Lines of Sight: Watching War in Jarhead and My War: Killing Time in Iraq

Abstract

Jarhead, Anthony Swofford's 2003 memoir of the Persian Gulf War, and My War: Killing Time in Iraq, Colby Buzzell's 2005 memoir of the Iraq War, emphasize the authors' voyeuristic delight in watching war movies before and during their military service. What follows their enthusiastic consumption of “military pornography,” however, is a crisis of nonidentification and a lingering uncertainty about the significance of war in their own lives. Swofford and Buzzell find that the gaze they initially wielded is turned on them, and in response Swofford roils with sexually coded anger and frustration while Buzzell chooses to amplify his exposure by starting a blog. The two memoirs, then, provide a compelling account of the relation between changing technologies of representation and the experience of postmodern war. These lines of sight, all targeting the spectacle of combat, reveal the contemporary intersections among war, media, and agency.

War, trauma and the militarized body

“…These memoirs inform us about the important role that war cinema plays in how soldiers experience war and integrate militarized experience into everyday life. The thrill of the violent cinematic spectacle frequently gives soldiers a sense of agency and create specific expectations regarding the actual war experience (Peebles, 2009(Peebles, , p. 1663. This is the case because film as phantasy can organize the soldier's desire.…”