
reading of the
post-feminist woman where, “her process
of self-interrogation takes place
without any discussion of conditions or
resources, economic, social or cultural”.
The way in which individuals under
capitalism become disciplined by modes of
self-regulation is a consistent feature
of the film. As it progresses, Maya becomes
more comfortable with torture and is
simultaneously presented as a more
individualist, competent, powerful and
respected woman. A key scene involves
her analysing torture tapes. Maya is shown alone, working late and
rubbing her
eyes because she is tired, close-ups of
her face indicate that she is intensely
focused on her work. Earlier scenes using the computer as a symbol
of Maya’s
irrationally are recalled, and reversed,
to represent Maya’s transition to an expert
in technology/rationality. While she is not participating in torture
directly, she is
watching it on the screen, analysing it,
without showing emotion.
In between her analysis of the torture
tapes, the viewer is presented with a scene
that signifies her transition. She is shown emerging from total darkness. We
do
not see her shoes, but we can hear her
high heels on the concrete, a trope that
suggests she is becoming a powerful,
‘modern’, woman. As she emerges from the
dark, Maya has become the
self-regulating, individualized woman whose agency is
largely about individual choice, both to
torture and to dress according to her own
initiative. The viewer is encouraged to recognise what
women can achieve
anything through hard work. Cornell (2013, n.p) argues that when Maya
learns to
accept the necessity of torture, she
becomes more powerful and successful.
Maya’s endorsement of torture recalls
McRobbie’s (2004: 258) notion that
successful female individuals are
dependent on an anti-feminism, a displacement
of feminism as a political movement,
i.e. a rejection of anti-racist, anti-imperialist
and anti-war politics. In this scene, Maya chooses female
individualism over
feminism.
Feminist analysis of gendered war
stories provides greater understanding of the
film’s representations. The film reworks Brittain’s (2006: 80)
analysis of
gendered war stories, where narratives
of vulnerable, white women being
rescued from barbaric brown men by white
men. Modernising colonialist
narratives, by incorporating
post-feminism, the film suggests that white women
are possible saviours of brown
women. Through Maya, Western women
demonstrate possibilities for agency
non-Western women, if they become
individualized, post-feminist
subjects. Ayotte and Husain (2005: 123)
add that
gendered war stories about the war on
terror featuring women advocating
violence are “more persuasive because,
when a woman advocates violence,
supposedly there must be no other
recourse.
To further understand the extent to
which gender, religion, race and nationality
intersect to position White Western
women, as superior to the Other, a closer
look at the film’s representations of
Christian privilege will be undertaken.
It has
already been outlined how the veil has
been used as a signifier of religious
oppression. There are a range of other ways that the film
reaffirms the value of
Christianity over Islam.
Christonormativity is the privileging of Christianity over
other religions, by defining it as
superior and normal, often in hidden and
complex ways.
'Christian privilege is embedded in our
laws, policies, schools and
workplaces. In schools, for example, the curriculum,
dress codes,
cafeteria food, and even the calendar
reinforce Christian values and
practices as universal norms, where
their underlying Christian
foundation is often invisible to all
except those who are marginalized
and excluded from such practices' (Ferber
2012: 71).
A key sequence which demonstrates the
intersections of gender, race, religion in
privileging Christianity centers around
Christmas. Maya’s female colleague,
Jessica, is shown at Camp Chapman,
Afghanistan. She has baked a cake for
the
birthday of a suspect that she intends
to bribe/question for information. On
the
telephone, Maya says that she, “doesn’t
think that Muslims celebrate with cake”
(Bigalow 2012). Jessica then says, “We’ve got lots of wine”
(Bigalow 2012). The
dialogue is a trope of the subtle
mockery of the practices of others (who may
choose not to drink alcohol), by
normalising practices that modern Christians may
regard as normal. These scenes end in the death of Jessica,
from the terrorist
suspect (suicide bomber) for whom she
baked a cake. After Jessica’s death,
Maya
states, of the search for Bin Laden, “a
lot of my friends have died trying to do this.
I believe I was spared so that I could
finish the job” (Bigalow 2012). For the
rest
of the film, Maya seems to adopt a
messiah complex. The rationality of her
theories is obscure. When she is asked
about how sure she is that Bin Laden is
hiding in the Abbatobad compound, she
says she is 100% , while the others in her
team are 60 or 80% confident (Husain Jr.
2013). The film’s suggestion that Maya
is influenced by a higher power acts to
further define Christianity as superior to
an constructed Islamic Other.
Ferber (2012: 63) uses an intersectional
framework to examine how racism, post-
feminism and christonomativity combine
to reinforce and defend the culture of
privilege. Post-colonial feminists have been critical in
insisting that the repetition
of representations of gender, race,
religion, nationality, sexuality and other
identity categories combine to manifest
privilege or discrimination (Hunt and
Rygiel 2006: 1). Further investigation of these links is
essential in understanding
the connections between gender,
neoliberal subjectivities, global capitalism and
militarism.
Throughout the film, racism (both overt
and covert), post-feminism and
Christonormativity bind together to
privilege the West and Western white
women. In the film,
'the belief that legal obstacles to equality
have been removed and
everyone has equal opportunities to
succeed, is used to justify not only
race, but gender and religious
inequality, which is rearticulated as the
product of the poor choices of
individuals, rather than a systemic issue.
When we hear the very same arguments
offered to explain each one of
these systems of inequality, it gives
them more legitimacy. The more
familiar the arguments are, the more
they feel intuitively right to
people.
The frames are more likely to resonate, and to feel like
“common sense” '(Ferber 2012:74).
In conclusion, it has been argued that
the film ZD30 uses gender, race and religion
to assert an opposition between a
Western, white, liberated woman and a Middle-
Eastern other. These representations, typical of mainstream
war stories, act to
reinforce militaristic and unilateral responses
to war. In the absence of a critique
of militarism (and by asserting its
normality through the post-feminist woman),
the film actively reinforces mainstream
positions about war. In an environment
where signifiers of Otherness such as
the veil are used without scrutiny, (and the
public adopt these attitudes through key
signifiers and the popular texts that
represent them) many feminists argue
that representations need to promote the
value of difference, not Otherness
(Marchand 2009: 932). The complexity of
difference can be revealed through the
lived experiences of real women as these
often challenge the binary oppositions
which construct our subjectivities,
institutions and cultural
representations. It is important that
feminists
deconstruct representations,
institutions, discourses (such as international
relations) and individual
subjectivities. Without this scrutiny of
the way these
elements mutually constitute one
another, problems with the West’s adherence to
capitalism and imperialism remain
camouflaged. The unpacking of mainstream
gendered war stories may help to both
deepen our understanding of its root
causes and question the usefulness of
militaristic responses.
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