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Understanding the Funny Military Music Video

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2016

ZARA DINNEN
ZARA DINNEN*
Affiliation:
Department of English, University of Birmingham. Email: z.dinnen@bham.ac.uk.
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Abstract

Funny military music videos are popular videos featuring soldiers dancing to chart hits, usually parodying other Internet music video memes. This article is interested in the conditions of seeing these videos, of their being seen, in specific relation to their military-ness and their American-ness – US soldiers, on a US military base in occupied territory, dancing to US pop music, circulating on US social media sites, watched by a US public. This article claims that as insistent expressions of a popular, militarized, everyday culture, funny military music videos are exemplary assemblages of the visual conditions of the American military imaginary.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , November 2016 , pp. 899 - 921
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2016 

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