| Summary: | Based on a close reading of Ridley Scott’s war film Black Hawk Down (USA 2001; BHD), the present article investigates the formal properties through which a certain strain of war and action movies discursively constitutes the other – the enemy – as less than human. I develop the argument that the emergent relation between friend and foe in these films can be read through the concept of the border as an epistemological barrier that keeps the other incomprehensible, inaccessible, and ultimately ungrievable. Having demonstrated how BHD sets up such epistemological barriers, I widen my focus and show that similar formal properties can be found in other audio-visual media, such as video games or news items.
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