Revenge of the Fallen

transformers 2: revenge of the Fallen

life of high school sophomore Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf)—buying his first car, attracting a mate with said car, and ultimately proving worthy of said mate in the crucible of battle alongside his transforming car, Bumblebee—the 2007 film affirms a hasbro-centric version of childhood play, the ‘scopic relation between male viewer and fetishized object: the car-man’ (Wilson, 350). Set against the background of Sam entering university, Transformers 2 amplifies Sam’s role as honorary transformer through two ancient astronaut inspired adventures: an expedition to Petra to recover the ‘Matrix of Leadership,’ an artefact that fuels the weapon of mass destruction in the great Pyramid, and a joint u.S.-autobot clash with the Decepticons for possession of the giza plateau. the colossal damage to World heritage sites in the finale is a spectacular analogue of Sam’s mutation into an action hero, a transfor-mation that also embodies the contradictory tenets of stewardship in the military-archaeology complex.

this chapter examines relationships between the film’s production history and its representation of historical remains within the milieu of SF action cinema. collaborations with the Pentagon and with archaeological oversight organizations in Jordan and Egypt contribute to the film’s ‘realistic’ portrayal of conflict in the Middle East. i argue that these relationships are indicative of ‘structural violence,’

a term coined by peace and conflict studies scholar Johan galtung and adapted by archaeologist reinhard Bernbeck to critique the mechanisms by which Western academics and institutions consciously and unconsciously perpetuate political and economic inequalities, often on a global scale. this concept assumes several complementary meanings in a contemporary SF action film that locates conflict at World heritage sites. violence to things in the film—the pyrotechnic spectacles of exploding military machinery, cyborg soldiers and ancient monuments—is a visceral correlative of the ‘violent structures’ inherent in the power of the military-archaeology establishment to secure consent for the questionable political worldview Transformers tacitly endorses as entertainment.

in the social sciences, the conceptualization of violence encompasses but is not restricted to its physical meaning. Johan galtung’s term

‘structural violence’ refers to the tendency of dominant social structures like capitalism and patriarchy to produce economic and political disparities, which are then naturalized in cultural systems that legitimize inequalities of gender, class, race and nationality. Structural and cultural violence are the subliminal ideological forces that inevitably lead to and are expressed physically in ‘direct violence’ like assault, police action and war. at the same time, physical or direct violence maintains systemic

inequality often by posing as the solution to, rather than the product of, structural and cultural violence (galtung, 1969, 1990; galtung and høivik). Structural, cultural and direct violence thus circulate in a hegemonic system that ‘vehemently denies the connections between direct and structural violence’ (Bernbeck, 395).

applied to archaeology, Bernbeck’s focus is not on violence to objects per se, but on the ways his discipline thrives within the

‘violently unequal structures of our present world’ (390). he illustrates this through several post-9/11 funding programmes and application procedures for international students at u.S. universities. these seem innocuous enough. Mandatory language testing (tOEFL) and Educational testing Services, levying international student fees, complex entry and work visas, and security vetting are all realities in the post-9/11 English-speaking corporate and academic world. they are in place for our protection by screening for people ‘pre-adapted to u.S. academic standards by indirectly ascertaining their financial background, class position, discipline, and willingness to submit to Western values’ (400).

these benchmarks of competency are deeply embedded in, Bernbeck argues, a system of inclusion and exclusion ‘guaranteed to result in minimal impact of foreign ideas on institutions in the West’ (401) by erecting intellectual and social barriers to knowledge transfer from non-Western countries (405). Positions of inferiority are perceived and interiorized by international students through structures that promote

‘the superiority of others’ (394) who are born into and/or have mastered

‘internationally acceptable professional discourse’ (398). ‘[B]iopolitics at the level of academics’ have, he continues, ‘such a deep history that they have become entrenched in our professional routines, on all sides of the structural divides […] the main problem of Western imperialist archaeology is our inability to see our own practices as a facet of much larger economic, military and political structures of violent domination’

(401, 405; cf. Starzmann).

Practising archaeology at sites of actual violence raises pertinent questions about the discipline’s ongoing complicity with violent structures.

the ‘soft power’ initiatives by the u.S. government outlined by Luke and Kersel are a case in point. aggressive appeals to global heritage and the return of Western archaeologists to iraq as global stewards are embedded in larger strategies of pacification and reconciliation (cf. hamilakis, 2003, 2009; rush, 2011, 2015). a recent essay collection by archae-ologists alfredo gonzález-ruibal and gabriel Moshenska, Ethics and the Archaeology of Violence (2015), explores, as the title suggests, the ethical dimensions of research conducted at sites of past and contemporary conflict. reflecting on theory and praxis at locations of ethnic violence

and genocide, colonial and dictatorial oppression, and military conflict,³ the case studies consider how the discipline has been responsible for and profits from the kinds of violent structures outlined by Bernbeck (gonzález-ruibal and Moshenska, 5–6). Endeavouring to ‘historicize [the discipline’s] ethical principles’ (gnecco and ireland, v), the volume’s central message is the need for archaeologists to harmonize academic practices of fieldwork and publication with the goals and method-ologies of social justice. Widening stakeholder inclusion to include the experiences and often silenced voices of people most directly affected by the violence under investigation is a fundamental step in this process.

connections between hollywood and contentious real-world issues by archaeologists working in conflict zones may seem tenuous or inconse-quential, but a blockbuster like Transformers 2 not only represents global conflict but perpetuates through its corporate culture the violence it packages for global consumption. the interrogation of disciplinary habitus by archaeologists like Bernbeck, Luke and Kersel, and gonzález-ruibal and Moshenska helps expose ways in which archaeology is represented in a medium that is expressly about, profits from and perpetuates violent action. in the case of Transformers 2, popular represen-tations of archaeology sublimate violent structures of inequality into powerful hegemonic images of salvation. By examining the effects such representations may have on an audience whose sympathies are aligned with the objectives of ‘good guys’ acting violently in global contexts, similar claims can be made for popular cultural representations of archaeology that naturalize the kinds of violent structures outlined by Bernbeck. archaeology plays an important cultural role in maintaining the illusion that spectacular cinematic violence is self-contained on the screen and that its enthusiasts are merely spectators rather than sponsors of the action it references.

in this vein, film and media scholars have begun to appreciate action cinema as a vehicle of ‘soft’ power politics. Lisa Purse contends that the genre invites us to consider ‘historically specific questions, prompted by contemporaneous and recent events, about the basis upon which it is right or necessary to take violent action, about what constitutes heroism, and more generally about what can and cannot be represented on screen in a cinematic fiction at this contemporary juncture’ (2011, 5). in the hollywood blockbuster era, violence circulates globally through high concept, protagonist-centred narratives that typically dramatize, in the words of media studies scholar tanner Mirrlees, ‘conflicts and crises of

3 See also Stone, passim, for considerations of ethical issues of archaeologists working with the military.

world-historic proportions. they stage threats and challenges that tap into or resonate with the hopes and fears of the whole world’ (188).

Made-in-the-u.S.a. spectacles of violence for domestic audiences inured to ‘watching Babylon’ and exported to world markets assume particular kinds of global significance when, as in the case of Transformers 2, the strategic spaces for staging ‘crises of world-historic proportions’ are World heritage sites.

close collaborations between the military establishment and the production team are important for rendering historic space into spectacles of world-saving violence. the Pentagon has long been interested in what georg Löfflmann characterizes as the ‘production of cinematic narratives of military power and geopolitical identity’ (280). Maintaining its entertainment liaison office in Los angeles, each branch of the armed forces brokers deals with film producers willing to promote the

‘global military role of the united States in the defense of national security’ (282) in exchange for access to current military hardware and personnel.⁴ the cornerstone of this arrangement is ‘accuracy’ and

‘realism’ (283) in presenting positive images of the american military and u.S. foreign policy. the long-time chief of the Pentagon’s liaison office, Phil Strub, is on record as stating that ‘any film that portrays the military as negative is not realistic to us’ (robb, 143). ties between the Transformers franchise and the air Force Entertainment Liaison Office in hollywood are illustrative. a short promotional video on the aFELO website replicates the transformational logic of war into spectacle and the spectacle of war into entertainment. introduced through a montage of air Force activities and assets, the video advertises aFELO’s mandate to ‘protect and project the air Force and entertainment media: films, television, music videos, comics, video games.’ Transformers military tech advisor harry humphries relates that the air Force has been ‘very very aggressive in recent years’ in ‘trying to be a part of the support function [of the film industry], showing the new assets that the air Force has to offer’ huge-budget SF projects like Armageddon (1998), the Ironman franchise (2008, 2010, 2013), Battleship (2012) and of course Transformers. the hollywood blockbuster is the perfect medium for military self-promotion, and directors and producers speak admiringly

4 Transformers 2 is a case in point. involving cutting-edge military machines and hundreds of personnel from all five branches of the armed forces, the film is, in the words of army liaison officer Lt. col. greg Bishop, the

‘largest joint-military movie ever made’ (Bell). Studies of the relationships between hollywood and the Pentagon include Boggs and Pollard, 2007;

Dodds; Power and crampton; robb; and Shapiro.

and uncritically about the production value these partnerships bring to their films.⁵

Löfflmann further observes that the ‘alien invasion’ film is a partic-ularly fruitful genre for representing ‘authentic’ military action (287–91).⁶ With its clear enemy, moral certainty of the cause and the inevitable victory of the besieged, the alien invader action film displaces geopolitical contestation into widely accessible narratives and spectacles of defence and domestic security. the paradox of rendering ‘authentic’ images of violence through the conventions of SF is easily resolved by considering the public values the Pentagon and directors like Bay share. as film scholars carl Boggs and tom Pollard observe, the ‘deep patriotic and militaristic content of most combat pictures […] is rarely determined by stringent Pentagon controls over the way producers, writers, and directors do their work; instead this content flows from the larger political and media culture that is the repository of imperialist ideology’ (2007, 226).

the Transformers franchise can disavow structural investments in military violence by accepting that ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ spectacles demanded by the Pentagon are divorced from political context in a film about cyborg soldiers saving the world from evil aliens. as SF, Transformers 2 supports aFELO’s mission to ‘protect and project’ the contradictions of military culture by presenting, as producer Lorenze di Bonaventura relates, ‘an extreme example of what the military does in everyday life’ (Davidson).

the spectacles of transformation in Bay’s film—of vehicles into men and men into military machines—is the fantasy the military offers a theatre-going public desensitized to the political content latent in big-budget, high-tech productions of violent action.

the fantastic fabula of alien invaders who are actually war machines affords a broad canvas on which to mobilize military hardware. the plot reorients military commitments to homeland security and the war on terror through an all-or-nothing defence of the planet staged in the Middle East. the battle is spearheaded by Optimus Prime, who, after the defeat of his arch-nemesis Megatron in Transformers, leads a secret military organization of human soldiers and autobots called nESt (non-biological Extraterrestrial Species treaty), which is tasked with

5 cf. u.S. Department of Defense press release, ‘Military unites with hollywood on Transformers’ (23 June 2009). archive.defense.gov/news/

newsarticle.aspx?id=54875.

6 Mirrlees relates that with the exception of Titanic (1997), the top ten grossing films in each decade since the release of Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977) are fantasy, SF or their hybrid. Transformers 2 is counted among them.

the economic reasons are fairly straightforward: fantasy and SF attract hollywood’s most targeted teen and young adult demographic (187).

rooting out Decepticon terrorist cells. the planet’s survival depends upon finding the ‘Matrix of Leadership,’ an artefact that activates a Sun harvester, a device that drains stars of their energy. Megatron plots to harvest Earth’s sun in order to recharge cybertron’s depleted allspark and thereby declare victory in the age-old civil war against the autobots. in the opening sequence we learn that in 17,000 Bc such a device was created on Earth by an evil member of the first race of transformers called the Dynasty of Primes, and sheathed by what we now recognize as the great Pyramid. this ‘Fallen’ Prime was defeated by his benevolent brother Primes when they discovered that he wished to use the device on a planet inhabited by primitive humans. to ensure that the Sun harvester could never be deployed they sealed the Matrix within what would become the treasury of Petra. the return of the Fallen in Transformers 2 is thereby imagined in terms of a battle to monopolize energy and consolidate political power in the Middle East. in this sense, Transformers 2 is an imaginative realization of Dick cheney’s Project for the american new century, which folded in 2006 when the first transformer film was in post-production.

violent structures linking hollywood to the Pentagon also extend to archaeological agencies responsible for cultural oversight in Jordan and Egypt. Transformers 2 producers acquired approval from the royal Film commission of Jordon for a four-day shoot at Petra (Jafar). Fostering partnerships with hollywood has become an important expression of Jordanian modernity (ciecko). acquainted with Steven Spielberg from the shoots at Petra for the concluding sequence of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), King abdullah ii enlisted the director’s help to establish in 2008 the red Sea institute of cinematic arts in aqaba.

created in collaboration with the university of Southern california to train Jordanian students in the techniques and business of filmmaking, the institute is also endemic of the structural violence Bernbeck identifies in training programmes for foreign students of archaeology at american universities.⁷ Bay likewise procured consent from the Egyptian Ministry of State for antiquities to shoot principal photography at the giza pyramid complex and at Luxor. Similar to the Pentagon liaison office, the official stewards of archaeological heritage in these countries tacitly acknowledge the power of hollywood to mobilize and ennoble their

‘assets’ in the cinematic war on terror. Structural violence in archaeology assumes multiple meanings in a film that features direct violence to actual archaeological structures, violence that in turn promulgates unequal global structures typified by the desire for countries like

7 ‘Jordan Signs cinema Pact with uSc.’ cf. ciecko.

Jordan and Egypt to solidify cultural relationships with the West by tapping into the transnational power of the hollywood film industry.

Symbolic violence requires, Moshenska and gonzález-ruibal remind us,

‘complicity of those who suffer the violence’ (5), in this case by actively seeking economic and cultural relationships with an industry that, as hani’s dream in Manticore of ‘making pictures’ like Spielberg attests, has tremendous power in shaping perceptions of the Middle East, its peoples and history on ‘all sides of the structural divides’ (Bernbeck, 405).

traces of these violent arrangements may be detected in Bay’s transformation of world historic sites into a site of ‘world historic’ action.

in a pre-release interview the director relates that the Egyptian set he recreated at the White Sands Missile range in new Mexico imparts narrative coherence for the finale. he says,

i personally thought the ending of the first movie was pretty weak.

For one thing, i had to shoot the city battle [in chicago] on five separate blocks, which made it confusing and hard to follow. But the climax here is much clearer in terms of the landmarks and what the endgame is. and it’s a really cool scene. you’ll never have seen anything like it before.⁸

We certainly have not, because Bay repositions archaeological ‘landmarks’

separated by hundreds of kilometres into a single diegetic field. after helping Sam locate the Matrix of Leadership at the royal treasury at Petra, agent Simmons (John turturro) observes through binoculars Optimus parachuting with the army’s golden Knights demonstration team to the ‘pillars’ located at the base of the great Pyramid; Sam then takes a short drive to regroup with the autobot commander. there are of course no pillars at giza (principal photography for these was taken at the Karnak temple complex at Luxor some 500 kilometres south), and it is impossible to see giza from Petra, which is roughly 400 kilometres distant.⁹ On the new Mexico set Bay reorients archaeological space into action space, into what Martin Flanagan calls a ‘chronotopic threshold,’

the space where ‘time is waiting to happen.’ Like the tower in Die Hard (1988) or the bus in Speed (1994), defined spaces ‘seem to wait for the inevitable burst of action which will activate their potential.’ in action

8 http://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/transformers-revenge- fallen-trailer-breakdown/19/jpg.

9 Spatial misprisions of Egypt have another domestic analogue in MgM’s Luxor Palace hotel in Los vegas, which served as a projection screen to advertise the film’s release. cf. Malamud.

cinema, the ‘interaction of the hero with the spaces around him drives the narrative’ and establishes dialogic engagement with ‘the temporal and spatial environment of the spectator’ (113, 107). Flanagan notes that the ‘unstable relation of what we might term “adventure-space” to its real geographical equivalent denotes a trend that, usually sanctioned by political or economic factors, has become embedded in film production’

(108). at the levels of production, representation and reception, then, these chronotopic thresholds are embedded in the violent structures of an industry with the influence to sacrifice the geographical and cultural verisimilitude of its landmarks to the ‘archetypicality’ (108) of the endgame.

Flanagan observes that films ‘in the blockbuster action tradition rarely engage with a “real” historical register, instead supplementing or conjoining historical allusion with self-conscious cinematic reference’

(110). in Transformers 2, however, the chronotopic threshold Bay meticu-lously reassembles on an army base cannot entirely escape the violent histories that resonate in the spaces the film exploits for its story. in Filming the Modern Middle East: Politics in the Cinemas of Hollywood and the Arab World (2006), Lina Khatib contends that the association of the Middle East with violence is pandemic in hollywood. She argues that

(110). in Transformers 2, however, the chronotopic threshold Bay meticu-lously reassembles on an army base cannot entirely escape the violent histories that resonate in the spaces the film exploits for its story. in Filming the Modern Middle East: Politics in the Cinemas of Hollywood and the Arab World (2006), Lina Khatib contends that the association of the Middle East with violence is pandemic in hollywood. She argues that