“Doing a Lynndie”: Iconography of a Gesture

Abstract

In the fall of 2003, Lynndie England gave thumbs-up with one hand and lock-and-load with the other to a group of naked Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, when facing a camera. Soon after the Abu Ghraib tortures became public knowledge, and Lynndie England became an iconic “Hillbilly” who tortures for fun, hundreds of people around the world, prompted by a British blog named Bad Gas, took up Lynndie's gesture and transformed it into a humorous everyday practice. This article attempts to illuminate the processes that transform iconic images into embodied commonsense cultural practices by tracing the life of Lynndie's gesture across a varied and complex media landscape. It poses questions about the role that popular media played in providing mainstream discursive frameworks about the Abu Ghraib tortures and about the role of social media in transforming these discourses into humorous practices.