War in Pieces

War in Pieces considers media representations of the first phase of the "War on Terror," set between 2001 and 2013. The book argues that the central figures around which narratives of the conflicts cohered—the war journalist, the active-duty service member, the veteran, and the military family—served to mask the loss of the myth of a unified American national identity and embodied the negotiation of cultural anxieties. Offering a theory of narrative figuration that draws into conversation repetitions and differences across media forms (fiction and nonfiction films, television shows, and online videos), this book breaks down how these figures contributed to a continued sense of unified national identity even as different audiences came away with divergent understandings. This book frames these questions in terms of how US media packaged the "War on Terror" for future cultural memory even as the conflicts continued.