Bringing the War Back Home: Consuming Operation Desert Storm

A factor that has become ever more characteristic of American warfare during the twentieth century is the intricately stage-managed relationship between distant fields of combat and the homefront. Nowhere was that more evident than with Operation Desert Shield/Storm (ODS) where an interplay between official, private institutional and ad hoc forces created a full court press of war supportive ideology which proved to be enormously persuasive. That ideological construct has much to say about what notions "we" as a people currently hold about the meaning of war and the nature of civilian participation in a "war effort." In this paper I want to examine those issues by looking at the marketing of the war--specifically the material culture of war-related artifacts produced for sale in the winter/spring of 1990-91.I would like to begin with an anecdote about an incident that happened in October 1990 which both piqued my interest in this topic and set the stage for my understanding of what ODS was about to become as a signifying system. During a weekend walk in downtown Pasadena I encountered a young guy setting up a table full of sweatshirts with U.S. Marine insignias. He was talking fervently to a girl about the build up of troops in the Gulf, and how--wanting to make common cause with those troops--he had obtained these sweatshirts from a clothing jobber. Echoing his sentiments, the girl bought a $20 sweatshirt. What interested me so about their enthusiastic and rather lengthy exchange was what they did not say. Neither one of these people breathed a word to each other about the possibility of joining the military and going to fight, nor was mention made of whether the sale's profits (rather hefty) would benefit a war relief agency or the Red Cross. No, it was simply the transaction itself, his selling and her buying, that was taken to be an act of patriotic "support" for the war effort.To my mind the above exchange signals a real shift in the U.S. citizenry's collective sense of how it should respond to our nation's military adventures. Until recently, the model by which modern governments encouraged their civilian populations to relate to military conflict was that of sacrifice. Proposing such a mindset makes much sense. Certainly in most times and places in history the rhetoric of wartime sacrifice has rationalized a reality of terrible deprivation, frequently including the "sacrifice" of one's own life or that of a loved one. But it is a rationale that has little relevance to what one might call the natural agenda of American-style commodity capitalism. Take World War II for instance. Leaf through popular magazines of the 1940s and note the awkward juxtaposition of messages encouraging sacrifice with the categorical imperative that endlessly promotes identity enhancement through consumption. (One of my particular favorites is a 1944 Esquire Magazine plumping for the new fashion of cuffless trousers and narrow lapels as a means of "conserving" raw materials needed for the war effort.)(1) What interests me about the material culture produced for ODS is how it reflects a transformed ideology that eliminates any message of necessary sacrifice and replaces it with a means of supporting war that seamlessly anneals patriotism to consumption.As soon as ODS began to build during the fall of 1990, patriotically themed merchandise appeared for sale. Central to the effective functioning of ODS ideology was the speed with which these items were conceived, manufactured and distributed, a speed that "normalized" their appearance in relationship to the war. It is as if a whole set of questions about the appropriateness of using pop cultural items to express personal convictions had already been asked and answered. Before examining this merchandise per se, I want to suggest a context within which the fact of its rapid appearance can be understood.Over the past decade and a half, a commercial structure has evolved which is poised to take the temperature of popular consciousness and reduce it to products that are very overtly sign systems. …