Zero Dark Thirty at ten years: the power of cultural texts
Channel: War Studies KCL
Date: 26/01/2022

Certain cultural texts seek to create a first draft of narrative history, which can reinforce already established power structures and diminish any requirement for further interpretation. 

As Zero Dark Thirty is approaching the tenth anniversary of its release in 2022, Emily Brown, a final-year PhD candidate in the War Studies Department of King’s College London, will consider how the film has performed as a political tool in that time. Was the film a successful 'first draft of history' as filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow wanted? What difference did the discourses around the film make in our understandings of American torture? What are the stories we tell about torture now?