Bushi-mushi - ******

Thank you to Dinosaur Jr.!!!

cute baby

Landing on your Feet // 2012

Tristan Stevens 

Hard to Be a God (2013, Aleksey German)

Still from 5000 Feet is the Best, Omar Fast

For my module this term we’ve been asked to watch this short film, 5000 Feet is the Best, which uses anonymous footage and re-enacted scenes from an interview with the pilot of an unmanned drone active in Pakistan. Not only is the film visually tasty - eerily silent aerial shots of Sin City, wavering and blurring alongside Burnt Face Man’s dulcet voice-over (okay so it’s Denis O'Hare but I couldn’t help thinking of American Horror Story while watching), but its insight into the psychological consequences of remote controlled warfare are powerful. The fragmented imagery and inexplicable scenes of seemingly irrelevant, arbitrary storytelling echo the dislocation which is at the heart of the life and work of the drone pilot: causing damage from a booth halfway across the globe, no doubt with rush hour traffic outside, the bustle of a busy cafe not too far from the walls of the military compound, and yet the world they occupy is accompanied by superhuman sight, the ability to “see what shoes you are wearing from 5,000 feet, a mile away”.

This juxtaposition of space and body, or “Euclidian shit” as O'Hare quips in his role as the pilot, and a sight that is beyond your body in more ways than simply geographically, interests me. What happens when we are given an extension of our body not only in action and distance but in quality? The constant mention of high quality, crystal clear vision which the drone enables doesn’t remove the human capacity for error, however, with the most chilling moment being when the real Predator pilot adds “sometimes I can make mistakes”.

In my reading this week one theme in particular has stood out: the idea that we are entering (or have entered, long ago) an era of post-humanity. Is our warfare ‘post-human’ when the destruction of humans (both through the killing of civilians, dissidents and enemies and the mental destruction visible in the pilot’s “virtual stress” symptoms) is easily quantifiable? Or is the most revealing part of the pilot’s testimony when he describes how the drone missile locks on not to heat,  nor the image of a person (although these are used) but ultimately to pixels? Have we reduced our enemy, whoever or wherever that may be, to information, ready to delete? 

I’ll leave it up to you, but I’m really looking forward to my seminar tomorrow. That and the fact that we’ll be using Call of Duty as a case study.