War/Film Junkies: The Hollywoodization of the Lebanese Civil War

Abstract

In this project, I intend to explore some of the Lebanese Civil War militiamen’s war texts produced during the war that dissolve with Post-Vietnam American War films as amplified versions of hyper-masculinity. I argue that these war texts represent intensely Herculean war/film junkies or street stars –in highly visible and re-configured heterotopic-like settings of war, that underscore their hyper-masculine performances. With varying degrees, these war texts or visual representations of war signify hard-body militiamen who transform in Lacanian processes of identification and transmogrify to become the film heroes themselves, in displays of self-aggrandizement. All this suggests a revelatory idea: Post-Vietnam American war films, among other timely factors, led to the Hollywoodization of the Lebanese Civil War, which turned out to be its possible sequel.