Nostalgiculture And The Gulf War.
"Already lost to sight, the Gulf War is receding into the vacuum of consciousness at the speed of the meteorite that apparently came within a hair's breadth of the earth's surface twelve months ago…
Overexposed for one hundred long days, this conflict has finally suffered the same fate as the news. The first televisual war, the war of the Persian Gulf has not escaped the law of the genre: now you see it, now you don't. It is enough to make you think the electronic process known as image compression, which allows information to be stored, has promoted the compression of history and finally the disappearance of the event!
A war in two dimensions—plus a third, the dimension of time, of the real time of televised broadcasts—a world war in miniature perceived via the intermediary of the screen, the Gulf War is inseparable from its cathodic framing, to the point where it only subsists afterward in the memory of those video cassettes now on sale along-side war games and the Nintendo series."
- Landscape Of Events, Paul Virilio.
"We are just victims of the contemporary style." - Drugs With Friends, Car Seat Headrest.
It would seem that Nostalgiculture has finally come to the Gulf War.
It has been around 31 years since the Gulf War came to pass, and it did seem to fade quickly into the detritus of the cultural memory of the West as Virilio promised. Being stored within the world of National Geographic magazines used by collage creators and historical hoarders, the media objects of the war remain within the ecosystem of thrift stores and used bookstores. But it seems that beside these objects the Gulf War quickly disappeared within the collective memory, in fact this seems to be the fate of all the wars of the 90s as recent events have shown with coverage of tensions in Ukraine. The coverage of the Ukraine situation phrases it as the first possible war since World War Two to occur within Europe, forgetting conflicts within the Balkans. There with Ukraine it appears as if the past of the make-up of the situation disappears within a mist or fog, the past of the area matters very little for the current staging for current events for the media. Through the lens of the media it appears as if we are currently on the eve of war, an eternal evening of anxious preparation, the content of the situation matters far less than the appearance of it now.
It is at this point where the appearance of the events then is said to become the substance of events, the simulated and imaginary then becomes to inform the actual temporal topography of events. What matters now is perception and appearances and not the geographic area where the events unfold. Our experience of the events are mediated via the usage of interfaces and thus how this world of Ukraine reveals itself is shaped and formed by a technology that cannot capture an actual substance. If we were to speak to a rabbit with her barrow near Kiev then she would offer a more revealing view than the interface, she would know the coming and goings of the townsfolk, how her cousin spied a man whose Ukrainian sounded off carrying a suitcase to who knows where, she would tell us if any of her neighbors' tunnels suffered from the movement of tanks or if there had been nothing at all. She as the passant would reveal the experience of events better than the interface with his ghosts would. Thus we see an issue with our coverage of war, it seems to be unable to forge any experience of it.
With this in mind we can explain why the media phrases the current situation with Ukraine as the worst crisis since World War Two, to many there is simply no experience of any events in the Balkans in the 90s, especially here in the United States. Occasionally one encounters a veteran of the Gulf War or one of the Balkan wars but these do not communicate the experience of them, unlike the Vietnam war which has an endless amount of media concerning and depicting it the wars of the 90s only garner passing reference in the media terrain.
Retrovision media loves to depict the fallout of Vietnam, of course often forgetting to say its origins (especially with the Gulf of Tonkin and a non-occurrence that became an event via the reported appearances). This fallout shows troops flung into battle, forced into a battle with the environment itself, the oriental Other simply becomes another danger of the environment who cannot be communicated with. The terror the American forces enacted do appear at points but never does anything say to the full extent what happened. The song Napalm Sticks To Kids reveals more what America's involvement in Indochina entailed than any cinematic appearance of the events of the war. For us in the United States the Vietnam war has not truly ended, it appears time to time on our TV and in our books, it appears more than the Balkan wars or the Gulf War. For us the ever slightly present Vietnam war differs greatly than the Vietnamese view of it, for them it continues to happen whenever a mine goes off or when they speak to any of those who were disabled by napalm. A war culturally goes on long after any treaty is signed, it can even continue when the last combatant disappears from our Earth.
The Americans still have to interact with these cultural images of Vietnam, to realize that our representation of them is one that came loose long ago and no longer truly depicts what happened, that how we experience Vietnam has been made comfortable for us. Nostalgiculture however did not fully capture Vietnam quite yet, an American audience despite how comfortable whatever they watch may be they still hold an uncomfortable knowledge about that war, one that they do not feel with the wars of the 90s. There was no need to create representations of the wars of the 90s for the simple fact that they were being represented as they happened, at least that was the thought of it, that TV networks offered the greatest image resolution of occasions. The consideration was that it all happened so fast we could scarcely reflect on it, there was no simply no time at all to make art in the age of war which happened at breakneck speed. The art of an event (in many senses events are made and do not merely happen) offers a glimpse into an experience of the event better than a "pure" representation of it.
The wars of the 90s for Americans but especially the Gulf War lack this kind of artistic representation that makes one reflect and consider what this experience was. What we have left of the Gulf War is a supposedly pure representation of it mediated via the interface rather than a mediation on it. Our sense of time has ceased to be, the wars blur together for an American who is safe at home, Afghanistan gained the name of the forever war, the temporal frame of reference is gone, the dromosphere has rendered any landmarks no more. Recently someone declared in an attitude typical of those in the English speaking world that "For some reason I keep thinking the Gulf War happened only like 10 years ago, but when it reality it happened over 30 years ago :X" right after saying of scenes of the Gulf War that "Gulf War aesthetics just hits different". A glimpse into a conception of a temporal landscape without distance as well as celebrating Nostalgiculture finally capturing the Gulf War within its grips, specifically the appearance of events without blood, the images of the war she showed provide no experience.
Nostalgiculture grasps onto anything it can, specifically targeting events and objects with no seen substance, and emptying anything it can of substance. The Vietnam war has had this happen over a period of time, Da 5 Bloods brings the scene to Vietnam because it is simply the pastime of Americans to visit what they have already explored and to engage in memories of past conflicts. Soon Vietnam will mean nothing to anyone, it shall be simply an event that happens that suffers as a location for FPS levels. The Gulf War was so far away and so quickly represented that allowed for no time for reflection that as it occurred a videogame was made of it in Operation: Desert Storm (even though it sold only around 2,500 copies). It seems that even as the bullets flied that the war itself flew into a purely cultural stage. But for Americans the Gulf War did not seem to even persist within the world of culture until recently where it has simply become a series of pretty images.
However behind every image like the one above where a plane soars past lit oil wells is a distinct lack of the dead, images like the one Kenneth Jarecke took of an Iraqi soldier engulfed by fire. The Gulf War that occurred for Americans was a clean one, tactical, as if the nasty business of death had disappeared and in its wake left precision that only a machine is capable of. However to quote from an article detailing Kenneth Jarecke's photo we see an image of the opposite.
"In his other shots of the same scene, it is apparent that the soldier could never have survived, even if he had pulled himself up out of the driver’s seat and through the window. The desert sand around the truck is scorched. Bodies are piled behind the vehicle, indistinguishable from one another. A lone, burned man lies face down in front of the truck, everything incinerated except the soles of his bare feet. In another photograph, a man lies spread-eagle on the sand, his body burned to the point of disintegration, but his face mostly intact and oddly serene. A dress shoe lies next to his body." - The War Photo No One Would Publish by Torie Rose DeGhett, Published in The Atlantic.
It was if Pompeii was unleashed onto that small spot, a scene that surely happened thousands of times across the course of the war, those who survived would surely spend the rest of their lives bearing the mark of Empire. I draw now from Enda Duffy's account of coverage of early car crashes which I believe is easily retrofitted to war photography.
"Testament to the ineffectuality of the human subject before the violent impact of the machine, their peripheral presence prevents us from reading the wrecked metal wholly tragically. Again, even in these throwaway images, the dream of the absent body and the off-key comic note are the signatures of the apparently close-up spectacle of the car crash." - The Speed Handbook, Enda Duffy, Pg 243.
The culture that grows around this lack of the tragic image is a disconcerting one, in it we forget one of the most important substances, the one of death. In this way with a lack of substance the American coverage and memory of the Gulf War not only allows Nostalgiculture it actively invites it. The Gulf War is situated within a temporal topography ripe for Nostalgiculture, emerging at the point between the 80s and 90s, Nostalgiculture's favorite hunting ground. It is also ripe due to the fact that our representation of the war was one with no actual reflection, here is ample room for a pseudo reflection on it, ready for Nostalgiculture to inject it with false substance. The answer to Baudrillard is that the Gulf War will take place, not quite yet, but soon enough when Nostalgiculture eats it fully.
I wrote the words above earlier today, it seems now that the situation in Ukraine is now a state of war, the question is now simply "What now, is this war?" and the answer is that I simply do not know.
We cannot say that if Ukraine will become like Kuwait and in a half year we will find it ended and in two years it will disappear entirely or if the ghost of forever war shall live within Ukraine for the next twenty years. The Ukrainian War however, is now happening and not happening, in moments phone video will break through but not many will see it, this war will not happen really to most Americans, to them it is another season of entertainment, but to some Americans it will happen and it will impact them heavily.
In the dawn of war it appears to the news that Kiev is being bombed, it is also appearing to the news that the power is on and thus no one is bombing, it remains unknown if this war is actually now happening.
February 23 2022.