Film and Media Studies Commons^™

The Immediacy Of Narrated Combat: Operation Iraqi Freedom As Public Spectacle, Jason Mcentee

English Faculty Publications

From the Vietnam War to Operation Desert Storm to Operation Iraqi Freedom, Americans have seen a dramatic shift in the ways they see combat - countless, and often dubious, images certainly impact how they interpret their warriors' actions. Iraqi Freedom presents an interesting shift in the immediate availability of numerous fiction and non-fiction narratives often stemming from the accounts of the soldiers themselves. I refer to this shift as the immediacy of narrated combat. Iraqi Freedom, unlike Vietnam and Desert Storm, has seen an almost immediate response in terms of the narratives we see and read, including movies, television programs, …