The Desert of Experience: Jarhead and the Geography of the Persian Gulf War
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124.5 ]
The Desert of Experience: Jarhead and
the Geography of the Persian Gulf War
geoffrey a. wright
“[T]here is no getting out of the land. No stopping. . . . The desert is everywhere.
The mirage is everywhere. . . . I am still in the desert.”
—Anthony Swofford, Jarhead
Introduction
D epictions of the Persian Gulf War in contemporary Amer-
ican combat narratives differ dramatically from public dis-
course surrounding the war. Media coverage of the war has
been widely documented for its preoccupation with emergent mil-
itary technologies. During the war, the Pentagon teamed up with
cable networks to inundate the American public with spectacles of
Stealth bombers, Scud missiles, Patriot missiles, Tomahawk missiles,
and smart bombs in action. The highly censored media coverage ob-
scured the region’s geography and erased the suffering of combatants
as well as civilians.1
In contrast, the literature and film on the war emphasize the hu-
man rather than the technological dimension of the fighting. Veterans
and veteran correspondents employ a language of sensory experience
to tell their stories about infantry life and combat, stories abounding
with the minutiae of training, sleeping, eating, patrolling, and fight-
ing. These deeply personal experiences are anchored to the landscape
in numerous and peculiar ways.2 This essay sets forth a geographic
semiotics of Persian Gulf War combat narratives, which entails the
Geoffrey a. wright is assistant pro-
study of an array of geographically oriented codes for making mean-
fessor of English at Samford University,
where he teaches interdisciplinary film-
ing out of wartime experience. The topography of the war zone, not
and-literature studies. This essay is part of the human enemy, acts as the primary antagonist in these stories and
a larger project devoted to the geographic serves as the source of the characters’ physical struggles and psycho-
semiotics of American combat narratives. logical crises; the landscape absorbs or even stands in for the human
[ © 2009 by the moder n language association of america ] 16771678 The Desert of Experience: Jarhead and the Geography of the Persian Gulf War [ PM L A
enemy; geographic features ranging from that the desert is a material object, a priori to
sand to the contours of the horizon inflect American technology and ideology.
the writers’ and filmmakers’ self-conscious
attempts to communicate their stories; and
the processes through which the characters Geography and Memory
understand, morally as well as politically, the Swofford constructs the geography of the
world of the war and their place in it depend Middle East, the landscape of his wartime ex-
on interacting with the environment. perience, through a process of remembering
The study of geographic signs in Per- by writing. As he writes, the contours of the
sian Gulf War combat narratives revolves desert—its flatness and openness—and its ma-
around images and descriptions of the des- terial substance define not only the shape his
ert as it resonates in such literary and filmic memory takes but also his evolving sense of
accounts of the ground fighting as Anthony an embodied self. He begins with a nostalgic
Swofford’s memoir Jarhead (2003), Sam Men- trip down into his basement, where he forces
des’s film adaptation Jarhead (2005), and Da- himself to unpack mementos from the war:
vid Russell’s Three Kings (1999).3 These texts “I pull out maps of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
depict the war from a ground-level perspec- Patrol books. Pictures. Letters. My journal
tive rather than from the technological and with its sparse entries. Coalition propaganda
bird’s-eye point of view of a smart bomb. Re- pamphlets. Brass bore punch for the M40A1
flecting on the production of the film Jarhead, sniper rifle. A handful of .50-caliber projec-
Mendes asserts, “What we remember about tiles.” These jumbled artifacts contain the past
the Gulf War were these clean little images of of the war, and the descent into the basement
these tiny little bombs perfectly hitting these frames a descent into the past, into the writer’s
toy towns, bereft of any sense of human life psyche: “I am not well, but I am not mad. I’m
at all. To me, the interesting thing now is to after something. Memory, yes. . . . Years pass.
enter it through a person on the ground, be- But more than just time. I’ve been working
cause that’s where we weren’t allowed to go in toward this—I’ve opened the ruck and now I
this particular war” (Jarhead [booklet] par. 1; must open myself” (1). Writing the memoir is
my emphasis). He focuses on the infantry’s not an act of compiling a catalog of bygone
experiences in the ground campaign in order days so much as it is an uncertain attempt to
to uncover this unrecognized dimension of find a way back to a coherent sense of self.5
the war. By drawing on the desert as a central The corrosive cynicism pervading the book
motif, the film suggests that the environment suggests that any reconciliation he may obtain
in which American men and women fought from writing it will be troubled at best.
is as significant as the electronic instru- The memorabilia Swofford uncovers
mentation with which the war was waged.4 contain traces of past psychological wreck-
Swofford’s Jarhead, Mendes’s Jarhead, and age. He admits, “So my ruck didn’t have to
Russell’s Three Kings locate the chaos and be here, in my basement . . . I could’ve sold
violence of the war in the landscape, not in it for one outrageous bar tab or given it to
computers. These texts construct the desert Goodwill or thrown it away—or set it afire,
topography as a tactile structure confronting as some Jarheads did” (2). He records a list
both the bodies and minds of American sol- of options that have already run out. Unable
diers and Marines whose boots are literally on to rid himself of this long-repressed material,
the ground. Though the geographies in these he returns to it in the form of his memoir. In
texts are narrative constructs, products of one sense, the artifacts that he uncovers and
language, history, and culture, the texts insist recovers (the maps, books, letters, pictures,124.5 ] Geoffrey A. Wright 1679
pamphlets, fatigues, and rounds) are pages: logical forces shaping his sense of self. What
he reads them for what they have to tell him Swofford discovers by gazing at these literal
about himself. The textures of these physi- and figurative maps is “neither true nor false
cal objects become the text, the fabric, of his but what I know” (2). Rereading the geography
memory, bearing and baring the trauma he of his experience enables him to determine not
suffered before, during, and after the war. the truth of what happened in the Persian Gulf
It is critical to recognize the way Swof- War but rather what happened to him in the
ford describes these artifacts and makes them war. He is concerned not with abstract, histori-
present in the text. Their defining character- cal knowledge of the war but with understand-
istic is the mark they bear, the mark of his ex- ing his war, and he seeks to piece together what
posure to fear and destruction in war and to he knows from his subjective perceptions of
the extreme environment in which he encoun- what he experienced on the ground.6
tered that violence. As the enigmatic signifier
for the Persian Gulf War, the desert inscribes
The Desert
his past on the surfaces of these artifacts. His
fatigues are “ratty and bleached by sand and Jarhead and Three Kings take their places in
sun and blemished with the petroleum rain a long line of American war films set in the
that fell from the oil-well fires in Kuwait” (1). desert. John Ford’s World War I film The Lost
The geographic residue, the sand as well as the Patrol (1934) is a seminal text in this tradition
Kuwaiti oil, infuses the uniform with peculiar of films relying on that landscape as a narra-
shades of meaning so that the fatigues indi- tive device. The primary conflict in the film
cate more than his former membership in the is not between the British soldiers and their
Marine Corps. Faded by constant contact with human enemies but between the British and
the desert sand and stained by the oil that he the desert, which substitutes for the Arabs,
suspects is the real reason for the war (11), the who are heavily stereotyped and remain un-
uniform maps the confusion and futility he seen until the conclusion. David Lean’s World
experienced while wandering the desert. War I classic Lawrence of Arabia (1962) casts
These artifacts spark other memories: “I the desert as a character. Numerous pan-
open a map of southern Kuwait. Sand falls oramic shots construct the space of the des-
from between the folds” (2). Serving as a tes- ert on a massive scale that reflects the epic
tament to his experience, the sand clinging to story. Several World War II films dramatize
the souvenirs in his trunk recalls the war zone desert settings. In Immortal Sergeant (1943),
that the map is intended to represent but ulti- a naive young soldier played by Henry Fonda
mately cannot. Together, the sand and the map proves himself an heir to the tough-minded
form a palimpsest that does not make his past veteran for whom the film is titled.7 He sur-
legible so much as it represents the past’s il- vives exposure to the harsh desert elements
legibility. He explains, “I saw more of the Gulf better than anyone else, including the Ger-
War than the average grunt. Still, my vision mans. Whereas in The Lost Patrol the British
was blurred—by wind and sand and distance, are helpless against the environment and the
by false signals, poor communication, and bad enemies who inhabit it, in Robert Wise’s The
coordinates, by stupidity and fear and igno- Desert Rats (1953) Australian soldiers wage
rance, by valor and false pride” (2). Obscuring guerrilla warfare against Rommel’s tanks by
his map of Kuwait, the sand makes present using the topographic features of the desert to
again the landscape in which his sense of alien- their advantage.8 In Anthony Minghella’s The
ation and loss crystallized. Geography acts as English Patient (1996), the quest to map the
the agent of a complex of physical and ideo- desert provides the context for the struggle to1680 The Desert of Experience: Jarhead and the Geography of the Persian Gulf War [ PM L A
triangulate identities in the fluid space of an kicked ass in the Desert” (15). Geography
enigmatic past. While the desert in The Lost operates as the medium through which he is
Patrol functions as an active agent working able to tell the story of his deeply personal,
against the British, in The English Patient the disorienting experience in the war. He exhib-
desert is passive, a page on which the film its suicidal tendencies during his deployment.
writes the story of the count’s self-destructive After a particular episode, his close friend,
desire.9 Following in this tradition, Jarhead Troy, suggests that his problems stem from
and Three Kings deploy the desert as the vehi- the restlessness of waiting for the ground in-
cle for the protagonist’s crisis. As they merge vasion to start and from his anxiety over his
the landscape with the human enemy, they girlfriend’s presumed infidelity, but Swofford
depict the desert as the primary antagonist in replies, “It’s not about her. It’s about the des-
the war zone. ert” (72). Throughout the book, he gathers an
In the film Jarhead, Swofford’s only last- array of emotional traumas and projects them
ing experience of combat occurs through the onto the foreign landscape, whose enigmatic
medium of the landscape. When his platoon quality reflects his bewilderment and help-
is unexpectedly attacked by Iraqi artillery, lessness back onto him.
and while everyone else is screaming and Both the substance and spatial structure
scattering for cover, Swofford waits as though of the desert, the sand and the open expanse
hypnotized by the explosions. He closes his of it, puzzle and exasperate Swofford. His en-
eyes and stands motionless, allowing parti- counters with the desert threaten to topple
cles of sand and dirt to wash over him. When the epistemological framework provided by
the shells begin exploding, the film cuts to his scout-sniper training, as its topography
slow motion with a close-up on Swofford. The defies his ability to orient himself tactically
combination of effects accentuates not only and psychologically: “The open, we were
the intense emotional valence of the scene told as early as boot camp, is a poor place to
but also the significance of the gritty debris find yourself. In the open you die, and your
flying into his face and swirling around his friends, when they try to save you, they die.
head. Like Swofford meditating on his expe- But the whole goddamn desert is the open”
rience, the film slows down to dwell on these (135). The flat expanse of the desert renders
individual particles of sand ricocheting off his him vulnerable, and he imagines his wartime
skin. His first combat action takes shape as a experience as a prolonged and absurd exercise
spiritual experience: he is baptized in sand, in irony: “I return to the disturbing nature of
ushered into the space of the war in a cloud the terrain, the lack of variation, the dead
of dust. After several elongated moments of repetition, and constantly, the ominous feel-
silence, he states (in voice-over), “My combat ing that one is always in the open” (135).10 For
action has commenced.” He believes he has him the bareness of the desert’s surface con-
shed his old life and taken on a new identity stitutes an environmental deficiency. Rather
as a combat veteran. than signifying a unique ecosystem that is
The desert forms the crux of the memoir vital and complex, the topography appears to
Jarhead; that is, it acts as the material struc- him to embody lack.11 The empty sameness of
ture on which the author’s suffering takes the terrain defeats his ability to discern one
place. Swofford declares, “[W]hatever else the landmark from another, and the perceived
war, the mass staging and movement of per- lack of differentiation in the topography
sonnel and weapons of destruction might be translates into deadness.
called, it is the Desert. Were you in the Des- The sense of vulnerability Swofford experi-
ert? Who were you with in the Desert? They ences is amplified by the sand. Simultaneously124.5 ] Geoffrey A. Wright 1681
ubiquitous and elusive, sand surrounds him that will make futile all effort or endeavor”
day and night, yet he never succeeds in hom- (177)—inexorably draining from the time-
ing in on the meaning of it: “Below the sand of piece, the desert renders the simple act of dig-
the Arabian Desert is, quite simply, more sand. ging a hole hopeless and absurd.
We’ve dug fighting holes, but the Caterpillars Even his military maps fail to order the
have reached much deeper. I don’t know what vast cosmos of the desert. Swofford asserts,
I expected to see, perhaps bedrock, which cer- “We know nothing—we look at our maps
tainly exists at some level, but the blades of the covered with troop strength and movement
tractors have not gone far enough, and this symbols and minefield and obstacle loca-
disturbs me” (133). His frustration and anxi- tions, and we still know nothing” (175). The
ety suggest that he expected to find something only legible markings on his map are logistic
more than a recognizable geology—the figure symbols representing American troop num-
of a familiar and affirming environment ca- bers and resources, while the geographic con-
pable of providing the psychological stability text for those signs remains obscure. Without
he so desperately needs. But the endlessness of this context, the data regarding the locations
the sand suggests the absence of a fixed limit and movements of friendly and enemy forces
to the strangeness of this place. With no end are meaningless. The map, the text intended
in sight, Swofford is suspended in a geography to decipher the desert, serves only to reflect
that unsettles his expectations of normalcy the military’s ignorance back on itself.12 Swof-
and reality. Having been denied any sort of ford feels compelled to rewrite that text from
psychological footing in this new place, he scratch, to make a new map for himself. While
imagines the desert as the embodiment of occupying an observation post, which happens
death itself: “Sand—we can’t get away from it, to be nothing more than a hole dug in the side
and if we die and are abandoned, we’ll be bur- of a sand dune (96), he makes a drawing of the
ied in a sand casket” (133–34). surrounding area, a task that he is required by
Swofford perceives in the sand an eerie scout-sniper protocol to perform. He relates,
fluidity that continually defies his ability to “I draw a sketch of the area, an absurd sketch
control his environment, to impose order on because in addition to my being a poor art-
the strange world of the war and thereby to ist, the only thing in front of us is desert.” In
make some sense of himself: “It’s easier to drawing a new map, Swofford returns to his
dig a fighting hole in wet sand because dry earlier impression of the desert as the embodi-
sand tends to ship back into your hole, and ment of lack. He obsesses over the difficulty of
when dry and falling into your hole, the sand representing, and thereby ordering, the des-
is reminiscent of a timekeeping device from ert terrain: “[R]ather than sketch the rises and
the board games of your youth” (177). The draws and soft slopes, I want to write in bold
sand’s fluidity undermines and frustrates the print, THERE IS A FUCKING DESERT HERE AND
sociomilitary practices on which he has been NOTHING ELSE” (198).13 The new map, or his
trained to depend. Nothing could be more imaginary version of it, undergoes a textual
habitual for an infantry Marine than dig- shift from visual to verbal. He is confounded
ging a protective hole in the ground, yet even in his attempt to trace a mirroring image of
this banal routine is rendered unfamiliar and the desert onto paper, to create a self-evident
awkward in the desert. Swofford notes that representation that would capture the essence
his frustration evokes the feelings of helpless- of the desert as an empirical object. In turn,
ness he experienced as a child playing board he imagines altering the form of his map by
games. In that image of the sand—which he describing the desert instead of drawing it.
calls “this most unstable material or medium Unable to quantify the desert in an intelligible1682 The Desert of Experience: Jarhead and the Geography of the Persian Gulf War [ PM L A
picture, he rewrites the landscape as a per- tions as an obstacle to American-Iraqi inter-
sonal narrative, a story about his subjective actions in the film. After spotting the Iraqi
impression of the desert as a self-negating en- soldier, Troy shouts back over his shoulder,
tity, a geography that manifests nothingness.14 “Are we shooting?” He exchanges an absurd
For him, trying to map the desert is as futile and abortive round of dialogue with an off-
as trying to draw a picture of nowhere, as the screen soldier whose answers merely echo his
desert’s seemingly infinite but insignificant own confusion:
topographic variations dissolve into a same-
ness that negates his ability to orient himself Soldier 1: What?
in a recognizable world. Yet he never actually Troy: Are we shooting people or what?
Soldier 1: Are we shooting?
writes those words, partly because his partner
Troy: That’s what I’m asking you.
fears retaliation from their commanding offi-
Soldier 1: What’s the answer?
cer (198). He fails to mobilize the language he Troy: I don’t know the answer. That’s what I’m
feels compelled to call on, and the linguistic trying to find out.
act he wishes to perform as a way of imposing
order on this landscape remains aborted. In In the vastness of the landscape evoked in
one sense, the memoir takes shape as a retro- the establishing shot, the confusion between
active statement filling in that blank he left on Troy and his platoon mates deteriorates into
the map years ago. total indeterminacy. The spatial arrangement
The failure of maps to make sense of the of the shot suggests that the desert, which in-
war and the desert echoes the epistemologi- tervenes among fellow American soldiers and
cal crisis at the center of Russell’s Three Kings. between the Americans and the lone Iraqi
The film opens onto a panoramic shot of the soldier, is an agent of this indeterminacy. The
desert. Unlike popular images of undulating camera eventually follows Troy’s gaze back-
sand dunes, the landscape pictured here is an ward to the other members of his squad, who
undecipherable beige expanse as flat as a geo- are milling about in scattered groups of two
metric plane.15 The only recognizable topo- or three. Each group is pictured against the
graphic feature other than this flatness is the backdrop of the desert’s flat, empty horizon.
spiderweb of cracks in the scorched surface. In one group, Conrad leans close to Walter,
Russell accentuates the sheer f latness and inspecting his right eye, and tells him, “I can
breadth of the desert through the scale of the see a grain of sand in there. I just can’t get
shot. The landscape spans the entire width it out.” Conrad’s observation underscores the
of the screen and nearly all its height. These Americans’ collective inability to decipher the
dimensions make the desert appear infinite. physical and cultural geography of the Middle
Accompanied by the rhythmic crunching of East. Just as Walter’s vision is impaired by the
boots, the camera tracks forward as though single grain of sand in his eye, so the desert
wandering aimlessly. As it veers to the left, obstructs the Americans’ efforts to see across
a soldier’s helmet bobs up from the bottom its vast distances and through the haze of a
right corner of the frame, gradually reveal- war whose end has already come and gone
ing Troy Barlow, who remains isolated in unnoticed or disregarded.
that part of the screen while an Iraqi soldier
becomes visible in the distance, far out of fo-
Geography and the (Dead) Body
cus in the upper left. Russell keeps the shot
centered between the two figures—that is, on Human bodies are unquestionably part of the
the desert itself rather than on the emerging landscape in Persian Gulf War combat narra-
characters. In this way, the landscape func- tives. The relations between the human body124.5 ] Geoffrey A. Wright 1683
and the body of the landscape differ dramati- The film focuses on the dead bodies of
cally, depending on whether the human bod- Iraqis during a crucial scene depicting the
ies in question are American or Iraqi. The Highway of Death. This scene is made up
book and film Jarhead represent the bodies of several lengthy takes in which the cam-
of Iraqis almost entirely as corpses, as the era pans and tracks slowly along the smok-
residue of military conflict. Dead bodies are a ing hulls of countless burned vehicles and
common denominator of war stories, yet what the charred bodies of Iraqi victims. The film
distinguishes the representation of enemy ca- dwells on the profundity of the destruction,
sualties in Jarhead is that they are discovered even as it forces the audience to bear wit-
rather than made. Swofford does not fight ness.17 During a break in the patrol, Swofford
and kill enemies but walks through a land- walks off by himself and discovers a circle of
scape strewn with the already dead. He finds dead Iraqis frozen in eerily lifelike positions.
himself mired in the backwash of warfare, left He walks delicately through the wreckage,
to shoulder the moral burden of witnessing his boots leaving pale white footprints in the
dead bodies created—from a great distance— blackened sand. The prints lend him a ghostly
by American missiles and bombs. quality as he wanders through this devastated
During his tour as a Marine scout-sniper, landscape. As he approaches the group, the
Swofford never had to confront and overcome camera peers up at him in a low-a ngle shot
a living, human enemy by force. At the end with a charred corpse in the foreground. The
of his memoir, he attempts to sift through his key to this sequence lies in the composition
conflicted feelings about the absence of com- of the shot, which asserts the centrality of
bat. On the one hand, he is haunted by a sense the corpse in this space and, in turn, situates
of failure because of his belief that “[t]o be a Swofford in relation to the corpse instead of
Marine, a true Marine, you must kill” (247). vice versa. Swofford sits down in the circle of
On the other, he tentatively hopes that, for corpses and, after vomiting, announces, “One
not having killed anyone, he will be granted fucking hell of a day, huh?” In making this
“some extra moments of living for myself or self-consciously ironic comment, he places
that I can offer others” (257). The film Jarhead himself among the dead, identifying with
evokes a similar anxiety over how to handle them as fellow victims of the war.
conflicted emotions about death and killing. Repeated exposure to Iraqi corpses ulti-
While setting up camp in the midst of burning mately defines the landscape for Swofford as a
oil wells, Swofford and Troy discover Fowler place of alienation and desolation: “I’ve never
mutilating the corpse of an Iraqi whom he seen such destruction. The scene is too real
derisively nicknames “Ahab the Arab.” When not to be real. . . . Dozens, hundreds, of ve-
they confront Fowler, he responds desperately, hicles, with bodies inside or out. . . . The back
“This is war, man! . . . The whole goddamn sides of the corpses are charred and decay-
desert is shitting dead ragheads! Have we done ing, the bottom halves buried in the sand, the
anything? Have we done anything but walk sand wind-smeared like cake icing against
around in the sand?” Fowler feels a deep sense the bodies” (221–22). Human bodies blend
of failure as a Marine for not having killed almost seamlessly into the texture of the des-
enemies in combat, enemies he dehumanizes ert, which subsumes the human residue left
by referring to them as excrement.16 The film behind by American bombs. The figure of
suggests that he, not unlike Swofford, is caught the enemy takes shape not as a threatening
between an intense need to prove himself in fighter but as an inert and negated feature of
war and a disturbing guilt over witnessing the the landscape. Swofford imagines himself en-
destruction of so much human life. tering a place made sacred by death. Later he1684 The Desert of Experience: Jarhead and the Geography of the Persian Gulf War [ PM L A
tells himself, “This is war, I think. I’m walk- as objects of Americans’ collective technolog-
ing through what my father and his father ical fantasies. Norris argues that what these
walked through—the epic results of Ameri- people “are not are figures of phenomenology,
can bombing, American might. The filth actual beings . . . that are ontologically mor-
is on my boots. I am one of a few thousand tal, figures of empiricism, material objects of
people who will walk this valley today. I am sufficient individuality to be either counted or
history making” (222). He treats his experi- represented” (Writing 242). In the absence of
ence in this space as a means toward personal a corporeal enemy as the object of violence,
validation. The qualifier “I think” reveals the death is rendered meaningless. In turn the re-
uncertainty underlying his attempt to fashion ality of the war becomes suspect—as it did for
an identity for himself in war, as though by Jean Baudrillard, who famously claimed that
exposing himself to this human, mechanical, the Persian Gulf War was not even an actual
and environmental wreckage he can finally war.19 The reason, in his eyes, is that the con-
take his place in the history of his family, his flict became suspended in virtuality, in the
nation, and his corps. hyperreal space of digital imagery. His notion
Both the book and the film repeatedly of the inconsequential abstractness of the war
note that the media omitted images of enemy revolves around his critique of the political
casualties from the public version of the war. technology of the news media: “War has not
Elaine Scarry suggests that bodily pain “may escaped this virtualization which is like a sur-
disappear from view simply by being omitted: gical operation, the aim of which is to pres-
one can . . . listen to many successive install- ent a face-lifted war, the cosmetically treated
ments in a newscast narrative of events in a spectre of its death, and its even more decep-
contemporary war, without encountering the tive televisual subterfuge” (28). While laying
acknowledgment that the purpose of the event out his polemic against the media, he unfor-
described is to alter (to burn, to blast, to shell, tunately appears to dismiss the real suffering
to cut) human tissue” (Body 64). The news on that occurred during the war: “Even the sta-
the Gulf War took shape in the manner she tus of the deaths may be questioned, on both
describes: as an entertainment that diverts at- sides. . . . The paltry number of deaths may be
tention from the destruction of human bod- cause for self-congratulation, but nothing will
ies, which is the objective of war. She remarks prevent this figure being paltry. Strangely, a
that in the reportage on the war, “there were war without victims does not seem like a real
no bodies of the enemy, no photographs of war but rather the prefiguration of an ex-
bodies, no verbal narratives about bodies, perimental, blank war, or a war even more
no verbal counts of bodies” (“Watching” 64). inhuman because it is without human losses”
Margot Norris concurs, asserting that “mili- (73).20 In the process of staging a provocative
tary censorship” of the media during the Gulf critique of the media’s obsessive abstraction
War produced a conflict that was “virtually of the war, Baudrillard denies the worth of in-
corpseless” (Writing 235). By restricting the dividual human beings and further robs the
media’s access to the front lines as well as their combatants—American and Iraqi alike—of
ability to disseminate potentially negative in- their humanity.
formation about the conduct of American and Counteracting the televised version of
United Nations forces, the military robbed the Persian Gulf War, Jarhead reinserts Iraqi
the American public not only of a palpable and American bodies into the discourse
human enemy but also of a chance to recog- on the war. Both the book and the film cast
nize the humanity of that enemy.18 The media, American bodies in a discourse of corporeal
willingly or not, constructed enemy soldiers invasion. These bodies are objects of violence,124.5 ] Geoffrey A. Wright 1685
yet—unlike Iraqi bodies—they remain the lighted by retreating Iraqi troops becomes
property of unique individuals with whom a proxy geographic element, a metonym for
readers and viewers are asked to identify and the desert. Ingesting it functions as an act
sympathize.21 Swofford states, “This is the of communion in which he consumes, and
pain of the landscape, worse than the heat, thereby identifies himself with, the desert.
worse than the flies—there is no getting out The question “What does it mean?” suggests
of the land. No stopping. . . . [T]he desert is in that he is seeking through this tactile encoun-
us, one particle at a time—our boots and belts ter to understand himself and some portion
and trousers and gas masks are covered and of this war in which he has become trapped.
filled with sand.” Sand, the substance of the This scene is repeated in the film Jarhead. Af-
desert that defies his attempts to order the cos- ter tasting the oil droplets on his tongue he
mos of the war, also infiltrates the metaphysi- observes, “The earth is bleeding.” He invokes
cal perimeter drawn between mind and body the symbolism of communion insofar as he
as well as between the body and the environ- imagines himself ingesting the blood and
ment. “No getting out of the land” means that body of a sacrificial subject. The film, how-
he finds no way of physically or psychologi- ever, truncates this line of redemptive com-
cally avoiding it because the sand constantly mentary when Troy reprimands Swofford,
creeps into the folds of his clothes and into his telling him, “That shit’s poison.” Troy repudi-
gear. In an almost confessional tone, he adds, ates Swofford’s efforts at reconciling with his
“Sand has invaded my body: ears and eyes disorienting experience in the desert.22
and nose and mouth, ass crack and piss hole. A similar moment in Three Kings takes a
The desert is everywhere” (15). Nowhere in his more sinister tone. After the Americans steal
memoir does Swofford sound more defeated or the gold and are making their getaway, Troy
more exasperated. Not only is the desert “ev- is captured by Iraqi soldiers and tortured. The
erywhere” in the sense of its vastness, but it is Iraqi interrogator rebukes Troy’s naive, pre-
also “everywhere” in the sense that he cannot programmed justification for the war as the
limit his exposure to it. The sand unexpectedly defense of freedom and political stability in
penetrates the surface of his body, invading its the Middle East. As a way of answering his
most private spaces. The confessional tone of own questions about why the United States is
this passage suggests that he feels violated by fighting this war in this particular place, the
this environmental agent. Iraqi interrogator forces Troy’s mouth open
Loss of his sense of autonomy from and and pours a bucket of oil down his throat. He
power over his environment has a profound tells Troy, “There are a lot of people in trouble
impact on Swofford. As American and Co- in this world, and you don’t fight no fucking
alition forces prepare to initiate the ground war for them. . . . This is your fucking stabil-
offensive, he sits and contemplates his circum- ity, my main man.” The act of forcing oil down
stances: “I look at the sky and the petrol rain Troy’s throat connotes the American con-
falling on my uniform. I want the oil in and sumption of oil, and it asserts that American
on me. I open my mouth. I want to taste it, to dependence on oil is the underlying reason for
understand this viscous liquid. What does it the United States’ involvement in the conflict
mean?” (214). Now in the advanced stages of between Iraq and Kuwait. The film portrays
his tour of duty, he willingly courts the cor- the Iraqi interrogator sympathetically as a
poreal invasion he previously resisted, delib- victim of the American military. To justify
erately opening himself up to the desert and his violent actions, he describes the death of
taking it into his body as though it were food. his infant son in an American bombing. The
The oil raining down from the oil-well fires killing of the innocent boy frames the war as1686 The Desert of Experience: Jarhead and the Geography of the Persian Gulf War [ PM L A
a violation of Iraq, not of Kuwait, and the film lows us to rethink the war, to reimagine what
imagines this violation in bodily terms. Early its stories might signify—morally, politically,
on, Troy and Conrad assist in disrobing Iraqi and spatially. These narratives offer us access,
soldiers as they surrender. The two discover however technologically mediated, to the con-
that one Iraqi man has hidden a map on his temporary world of war, where we are asked
body by inserting it partially into his anus. Af- to acknowledge the damage done to human,
ter removing the document, Troy labels it “my animal, and environmental bodies.23
Iraqi ass map.” The map shows the location of
the Kuwaiti gold bullion, which the group de-
cides to steal. By locating this map inside the
man’s rectum, the film conflates the body of
the Iraqi soldier with the country of Iraq and
Notes
suggests that the Americans’ thievery consti- I would like to thank Gordon Taylor, James Watson, and
Sean Latham for their criticism and support on early
tutes the political equivalent of rape. drafts of this essay—when the essay lived in another form
and I in another time and place.
1. Margot Norris examines the dynamics of the gov-
Conclusion ernment’s unprecedented censorship of the media during
the Gulf War (“Military Censorship”). See also Scarry,
The memoir and film Jarhead and the film
“Watching”; Jeffords and Rabinovitz.
Three Kings revolve around the characters’ 2. Yi-Fu Tuan’s theorization of geography as a function
myriad confrontations with the desert. These of a people’s experience with environmental stimuli pro-
texts counteract the televisual abstraction of vides a platform for examining how characters in combat
the war by marshaling an array of signs that narratives seek to understand themselves through their
firsthand interaction with the physical geography of the war
communicate the characters’ visceral expe- zone. Tuan defines his formative concept of “topophilia” as
riences with the geography of the war zone. “the affective bond between people and a place or setting,”
Narratives by and about combat veterans and and he asserts that this connection revolves around “the
veteran correspondents re-create the circum- response of the senses to external stimuli and purposeful
activity in which certain phenomena are registered” (4).
stances of the characters’ experiences on the Environmental stimuli shape not only people’s specific
ground. Woven into the fabric of these narra- daily practices but also their larger conception of the world
tives is the material structure of the desert, the (75–77): “[W]orld view . . . is necessarily constructed out
sand and the impossibly flat horizon, which of the salient elements of a people’s social and physical set-
ting. . . . Like means of livelihood, world view reflects the
inflects the characters’ knowledge of the war rhythms and constraints of the natural environment” (79).
and of who they have become as a result of it. Physical geography plays a central role in the cultural pro-
Swofford provides an anecdote that can duction of subjecthood, community, and cosmos.
aid us in measuring the legacy of the Persian 3. David J. Morris, who enlisted in the Marines
shortly after the Gulf War, pieces together the story of
Gulf War: “Some mornings, . . . if I’ve found
one of the war’s fiercest ground battles from veteran ac-
a quiet moment with no ground traffic from counts and official histories. He interviewed over a hun-
mechanized units, I might easily convince dred Gulf War veterans while writing the book, and he
myself that where I stand is nowhere, that relates that these veterans’ stories “inevitably began with,
I’m an exile stuck between worlds, between ‘Man, back in the desert’” (xviii).
4. In formulating my argument, I am cutting against
many worlds, a prisoner held captive by sand the grain of Paul Virilio’s postmodern theorization of the
and haze and time” (175). Like Swofford, the Persian Gulf War. The new domain of the battlefield resides,
Persian Gulf War has been suspended be- according to Virilio, in technological instrumentation
tween two worlds: in this case, one of media- rather than in physical geography: “Space is no longer in
geography—it’s in electronics. . . . It’s in the instantaneous
i nduced abstractness and one of the violent time of command posts, multi-national headquarters, con-
immediacy of experience. Practicing a geo- trol towers, etc. Politics is less in physical space than in the
graphic semiotics of combat narratives al- time systems administered by various technologies, from124.5 ] Geoffrey A. Wright 1687
telecommunications to airplanes” (Virilio and Lotringer 10. Tuan diagnoses this sort of anxious response to
114). Military geography, for Virilio, becomes a function of desert climate and topography, observing that the “for-
technology insofar as electronic communications instru- est envelops man in its cool shadowed recesses,” whereas
ments instantaneously link combatants to their targets on “the desert is total exposure in which man is repulsed by
the field as well as to officers or politicians absent from the the hard earth and excoriated by the brilliant sun” (115;
immediate vicinity. He sees his vision of the instantaneous my emphasis). He points to the openness of the desert as
space of communications technologies realized in the Per- a primary cause of the extreme conditions it features.
sian Gulf War: “[T]he military environment is no longer 11. Tuan observes the divergent perspectives that visitors
so much a geophysical one of the real spaces of battles . . . as and native inhabitants have on environments, especially
a microphysical one of the real-time electromagnetic envi- extreme ones such as the desert. He explains, “The part of
ronment of real-time engagement” (Desert Screen 109). The the Kalahari desert in which the Gikwe Bushmen live is not
battlefield has seemingly been transplanted from the physi- only barren but devoid of landmarks”; yet in the eyes of the
cal surface of the desert into the digital spaces of computer bushmen, the “desert is not featureless and empty.” In fact,
monitors and radar screens. the bushmen “have an extraordinarily detailed knowledge
5. His descent echoes a basement scene Tim O’Brien of their roaming area” and even “‘know every bush and
describes in his Vietnam War memoir If I Die in a Com- stone, every convolution of the ground’” (78).
bat Zone (1975). O’Brien relates that after he received 12. Swofford’s cartographic dilemma is also interest-
his draft notice, he went down into his basement and ing in terms of the much broader cultural significance
scrawled “obscene words” on “scraps of cardboard” with that J. B. Harley and David Woodward envision for maps
a bright red crayon. Printing those words allows him to in their History of Cartography, which is an immense
express, and temporarily purge himself of, his anger, project tracing the various types and functions of maps
frustration, and denial. The words constitute a symbolic worldwide, from their prehistoric origins to the present.
rejection of social demands and familial expectations, Its second volume, Cartography in the Traditional Islamic
and for a moment he feels “outside the town” and “out- and South Asian Societies, examines the geographic and
side the law” (20). His denial of his social responsibility celestial branches of mapping in Eastern cultures.
is underscored by his writing in crayon, which suggests a 13. Mark Monmonier provides an enlightening analy-
momentary return to a childhood state. sis of the types of intentional and unintentional distor-
6. This stance situates Swofford as a literary heir to tions maps undergo. He notes, “Some maps fail because
O’Brien, who throughout his work is concerned with of the mapmaker’s ignorance or oversight. . . . By defi-
re-creating the confusing relativity of the truth of what nition a blunder is not a lie, but the informed map user
happened during his tour in the Vietnam War. Piedmont- must be aware of cartographic fallibility, and even a bit
Marton notes this psychological parallel between the two of mischief ” (43). Swofford is guilty of all of the above.
writers (257, 267). He is most definitely ignorant of the desert as a viable
7. Fonda’s character, Corporal Colin Spence, is a Cana- ecosystem, he fails to recognize its subtle topographic
dian who enlists in the British army and is sent to North contours, and he contemplates using the map to inflict
Africa. The film’s heavy-handed patriotism is typical of some mischief on his commanding officer. In his defense,
Hollywood films during the war. In this light, Spence the map he was given appears inadequate to begin with.
represents the generation of young American men being Along this line, Monmonier points out, “Modern warfare
called to serve in “the Good War” in the early 1940s. is particularly vulnerable to bad maps” (45).
8. The Desert Rats responds to the earlier film The 14. Swofford’s cartographic impulse provides a twist
Desert Fox (1951), which offers a romantic portrayal of on the colonial-era practices of surveying and mapmak-
Rommel (in the 1953 film, James Mason reprises his role ing that Martin Brückner investigates. Brückner observes
as Rommel). Although most of The Desert Fox takes place that a typical “field book provides a textual space in which
in Europe and concerns Rommel’s part in the conspiracy the surveyor recounts particular observations . . . in nar-
to assassinate Hitler, the opening of the film is set in rative form,” so much so that “the descriptive, verbal ele-
North Africa and features a number of voice-overs care- ment nearly overwhelms the graphic component” (29). In
fully praising Rommel. These are spoken while the cam- the process, the colonist-surveyor “convert[s] the techni-
era pans across vast stretches of desert, thereby linking cal discourse of property into a narrative of selfhood” (37).
the figure of Rommel as a superior enemy to the fierce- Swofford does not adopt the vocabulary of mapmaking
ness of the environment. but corrupts it, opting to use his denial of cartographic
9. In the film, the severity of the desert is treated as discourse as a way to locate himself in the world.
an element of its beauty, a dynamic that marks it as an 15. The film was shot on location in the deserts of
object of cartographic and militaristic conquest. As ob- Arizona, California, and Mexico (McAdams 270). The
ject, the landscape becomes the symbolic equivalent of original title for the screenplay was “Spoils of War” (269).
Katharine’s body, drawing a link between European co- However, Russell changed it in the process of rewriting
lonialism and white male desire. the script as a political satire (270). The title, Three Kings,1688 The Desert of Experience: Jarhead and the Geography of the Persian Gulf War [ PM L A
also plays on the New Testament story in the Gospel of be measured in numbers; instead, he locates the signifi-
Matthew, chapter 2, of the “wise men from the East” who cance of war in the lives of the people who experience it.
followed the vision of a star to witness the birth of Christ 21. Three Kings also depicts the bodies of Americans as
(2.1 [New King James Vers.]). The film’s plot, in which objects of violence that deserve sympathy. In an interview
the protagonists steal gold bullion originally taken from with Christian Divine, Russell relates, “The whole process
Kuwait by Saddam Hussein’s troops, subverts the actions of resensitizing violence cinematically captivated me at
of the biblical wise men, who bestow gifts, among them the time. I felt that bullets had become glib and cartoon-
gold, on the baby Jesus. The biblical story is the basis for ish, even in really smart independent movies” (56–57). For
the popular Christmas carol “We Three Kings of Orient Russell, reembodying filmic representations of combat re-
Are,” which the character Conrad parodies in the film. quired gazing not only at the body but inside it as well.
While he and the others settle their plans, he sings glee- The use of computer-generated imagery to peer inside
fully, “We three kings be stealing the gold!” the abdominal cavity as it is being punctured by a bullet
16. Fowler’s actions subvert the scene in O’Brien’s The forced audiences to recognize, however fleetingly, the sort
Things They Carried when Rat Kiley methodically shoots of damage that weapons are capable of inflicting (57).
a water buffalo to death after Curt Lemon has been killed 22. Following this scene, the film delves into a night-
by a land mine (85–86). O’Brien declares, “It wasn’t a war marish world as the smoke from the oil-well fires increas-
story. It was a love story” (90), suggesting that Rat Kiley ingly blackens out the sky, cutting the Marines off from
destroyed the innocent animal not out of a pathological the rest of the war zone. This segment of the film borrows
need to do harm but out of an inarticulable sorrow over heavily from the imagery in Werner Herzog’s Lessons of
the loss of his friend. Darkness (1992), a surrealistic documentary on the Ku-
17. Similarly, in Three Kings, Major Archie Gates waiti oil-well fires, the crews who fought them, and the
halts the raucous jeep ride the group is taking on its way environmental damage they inflicted. Herzog depicts the
to steal the gold bullion from Iraqi troops. He pulls off fires and the workers as equally maniacal counterparts in
the road and leads Troy, Chief Elgin, and Conrad to the a world gone insane.
site of a heavily damaged and rotting corpse of an Iraqi, 23. The texts by Swofford, Mendes, and Russell not
only to observe stoically, “We dropped a lot of bombs out only comment on the Persian Gulf War but also antici-
here.” Just as Gates attempts to instruct the three younger pate the treatment of the Iraq War. The current war has
and somewhat foolish men, so the film pauses to teach repeatedly been obscured by politically manipulated me-
the audience a moral lesson about the physical violence dia coverage, which denies the human consequences—
that occurred on the ground. American and Iraqi alike—of the violence continually
18. Michael Ignatieff’s critique of the 1999 Kosovo con- being committed. Numerous memoirs and documenta-
flict further illuminates the problem with the disembodi- ries have begun to tell a counternarrative about the Iraq
ment of the Persian Gulf War. That there was virtually no War as it is being lived out at ground level.
loss of life on the side of NATO forces in Kosovo “trans-
forms expectations that govern the morality of war. The
tacit contract of combat throughout the ages has always
assumed a basic equality of moral risk: kill or be killed”
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