‘War is Like This’: Jirga, History and Genre Tropes

Title: ‘War is Like This’: Jirga, History and Genre Tropes
Creator: Hamilton, Emma; Chojenta, Paul
Relation: Journal of War and Culture Studies Vol. 17, Issue 2, p. 228-246
Publisher Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17526272.2024.2323762
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Resource Type: journal article
Date: 2024
Description: The critically acclaimed 2018 Australian film Jirga follows an ex-Australian soldier, Mike Wheeler, who returns to Afghanistan three years after a firefight during which he kills a civilian. Wheeler returns at risk of his death to confess his guilt to the man's community and the film examines themes of forgiveness and revenge, guilt, trauma, justice, and, as one Afghani tells Wheeler when he explains what he is doing back in Afghanistan, whether ‘war is like this’. ) This article will explore the ways Jirga uses the generic forms of the war film to convey meaning; it interrogates the usefulness of positioning films as either adhering to or subverting generic tropes, and instead points to the historically contingent evolution of generic tropes across time and place. With this understanding we can see genre tropes as complex, ambiguous, and sometimes even contradictory, attempts to develop meaning out of wartime experience.
Subject: Jirga; war film; genre; Australia; war history
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1500482
Identifier: uon:54937
Identifier: ISSN:1752-6272
Language: eng
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