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This book is the first comprehensive study of documentary film on the Iraq War. In a series of close readings of some thirty American and European works, it analyzes how documentaries on the run-up, unfolding, and aftermath of the war (2003-2014) have adopted different points of view and aesthetics in order to address their publics.
List of contents
Introduction 1. Contemporary Radical Documentary: Generic Issues, the Social Role of Documentary, New Hybridized Forms and the Digital Turn 2.
Fahrenheit 9/11: Documentary as a Political Weapon 3. Documentary Versus the Mass Media: Denouncing Disinformation and Turning Back the Rhetoric of
Militainment Against Itself:
Weapons of Mass Deception,
War Made Easy,
Militainment, Inc and
Operation Hollywood 4. Documentary, Empire, and War profiteering:
Why We Fight and
Iraq For Sale 5. Documentary and the Embedded 'Grunt POV' Versus Representations of Iraqi Trauma: The Ironies of
Gunner Palace and
Occupation: Dreamland and the Iraqi POV in
The Prisoner and Other Films
6. Documentary and Conflicting Authorial Voices: The 'Virtual Embed' of
The War Tapes 7. Documentary and Anti-War Activism: From the Performance of Protest to Confessional Address:
Arlington West,
Breaking Ranks,
Not in Our Name,
The Ground Truth 8. War Documentary and Grievous Bodily Harm: Between 'Body Politic' and Taboo Anti-War Spectacle:
Body of War,
Baghdad E.R.,
Alive Day Memories 9. The Torture Documentaries: Exposing the Dark Side of War:
Taxi to the Dark Side,
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,
Standard Operating Procedure Conclusion
About the author
Monica Michlin is Associate Professor of American Studies at Paris-Sorbonne University, France
Summary
This book is the first comprehensive study of documentary film on the Iraq War. In a series of close readings of some thirty American and European works, it analyzes how documentaries on the run-up, unfolding, and aftermath of the war (2003-2014) have adopted different points of view and aesthetics in order to address their publics.
Additional text
"This book transports us back to a critical time when the national conversation was deeply driven by a new wave of documentaries about what war means. Michlin is a deft guide who both celebrates this era and peels back the layers of reality that animate the form." - Roger Stahl, University of Georgia, USA
