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http://jci.sagepub.com/ Zero Dark Thirty and the Critical Challenges Posed by Populist Postfeminism During the Global War on Terrorism
Marouf Hasian, Jr. Journal of Communication Inquiry 2013 37: 322 DOI: 10.1177/0196859913505616 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jci.sagepub.com/content/37/4/322

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Zero Dark Thirty and the Critical Challenges Posed by Populist Postfeminism During the Global War on Terrorism
Marouf Hasian Jr.1

Journal of Communication Inquiry 37(4) 322343 ! The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0196859913505616 jci.sagepub.com

Abstract This essay provides readers with a feminist critique of the movie Zero Dark Thirty. The films producers, Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal, have marketed this visual artifact as a liberating cinematic representation that shows how a dedicated woman led the manhunt for Osama bin Laden, but the author argues that this is more of a populist, postfeminist representation that advances militarist causes. The essay provides readers with illustrations of how the films leading protagonist, Maya, is used in ways that reinforce structural patriarchy that deflects attention away from the larger problematics of harsh interrogations and military interventionism. Keywords American studies, critical communication studies, feminism, ideology, media and terrorism

Zero Dark Thirty . . . could well stand at the vanguard of a new genre: the viscerally human but post-feminist (and post-political) war lm. Steven Zeitchik (2012, para. 9)

University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA

Corresponding Author: Marouf Hasian Jr., University of Utah, 255 S. Central Campus Drive, Room 2400, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA. Email: Marouf.Hasian@utah.edu

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Like [Leni] Riefenstahl, you are a great artist. But now you will be remembered forever as tortures handmaiden. Naomi Wolf

Zero Dark Thirty (ZD30), the result of a collaborative project that brought together producer Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, may eventually become the iconic representation of the May 2, 2011 Navy SEAL Team Six raid on Osama bin Ladens compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Countless newspaper articles and journal debates have focused attention on the alleged authenticity of the lm as a historic reconstruction of the bin Laden raid, and some have provided normative commentaries on the torture scenes that are presented in the movie, but few have focused in on the gendered implications of actually treating ZD30 as a postfeminist lm.1 Scholars, journalists, and laypersons are just beginning to explore the question of whether this movie really helps advance the cause of feminists. Peter Bergen (2012), considered to be one of the leading media experts on Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) interrogation histories, characterized ZD30 as a feminist lm epic, a point that I question. Rather, I suggest that this appears to be another example of the corpus of propaganda texts rolled out since 2001 to mobilize public support for U.S. military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq . . . (Vavrus, 2013, pp. 9293). More specically, it uses a thin veneer of feminism as a way of garnering support for American exceptionalist policies that are inviting publics to accept the legality of enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs), an increased role for the CIA, and the inevitably of a future American Way of War that will include fewer ground forces and more special operations and drones. As Dow and Condit (2005) have previously argued, feminists need to study the communicative dimensions of dominant discourses that emerge from corridors of power (p. 466), and this requires case studies that study the intertextual nature of popular representations. In this particular essay, I provide a critical rhetorical critique (McKerrow, 1989) of a cinematic representation that illustrates many of the gendered assumptions, tensions, contradictions, and sensibilities (Gill, 2007) that haunt 21st-century examples of postfeminist productions. It will be my thesis that the character of Maya in Zero Dark Thirty serves as a neoliberal, populist feminist character who is deployed to create the allusion of gendered equality within the CIA, while erasing or obfuscating the structural barriers that are still in play. Maya becomes an excellent example of the postfeminism that Dow (1996) was writing about when she discussed how some representations of womens liberation create the impression that gains have been made in areas of employment while denying the need for continued feminist action (p. 92). As Rentschler (2007) explained, there are times when neoliberal, post-feminist discourses of security are used to translate certain ways of thinking about individual choice and gendered constructions (p. 258).

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Part of the diculty of detecting some of this obfuscation comes from the selective nature of todays postfeminist rhetorics that strategically appropriate some recognizable features of the gendered politics that at one time contributed to substantive, social progress for women. As Shugart (2001) noted, members of Generation X have been bombarded with rhetorical materials that categorically reject some of the goals and achievements of second feminism that are perceived as na ve, obsolete, or irrelevant (p. 132). The study of gendered politics in securitized situations is complicated by the fact that theorists disagree about the phenomenological nature of postfeminist situations. Koivunen (2009) has noted that although there is a great deal of disagreement regarding the exact nature, scope, and contours of these productions, there does seem to be some general agreement that postfeminist genres do share some discursive characteristicstypes of discourse on gender and sexuality that encourage dierent generations to think about the importance of individual choice, empowerment, property, self-improvement, and self-surveillance (para. 4). Can younger generations use these notions to build on the gains of second-wave feminists, or does the voluntary embrace of these concepts tell us something about the abandonment of collective, allied feminist traditions? During the Global War against Terrorism (GWOT), is it possible that postfeminist authorizations of racial violence, or torture of foreigners, are used to deect attention away from the appropriation of populist, gendered representations? In order to help answer these types of questions, this essay provides a critical analysis of a gendered fragment that has receiving a wide variety of responses from diverse audiencesKathryn Bigelow and Mark Boals Zero Dark Thirty. Named after military parlance for the murky period of time after midnight, when darkness and confusion reigns, this movie has been described as a national Rorschach test (Thiessen, 2013, p. 3), a supposedly apolitical story about the CIA that looks more like a criminal procedural genre than any celebration of the eorts of presidents like George W. Bush or Barack Obama. Allegedly told from the point of view of the men and women on the ground who actually pieced together the thousands of bits of intelligence information that were needed to nd the Abbottabad compound, it has been touted as a lm that just happens to have a female heroine who takes center stage, and it is heralded as a laudatory example of constructive postfeminism. Pundits have argued over whether the movie is gender neutral, advances the cause of those who still believe in the tenets of second-wave feminism, or presents a postfeminist production that need not prioritize the dismantling of male patriarchy. Gender politics thus became a key feature in the debates that attempted to critique both the contexts and texts that swirled around ZD30. Chase (2013), for example, argued that the leading female protagonist in Zero Dark Thirty is a refreshing cinematic depiction of post-feminist strength, a portrayal of a woman for whom gender is not an issue, to her or those around

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her (para. 2). This, however, glosses over the ways that wartime violence in the lm, and the scenes of torture or brutal treatment of foreign others are used in ways that hinder the cause of radical feminism. ZD30 promoters may celebrate Mayas protagonist role as evidence that women in the CIA are being promoted and treated as fellow warriors in the GWOT, but it will be my position that all this comes at the cost of feminism undone (McRobbie, 2004, p. 262). The questions that are raised about the gendering of roles in Zero Dark Thirty come at an opportune time when communication scholars can now use critical ideological analyses of the lm as way of contributing to the ongoing conversations that exist regarding the complexities of postfeminism and the impact it has on Anglo-American cultures. Because postfeminism is and can be so many dierent things, argues Projansky (2001), it is a powerful, pervasive and versatile cultural concept (p. 68). Since the 1990s, scholars have recognized the importance of studying the production and circulation of many variants of postfeminist ideologies (Brooks, 1997; Dow, 1996; McRobbie, 2004; Tasker & Negra, 2005; Vavrus, 2013). I intervene in these conversations by extending the work of McRobbie (2004) and others who have noted the persuasive power of some populist variants of postfeminist thinking, and here I wish to underscore the martial features of some gendered forms of postfeminism. I share the concerns of those who study militainment (Stahl, 2010), who worry about the resonating power of what Vavrus (2013) has called the media-military-industry-complex. We are living during a period when militarized rhetorics have greater and greater persuasive power in an indeterminate global war on terrorism, and I contend that it is imperative that feminists critique the ways that feminist ideologies are hijacked and appropriated to help normalize the belief that all types of harsh wartime measures are not only legal, but culturally acceptable ways of acting in the 21st century. This article begins with an overview of some key neoliberal features of postfeminism that challenge todays feminists, and then it moves toward a second portion that focuses attention on the evolutionary development of neoliberal features of representations that manifested themselves in earlier lms of CIA women operatives. The third part of the essay extends these insights by providing a textual analysis of ZD30, while the fourth segment investigates how ZD30 resonated with populist audiences who want desperately to see some visual evidence that the CIA had been reformed in ways that advanced the cause of feminism. In other words, those who watch image events (Delicath & Deluca, 2003) like ZD30 enjoy seeing images of strong women intelligence operatives and analysts. The concluding portion of the manuscript critiques all of this and summarizes some of the reasons why feminists can justiable characterize this movie as simply the latest display of feminist imperialism. There I explicate the ways that both presences and absences in the lm work to obfuscate the psychic and social costs of valorizing Maya as an American postfeminist character.

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Neoliberal Gender Theories, Structural Inequalities, and the Allure of Postfeminist Securitizing Practices During the GWOT
First-wave feminists worked hard to get the right to vote (Shugart, 2001) and they and their supporters deconstructed the cultural logics that treated them as irrational beings controlled by their emotions, while second-wave feminists fought in various public and legal spheres for a variety of political, educational, economic, and social reforms. Neoliberal discourses were used to explain that social change only came through the progressive adoption of egalitarian principles or programs that helped with the dismantling of patriarchal structures. As Sarikakis and Tsaliki (2011) opined in their trenchant summary of postfeminist theorizing, the move from feminism to postfeminism represented a massive paradigm shift, in the same ways that postmodernists critiqued modernity and postcolonial critics interrogated colonial and imperial assumptions. With second-wave feminism being limited by its own political agenda and modernist inclinations, elaborate Sarikakis and Tsaliki, postfeminism transpired as a result of critiques from within and without feminism (p. 110). While many feminists welcomed the ways that postfeminists circulated or viewed mass-mediated texts that celebrated womens sexual freedom, individuality, girl power, or growing economic power, they were nevertheless bothered by the fact that the new cultural milieu seemed to be lled with prepackaged and highly commodied representations (Tasker & Negra, 2005, p. 107) that were depoliticized and dehistoricized. For McRobbie (2004), regardless of whether one thought of postfeminism as a type of backlash against feminism (see Faludi, 1992) or as complex condition that represented the double entanglements of growing up with coexisting neoconservative framings of gender, sexuality, and family life issues, its machinations seemed to be intentionally or unintentionally implicated in the undoing of feminism (p. 24). Many of the impulses that have led to the growth of postfeminist ways of thinking are rooted in social hierarchies of values that underscore the importance of gender equality. Postfeminists and their supporters benet from many of the social movement politics that have been bequeathed by rst-, second-, and third-wave feministsthey just simply believe that our society has reached a moment in which we are living out our lives on a level playing eld (Vavrus, 2010, p. 222). Given the entrenched and enduring power of patriarchy, feminists have always been vexed by the question of how to gauge egalitarian moves toward gender equality during times of war. Do securitizing wars provide opportunities for that leveling of the playing eld? For at least some scholars, the very presence of women on battleelds appeared to provide one more metric that indicated that at least some progress was being made in military circles. For even the most determined pacist feminist, argued Greer (1999) there can be no

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question of rescinding a womans right to choose a career in warfare. If we are to have armies, women should have the right to be in them (p. 163, quoted in Randell, 2011, p. 172). Yet this did not take into account the ways that women were portrayed on the battleeld, the power disparities that existed in military chains-of-command, or the other material or symbolic hurdles that were placed in the paths of women during periods of insecurity. Moreover, if women on the battleeld simply acted in ways that reproduced the patriarchal structures that helped perpetuate gender inequalities, then this fed into what critics today attribute to postfeminist (mis)readings of the real goals of radical feminism. As Ouellette (2002) has argued in The Communication Review, feminists who work at deconstructing some of the postfeminisms that appeal to middle-class women are already having to deal with the iconography of the militant, manhating, antifeminine and therefore unattractive feminist (p. 320), and all of this complicates the ways that critics think about todays representations in military and intelligence contexts. Given the continued popularity of the GWOT against terrorism among many empowered communities in the United States, it should not be surprising that , 2012), and for American women take pride in their role as drone pilots (Abe hundreds of thousands of individuals, the military seems to provide just those types of postfeminist, individualized opportunities that might have been denied to earlier generations. By encouraging a growing number of women to join the ght against the Taliban or Al Qaeda, the American military and intelligence forces tap into the cultural reservoir of meanings that are already operating in other populist forms of postfeminism (McRobbie, 2004). This in turn adds layers to the ironies (Shugart, 2001), and ambivalences, that are circulating when feminists, journalists, and other pundits wonder whether all of this advances or stands in the way of progressive politics and gender equality. How do feminists intervene when they confront these militarized logics that appropriate selective parts of feminist legacies? Should they follow the lead of feminists who interrogate the power of the postfeminist texts that operate in broader rhetorical cultures? Gring-Pemble and Blair (2000), for example, have provided us with an excellent explanation of how Camille Paglia and other writers of romantic quest novels can craft works that resonate with members of the public who may not share the ideological views of many academic feminists, and they suggest that part of the answer lies in the usage of deconstructive approaches that expose some of the inconsistencies that appear in allegedly feminist archetypal narratives (p. 374). Perhaps what critical feminists need to do when they confront militarized logics or securitized rhetorics is build on the work of some of this cultural criticism of postfeminism while attending to the unique challenges that confront women who join intelligence organizations like the CIA.

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Postfeminism, Evolving Neoliberal Undercurrents, and Gendered Representations of CIA Operatives

As one might imagine, given the pervasive nature of postfeminist argumentation, there are plenty of cultural and political texts that put on display some of the very logics that are being interrogated by postfeminist critics and by postcolonial scholars, and these include the stories that we tell about foreign relations, diplomacy, military maneuverings, and CIA operations. Note, for example, how Kang (2012) has written about some popular female spy stories:
Zero Dark Thirtys Maya (Jessica Chastain) and Homelands Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) are certainly cut from the same cotton-polyester blend cloth. Theyre both young, willowy, fair-haired women hell-bent on nding a man: Maya is after bin Laden and Carrie after Abu Nazir, OBLs ctional counterpart. Theyre no-nonsense women with passion and indignation to spare, and more often than not, the smartest person in the room. Theyre frequently the only women in a mans world, but theyre not the type to make a big deal about it. Their hunches are usually ignored by exasperated higher-ups, but that has less to do with their gender than political convenience and grandstanding. (para. 3)

These types of rhetorical creations help provide support for Koivunens (2009) argument that contemporary postfeminisms articulate an ambivalent encounter with radical feminism and late capitalist logic of individualism, using and translating thematic and formal tropes of the former to the service of the later (para. 5). As Boyd-Barrett, Herrera, and Baumann (2011) point out in Hollywood and the CIA, many of the mass media representations that have circulated on the silver screen over the years about the CIA are reections and refractions of how elites and publics have imagined some of our intelligence services. Once characterized as a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards (pp. 125), some of the older tropes and images of the CIA have to share space with more complex ideological formations, including gendered themes that try to help explain to audiences how viewers can reconcile what often look like two fundamentally dierent notionsgruesome CIA activities that are undertaken for questionable goals, and professional respect for rules and procedures that are at the heart of democratic governance (Boyd-Barrett et al., 2011, pp. 2425). Some of the same generations who watch Sex and the City (Southard, 2008) and Ally McBeal (Hammers, 2005) can now cheer on the exploits of those who have clearly become the beneciaries of second-wave feminism, the 21st century heroines who ght in the U.S. military or join Anglo-American intelligence services. A quick study of post-feminist spy dramasthink Alias or La Femme Nikitaargued Conroy (2010) reveals two opposing, but not mutually contradictory themes. We now have female heroines who are not only admirably

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capable, resourceful, and strong, but they are also hypersexual, dened by their romantic relationships (or lack thereof) . . . (para. 1). Freed from the political obligations that were felt by earlier generations of activist women, they can now take-for-granted their opportunities, their abilities, and their freedoms. Before the appearance of Maya perhaps one of the best examples of postfeminist representations of CIA heroines could be found in the television program Covert Aairs, where Annie Walker (Piper Perabo) joins the CIAs Domestic Protection Division so that she can make a dierence. During one of the rst episodes, a polygraph technician has to ask Walker some seemingly innocuous questions before she becomes an ocial CIA operative, and in many ways, these banal exchanges reveal some of the postfeminist expectations of those who produce, and view, these types of visualities. After Walker answers some questions about where she lives (trendy Georgetown), the polygraph technician then asks her if it is true that she speaks six languages, and he rudely cuts her o when she tries to elaborate by talking about her love of travel and adventure. As if to underscore both the cold nature of the CIA and lack of any private sensitivity, the technician begins asking Annie Walker about her love life and whether this might compromise her role as an agent. Audiences soon become privy to the fact that her last serious relationship took place two years ago, and ashbacks are used to show that she once had a three-week ing in Sri Lanka. How was the sex? asks the polygraph technician, and images of billowing curtains, tribal beads, and interwined ngers let viewers see Walkers performative answer as all of this implies that the sex was vigorous and emotionally fullling (Patterson, 2010, para. 46). Postmodern feminists, after all, may make some familial sacrices for their careers, but individualism has its rewards.

Decoding the Supposed Feminist Arc of Zero Dark Thirty

Fictional characters like Annie Walker provide members of Generation X and other communities with cultural exemplars of postfeminist social agents, but what really captivates the attention of audiences are realistic portrayals of women who actually ght Taliban or Al Qaeda forces. As previously noted, Zero Dark Thirty allows audiences to see the decadelong manhunt for Osama bin Laden through the eyes of Maya, a ctional composite character whose actions are said to be based on the true life decisions that were made by one or more CIA operatives or analysts.2 Characterized by one British tabloid writer as the CIA spy in designer heels who caught bin Laden (Leonard, 2012), Maya takes a journey that transforms her from novice interrogator to seasoned CIA operative, and viewers can travel along with her as she spends years of compressed time facing recalcitrant Al Qaeda terrorists, patriarchal bosses, a female

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friend who questions her about sexual liasons at work, assassination attempts, and uncooperative surveillance teams. While Maya rarely wears her patriotism on her sleeve, she performatively illustrates what it means to be a dedicated CIA operative and analyst who spends countless hours defending the nation. In surely one of the most provocative early commentaries on the movie, New York Magazines David Edelstein (2012) remarked that ZD30 was borderline fascistic, in that the main story was presented with the movies liberal-pleasing feminist overlay, so that you root for her to compel the men to do what men would do naturally if they werent so constrained by modern technological and bureaucratic and constitutional hurdles: nd the motherfucker and blow his fucking head o (para. 1). Maya comes across as the individual postfeminist who has the sort of female intuition that helps her put together better CIA intelligence mosaics than the ones produced by more cautious, careerist males. ZD30 begins with a darkened theater projection, and for a few minutes, audiences listen to the anguishing voices of those victims of the 9/11 attacks who spent their nal seconds talking to loved ones. We hear reassuring phone operators, screaming, crashing, and other noises that remind us of the traumatic horrors and memories of this chapter in Al Qaedas war on Americans. Defenders of the lm have argued that all of this accurately captures the magnitude of the suering that was inicted by foreign foes, while detractors argue that this is unnecessary jingoistic framing that plays on vigilante sentiments and patriotic emotions. Bigelows opening scenes thus provides us with audio and visual warrants that will help us digest and accept what we are about to witness for the next 30 min of the lmMayas involvement in what the George W. Bush administration called the enhanced interrogation techniques that were used on high-value terrorist detainees. The darkness of 9/11 gives way to lighted scenes 2 years later, and viewers see Maya arrive at an undisclosed CIA interrogation site. During one of the rst interrogation scenes, this rookie becomes just an observer who watches her mentor, Dan (Jason Clarke) as he interrogates a man by the name of Ammar, but we quickly learn that Maya is not some squeamish, soft, pacist who opposes all wars or all forms of painful interrogation. Audiences cannot help wondering what Maya must be thinking as Ammar is forced to take o all his clothes in front of her, gets waterboarded, and is stued into a small box. At one point Maya winces, but she quickly recovers, and when Ammar asks her for help, she informs him that he can help himself by telling the truth. Dan, who seems to be in the middle of intercultural psychological warfare with some of his foreign detainees, turns to one bruised and battered captive and declares, This is what defeat looks like, bro. Your jihad is over. When OHehir (2012) watched this scene he was sure that Bigelowthe rst and only female director to win an Oscar awardknew something about being a woman in a macho environment, and he wondered if a society that produces female CIA agents (and reelects a black president) gains the right to commit

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atrocities in its own defense? More specically, does the feminist angle adopted in the movie justify the usage of torture if the torture is a university-educated woman, and the tortured a bigoted Muslim fundamentalist? (para. 3) All of this underscores the importance of Ferbers (2012) admonition that many purveyors of 21st-century postfeminisms have trouble interrogating cultures of privilege and colorblind ideologies. OHehir wants us to answer in the negative, but the aesthetic allure of having a feminist director, and the character development of a strong female CIA agent, is palpable. For those who are tired of seeing men in dominant military and intelligence hierarchies, Mayas presence is a refreshing jolt, a transgressive move that reminds us of the ambivalences of the contemporary postfeminist conditions. Maya works right alongside Dan, and when he decides that he has seen too many interrogations and too many naked men, she stays the course and remains in Central Asia so that she can keep pursuing bin Laden. Over time, she learns the intricacies of waterboarding, sleep deprivation, the forced wearing of dog collars, and other means that can be used in the interrogation of detainees, and during two scenes we watch Maya supervising the questioning. All of this action argued Kang (2012) chronicled a more serious case for feminismor a more serious kind of femin bikinis for sensible pantsuits (para. 2). Todays ismby eschewing gold-lame CIA agents could look stylish, accept the fruits of capitalism, act on the basis of individual initiative, and put on display that hard edge that was needed in dealing with Al Qaeda or Taliban enemies. In times of national emergency, after all, one has to make sacrices and accept some patriarchy. For the rest of the movie Maya appears to be living in foreign countries that are lled with violence, intrigue, duplicity, and all forms of antidemocratic terrorism. Viewers follow her as she reviews dozens of CIA interrogation tapes of other detainees, and we see her steely demeanor when she loses one of her few friends, Jennifer Matthews (Jennifer Ehle), during a car explosion in Khost. At one point, her self-dened mission becomes almost messianic, when she declares after a failed assassination attempt that she believes that her life was spared for a higher purpose. Audiences can enthymematically guess that getting bin Laden took on greater urgency and became a moral imperative for her, and her patriotism takes center stage. Bigelow and Boal make some interesting cinematic choices that help inject some ambiguity and complexity into the situation, and matters become more cosmopolitan as we observe Maya and the rest of the CIA operatives as they watch other terrorist attacks in the United Kingdom, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Maya, like her homeland, is now participating in a type of just war in the midst of international indierence or acquiesce. She and her nation are willing to operate alone if other nation-states are unwilling or unable to take out the enemy. In one of the most famous scenes in Zero Dark Thirty, CIA director Leon Panetta (played by James Gandolni), asks why there is a girl in the room,

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and without blinking Maya responds that she was there because she was the motherfucker that found this place, referring to bin Ladens compound. Maya gets to stay because by the time that she appears in that Langley, Virginia, roomthat is lled with high-ranking, male CIA ocialsno one question the fact that she has paid her dues. They know what viewers knowthat this strange and obsessed person has watched and supervised interrogations, has traveled to Pakistan and other supposedly inhospitable places, has spent countless hours watching videotapes of tortured high-value detainees, and has suered through the reportage of the deaths of some of her colleagues during a suicide bombing in 2009. In many ways, it could be argued that she was allowed into that room because of her individualism, her performative demonstration of equality, and her display of her dedication and patriotic duty. She did all of this, of course, without demanding any special privileges. After all, more active feminism would have looked out of place when the nation was in danger. In this postfeminist world, where women may not openly admit that they are beneciaries of feminist legacies (Vavrus, 2010, pp. 223224), the right type of women can put on the big boy pants that Jose Rodriguez, the former head of the CIAs clandestine branches, once said had to be put on by members of the George W. Bush administration and others who needed to accept the necessity for EITs.3 Maya, after all, had interrogated detainees, and she stayed the course when some of her superiors wanted to her stop concentrating on bin Laden so that she could work on other, supposedly more relevant, projects to protect the homeland. On this supposed level playing eld, cautious superiors had to grudgingly admit that she was right all along, and that she beat both enemy males and some of her male CIA superiors at their own games. Moreover, viewers see her zealously pursuing leads while she engages in shouting matches with pigheaded superiors. As Klaidman (2012) noted, the lms dramatic arc follows Mayas near-messianic quest to take out bin Laden and she battles the weary fatalism of her bosses, suppresses all moral doubt about the use of torture to extract leads, and sticks to her theory of the case with feverish conviction (para. 1). This is the type of populist feminist image event that can resonate with both conservative and liberal American audiences, because it tethers together several taken-for-granted clusters of appealing nationalistic tropesthe notion of ghting just wars, the neoliberal notion of beneting from hard individual labor, the prot that comes from unswerving dedication to country, and the belief that other nations that do not understand or do not respect the American way of life had better get out of this heroines way. During some of the nal scenes in ZD30, Maya has to temporarily take a back seat as the Navy SEALs prepare for the famous raid on Abbottabad, but even here she manages to show her gendered empowerment and dogmatic determination. Before the boarding of helicopters, while two of the raiders engage in playful banter, one of them asks the other why he believes that bin Laden is in that compound. The second raider gestures in the direction of Maya and

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responds by commenting on Mayas certainty. When the helos nally take o in darkness, we see her waiting patiently for their return. Here the heroine plays the postfeminist CIA operative who has the security clearance to do more than analyze data. While this silent, rather repressed May of Arc, is a woman not permitted to take part in the nal executioners mission, she is the one who becomes the moral authority at the end of the lm, because she is the expert who has to survey OBLs corpse, and nodding, as if to imply, mission accomplished (Thomson, 2012, para. 4). Tasker and Negra (2007) have argued that postfeminist media narratives often portray womens contemporary lives as overworked, harassed, rushed, and so on, to such a degree that their female adulthood seems to be dened as a state of chronic crisis, and many of the scenes in ZD30 present Maya as a sleep-deprived fanatic. She is the one who looks through older back les on high-value detainees, and she is the one that we watch spending countless hours reanalyzing the intelligence materials collected by other interrogators and analysts. In Bigelows postfeminist world, Maya can appear as a genderneutral character, a sexless, workaholic who briey dons the mean-girl mask to dene herself against other girls (Kang, 2012, para. 6). When another female CIA analyst hands Maya a key le and comments on her legendary status, this does not become a bonding opportunity, but one more episode in the national pursuit of Americas enemies. In the name of national defense, individuated social agency takes precedence over other gendered issues. As Maya explains to another operative who tries to tease her about a possible oce romance with Dan, I am not that girl that fucks, and for the rest of the movie, viewers are presented with little personal back-story.

Populist Perceptions of Mayas Postfeminism and Her Supposed Liberation as a Patriotic Representative of American Women Today
How did these representations that appeared in ZD30 resonate with audiences? There are no shortage of producers, actors, actresses, researchers, and viewers who recognize the cultural signicance of having leading female characters play the role of real CIA heroines, but there is a great deal of debate about how to contextualize that gendering. Lepore (2012), for example, liked the fact that Jessica Chastain played the role of Maya, or the girl who got bin Laden, and she argued that although we need Katniss Everdeen and Hannah from Girls, the Zero Dark Thirty role was extra special because it was based on the work of a real woman who saved the day (para. 3, 7).4 Valerie Plame, a former female spy, noted that while some dinosaurs still roam the halls at CIA headquarters, the roles of Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) in Homeland and Maya in Zero Dark Thirty were showing that womens intellects were the most important weapons in their spying arsenals. For Plame, the display of Mayas

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intelligence countered some of the damage that came from the circulation of popular cultural displays that assumed that female agents had to be either highly sexualized or hugely physical in order to compete and succeed (Harris, 2012, para. 9, 3). As millions ocked to the cineplex, did all of this show that Americans of all political stripes were willing to temporarily put some of their disagreements aside and nd ways of identifying or admiring an individualistic, careerobsessed, postfeminist leading lady? At rst blush, a critical cynic might argue that the screenwriters and producers of Zero Dark Thirty are simply trying to avoid alienating any particular segment of Anglo-American populations by spinning the movie as an authentic portrayal of the bin Laden manhunt that has nothing to do with artice, gendering, or ideological guration. The movie, after all, begins with a claim that the movie is based on rst-hand accounts. While Mark Boal, the screenwriter for ZD30, might characterize this production as feminist artifact that shows that Osama bin Laden was defeated by a liberated Western woman (Carmon, 2013), I would argue that all of this supposed liberation is contingent on accepting certain military ways of framing liberation, gender relations and international foreign diplomacy. As Eisenstein (2013) explains, Zero Dark Thirty tries to justify or explain U.S. war revenge with a pretty red-head white woman with an obsession, to catch the mastermind of 9/11, and at the end all we are left with is a form of imperial feminism that shows surface characters carrying out violence against people of color (para. 8, 13). Maya may indeed be the pretty little lady whose certainty compelled American men to overcome their wishy-washy caution, but let us not forget that ZD30 also gives the dark side a womans blessing (Edelstein, 2012, para. 7). I share Naomi Wolfs (2013) opinion that Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal are peddling an apologia for torture, and I agree with her assessment that they have used their incredibly artistic talents in ways that highlighted American CIAs narrative of manufactured innocence. A gendered CIA analyst and operative like Maya allows diverse audiences to justify not only the usage of EITs, but special operations forces that heroically point the way forward for those who are puzzled about Americas future. What these crafty producers have sutured together is a populist lm that might appear to be apolitical in ways that aid the cause of women during times of war. However, all of this obfuscates the ways that gender relations are appropriated for other purposes.5 Khalek (2013) does a wonderful job explicating some of the reasons why we should not automatically praise a lm where the director and main character are both women:
Yes its true that Bigelow has received prestigious awards in an industry dominated by male writers, directors and producers. But this alone doesnt automatically make her lms a symbol of female progress. How can her movies promote gender

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equality when they honor the most destructive characteristics of American patriarchy? The glorication of war, imperialism, empire, torture and hatred of brown people are themes of some of Americas most popular lms. The only thing Zero Dark Thirty does dierently is it puts a female on the face of imperialism. (para. 4)

In other words, patriarchy is not something that can be overcome by just putting on display female interrogators or CIA analysts whose role was indispensable. While many defenders of the lm are convinced that some form of feminism is operating in Zero Dark Thirty, this is certainly an impoverished variant that shows little interest in any major feminist issues or substantive social change. A sardonic Eisenstein (2013) titled her essay Dark, zero, feminism and averred that all that this exposed was U.S. thuggery and a revenge narrative of post9/11 with no regret, no hesitation, or ambiguity (para. 2). Approaching the movie from a dierent angle, Reed (2012) complained that Ms. Bigelows inducement to turn a group eort into a feminist triumph is the ctional leap of faith Zero Dark Thirty hinges on (para. 3), but this misses the metonymic process that is operating here when Maya stands in as symbolic representative of all of unacknowledged CIA female operatives who were team members since the 1990s searching for Osama bin Laden. Despite these lamentations, there is little question that many viewers did treat ZD30 as a postfeminist lm that graphically portrayed how the men and women who were working for the CIA in the 21st century were operating on an equal playing eld. Schnarre (2013), for example, opined that this is not a stereotypical study of a woman rising above adversity in a male-dominated eld, but the study of a woman working with male and female co-workers on an equal level at a dening moment in our countrys history (para. 3). The perspectival assumptions that went into the act of dening that history are erased by those who assume that postfeminism realistically reects material conditions and structural equalities in the status quo. Many American conservatives also went to their local theaters, and some put together panels that tried to explain the role that women played in the manhunt for Osama bin Laden as they separated out some of the fact from ction in ZD30. In Washington, D.C., for example, Marc Thiessen (2013), a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, gathered together a former director of the CIA, General Michael Hayden, a former chief legal ocer for the CIA, John Rizzo, and the former director of the National Clandestine Service, Jose Rodriguez, so that they could discuss in front of audiences the authenticity of the movie. While all of them enjoyed the lm, General Hayden made it clear that Maya was a composite character, and that all knowledgeable CIA operatives can claim to know a Maya (p. 21). Audiences members started to laugh when the General told a story of how his wife and her sister were talking about how the movie tried to be politically correct by making the woman the hero, but he wanted to

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underscore was the point that an incredible band of sisters were the ones who spearheaded the analyst cell that was tasked with the mission of nding bin Laden (p. 21).6 What none of participants on the panel seemed to realize is that the very selection of the members of this panel, the tone that was taken in the discussion of the role that these women played, and the nature of the arguments that were made about CIA hierarchies undercut some of the arguments that they were trying to make about conservative egalitarian feminism. As Hammers (2005) noted, given the extent to which the professions maintain their primarily male-dominated, insulated, distinctiveness from society in general, professional standards will remain resistant to change (p. 180). Maya be congured as one of the band of sisters who played a key role in nding bin Laden, but she receives her orders from a phalanx of male superiors who visit the White House and Congress as they come up with the rules for EITs. Since the early circulation of ZD30 in front of select audiences in December of 2012, both the producers and actors involved with this production have been adamant about the feminist avor of this work of art. Mark Boal opined that the Maya character was emblematic of a larger shift within the culture of women taking jobs that were previously reserved for men, in the intelligence community, but also, as we see in the military . . . (quoted in Carmon, 2013, para. 6). When Kathryn Bigelow was asked to give a speech at the National Board of Review Awards ceremony in January of 2013, she talked of how four extraordinary women (Megan Ellison, Amy Pascal, the unidentied CIA operative that was the model for Maya, and Jessica Chastain) were part of a conuence of fate that helped with the representation of the strong women that are kind of the unsung heroes of the ZD30 story and the industry (Vinyard, 2013, para. 35). Jessica Chastain seemed to record some of the postfeminist ambivalence of her generation when she explained her initial reactions after readings Mark Boals script:
When I read the script, from the very beginning I was shocked that there was a woman at the centre of it. Then I was disgusted with myself that I was shocked by it. Why would I be so shocked? Of course, a woman could have done this. You start looking at lead female characters in lm, theyre usually dened by the men in their lives. Theyre either the victim of the man or the love interest of the man. Maya is not. Shes not protected or mentored really. Shes not suering from neuroses or trying to sleep with her boss or any kind of mental issues with her. Shes intelligent, capable, and she can stand on her own. (quoted in Contact Music, 2013, para. 34)

From a critical ideological perspective, one could argue that Chastains initial skepticism provided ample proof of the need for more feminist critiques, and yet the more layers she added to her analysis, the more one can sense the takenfor-granted nature of postfeminist sensibilities that link the autonomous, calculating, self-regulating subject of neoliberalism to the active, freely choosing,

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self-reinventing subject of postfeminism (Gill, 2007, p. 164). ZD30 is being marketed as a patriotic commodity, rmly convinced that women can act in empowering ways that take-for-granted the fruits of activism without any continued engagement with any lingering structural inequalities.

Conclusion: Militainment and the Future Circulation of Military Postfeminisms During the Global War on Terrorism
As Vavrus (2013) insightfully noted in her analysis of Lifetimes Army Wives, there are times when producers who are a part of media-military-industrialcomplex (p. 102) can use gendered propaganda to aid the cause of banal militarism. By crafting polysemic and polyvalent patriotic texts that appear to be apolitical through their avoidance of overt commentaries on President Obamas National Security Advisers and the White House Situation Room, movies such as Zero Dark Thirty, that have female protagonists, can appear to represent the ordinary American who joins the CIA and works selessly for the greater good. Yet what all of this focus on individual accomplishment hides are the structural barriers that inhibit radical feminism while contributing to the death and destruction of many foreign others. This article contributes to the conversations that scholars are having about postfeminism by showing how a populist image event can serve as an ideological framework that takes advantage of feminist sentiments. Rather than taking at face value all of the claims that are made by the defenders of the lm who treat it as some feminist progressive vehicle for substantive social change, we need to widen our gaze so we can see how this exemplar of postfeminist circulates nationalist pleasure at the cost of reifying some traditional militaristic tropes. Throughout this article, I have defended the position that Bigelow and Boals Zero Dark Thirty is a postfeminist production (Zeitchik, 2012) that has done little to aid the cause of feminism. Although the inventional crafting of this populist lm resonates with audiences who rmly believe that Mayas work ethic puts on display the type of American prowess that led to the discovery of the Abbottabad compound and the death of bin Laden, what we are ultimately left with is a very entertainingbut supercialgendered narrative that panders to the views of those who believe that men and women are now competing on equal, intelligence-gathering playing elds. This is accomplished by providing a martial variant of the postfeminist tropes that circulate logics that infer that single professional women can be selsh, emotionally stunted, and ultimately regretful (Negra, 2004, para. 6). While ZD30 contains a narrative arc that may seem to highlight the social agency of CIA women, it is in fact a misogynistic fragment which puts on display the dehumanization and barbarity that takes place when women have to act in hypermasculine ways in order to achieve their goals.

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Moreover, all of this supercial feminism comes at the cost of hiding myriad political, economic, and social inequities. Khalek (2013) averred,
Then theres the fact that those calling the lm feminist are speaking from a place of (typically white) privilege where their version of gender equality means little more than a few select women joining the ranks of the powerful to facilitate a system of oppression. Meanwhile, poor women and women of color remain invisible. The female heroine in Zero Dark Thirty is a part of that very system. Were supposed to see her as the embodiment of feminism because she proves that women, just like men, are capable of hatred, vengeance and war crimes. Indeed, women can murder scores of brown people, some of whom might be women as well (but who cares, they are poor and brown and dress weird), just as chauvinistically as well. (Khalek, 2013, para. 5)

The CIA operatives take center stage, but any other communities or populations become mere scenery for those who want to paint hagiographic pictures of those who sought, and killed, Osama bin Laden. All of this focus on Mayas individualistic social agency also serves to deect attention away from many of the more complicated structural and material features of the GWOT. The aura of Maya, argues Thomson (2012), means that audiences can focus in on her dedication to her task without having to notice that George W. Bush began to scour Afghanistan and Pakistan for Osama but then lost patience with its diculty and turned to another war (para. 5). This had the ideological advantage of crafting a narrative arc that may have lacked political texture but gained heroic military avor in ways that were consonant with the refusal to ask why the terrorists did what they did (para. 5). In other words, most viewers will leave the cineplex convinced that they have seen the necessity for EITs, the legality of a raid that threatened Pakistans sovereignty, and the righteousness use of many military and CIA tactics that have alienated many other international communities. As America begins to contemplate other military or CIA incursions in places such as Yemen, Mali, Somalia, and so on, do not be surprised to nd that Maya becomes the prototype for many other populist, postfeminist protagonists. Acknowledgments
The author thanks Megan D. McFarlane for the productive discussions about both the Osama bin Laden raid and Zero Dark Thirty.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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The author received no nancial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes
1. For some notable exceptions, see Carmon (2013), Corliss (2012), Eisenstein (2013), Rothman (2012), and Wolf (2013). 2. Although several former CIA female analysts later questioned the accuracy of ZD30 and argued that no single CIA employee should be credited with gathering the necessary intelligence that led to Osama bin Ladens Abbottabad compound, many of the early reviewers of the film talked incessantly about the contributions that were made by a real, unidentified CIA operative who was still complaining behind the scenes about the attention that others were getting in the aftermath of the raid. In other words, Mayas fictional individual agency was contrasted with the real individual agency of a single female CIA operative. See, for example, Miller (2012), ODonnell (2013), Pfeffer (2012), and Voorhees (2012). 3. Jose Rodriguez, one of the former CIA higher-ups who helped conceptualize the Bush Administrations enhanced interrogation programs made the comment about the need for big boy pants during an interview with Leslie Stahl of CBSs 60 Minutes. During the interview, he said that in order to help out the CIA operatives who were in the field, we needed everybody in government to put their big boy pants on and provide the authorities that we needed (quoted in Serwer, 2012, para. 14). That authority turned out to be the infamous Torture memos that were written by John Yoo and signed by Jay Bybee, who both worked for the executive branchs Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). 4. The stories that are told about the life of the real female CIA operative who served as the model for Maya are themselves exemplars of even more postfeminist thinking (see Kegley, 2004). Mass-mediated accounts of this mysterious person comment on how she received a medal and commendation for her role in the Abbottabad raid, but then note that she was abrasive and angered when others received praise for tracking down bin Laden. Journalists noted that she was ultimately passed over for promotion. See, for example, Miller (2012) and Pfeffer (2012). 5. It is perhaps no coincident that Katherine Bigelow started to lend her name to social media campaigns that were circulating as a salute to heroic womenat the very same time that the Barack Obama Administration was announcing the lifting of some bans on women in combat, see Carmon (2013). 6. For some commentary from some of the actual members of this band of sisters, see Bakos (2013).

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Author Biography Marouf Hasian Jr. obtained his JD from the Campbell University in 1984 and his PhD in Speech Communication from the University of Georgia in 1993. His areas of scholarly interest include critical cultural studies, postcolonial studies, and security studies.