Blame the War, Not the Troops: Good Kill

Abstract

The 2014 feature film Good Kill is a case study of how hegemonic popular culture can defang and absorb critiques of military discourse. Although this film articulates a limited critique of drone warfare, its major task is to normalize drone warfare in three ways. First, it presents a romanticized view of the ‘clean’ military capabilities of drone weaponry. Second, the film shows ordinary soldiers as morally good actors who are forced to execute operationally counterproductive orders by inept superiors. Finally, it emphasizes the corrosive effects of drone warfare on the protagonist’s mental wellbeing. This synthesis of tropes enables a depoliticized understanding of drone warfare, which is morally exculpatory for drones as a technology at the same time as it represents drone operators sympathetically. Good Kill demonstrates how hegemonic popular culture can articulate a limited critique of war in the course of politically legitimizing it.