Towards Just War-Film Theory: A Critical Analysis of Propagandistic Elements in US War Film

Othering is distinct from dehumanization in the sense that other creates an ontological antagonist out of another human being.³⁷ While dehumanization creates an object which does not receive the same moral benefit of the doubt as a person, othering creates a person onto which actions can be justified because they are directed toward threats to the self's perceived hegemony although they are human.³⁸ Both dehumanization and othering are co-implicative and are often cased together in similar depictions. However, they are distinct apparatuses in the portrayal of persons, particularly in war film, which both serve to code a moral evaluation into the film in distinct ways. As a result, they deserve to be analyzed separately.

This distinction is important and worth further emphasis: dehumanization creates an object toward which use or exploitation is justified (as in the case of the depiction of casualities in aerial bombardment as means to an end of war); othering, on the other hand, depicts a person or agent toward which even normally questionable action may be justified uncritically on the grounds that they are are threat to peaceful human existence.³⁹ This is the way in which othering augments a moral evaluation of just cause, because just cause requires in part, the perception of the other as unjust and necessity of war as a last resort. Through othering, both of these principles of just war become easily coded by the depiction of the enemy as adulterated moral agents which justifies military action as necessary for elimination.

In light of its controversial reception and massive box office success, it is worthwhile, for the final subject of this analysis to take a closer look at Clint Eastwood's American Sniper (2014). The primary reason for this, is because it represents a more contemporary example of war cinema, in a time where conversations about the jingoism of war films has come under fire, and filmmakers are expected to respond to the public's aversion to patriotic portrayals of war as propagandistic. This enables us, in the course of this analysis, to apply the framework posited here to a subject with a more convoluted approach to the coding of a moral evaluation of war. Although the film has been widely receive as "jingoist propaganda" the creative team has largely sought to reassure the public that the film is an a-political study of the struggle of an individual soldier.⁴⁰ Despite the intended a-political nature of the film, a deeper understanding of apparatus of othering that exists throughout the film, enables us to critique the film on its own, regardless of the intentions of the creative team and reveal the mechanism with which a moral evaluation of war is coded into the narrative.

The moment when our protagonist Chris Kyle chooses to join the military is emblematic. Sitting in his living room with his younger brother, news of the bombing of the American embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania breaks on the TV. In response, Kyle mutters only to the viewers ears, an unambiguous statement of pure othering: "Look what they did to us." From the viewers standpoint, both they and us are obscure—it is not even clear in the context of the film that Kyle knows anything about the people who constitute "they" as the reporter even mentions that they are unsure who committed the bombing. Additionally is also not clear that Kyle includes any of the Tanzanians, or anyone else in his consideration of "us."⁴¹

Certainly, it is possible that the filmmakers intended to include the mechanism of othering as it exists in the story of the common soldier. However, throughout the rest of the film, Kyle is lionized for his honorable and self-sacrificial commitment to the protection of his brothers in arms (as well as his literal brother). As Lennart Soberon has aptly interpreted American Sniper through the lens of the classic western genre, the othering of Iraqi militants is reinforced throughout the remainder of the film as a depiction of a war between civilization and savagery.⁴² Enemies are at times called savages, and Kyle at one points reports back to his wife, "I've never seen evil like this before." Additionally, the enemy sniper Mustafa is clearly set up as the anti-Kyle— the antagonist other. The othering may be a depiction of reality, but it is clear in the context of this film, that it still functions as an apparatus through which just cause is coded onto a moral evaluation of the war, and the actions of our protagonist.

Soberon's analysis of American Sniper and the way in which its depiction of the war in Iraq is coded with moral evaluations of the war contours precisely with the purpose of this investigation and is worth quoting at length: In its evocation of frontier mythology the film delivers to audiences a powerful frame of reference through which contemporary geopolitics are to be read, at the same time promoting an aggressive foreign policy and a militaristic disregard for human life. Such attitudes are further enforced by American Sniper’s representation of the enemy as a savage entity that can only be eliminated through acts of regenerative violence. [...] Such sentiments thereby facilitate the justification of war as a viable, and indeed necessary, means of political action.⁴³

To deepen Soberon's conclusion, it is one function of othering in media through which the moral evaluation of just cause is coded into the narrative—American military are the innocents worth protecting, threatening Iraqis (or Syrians) are unjust agents. Additionally, othering and the portrayal of enemies as savages, codes onto the narrative the reprobation of barbarism, incapable of being reasoned with and requiring the use of violence as a last resort to restore justice. While the creative team behind American Sniper is able to, in part, circumvent the wholesale othering of the enemy through the portrayal of Kyle as a honorable soldier who wrestles with the moral justification of his own actions, it utilizes the apparatus of othering to code a moral evaluation into the actions of Kyle as just, thereby transcoding the same moral evaluation onto the American agents in the historical war for the viewer.