Soundscapes of war

War music videos are not just artefacts of ‘popular culture’, but practices integral to war-making itself. The videos work to recruit new fighters and to keep soldiers motivated, and they are listened to during training and recreation, as well as in soldiers’ home communities and families. In this sense, they can be seen as technologies of war, or even weapons of war. But the videos also frame and regulate spectators’ knowledge of warfare. They articulate, select and enhance always specific and selective notions of what war is, and solicit viewers in distinct ways, for instance inscribing viewers in the same moral geography as the soldiers.

This article by DIIS Senior Researcher Helle Malmvig, and published in leading international journal: International Affairs, sets out to bring sound and music to the field of visual studies in International Relations (IR). It argues that IR largely has approached the visual field as if it was without sound; neglecting how audial landscapes frame and direct our interpretation of moving imagery. Sound and music contribute to making imagery intelligible to us, we ‘hear the pictures’ often without noticing. The audial can for instance articulate a visual absence, or blast visual signs, bring out certain emotional stages or subjects’ inner life. Audial frames steer us in distinct directions, they can mute the cries of the wounded in war, or amplify the sounds of joy of soldiers shooting in the air.

To bring the audial and the visual analytically and empirically together, the article therefore proposes four key analytical themes: 1) the audial–visual frame, 2) point of view/point of audition, 3) modes of audiovisual synchronization and 4) aesthetics moods. These are applied to a study of ‘war music videos’ in Iraq and Syria made and circulated by Shi’a militias currently fighting there. Such war music videos, it is suggested, are not just artefacts of popular culture, but have become integral parts of how warfare is practiced today, and one that is shared by soldiers in the US and Europe. War music videos are performing war, just as they shape how war is known by spectators and participants alike.

Also read the interview with Helle Malmvig in Politiken (behind paywall - in Danish)