This week's bit of surrealism in the Iraq war involves a toy passed off as a US soldier. It's a fine case of the uncanniness of dolls, puppets, and robots, something we've posted on previously. The uncanny valley is an increasingly popular term often used to describe this eerie shuttling between thing and person, object and subject, but you should really start with the first great, mad meditation on it all.
In the meantime, what a tangled mess of psycho-political strands! At a glance, we could be reminded of war's dehumanization, either by mass war or individual atrocity. Conversely, there's the apotheosis of the lone victim, a martyred Warholian moment of fame. The doll in its mix of intense familiary and sudden distancing reminds of of the stuttered realtime nature of this war, with sudden information feeds embedded in the moment, while other events lag behind in the infosphere. The rapid boom in parody (of a parody) brings out the rapid news cycle, along with the mixing powers of ditial media. Parody of a parody: how old is the damning cliche where one condemns a war-happy or naive person for "playing soldiers"?
I still haven't seen Team America, but the resemblance is interesting. So is the coincidence in the recent resurgence of Phil Dick movies, with this GI Joe story feeling like a lost filming of "Second Variety ." (1953) The link between war machine and toys feels especially phildickian.
Addendum: this reminds me to try to find time to post about my "war on terror as pulp fuction" meme, at some point.
Funny, I thought the guy's head looked odd, but what I focused on first was that the Arabic looked funny -- and I don't know Arabic. Different people see different things, I guess.
Posted by: Prentiss Riddle | February 09, 2005 at 23:06