However scared, are still human. Still feel.’ In a condition of insecurity, in other
words, we can overcome difference and rivalry inside the state for the greater good
(‘We have become one in our grief’). On this level, the comic is a response to the
terror of uncertainty through the promise of a political and moral community that is
renewed through fear (‘You wanted to send a message, and in so doing you awakened
us from our sense of self-involvement’). The comic is concerned with making sense
of the events in a manner that ameliorates our sense of fear: we see images of the
military preparing to strike back (‘We live in each blow you strike for infinite
justice…’ and ‘Look for your reply in the thunder’). In short, the narrative explains
what has happened, admitting the sense of failure by the securing agents of the state
(personified by Spiderman and Captain America) but delivering us from fear through
the new sense of ‘oneness’ and the renewed attempt to respond to the terror,
overcoming fragmentation and vulnerability. It is narratives such as this that are non-
state forms of cultural governance that (re)produce the identity of the state as a
community that can deliver us from the terror of uncertainty.
In a move that appears on the surface to take us from the realm of fiction to
‘reality,’ we see a similar strategy at play in an issue of Vanity Fair titled ‘War and
Destiny,’ an article that contains a collection of photographs by Annie Leibovitz that
set out to capture ‘the spirit of Washington’s mission control.’
accompanies the photographs the article ‘War and Destiny: The White House in
Wartime’ is concerned with restoring a sense of security against the terror of
uncertainty that has been felt since 9/11. The editorial of the issue makes this strategy
explicit: Graydon Carter, after telling us of the memorable images that Vanity Fair
has produced since World War I, informs us that it is not just ‘strength but images of
strength that matter in this 21
st
-century war.’ Vanity Fair, Carter likes to believe, has
taken on a ‘status equivalent to the High Sierra of the Public Images.’
The pictures that dominate the article could have been produced by someone
who had studied Roland Barthes essay on ‘Photography and Electoral Appeal,’ where
Barthes sets out the signs that are used to produce ‘a veritable blackmail by means of
moral values: country, army, family, honour, reckless heroism.’
case, the narrative that develops is concerned with displaying considered and
13
‘War and Destiny: The White House in Wartime,’ Annie Leibovitz and Christopher Buckely, Vanity
Fair, Febuary 2002.
14
Graydon Carter, Editor’s Letter: The War Room, Vanity Fair, February 2002, p.18. It is worth noting
that the editorial stance of Vanity Fair changed as Bush’s intentions in Iraq grew clearer. Carter wrote a
powerful critique of the Bush Administration in What We’ve Lost, New York; Little Brown, 2004.
15
Roland Barthes, Mythologies, p.92.
9
Convention