Somali Civil War

The language (sound and body) is also associated with the films binarism that seeks to demonize the Somalians. First of all, you can tell that most of the American soldiers have years of training and experience making them effective fighters, but the Somali militia forces are shown as a barley functionable fighting force. In many of the fight scenes, the militia not only can’t aim, but they are super disorganized in how they fight. They rarely even utilize guerrilla tactics when fighting and just in general seem careless only hitting targets through sheer luck. On top of this, their killings are made to look far more ruthless than that of the American soldiers. For example, there is a scene where a Somali child soldier fires an RPG into at a tank which blows one of the American soldiers in half. This, and the fact that it was a child soldier that did the killing ties directly back to …show more content…
This false representation of history can be tied to another key aspect of what make whiteness so powerful according to Dyer. This would be representation which he states can be used within the media as a tool of marginalization and oppression in order to drive home the narrative that people of color are different in a negative way and are therefore not part of the dominate society i.e whiteness (Dyer). This narrative becomes abundantly clear in the opening minutes of the film. The audience is given a brief overview of the situation in Somalia during the time period that Black Hawk Down takes place in. The audience is informed of the fact that Somalia faces a crisis in terms of famine due to the central government being ousted and replaced by Aidid and his militia. The rest of the film is framed around the narrative of how unstable the country is as a justification for the U.S military to be present. The first thing to be noted about this narrative is that it