Theory & Event

The rush of battle is a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.¹ Chris Hedges

Since enough theoretical eulogies have been written about the 'notorious' subject of desire,' … it is perhaps time to focus on the much more mysterious subjectivity brought about by the circular movement of the drive.² Slavoj Žižek

Not surprisingly, the film The Hurt Locker directed by Kathryn Bigelow has received near universal acclaim as the first great film about the Iraq War. Reading the "top" film critics together, one comes across an interesting tension between, on the one hand, sentiments about war that are complicit with a ruling ideology (the bravery and courage that goes with war is timeless and thus something beyond the privation of political talk, or even, for that matter, the symbolic) and, on the other hand, something else that totally threatens the fabric of this ideology (the film is evoking something about our time that is defining, something which we will have to look back on in order to understand).³ This tension between the clichés of war, clichés that worked wonders in depoliticizing the tenuous link between 9/11 and the Iraq War, and something that fascinates but which is not yet understandable is precisely what calls to be examined. Specifically, what is fascinating about the film is not the representation of the "real" of war and what it means to be a soldier in the Iraq War, but rather a penetrating insight into not only contemporary western culture but also a certain modality of subjectivity. In other words, there is no wonder that the film successfully captivates the audience – of being captivated by the suspense and the drama that unfolds in a rather magnificent rush, from start to end. I agree with Steven Shaviro when he writes about the film that "the senses are stretched to a point of acute tension and wary, analytical alertness … [such that] this sort of subjective state, as well, can be seen, heard, and felt to overflow as a kind of nonsubjective sensorial immersion."⁴ Where I disagree with Shaviro, however, is how to interpret this 'nonsubjective sensorial immersion.' It is this affect, this sensorial immersion that overrides the subject, and which evokes a point of captivation and fascination that I want to analyze.

There are two very different frames that dominate the film, but which function as though they are one and the same. The dominate frame, or the frame that develops a subjective point of view, is supported by a narrative detailing the dramatic lives of three men who are technicians on a bomb squad tasked with detonating or defusing improvised explosive devices or IED's in Baghdad, 2004. The film is organized around a series of rather long episodes in which our three protagonists are faced with incredibly suspenseful and riveting life or death scenarios, from defusing bombs to engaging in fire fights. Upping the ante to the suspense is the fact that they have 38 days left in their command, a fact the viewer is repeatedly reminded of, as if miming for the spectator the actual ticking of a bomb. While the conditions of this particular war are different than previous wars, the men fighting the war are not. This is a film about soldiers enduring the timeless drama and suspense of war itself, of men bound together by their very proximity to death, indeed bound to a language that is more real and thus mocks any commentary for or against the war. It is this "heroic" frame, one that offers a timeless insight into the 'real' of war, represented with such eloquence and bi-partisan passion by our top film critics, that forms the ideological coordinates of a nostalgic and tired humanism, and which, most importantly, enables a disavowal of the other, de-subjectivized frame – which is, quite simply, the stark brutality and nihilism of this specific war. It is almost uncanny how this other, disavowed frame hangs in the background. The gorgeous documentary style, hand held camera does indeed give us the feeling that we are in the...