{"id":77800,"date":"2022-04-26T13:53:52","date_gmt":"2022-04-26T17:53:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=77800"},"modified":"2022-04-26T13:55:12","modified_gmt":"2022-04-26T17:55:12","slug":"brock-profs-new-book-analyzes-media-representation-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2022\/04\/brock-profs-new-book-analyzes-media-representation-of-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Brock prof\u2019s new book analyzes media representation of war"},"content":{"rendered":"

A timely new book by Martin Danahay explores how war is represented in ways that minimize damage and death to make it more acceptable.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone agrees that war is terrible, but we still fight wars,\u201d says Danahay, a Professor in Brock\u2019s Department of English Language and Literature. \u201cWe see more and more images of war, but somehow we are anesthetized to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

His new book, War Without Bodies<\/a>,<\/em> examines how new communication technologies make war more \u2018real\u2019 and present while simultaneously refraining from showing the corpses of soldiers and civilians.<\/p>\n

During the Crimean War of 1856, men were seen as sacrificial warriors destined to fight and die in battle, which justified the loss of troops, says Danahay. By the early 20th century, war was turned into a game and entertainment as toy soldiers, tabletop games, role playing games and, eventually, video games came into popularity.<\/p>\n

\"The

Brock Professor Martin Danahay has released a new book, War Without Bodies.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWar became entertainment for us,\u201d he says. \u201cWe had war movies. We had video games that contained war. Video games on the screen and news on the screen become meshed together.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the Crimean War was the first British war with photographs, the Persian Gulf War in 1990 was a \u201cvideo war,\u201d where the public could see things happening through live video. It was a \u201cwar without bodies,\u201d as U.S. media agreed not to show soldier or civilian casualties and there was no count of civilian bodies.<\/p>\n

The images of modern drone warfare show explosions from a distance and people aren\u2019t shown getting killed, says Danahay. The automation of warfare has reduced risk to soldiers, but not to civilians.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s war from a distance with a video screen,\u201d he says. \u201cThe drone operators are thousands of miles away and they are looking at a screen like we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the Second World War, when combatants began targeting civilians, more civilians have died in wars than soldiers.<\/p>\n

Danahay has been surprised by the images of dead Ukrainians and Russians seen recently in U.S. media. While he is glad to see the reporting on civilian casualties, he is concerned about the impact these images might have and the lack of historical context for them.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to mobilize a population behind a war,\u201d he says. \u201cWe think we have to do something about this because innocent people are being killed. Its overall impact is to make going to war with Russia acceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photography didn\u2019t change people\u2019s attitudes in the Crimean War, says Danahay, and video hasn\u2019t either.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have all these representations of more and more war, and we are saturated with images, but it hasn\u2019t led to a widespread reconsideration in the U.S. context, whether we fight wars or not,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Danahay hopes that those who read his book will question why they are being shown, or not being shown, certain images in the lead up to war.<\/p>\n

\u201cA military strategy isn\u2019t just to defeat someone in battle, but to influence public support,\u201d he says. \u201cIf any country goes to war against another country, civilians are going to suffer.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A timely new book by Martin Danahay explores how war is represented in ways that minimize damage and death to make it more acceptable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":77852,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,37,1],"tags":[263,2200,30,6822,3325],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77800"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77800"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77854,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77800\/revisions\/77854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}