Heroic Soldiers, Justified Wars: Depictions of the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in Polish Popular Film

Abstract

Polish popular film has responded to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with two productions: the TV series Misja: Afganistan (dir. Maciej Dejczer, 2012) and the feature film Karbala (dir. Krzysztof Łukaszewicz, 2015). They do not reflect the prevailing views of the public on these two military conflicts, but rather appeal to the general imaginings about Polish wars in the course of history. As they leave out issues of politics, it is the portrayal of the soldiers that most fundamentally contributes to the construction of the perspectives on the wars in the Middle East in the films under discussion. The predominantly positive image of the Polish soldiers leads the viewer to believe that the wars in which they fought were justified. Misja: Afganistan and Karbala perpetuate the tropes entrenched in the heroic/martyrological model of representing war in Polish film through exploiting universal connotations of heroic war.

KEYWORDS:

• Polish film
• platoon film
• siege motif
• heroism
• enemy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 All translations from Polish are by the author of the article.

2 It is not accidental that both Mission: Afghanistan and Karbala mention the issue of money as the belief that a military mission abroad is a well-paid job is rather common in Poland. According to the figures published in March 2021, a Polish private in Iraq or Afghanistan earned 12,741–16,440 PLN a month, including various extras, while the minimum salary for a professional soldier amounted to 4110 PLN (Jaszczuk 2021). In 2020 the average salary nationwide was 5167 PLN.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marek Paryż

Marek Paryż is an associate professor of American literature at the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw.