Triumphing Over Stupid Bureaucrats

Die Hard 2 continues the pessimistic view developed in the first film in the series, but to much more incisive ends. In the first Die Hard Bruce Willis's solo cop John McClain goes up against terrorists, hindered by the stupid, greedy, or willfully malicious. The film is built around the notion that the USA in the 1980s might be a land in terminal decline that can only be saved by a few good guys who know the ropes and don't take shit from nobody. As deadly as the terrorists are dimwitted cops, FBI agents used to treating the USA like Vietnam, duplicitous yuppies, moral-less newshounds. The vital forces of action shown actually getting things done are New Women (gutsy like men, in business, although Bonnie Bidelia's Holly is defined mostly by her marriage to McClain and her family), the Japanese (the action takes place in what feels something like foreign soil, or an everyplace, a chunk of California signed off to Tokyo), and a gang of multi-national/racial terrorists.

Die Hard 2 of course repeats this, unhelpful cops and conniving bureaucrats and so forth, although actually the air control staff are depicted as resourceful and courageous: possibly, like Billy Elliott, a segment of the workforce that had struck a blow against neoliberalism, and becomes its victims (the PATCO strike of 1981), was being rehabilitated. If anything the film's failure at being as wholly enjoyable comes from repeating the first film on a vastly smaller scale (also Willis wanted out by this point, asking for his character to be killed off). What is more pointed here is that the film draws direct links between the USA's overseas wars and the military-industrial complex. The backing of a Latin American drug dealer leads to a team of US Special Forces turning rogue in a bid to free him from prison: such as links are well established and still being raised.

Though 90s action films are largely fluff, some seem very remarkable when looked back on.

Either in their vision of the 1990s as a grim near-future, or chaotic distant 'dark age':

Or in fairly critique/contempt for the government from within the military:

Something of a 'Praetorian guard taking over the republic' feel to all of it really.

Message sent, message received

I don't think you trust in my self-righteous suicide

 Insider accounts published in the British, French and Indian media have revealed that US officials threatened war against Afghanistan during the summer of 2001. These reports include the prediction, made in July, that “if the military action went ahead, it would take place before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.” The Bush administration began its bombing strikes on the hapless, poverty-stricken country October 7, and ground attacks by US Special Forces began October 19.

Hey soldier, you ain't ready for war/Clearly the embattled star felt he had much to prove

The pundits for the American television networks and major daily newspapers celebrate the rapid military defeat of the Taliban regime as an unexpected stroke of good fortune. They distract public attention from the conclusion that any serious observer would be compelled to draw from the events of the past two weeks: that the speedy victory of the US-backed forces reveals careful planning and preparation by the American military, which must have begun well before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

For contemporary young radical activists, anarchism means a decentralized organizational structure, based on affinity groups that work together on an ad hoc basis, and decision-making by consensus. It also means egalitarianism; opposition to all hierarchies; suspicion of authority, especially that of the state; and commitment to living according to one’s values. Young radical activists, who regard themselves as anarchists, are likely to be hostile not only to corporations but to capitalism.
 - Monthy Review, September 2001

(worth noting: not an endorsement of conspiracy theory nonsense, more a reading of the psychic entrails, something weird in the air, also relevant is this and this. Somebody should write a conspiracy theories post really).

People have found the lo-fi nature of the murders quite shocking

 'They were kind of atrocities but they'd gone unnoticied, unrecognized, they'd been done in the name of leisure almost.'

'The NoW reveals that the video has a further two minutes of footage shot at various intervals. In one sequence, the cameraman is shown an Iraqi corpse and proceeds to kick the dead man in the face twice, whilst a soldier sniggers: “He’s been a bad mother****er.”'

There's a parallel between the charcter of Richard in Dead Man's Shoes (2004) being a soldier, and the film being released a year after Iraq, three after Afghanistan. Like Northern Ireland there is a lot of horror waiting to come out: nobody talks about Northen Ireland today, and barely anyone talks about Afghanistan or Iraq. The topic is taboo. There are no comforting myths to emerge from the War on Terror: in a great act of collective memory it has been entirely forgotten. The BBC have rewritten their history in an attempt to reinforce the commonsense "nobody could have wanted this" storyline that will eventually become the true story, if any story at all. In Dead Man's Shoes (2004) Richard visits supernatural, violent justice on the lowlifes who killed his brother. It is a film about the importance of taking responsibility: slaying the guilty, and once becoming guilty yourself in the process, seeking self-terminarion. Richard's justice is moral: his enemies are the lowest degenerates of the working class, druggies and immoral scum. They even listen to the wrong music, hip hop rather than the tasteful alt-Americana or wistful folk supplied by Warp. Whatever the intention a trawl of youtube comments reveals commenters seem to have incorporated the film directly alongside the likes of Death Wish and Dirty Harry: they deserve it, every one. The post-apocalyptic state of Britain is well described, casual violence, isolation, and no future, propaganda for any leftist reading; the solutions however, a culling of the irressponsible and devolved, is straight out of the right's playbook. The old embers of political struggle were fading out in the early 2000s, a strange period when the organizations and individuals the left assumed were allies began advocated wars they knew could only have the consequences they did if they had any idea of history. Even the BBC couldn't be trusted anymore. The feedback can be observed in popular militarism (which will likely die with the wars) and the stark reactions to send in the army in response to 2011's riots.

The prediction buried within Edge of Darkness (1985) and GBH (1990) was that Britain (England particularly) had become occupied territory: an alien colonizing force was manipulating what seemed like organic commonsense developments for the good of the colonizer's. Dead Man's Shoes is a depiction, along with elements of GBH, about how the colony should be policed and what should make up the policeman. Detatchment, responsibility, and a calm repose are what is required. After a time, as in Kenya, the Congo, or elsewhere, the violence flows naturally. The battles of the 80s and 90s dramas are done with, more history than ever in the wake of the totem of that era's death: with the natives broken and scattered, what becomes of us next?

He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.

New fronts of terror

For several years during various stints on a business-led Middle East/North Africa magazine, In Amenas represented little more than a pool of data – owners-producers, capacity, products, pipeline routes, end-users (broadly, us in Europe) – that’s what we cared about and reported with repetitive monotony. We could be lulled into false assumptions about its security because, like many such installations in the region, it was a militarised industrial complex in a remote outpost of a huge country used to dealing brutally with terrorists. No danger here, we effectively told subscribers.

Last week’s attack on the workers and the plant, by a bunch of Maghrebis (and, er, Canadians) pledging allegiance to a stateless cause where Salafist beliefs provide the veneer of a crusade (as if one were needed) against western geopolitics, shattered all those illusions. The numbers, around 40 hostages killed alongside 30 kidnappers in nearly five days’ worth of assault and counter-assault, are not as grim as some 90s/00s bombings. Unlike 1998’s East Africa embassy blasts, 9/11, 7/7, the Bali bombings, etc etc, this attack, on a remote plant 1,000 miles from Algiers, was a largely unseen event; in the early hours news editors, especially television editors desperate for images and movement, were forced to make assumptions and perhaps push the story too far on the basis of faintly credible sources. But the fundamentals of the event – a not-quite-successful kidnapping and a ferocious but bungled response – provide for a deeper narrative and strong resonance.

Despite the frustrating invisibility as far as insatiable western media were concerned (leading to an over-reliance on talking heads playing guessing games), there was still more than enough fodder for the endless war on terror (as Phil says, our politicians know no different) and what Cameron has proclaimed as a ‘generational struggle’ (conveniently in a theatre-galaxy far far away). We had the archetypal bad guy, ‘the Uncatchable’ Mokhtar Belmokhtar. Like Bin Laden too wise to actually be there, he was said to be a ruthless veteran of Afghanistan (must have been making the green tea; could have only been about 12) and Algeria’s civil war. We had old players in new situations – not least an Algeria frustrated its Mali peace initiative failed and then reluctantly drawn into it by offering up airspace. We had new motives – not just the broader motive of revenge for French action in Mali, but Belmokhtar’s coming out (!) as leader of a breakaway group. Thus we had new blood curdling names to assign fear to – Katibat al-Mulathameen (Masked Brigade), Those Who Sign in Blood or Signatories in Blood. All this combined with the grisly accounts of survivors.

While the ostensible aim to rush expats out to remote hideouts inevitably twisted into holding a huge industrial complex to ransom – that plant carries way more capital than a few hundred expendable staff – the ‘fluid’ dynamics of the attack resulted in a weird meta-collusion between Algiers and the attackers. A plant producing 10% of its energy and crucial in providing the revenue that keeps Algerians in subsidies and therefore more politically quiescent, gave Algiers little choice in how to deal with it. That made the jihadist raid effectively a suicide attack – attacking a complex like that could only result in a brutal reprisal, despite initial western dismay. Everyone knew the stakes. There was also perhaps an embarrassed realisation that the local security forces’ reaction at the start had been less than the iron fist we’d expected of fortress Algeria. It is worth emphasising here Algiers’ approach to the expat workers who some view as mercenaries working for first-world companies exploiting developing world resources. They were destined to end up as collateral, the ultimate price of a well-paid but highly alienating spell in the desert in the pay of majors such as BP.

‘Once again the good ol' Global War on Terror (GWOT) remains the serpent biting its own tail … As blowback goes, [Mali] is just the hors d'oeuvres’ - Pepe Escobar

So for all the talk of shutting down the Islamist threat, quixotic and inconsistent western policy shows a remarkable capacity for opening up new fronts, in weird double-step with the Islamists they denounce. While in Syria we have seen bearded warriors actively given time, space and materiel to mess up the Shia crescent, Mali was something experts had been warning about with increasing noise since Islamicised Tuareg fighters came back with loads of gear from Libya - more Arab spring blowback to consider there. Though a counterinsurgency campaign would doubtless have won sympathy with those world heritage sites and the region’s beautiful music at threat (Damon Albarn will lead the campaigning here), the west looked on as Mali’s defence structures imploded with a weak coup led by leaders nonplussed at defending the north.

What the geopolitical analysts are talking about now is a cross-Sahel force of Al-Qaida aligned fighters, bringing the pain for diverse reasons: some localised and further afield such as Somalia; others more vaguely for the ‘cause’; still more mere fronts for cocaine, cigarette and people trafficking. Such ‘existential’ crises can be pretty brutal for some. But all in all cause enough to keep the military industrial complex well funded and focused on picking nonsensical fights for decades to come.

NSFW: Public Relations

With pwnography's ballooning mainstream presence since the 90s, discussion of it has become a little more nuanced. However, in terms of the 'public arena' the debate has largely boiled down to censorship, family morality or rape - deeply emotive issues that encourage fundamental calls for freedom, regulation or condemnation. By and large, viewer effects - and human sexuality - remain mysterious even to the most attentive researchers. Inequality between the sexes, less so; but to locate it in specific media product is to limit understanding of what representations emerge from. The reproduction, enforcement, and mutation of gender oppression began long before the invention of the internet, film, photography or the printing press. In a sea of imagery and discourse competing for attention, gender oppression is consolidated at every level of culture. There's frequent confusion between 'genre' and 'industry' when discussing pwn - as with de facto arguments that deem it an objectively worse form of exploitation than extracting value from au pairs, farmhands, cleaners, miners, or prison inmates. Sociological and economic research may suggest otherwise. We can't be certain if 'pwn causes rape' any more than we can know if gangsta rap encourages urban crime. We can't be certain if it 'prevents' rape either. However, as something interrelating with the cultural landscape, pwn plays a crucial ideological role; and not necessarily in ways that most assume. That's not to say that I'm 'defending' it - far from it - but I'd like to gratuitously shift focus in a different direction.

As this is (nominally) a blog about the 90s, I'll try and focus on what pwn has been 'about' since the turn of this century; which I'd contend is very different to what it was 'about' in the 70s or 80s. I should add that I'm discussing 'mainstream' pwn here - namely, heterosexual productions featuring 'name' performers, and - of ideological importance - legally marketed from the US by its most powerful brands and distribution networks. Since the 90s, pwn has embedded itself into mainstream culture; but certain kinds remain more mainstream than others - the kind where performers put their names to supplementary merchandise, has its producers interviewed by non-pwnographic outlets; and lurks much closer to 'respectability' (and mainstream sexual representations) than the daunting range of niches pwn caters for. The usual debates about pwn may never be resolved; because what it 'means' as a genre will never be as fixed as many of its critiques assume. The meaning of a genre changes as much as its production, format and marketing does.

If that's confusing, let me offer another example. Not only did 'Dracula' or 'the vampire' mean something very different in the 1990s to what it did to the 1890s; but also the overall meaning of 'horror' as label and metaphor changed, and will continue to do so. Meanings within a story always operate in directions moving outside the story; towards the identifying features of a genre itself, in its role as an intermediary between text, production, industry, audience and society. The varying status and influence (and market share) of genres over time demonstrates this. What horror means (and its value) depends on geographical and historical circumstances as much as anything else. Even non-fiction requires certain motifs, hierarchies, environments, narrative structures, character behaviour (and of course, clichés), to be identified as a genre. It simply puts different energies into disguising its ideological coding - its metaphors, or 'similes' - beneath the narrative. I'm taking it as given that metaphors largely function as ideological coding, however playful or contradictory they may be; and at different levels, they are always present in visual narrative. For example, a straightforward one-hour medical documentary of diagnosis, treatment and recovery is held together by a guiding metaphor negotiating issues of health, family, state, individuality, responsibility, security, work, growth and death. These issues periodically rearrange their perspective, emphasis, urgency, authority - recombine into a different generic meaning - according to ideological shifts over time. The genre of 'medical documentary' is as subject to change as medicine itself. In the context of the genre discussed below, this is relevant to the problem (or appeal) of something so dependent on the 'reality' of what's filmed.

Contra Goebbels, masking ideology beneath ostensibly 'real' imagery has proven to be very powerful in reinforcing cultural hegemony. Social, political, technological and economic conditions - themselves determining a given genre's production, distribution and consumption within society - adapt to 'answer' questions posed to a given audience; or to reproduce further questions, desires, to retain attention. In addition to constant dialogue with its audience and society, a genre engages in dialogue with other genres and in dialogue with itself to adapt, survive, and sustain a certain kind of power. With all these levels of negotiation, the overall genre may eventually synthesize, to represent an entirely different metaphor to that of an earlier stage. It can retain unavoidable traces and influences from previous syntheses (and usually does), but a genre can come to play a very different 'role' within the culture it forms part of. With this in mind (and in the hope I'm making sense!), we'll now consider what pwn has actually represented since the end of the 90s.

At this historical conjecture, within the imperial core of the west, pwn isn't really about sex. Rather, it uses sex as a metaphor. Here’s a standard scenario in mainstream American pwn, the ‘bare bones’ of the genre in its current state: A woman is interrogated by a man (about her background, age, status etc.). The man – and/or the camera – conducts a physical examination of the woman, often with running commentary on her ‘distinguishing’ features; before, during, or after she undresses. This commentary usually goes no further than physical description, without much suggestion of what could be done, will be done, or why it is done. Then, a penis is introduced – in the manner of a protagonist, or rather a hero. It/he is foregrounded by both the camera and the woman, to confirm its central role in the narrative (rarely off-camera, the pwnographic narrative devotes more attention to the penis than anything else). It/he may be commented on in admiration, but hardly interrogated. Then, fellatio – at which point the woman’s dialogue largely ceases; give or take improvised fragments of ‘dirty talk’. Fellatio is often filmed from several angles and/or in different ‘variations’. Then following this (usually protracted) sequence, there is vaginal sex; again from several angles and/or different ‘variations’. This is then followed by anal sex. Not always, but common enough to be normative; if not for the woman, then definitely for the genre. Intervals of fellatio will frequently punctuate penetrative sex. Then to conclude, the man ejaculates; almost always on the woman’s face, with the camera paying upmost attention to the penis until it does so. Before fade out, there will be a (very brief) denouement where the woman (still covered in semen) expresses satisfaction; either verbally, with a silent smile, or an endorsement of her employers. The end.

That’s the basic scaffolding of 21^st century mainstream pwn. To the above can be added a higher ratio of male participants (or less commonly nowadays, female), intensified aggression (of sexual acts, apparatus, dialogue, or pacing; with an emphasis on punishment), varying levels of attention paid to age, race, experience, nationality, body type, or fetishes (close-ups of particular body parts, orifices, objects or clothing); or a slightly more detailed mise en scene and ‘dramatic’ context for activities depicted. This context goes no further than the title, packaging or rudimentary introductions between characters (“I’ve brought my wife”, “I need to check your immigration status”, “What are you doing in the girl’s dorm?” etc). These details may add some initial ‘tension’, but they largely adhere to the standard plot above. Even today’s more ‘elaborate’ pwnographic scenarios devote a bare minimum of attention to the social context of ‘employee’, ‘boss’, ‘guest’ ‘suspect’, ‘babysitter’, ‘teacher’, ‘neighbour’, ‘wife’, and ‘best friend’s’ (my?) ‘mother’ ‘daughter’ or ‘sister’. Compared to how these relationships were ‘explained’ in earlier decades, narratives (and social relations upon which they’re based) are largely ‘expressed’ through sexual acts alone. It’s a process of interview (or exchange), employment (dispossession), performance (ordeal) and 'payment' (ownership). That’s the affective part of the scenario, but it’s also producing something other than profits (or semen). Ideologically, this grotesque caricature of sexual relations represents – and reproduces – surplus desires venturing beyond misogyny.

It’s been widely noted how ‘drama’ in pwn has shrunk to a bare minimum since the 70s. Changes in technology, economics and distribution played a major role; but the drastic reduction in narrative context also suggests an ideological shift (itself affected by technology, economics and distribution). Three hits that put pwn ‘on the map’ in the early 70s – Behind The Green Door, Deep Throat, and The Devil in Miss Jones – were based on very different narrative ‘scaffolds’. This is not just due to running time (contemporary pwn films often run much longer than the above, albeit mostly as ‘compilations’ of unrelated scenes). Nor is it due to changes in sexual practices (although what sex is ‘for’ may change). All three films focused on women moving from restricted, lonely worlds to one of supposed ‘liberation’; a standard plot template that would continue into the 80s, less so by the 90s, and now pretty much non-existent. They would of course conclude with ‘liberation’ (supposedly) conducive to the sexual demands of men, arriving at similar conclusions to the soft-core pantomimes of Russ Meyer, Tinto Brass or Just Jaeckin. Like them, standard pwn stories were variations on a ‘journey’ from one experience of life to another. But that was during a time of great social upheaval and cultural fragmentation. It was also a country still licking wounds from its last war. Lockdown on the field of vision wasn’t as resolute as it is now.

This is not to say the above were ‘sexier’ more ‘realistic’ or ‘progressive’. They weren’t. Notions of a golden age with regards to anything are almost always reactionary nonsense. But however corny, distorted and misogynistic, earlier mainstream pwn films were nominally about sex. Plots up until the 90s were often built around frustration, restlessness, or even love, on the part of men or women. Set-ups leading to sex scenes were based around awkwardness, curiosity, anxiety or farce. ‘Major’ sex scenes accrued meaning in relation to ‘minor’ sex scenes. This could be expressed with music, montage or ‘meanwhiles’. They would include scenes of unsatisfactory sexual activity (for both parties). Jealousy, domestic limitations, separation, adultery, performance anxiety, competition, and social taboos – however clumsily, they were articulated in plot, setting and dialogue. However ugly, offensive or crude it was, mainstream pwn once entertained the basic foundation of drama: Conflict, something that has largely vanished from within pwn’s narrative. In contemporary pwn, there is little suspense as to who will do what and when or how they will do it. With Internet distribution, all acts – and outcomes – are explicitly announced in advance. Its use of sexual activity reproduces a way of seeing. It isn’t about ‘the battle of the sexes’, so much as asymmetrical warfare in microcosm. When one, two, many male performers enter the scene, it’s on condition their full spectrum dominance will be a foregone conclusion. The camera must accord pride of place to their camaraderie and superior equipment. The performance – or mere introduction – of the ‘unquestioned’ penis must be greeted with shock and awe.

Popular pwnographic websites monitor highly organized classifications of operations, resources and personnel: ‘Natural’, ‘nerdy’, ‘ebony’, ‘Asian’, ‘blowjob’, ‘interracial’, ‘anal’, ‘big cock’, ‘milf’, ‘teen’, etc. etc. Activities, appearances, races, uniforms, skills, capacities that can be assessed, filed, exchanged; in order to be efficiently mobilized at the click of a mouse. In addition to this military classification, next to performers’ names (including all aliases) are detailed lists of previous activities; regularly updated like personnel files. Some may even include places and dates of birth, height, measurement, sub-listings of previous employers, and activities they specialize in. Many include links to forums requiring log-ins, where further information and codes are exchanged like classified information: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Jerkoff. Look at security agency websites, newspaper editorials, or dossiers arguing for war – the protracted gobbling of pre-intervention propaganda and selective data, stimulating a solid case for action. Desire is generated, and generated further, to arouse ‘security threats’. It consolidates the efficient, reductive ideological economy. Phrases are repeated like mantras to the rubes: “Evil dictator”, “office gang bang”, “nuclear capabilities”, “first time anal”, “failed state”, “cumshot fiend”, “clear and present danger”, “double penetration”, “humanitarian intervention”. Identify the transgressor. Locate the target. Point your weapon. Splat.

With these eye-catching labels and formats, one link leads to another. And another. Accompanied by adverts demanding further and further attention. Do you 'want' this? We could provide something better, more you. Like the recruitment ads say: Be all you can be. Keep clicking until we get you there, that's a good boy. The viewer’s attention rationalized ever more efficiently; it trains him to desire in a certain way:

The parallel to the scientific management of production is straightforward: the task of watching is broken down according to the specific characteristics of the viewer. The rationalization strategy is based on “the specification and fractionation of the audience,” which leads to “a form of ‘concentrated viewing’ in which there is (from the point of view of advertisers) little wasted watching.

Mark Andrejevic Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched

To ensure “little wasted watching”, the message must be received with a minimum of interference. For mainstream debate, narrow it down to a minimum of ‘talking points’, all arriving at the same consensus. For mainstream pwn, narrow sex down to the unchallenged penetration of three orifices in the ‘right’ order, concluded with ejaculation upon the ‘right’ area. Work to convince young audiences this is ‘what men want’… or what the Free World needs. Micromanage the available paradigms, based on accumulated audience data – target that pwn viewer or patriot. Show them the way to wave their respective flagpoles. Ensure all complementary information - adverts, menus, supplementary entertainment - stay on message. Reproduce further desires accordingly, until the neural routes of ‘sex’ and ‘war’ get hotwired into the slickest of perception machines; generating stimulus with the structure and POV of a drone operation. To masturbate or bomb with maximum productivity, one must know how to look. Ever wondered why Neocons (far to the right of Nixon or Reagan’s moral majorities) raised little more than a whimper in their supposed war against pornography? When clamping down on so many other civil liberties like a ton of bricks? It takes more than Jack Bauer to keep the Homeland vigilant.

As with (competitive) reality TV, sports broadcasts and videogames, pwn has adapted its format and narrative structure to reproduce war by other means. Arnie or Bruce decapitating terrorists got somewhat passé years ago. Interactivity can bypass fragile suspensions of disbelief. Voting, cheering, betting, shooting, ejaculating - it draws one into the heat of battle more effectively than simple reading, watching or listening. Paul Virilio noted how narrative codes of the moving image emerged with the use of military ordinance and surveillance since the First World War: “The function of the weapon is the function of the eye.” Consider how wars have been fought by western powers since 1989. Compare CNN’s bomber’s-eye view of Gulf War I with the ubiquitous ‘POV facial’. Or compare the news anchor’s admiration for Pentagon hardware to the pwn star’s (and viewer’s) reverence for her partner’s invulnerable tool. Consider pwn’s accelerating efficiency in marketing, classification, consumption, editing, positioning, perspective, decontextualization, dumbed-down ‘rationale’ and the parenthetical asymmetry of its aggression. Keep the story simple: Either with us or against us. Suck it or fuck it. Axis of Evil. Bikini Sluts Gone Wild. No-fly zone. Gone are any pretenses to depicting the push-and-pull of the sexes, or the possibility of legitimate resistance in enemy territory. Character has been superseded by function (by the climactic cumshot, does the remote masturbator remember – or care - if the ‘target’ was born in Los Angeles, Buenos Ares or Prague?). The mechanistic misogynists of the Renaissance get a belated second wind on Porntube: I cum therefore I am.

And that’s just in ‘normal’ pwn scenarios. Over the past decade, mainstream providers have increasingly brushed against the edge of legality – overtly deploying rituals of humiliation, confinement, binding, gagging, deprivation, tools, and stated demands for absolute submission; with her approving smile concluding the narrative as much as it would after ‘vanilla’ activity. The same performer who played that curious mom, daughter or sister last week can be broken down and reconstructed in scenarios of Extraordinary Rendition within dungeon-like settings; a microcosm of the overwhelming force deployed against Afghanistan, Iraq or Somalia. “Pure cock punishment”, that the ‘accused’ will eventually thank her punisher for (whether said ordeals are staged by pwn directors or NATO). Cheerful reminders that it’s ‘just a movie’ must be included, lest viewers by distracted by the possibility of real suffering (by all means have a “mission accomplished” parade, but sores? Enemas? Streets strewn with mutilated corpses? Bad for morale…). Accentuate the positives in sadism, with a happy disclaimer that abuse was actually invited with open arms. But do pwn performers represent 'soldier' or 'enemy territory'? Female performers could represent both, albeit at different degrees of degradation. It helps if military ideology covers all its bases. In its initiation rituals (break 'em down to build 'em up), militarized subjectivity demands alienation from the self as well as designated enemies. 

As with ‘the Iraqi people’, ventriloquism can be employed to request violation. Like the ‘freedom’ once demanded by the Eastern Bloc, which since the 90s has supplied ever more ‘cannon fodder’ for western pwn markets. Economic shock treatment got the Homeland more bang for its buck. White women paid at Third World rates were the spectacular trophies of globalization. But pwn isn’t racist per se – Black Bros on Blonde Hos teaches us that opportunity awaits Amerikkka’s most marginalized citizens. These wars need all the ‘swinging dicks’ they can mobilize. This is no time for cracker insecurities. Like I said, pwn’s overriding metaphor is no longer about sex, but is it about rape? Like famine or slavery, rape is one of the most ancient weapons of war. Pwn is about war, and war is about rape as much as any other atrocity it entails. Rape isn’t culturally unique to any military campaign. To claim otherwise is to provide Empire with another trusty weapon: Demonizing the sexual depravity of the natives. It’s deeply ironic how Catherine Mackinnon accused pwn of being a “genocidal” incitement to mass rape in Yugoslavia – contributing to a chorus of propaganda eventually used to bomb it to the End of History; paving the way for further US atrocities in the decade that followed (space restricts discussion of Andrea “pwn holocaust” Dworkin’s celebration of Zionist masculinity). We had a responsibility to really fuck Yugoslavia, to protect its peasants from their pwn. Rocco fucked Budapest. Wall St. fucked Warsaw. Slick Willie fucked Belgrade. Money shots all round.

Relentlessly pounding that pseudo-frontier of known unknowns: Women, foreign territory, the clash of civilizations, lucrative resources, male desire – the only known knowns are profit, imperialism and the reproduction of an ideology required to maintain them. Am I confusing the development of an industry with a genre here? The perspective of the former feeds into the latter, and vise versa. All corners of our increasingly militarized culture energize a self-perpetuating ideology machine. With their wings clipped by the Great Enclosure, future generations line up for enlistment. They may yet have their perspective and desires directed accordingly; reproduced via a landscape of ‘pure entertainment’ that’s left them riddled with frustration. Doubtless there's drill sergeants initiating their young privates with interrogative, relentless demands like a domineering pwn stud. Indeed, he’s likely barking kinky insults redolent of ‘extreme’ pwnographic ordeals. On the battlefield, our boys may finally make sense of that invincible, unquestioned prick that every shot trained them to focus on; like the winning weapon in an X-Box game. Disciplined through every receptive orifice, our ‘heroes’ can stand erect at the centre of the ongoing military spectacle. Penetrated by ideology as virgin territory, they can reify their manhood by penetrating further territory. And we can expect them to penetrate the right territory in the right order, aiming with admirable precision (and mentioning epidemic levels of rape among ‘our' boys would only empower the enemy, so don’t even go there…). Pwn's infernal desire machine bypasses the frontal lobes, heading straight for the groin; reaching the parts that even Goebbels couldn’t (loser). After we dump the last load upon their grateful heads, we can only hope ‘liberated’ nations will smile at the camera to endorse our superior culture. If they don’t, I’m sure news anchors will find a way to tell us they are. At this point, it’s a generic requirement.