We leave no one behind! - De-victimization and stereotypesof heroes and villains in contemporary action/war movies

- So why does the mass media prefer to talk in terms of numbers of corpses, calculating them morbidly, with apparent disregard for the victims' status?

Let’s make a quick overview on what ‘victim status’ is, who are stereotypical war crime victims: Defenseless, mostly rural inhabitant from a third world country, either feeing from some unknown menace in masses with makeshift carts (conjuring up visual experiences we obtained from the footages of Vietnam War) or in hiding in a devastated urban area from some supreme power. They posses no weapons (those who do posses, immediately lose the status of the “victim” and becomes “insurgents, freedom fighters , or even terrorist), and staring into the objective of the camera with much innocence and sorrow on their faces.
These victims are people we don’t know, so can’t define with a proper form of identity. They are victims, maybe the same victims we saw in another conflict, maybe they are a tribe migrating form one conflict to another? They are not our friends, colleges, but rather a faceless mass of people – please take note, that victims, especially war crime victims are not tend to dwell alone – since they have no identity, their main strengths is numbers, which somehow seems to reflect their magnitude of suffering. Lone victims tend to overlooked by the media after the initial stage of the conflict, take the “San Francisco tiger attack” for example, we no longer cares about the daily victims of violence in Iraq unless their number seems to beat some morbid stake the global media has, but the same media engine goes crazy on the unfortunate passing away of a San Francisco teenager.

- What you are describing is a serious stereotype, probably from Hollywood movies, but don’t you think that we have a much complex, reflective view on the subject?

We could have, but since we have an extreme scarcity of actual, real life images taken on these people, either because they are hard to make or that they are not as appealing to our idea of what it to be a victim. Hence we accept those images which we think are the best representations of what is to be a victim of war, and these images exclusively coming from the entertainment media, which are very well aware of this, and trying to produce even “better” images from any imaginary or real conflict we might be interested in.

- But these movies are meant to be entertaining; they are not talking about genocide, mass murder, but rather giving a simplified version of some stereotypical events, like some kind of clichés. News channels are giving us facts, numbers, locations. Or there is no difference between imaginary genocides on the screen and real ones?

Hollywood movies are giving really good, structured narratives in order to be easily understood by the audience. In these narratives, everything has its on place, as victims do. But there are not many of them: yes, there are genocides, but the victims of genocides are minor characters – and they are avenged, an important, statutory twist in the narrative structure.
In movies, all players have roles. The victim’s role is to be victimized, later rescued, or avenged. Their number is only relevant for showing how large the effort was to save/avenge them, for this, they not needed to be counted, just shown that they are numerous.
I also have to add, that those actors, who have even a minor role in these movies, like the refugee father, his lost wife, or the nice old man slaughtered at the beginning of the movie to illustrate the cruelty of villains, are either becoming martyrs or “rewards”. The same goes to friendly soldiers. They are either die in glorious martyrdom (so allowing others to destroy the enemy encampment) or sacrificed just to show how skillful the enemy is. Neither way they are considered to be victims, rather predestined beings fulfilling a given role. Their numbers are not for terrifying the viewers, but rather to strengthen the narrative.
A small band of highly professional western country soldiers are evacuating a scientist/journalist/civic worker from a “state of concern” in which mass killings are taking place: who are the victims in this stereotypical plot? The villains are definitely not. They are faceless, countless entities waving Kalashnikov assault rifles and dying like flies, like German soldiers in old Yugoslavian partisan movies. The innocent local people? They seem to be well seasoned to the circumstances. The western personnel, who happened to be in the middle of the conflict? Yes, in a way, but he/she will be inevitably rescued, by the soldiers. The lesser actor, who is shot at the end of the movie by the second lieutenant of the evil warlord? Hardly, he/she offers glorious martyrdom for the cause, and he/she will be not left behind.

- And what about the horror of images of victimization? How are we affected by the mere sight of dead bodies? Why is an image of a dead body meaningful in some societies while in other societies it loses its capacity to provoke anger or compassion, but rather serves to produce attitudes?

Actually, even the most realistic looking action movies or war drama is hiding the dead bodies, causalities from our sight. Even if gruesome wounds are shown on the screen, they are not staying there for long, nor the bodies of the deceased. Never the less, the dead bodies who remain on display only becoming sets, nice aesthetic objects that strengthen the realism of the movies and illustrating the noble efforts of the remaining fighters. That especially goes for contemporary war movies and videogames, in which dead bodies become “objects”, which no longer be touched, nor can be interacted with. These bodies have no identity as such, so they are rely on numbers again. Unknown numbers. They are usually lying face down, becoming identical, unlike in the reality, where victims retain their personality either displayed on images or on narrative structures – I mean we distinct them form each other.

- Is it possible to “return” the identity to these victims, to outwit the stereotypical images and turn away from a neutral, aesthetic way of look on victims?

Imagine a situation in which you give identity to these people, victims not by the numbers, but faces: assume that they are your friends in a social networking site like Myspace or Facebook. You know these people, they are your friends, relatives, former schoolmates, ex-lovers, drinking buddies, whatever. Usually you have about 400 of them: an act of violence happens in your neighborhood, for example in your university (referring the Baghdad Mustansiriya University attack in the January of 2007). Many people dies from which you had six who you had close connections with via social networks or direct and active friendship. Six faces, persons, not numbers.
You might be well aware that myspace users created a blog for other members who passed away – some of the most depressing thing to browse for our generations. The entire life and deeds of the deceased are included with pictures, so we might feel that even our story could fit that sad list…
What is the same would happen with war victims, what would happen if they all would have faces like myspace dead has? Would that change anything or they would remain as distant and as prone to be appropriated by Hollywood as before, or we have to rethink how we perceive images of war, images of suffering?

Peter Fuchs is an art theorist, critic and performance artist based in Budapest (Hungary).Former researcher in the Artpool Art Researh Center and currently at the RIR Research-in-Residence) Program at the BAK (Basis voor Kunst) in Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Before the official start of the Victims' symptom, planned for early 2008, a serial of interviews will be published on this blog. Besides commenting, you can send your proposals with questions or full interviews that would shape the upcoming discussion.