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Reality TV takes on a new meaning during war
By Kristin Van Heukelem and Maria Post
Perspectives Co-Editors
FILE PHOTO
FILE PHOTO
CNN or C&C: Blurring the reality and fiction of war.
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The war in Iraq has become a multimedia extravaganza. Amid catchy slogans, intense graphics and stony-faced reporters, the U.S. media has turned Operation Iraqi Freedom into a sort of grotesque “reality TV” series. Like any other reality show, this war features actual events that are taken by mainstream reporters and news agencies and molded into what has come to be known as “Showdown Iraq.”
The coverage of this war is already melodramatic, with threatening music, alliterated slogans and eye-catching graphics slathered across television and computer screens across the United States. CNN.com features the War Tracker, “a daily briefing on the war in Iraq with the latest information, maps, statistics and other news,” a pictorial casualty list, and interactive battlefield maps (complete with the locations of various CNN correspondents). From one Web site it is possible to learn about American forces, Iraqi forces, weaponry being utilized by each side and possible battle scenarios and strategies.
Images and commentary on this war come directly from the middle of action, as “embedded” journalists have been able to work alongside the military on all fronts. The wealth of information available is incredible; we can certainly neither pretend war is not happening, nor can we simply ignore it. The war is being brought to every American home, and we are made keenly aware of the peril and terror of war. For people who have loved ones in the military in Iraq, the reality of media images is painfully clear.
At the same time, the whole thing has the feel of a slick marketing gimmick. CNN is using more extensive coverage about the war in Iraq as an incentive to purchase a more comprehensive News Pass. NBC’s website features an ad for the TV show Friends that reads, “In tough times, it’s good to have Friends.” CBS.com contains an “America at War” icon that looks strangely similar to the “Survivor: The Amazon” icon balancing it on the page. ABC.com features Iraq coverage at the bottom of a list of plugs including “According to Jim” (has anyone heard of this show?), “Life with Bonnie” (again, anyone?) and (drum roll, please) “The Bachelor,” which I guess isn’t all that surprising.
We are so far removed from the front lines that the media is our only link to what is happening, and while it is providing impressive quantities of up-to-date, on-location information, its coverage has great capacity for the dramatization and/or manipulative framing of the information. Our media and world leaders continue to ascribe quasi-spiritual importance to everything from greasy snack food (freedom fries) to other nations and to the war itself. World leaders are presented as the powers of light and dark; our enemies are dramatically termed the “axis of evil.”
Media coverage has not only turned the war into an earthly battle between good and evil, but also into what looks like play-by-play coverage of some sort of high-tech, high-stakes game, with live images broadcasted on major television networks and continuously updated, interactive Web sites. CNN’s War Tracker includes a point-and-click table comparing stats on coalition and Iraqi munitions, ground weapons, air craft, warships and weapons of mass destruction. 3D models of aircraft and munitions can be viewed, and with a simple click of the mouse, you can “fire missiles,” “extend and reset wings,” “barrel roll” and “drop bombs.” It all looks frightfully similar to a video game arsenal.
Computer games such as “Command and Conquer: Generals” (C&C) and “Counterstrike” present an interactive version of war free of any real implications. C&C in particular was made to reflect modern weaponry in great detail and allow players to engage in realistic battle scenarios minus the human face. With such commercialized presentations of real war and realist presentations of fake war, it is easy to become jaded war’s true implications.
We live in a visual society and have grown so accustomed to being surrounded by millions of images that, at some point, even images of the war simply do not register anymore, or at least, some level of reality is removed from them. The video clips and photographs look like another film about war, like “Pearl Harbor” or “Saving Private Ryan,” and it becomes difficult to discern and realize that this is not a film, that this is reality. We watch so much manufactured “reality” that we no longer know what’s real or what to truly care about.
The heightened involvement of the media in covering the war corresponds to a sort of “cyberfront” in this conflict. Websites have been “taken down” and radio and television channels monitored and blocked. The media’s role in disseminating information and slanting information has turned it into another “key player” in its own war game.
As media coverage of the war and media involvement in the war become inseparable, the lines of reality and fiction become ever more blurry. With appreciation for the truth that media technology can convey, there must be recognition of the danger of merging entertainment and war. This is not a game. It is not a movie. It is war.
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