Drones. More and more they seem to play an integral role in our modern society. From surveillance, to pizza delivery, to launching Hellfire missiles from three miles out; drones are here to stay. The following works primarily address and comment on the military's increasing use of drones and the slippery slope unmanned killing machines present. While they are beneficial in the sense that they can perform certain jobs that keep the fine men and women of our armed forces out of harm's way, their danger lies in the disconnect that occurs in their use. Robert Stam, in his book, Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism and Film, addresses this disconnect as he writes about Jean-Luc Godard’s film, Les Carabiners…
“Godard’s professed goal was to make the logic of war so simple a child could understand it, and if war is anything in the film, it is above all a kind of bellicose consumerism, a pretext for pillage. Godard counterpoints sound and image to highlight the patriotic glorifications of war and the sanguinary realties they mask. The conventional ethical hierarchies of war - massive aerial bombardments are antiseptic and humane; disemboweling with a knife is evil and barbaric - are leveled and revealed to be prevarications”.
Above emphasis mine. The "antiseptic" nature of drone use in the military makes killing an all too impersonal event. An actual missile strike on a civilian target can too easily become just another video game accomplishment for a technician sitting in a darkened room, half a world away. Killing moves even further towards a casual event with little psychological ramifications.