The Beautification of 21st Century Wars

Image: WAFA/wikicommons

In this interview, John Keane argues that the public beautification of war is among the oddest features of the terrible meta wars of our century. With the help of communications media, war becomes an elaborately staged, picturesque tableau designed to transfix audiences and wall them off from war’s horrors. Savagery and ghastliness are no more. War becomes bloodless. It undergoes a form of beautification more subtle and more insidious than ever happened in the era of radio, film, and television. However, a new type of rebel journalism does something that is powerfully different. It does more than problematize meta wars by chipping away at their beautification. The new rebel journalism keeps alive and nurtures political hopes for an end to war.