I see you but you can't see me: Visual Culture (and the military)

First I would like to discuss the very nature of recruitment and how the military finds ways to recruit new members. From personal experience, I felt like I had a lot to approve to myself when I walked by a military recruit table at my high school and was asked to see how many push-ups I can do. It was more than receive goodie bags with camouflage-style pencils and notebooks. I got a sense of pride thinking that even though I was not fighting, I was very capable of contributing to the military if need be.

 

This type of mentality connects to a controversial topic of using visual culture to find new recruits. With the advent of drone warfare, there is a dehumanization aspect of killing other individuals, whether it’s a person with an AK-47 or a camera. In the Franklin Mills Mall in Philadelphia, shoppers can stop by the “Army Experience Center”. With $13 million allocated to this center, the military is able to seek out for casual and professional gamers willing to drop their controller and hear their “Call of Duty”. This center breathes patriotism and has multiple simulators for gamers who play First-Person Shooters.

 There are multiple institutions that contribute to the use of games for the military’s benefit. The Department of Defense Game Development community was created to help supplement the development of games in the U.S. military. The USC Institute for Creative Technologies was created by the military and collaborates with the entertainment industry so they can replicate different real-world aspects of war. The key is to be immersed in the simulation which is some of the points discuss in class such as drone warfare or air superiority. The act of “being there” but “not really being there” is a privilege in war: I can see you but you can’t see me.

The reason I wanted to write on this topic was because how influenced we are with visual culture, especially in the media. I enjoy listening to different perspectives because it is the only way for us to be critical. After watching Night of the Living Dead, I called it halfway through the movie that Duane Jones would essentially be killed by the end. –SPOILER--, the trigger-happy militia shot Duane Jones when we tried seeing who was outside! It’s hard to pinpoint whether I can attribute my historical knowledge of racism during the period or whether minorities usually do not survive in horror movies. Using what I’ve noticed in the anime version of Barefoot Gen, we are treated to the Enola Gay POV with a target crosshair on Hiroshima (not seen in the book). I would have never caught this if we didn’t talk about the importance of the “target”. Without truly opening our eyes, we are unable to see the different issues media presents and we should always “target” the issue critically before we become one.