The Tropes of War

Visual Hyperbole and Spectacular Culture

Andrea Greenbaum

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781137550767
• eBook ISBN: 9781137550774
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Social Sciences

This book examines the myriad ways in which war is culturally reassembled, appropriated, and commodified as it manifests itself in our culture and invades our public imagination and becomes an indelible part of our landscape through fashion, movies, graphic novels, television etc.

1

The Mother of All Tropes: Visual Hyperbole and the Middle East

Abstract: Chapter 1 explores the use of visual hyperbole as a potent tool for the manipulation of public discourse, and, as I envision it, suggests that it branches into three distinct areas of analysis: the first is the media capture of “authentic” events, such as, for example, the execution of photojournalist James Foley. The events are genuine, not orchestrated, but they become part of the visually hyperbolic when the media magically appropriates the images, repeating and expanding them, so that the narrative becomes part of the mythic, disproportionate domain of hyperbolic discourse. The second is concerned with the manufacture of events (like the rescue of Jessica Lynch), as orchestrated by governments, groups, or the media. And the third is the use of illustrations and caricatures (such as the Danish cartoons that caricatured Mohammed, and the sparked protest from the Islamic world), by their very nature hyperbolic, since they are exaggerations of appearance and ideology.

Greenbaum, Andrea. The Tropes of War: Visual Hyperbole and Spectacular Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137550774.0006.

The beat poet Allen Ginsberg writes in “Witchita Vortex Sutra” that, “The war is language ... used like magic for power on the planet,” and there is no doubt that the ways in which cultures use – or more accurately, abuse – tropes and schemes often leads to violence, moving from the symbolic realm of language into the literal realm of action. The most notable examples emerge from German discourse during World War II, particularly the perfected use of euphemisms, when terms such as “final solution,” “special treatment,” and “resettlement” were part of a language of intentional obfuscation and misdirection. So the use of tropes in military discourse is certainly nothing new, but we live in a digital age, where words and images spread like spilled red wine on a white tablecloth. And the real costs of hyperbole translate into deaths of civilians, a global resurgence of anti-Semitism, a hydra-headed profusion of terrorist organizations, and the creation of a climate of fear and anxiety.

This chapter examines the use of hyperbole, as it moves from the verbal sphere to the visual. Specifically, I would like to expand on Henry Giroux’s notion of the “Spectacle of Terrorism” and express my own term, which I’m calling “Visual Hyperbole.” Visual Hyperbole is a potent tool for the manipulation of public discourse, and as I envision it, branches into three areas of analysis: the first is the media capture of “authentic” events, such as, for example, Figure 1.1, the Joe Rosenthal photograph of the Raising of the Flag at Iwo Jima.

The events are genuine, not orchestrated, but they become part of the visually hyperbolic when the media magically appropriates the images, repeating and expanding them, so that the narrative becomes part of the mythic, disproportionate domain of hyperbolic discourse. We saw the resonance of this image repeated with the Thomas Franklin photograph from September 11th, in which New York City firefighters are seen raising the flag over Ground Zero.

What makes the Thomas Franklin photograph hyperbolic is not that it’s a derivative of the Rosenthal photograph (which, of course, it surely is), or that it echoes or reverberates with the pathos of patriotism and nostalgia, creating its own unique status as a symbol of American fortitude and resilience, but that the image went through another iteration and became a postage stamp, thereby semiotically moving from the public space of documentation to the realm of commerce.

The second area of critique in regard to Visual Hyperbole is concerned with the manufacture of media events, sometimes orchestrated by the government, sometimes authentic, in that they occurred, but they are used, narrated for ideological purposes. For instance, the rescue of Private First Class Jessica Lynch, who served as a Unit Supply Specialist with the 507th Maintenance Company when her convoy was ambushed by Iraqi forces in the Battle of Nasiriyah. Her subsequent rescue, 21 days later, by U.S. Special Forces was filmed and then distributed to media outlets, where Lynch was labeled as a hero. Later, Lynch disputed that claim, suggesting that the military was using her as a propaganda tool. Other images include the toppling of the Saddam Hussein statue in Firdos Square, the image of captured Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll, at first calm and then in the next video, wearing a hijab and pleading for her life. And then, of course, there are the horrific beheading videos. These are the kinds of hyperbolic images that are orchestrated by governments, groups, or the media.

And the third category of Visual Hyperbole is the use of illustrations and caricatures that, by their very nature, are hyperbolic, since they are exaggerations of appearance and ideology. Michael Blain suggests that “hyperbole is the idiom of political violence and an essential vehicle for preparing a nation for war” and that “violence and cruelty ... is rooted in the hyperbolic resources of language” (Blain 258). In sum, the language and images of political hyperbole inexorably transmogrify into a beast of violence.

FIGURE 1.1 U.S. Marines of the 28th Regiment, 5th Division, raise the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima, on Feb. 23, 1945 (AP Photo/Joe Rosenthal)

Hyperbole and the distortion of reality

By definition, hyperbole is a “semantic figure of exaggeration or overstatement that exceeds the truth and reality of things. It is mostly a kind of metaphor or allegory that raises the referential object beyond probability ... ” (Plett 364). And therefore, like all figurative language, hyperbole has an affective dimension, the ability to move us and to elicit visceral responses. Furthermore, hyperbole is difficult to categorize for two reasons: first, because it overlaps with metaphor, simile, and metonymy, and so it fails to fit neatly into a discrete category, and second, because academic discussions of hyperbole almost always subsume it within the category of “verbal irony and humour” (McCarthy and Carter 150), making it difficult to take seriously as a tool of oppression. But Neal Norrick has argued that we can recognize hyperbole by its three characteristics: (1) Its affective nature, (2) its pragmatic usage, and (3) its function as amplification (Norrick, qtd. in McCarthy and Carter 156).

According to McCarthy and Carter, hyperbole also depends upon a “joint acceptance of a distortion of reality ... ” (McCarthy and Carter 161). It is in fact this “distortion of reality” that troubled Aristotle, who warned that the use of “hyperboles are adolescent, for they exhibit vehemence ... Thus it is inappropriate for an older man to speak [in hyperbole]”(Kennedy 253). McCarthy and Carter’s study on the verbal use of hyperbole is interesting for those of us who teach critical thinking, in that they note:

Hyperbole is a kind of “structuring” of reality where there are competing realities; it can enable sharp focus on one account of reality and downplay rival accounts, and it brings the listeners into the perspective of the speaker in a powerful way. Although it may be heard as counter to other claims to describe reality, or as describing impossibilities, hyperbole is not heard as an act of lying. [italics mine] (McCarthy and Carter 152)

This is an important point. If I, for instance, have not eaten in a few hours, and I say, “I’m starving,” or perhaps I’ve eaten too much and I say, “I ate like a pig,” the auditor doesn’t point his or her finger at me and scream, “Liar!” The auditor tacitly agrees that my use of hyperbole is warranted, given my desire to emphasize a particular point, either that I was hungry or that I overate. Furthermore, such emphasis on my part does not warrant a response from an auditor, since I don’t challenge a worldview, pose a proposition, or confront political or cosmological assumptions.

But what if I did? What if my use of hyperbole involved creating an exaggerated perspective that distorts (as is the very nature of hyperbole) reality and creates a bellicose rhetoric that does not simply disparage, but creates a Manichean split of epic proportions, good and evil, right and wrong, just and unjust. As Michael Blain in his study of Hitler’s hyperbole during World War II notes, the “efficacy of [such] a discourse resides in its tactical use of victims to constitute villainous enemies. ... A war discourse dramatizes the current scene of world history” (Blain 263). In the words of George W. Bush in his September 20, 2001 address to Congress, “You’re either with us or against us.” Or bin Laden’s, “You are either a believer or an infidel.” The either/or assertion is, as most of us who teach rhetoric know, a logical fallacy, but yet such constructions are part of the routine narratives that emerge from the Middle East – from all sides.

Saddam Hussein was particularly adept at the use of verbal hyperbole, and before the 1991 Gulf War, Hussein threatened that if international forces led by the United States attacked Iraq, it would be “The mother of all wars,” giving rise not only to the title of this chapter, but to an all purpose, fun-to-use catchphrase, as in: “the mother of all (fill in the blank).” Likewise, before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Uday Hussein, Saddam’s son, warned that the Iraqi troops would make the mothers of U.S. soldiers “weep blood instead of tears.” And during Hussein’s trial, according to CNN, the judge had to “cut off Hussein’s microphone at least nine times as the former Iraqi president made provocative remarks such as “You are living in darkness and bleeding from rivers of blood.” Likewise, Yasir Arafat’s secular Fatah organization talked about sending an “Army of Roses” in regards to women jihadists blowing themselves up in public places. And of course there was Arafat’s perpetual hyperbolic call for “millions of martyrs marching to Jerusalem.” I could go on: bin Laden referring to the United States as “The Great Satan”; Bush lapsing into cowboy speak, calling for bin Laden, “dead or alive”; his “axis of evil” comment at the U.N.; our ridiculous naming of military operations, like “Shock and Awe,” “Enduring Freedom,” and most recently, “Swarm.” The interview with Master Sgt. Kelly Tyler, offers, perhaps, my favorite hyperbolic expression. As Tyler, a spokeswoman for the 101st Airborne, the soldiers who killed Uday, Qusay, and Saddam’s grandson, said to CNN, the soldiers at the post were, “absolutely giddy” and “The 101st kicks ass” (CNN. July 22, 2005).

However, because the power of hyperbole is to describe the world “in terms of disproportionate dimensions” (Haverkate 103; qtd. in McCarthy and Carter 152), it must be linked, at least philosophically, to the discourse of propaganda, and Visual Hyperbole is its cousin; they go to the same parties, hang with the same unruly crowd, but we can distinguish Visual Hyperbole by its intention to not merely persuade, but to provoke, to horrify, to create, first and foremost, spectacle, and as with all forms of theatre, spectacle elicits pathos.

Douglas Kellner has done fine work in the study of the spectacle and terrorism, and he is particularly harsh in his view of the Bush administration’s use of spectacle to maneuver and steer public opinion in the War on Terrorism, but he also recognizes the thuggish qualities of the beheading and hostage videos and asserts that terrorism “works in part through spectacle, using dramatic images and montage to catch attention, hoping thereby to catalyze unanticipated events that will spread further terror through domestic populations” (Kellner 87). Kellner also argues that the targets of September 11th were themselves symbolic, representing “global capital and American military power” (Kellner 83), and I would go a step further and assert that the Twin Towers are an example of architectural hyperbole, excessive, exaggerated buildings – an easy mark. In Figure 1.2, we see Richard Drew’s photo, which became known as “The Falling Man.” This photo moved into public consciousness as it came to represent the horror of the choices of those left in the Towers: stay and be consumed by flames or jump. Many jumped.

Giroux argues that what he refers to as the “spectacle of terrorism” (26) became inaugurated by the video images of the hijacked planes crashing into the World Trade Center. Figure 1.3 shows the south tower collapsing. The media replayed that image, looping it through every newscast and publication, so much so, I would contend, that it moved into the realm of the hyperbolic, excessive in repetition, haunting and, yes, spectacular.

Others, like Kellner, and I must agree with him, have maintained that this mode of spectacular terrorism appears much earlier, and he lists them. We can look back at the 1970s hijacking of three western planes by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The group forced the planes to land in the Jordanian desert, and then blew them up in an incident known as “Black September,” which was made into a Hollywood film. In 1972, Palestinian gunmen from the same movement took Israeli athletes hostage at the Munich Olympic Games, producing yet another Hollywood movie, Steven Spielberg’s Munich. In 1975, an OPEC (Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries) meeting was disrupted in Vienna, Austria, when a terrorist group, led by Carlos the Jackal, killed three people. In 1983, Americans were targeted in a truck bombing in Beirut, Lebanon, in which 243 U.S. servicemen were killed. In 1985, Palestinians seized the Italian cruise ship, Achille Lauro, where they killed Leon Klinghoffer, 69, a crippled, Jewish-American, and threw his body and wheelchair overboard. In 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed by Islamic terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden, and in 2000, terrorists bombed the U.S.S. Cole (Kellner, “September 11” 86–87).

FIGURE 1.2 A pers...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1  The Mother of All Tropes: Visual Hyperbole and the Middle East
• 2  War and the Graphic Novel: Memory as Enthymeme in Maus and Waltz with Bashir
• 3  The War Documentary: Restrepo and the Synecdoche of Masculinity
• 4  Metonymy of Peace: The Comic Book Peace Project
• Conclusion: Living in the Age of Babel: War, Rhetoric, and the Perils of Hyperbole
• Afterword
• Bibliography
• Index