The “Credibility of An Unvarnished Image”
by Chiebuka Amu-Nnadi
Go to the You Tube website, type “Iraq War” and over 32,000 hits pop up. A good percentage are videos made by United States soldiers serving in the war. Because a music soundtrack is so integral to the production, Ana Marie Cox, in Time Magazine last July, called them essentially music videos. Mainstream media, like Time, is often faulted by arm chair soldiers for not “showing the good” of the war. Given that the You Tube videos are shot by those on the ground in Iraq, it would seem a logical place to find “the good.” Many, however, depict a disjuncture, perhaps unintentional, between the platitudes of “duty” and the footage that unwinds. Since most You Tube productions are only about five minutes long, it’s difficult to discern “a point,” but, as Cox writes, there is value in their offering the “credibility of an unvarnished image” of the Iraq war.
The video “Iraqi Freedom” is a typical production. At the time that I am writing this piece, it has been viewed 3,268 times. If nothing else, “Iraqi Freedom” shows the grim circumstances that surround the soldiers as they fulfill the orders of the president. As the song “Bring Me to Life,” by Evanescence, plays in the background, words in capital letters on the screen read: “There comes a time where Marines are called upon to do their duty—that duty—Iraqi Freedom.” From there the footage, for the most part shot by a camera man sitting in a vehicle, shows things either burning, blowing up, or, presumably, being bombed. All the while, “Bring Me to Life” surrounds the action.
The first three stanzas of the song’s lyrics describe a singer who is numb, without a soul and who is sleeping. Over and over the listener is beseeched to wake the singer up and lead his spirit home. If the viewer is to make a connection between what is heard and what is seen while watching “Iraqi Freedom,” the point could be that those fighting in Iraq are not sure when they will be awakened from the horrors, atrocities and psychological disturbance of war. The song, combined with the images, implies the war will have a lasting impact and will change the soldiers’ lives forever. The words “save me” as well as “call my name and save me from the dark” that are repeated over and over again in “Bring Me to Life” seem to ask that a guardian of some kind intercede and bring the filmmaker home without injury.
The song lyrics continue, “I've been living a lie, there's nothing inside; bring me back to life.” Perhaps the filmmaker is referring to the disingenuous reasons for the American invasion into Iraq—the stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Since none were found, the video “Iraqi Freedom” combined with the soundtrack imparts that the filmmaker feels he’s been living a lie and, as a result has lost an important part of his motivation for serving in the war. The words “bring me back to life” infer that what ever is happening in Iraq, it is without a great deal of morale.
The filmmaker records a pockmarked mural of Hussein as well as a donkey which runs loose down the road. A group of Iraqi men wave from the roadside riddled with plenty of heavy equipment, both operational and bombed out. While witnessing such images, the soundtrack “Bring Me to Life” continues: “without a thought without a voice without a soul, don't let me die here, there must be something more, bring me to life.” The images are incongruous and reflect the filmmaker’s assertion that the future must hold more than chaos. Although the start of the film referred to “Iraqi Freedom” as the “duty” of Marines, by the end of the film, with “Bring Me to Life” chanting “wake me up, wake me up inside” and “save me from the nothing I’ve become,” the meaning of what, exactly, duty constitutes becomes more and more ambiguous.
Chiebuka Amu-Nadi is a junior majoring in English.
