Shaping mnemonic opportunity: Remembering Iraq in American Sniper

Abstract

This article contributes to scholarship on public memory by developing a rhetorical model of “mnemonic opportunity.” Scholars of collective memory, especially sociologists influenced by the political process model of social movement research, have conceived of mnemonic opportunity as a more or less objective set of circumstances that determine a group’s actions. I modify this view by calling on rhetorical theory which demonstrates the ways rhetors shape the apparent situation to which they ostensibly respond. The result is a view of rhetors shaping mnemonic opportunity by associating their version of events with resonant concepts in the culture and, thus, better influencing public memory. I offer a critical reading of the film American Sniper to examine how the text shapes and exploits opportunities to remember the Iraq War positively through the popular figure of the Navy SEAL as a masculine western hero.