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in contemporary society. Political discourse is deeply embedded in the pieces, as they raise pertinent questions of international responsibility, civic duty, humanism, and humanitarianism. After the current craze for all things Scandinavian – from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to The Killing and the knitted jumpers worn by its central protagonist Sarah Lund, to Michelin-starred Danish restaurants – has inevitably died away, Sweden’s place in the world as expressed artistically in film and television (or film-as-television) will, I predict, remain tantalisingly
use this term as a way of building on accounts of white amnesia (Hesse 1997). The concerted erasure of the historical links leading to the impoverishment and destabilisation of some regions of the world has allowed European media and policy-makers to present all European actions as benevolent. Even very recent military actions, such as US-UK actions in Iraq, are forgotten or reframed as humanitarianism. In this telling, Europeans and European nations have no obligations to those fleeing conflict. Any action that is taken is an outcome of generosity and benevolence
calling for a ceasefire and humanitarian access instead of forceful intervention. Where proponents of ethical intervention tend to see self-interest as limiting the West’s willingness to intervene consistently, radical critics have dismissed the claim that humanitarianism and human rights have become central to Western foreign policy as an ideological cover for the pursuit of hidden interests
giving any impression that this is a war against Islam’. 7 Potentially more significant, perhaps particularly in a British context, is the way that, as discussed earlier, in addition to the idea of military action in Afghanistan being part of a ‘war on terrorism, leaders also invoked human rights and humanitarianism, continuing themes familiar from interventions of the 1990s. Questions
learned of the diffusion of combat space, mainstream media continue to present conflict zones as delimited areas. Occasionally we are encouraged to support interventions to remove civilian populations from the line of fighting – and this is presented as humanitarianism. However, when we are forced to recognise that there are no spaces beyond the war for anyone and no fantasies of safe havens or delimited zones of conflict, our narrative repertoire runs thin. In effect, and despite the seemingly endless appetite for bloody and triumphalist representations of war
’, ‘classic perfection’, ‘peaceful universalism’ and ‘rational humanitarianism’. 12 However, those same practitioners were influenced also by some of the more disturbing aspects of the period which they lived through, and this was also to shape the evolution of the ‘true style’. By the time that the ‘true style’ came to prominence in the 1780s, for example, the heroic providentialist ideals of the early
‘counterfeit humanitarianism’ (de Waal 1997: 195). Western governments later came to share similar views; for instance, British Development Minister Clare Short argued that ‘humanitarian assistance strengthened the evil forces which had brought about the genocide in Rwanda’ (quoted in Fox 2000 : 24) and Madeleine Albright, America’s UN ambassador at the time of the crisis, condemned the use of humanitarian
America. Who do we see about that? Do I want to preach America? Judeo-Christianity? No. If their religion forbids them from playing the trumpet, so be it. But I want those kids to look at a globe, be exposed to social sciences, history, some literature. They’ll like us when we win. Again, the language is reminiscent of the parallel debates in the real-life West Wing. Appeals to humanitarianism and human rights provide windowdressing for a particularly muscular variant of liberalism – a ‘Wilsonianism with boots’, to use Max Boot’s infamous phrase. 58 These
case against von Braun is represented initially by his fiancée Maria (Victoria Shaw) who is jealous of his commitment to space exploration and questions his humanitarianism. Later in the film, his chief critic is an American officer Taggert (James Daley) who has lost his wife and child in a V-2 attack. This character, according to Lee Thompson ( 1960 ), is ‘a “composite” of many influential people in America who still hold the view that von Braun
. The act of emasculation – the disabling of the guns – is carried out not so much in the strategic pursuit of military victory but as an act of humanitarianism which will allow the evacuation of British forces on a neighbouring island. Although the 2,000 servicemen trapped on Kheros will clearly be useful in the future prosecution of the war, their function in the film is primarily symbolic, to stand in opposition to the guns