Abstract
This paper provides an analysis of images associated with the British Royal Air Force's recent ‘Be Part of the Story’ war comic-styled military recruiting campaign. Set around literatures in popular geopolitics, the paper builds on the concept of comic book visualities to suggest that the ‘Be Part of the Story’ images reproduce longstanding war comics conventions, and coherently represent the complex, relational and spatially disparate battlespaces of the present. The paper, firstly, provides a detailed history of war comics as they have mediated war to publics, and argues that war comics should figure more strongly in future studies of popular geopolitics. Secondly, it argues that more than simply part of a pervasive ‘cultural condition’ of militarization, military recruitment is a vital medium through which states and militaries view, and choose to represent their role in the world. Lastly, it demonstrates that ‘Be Part of the Story’ reproduces the violent visions, metaphors and cultural designations integral to state-centric narratives of global politics, and specifically, spatial principles inherent to network-centric warfare.
Highlights
In the latter part of 2009, the British Royal Air Force (RAF) released a series of posters, magazine, TV, radio and cinema advertisements, blogs and online interactive content for a new recruiting campaign entitled ‘Be Part of the Story’
The paper concludes with a discussion which will further make the case that critical studies of military recruitment have a place in scholarship around critical and popular geopolitics
A established part of the three-fold ‘superstructure’ (Holland, 2012) of critical geopolitical critique, popular geopolitics has been concerned to expose state-centric narratives of global politics as they are manifest in popular culture and everyday life
Summary
Be Part of the Story: A popular geopolitics of war comics aesthetics and.
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