Iconic war images and the myth of the ‘good American Soldier’

Abstract

This article explores the ‘good American soldier’ as a gendered ideal type shaped by, and reproductive of, myths about American military success, romantic notions of small-town working and white America, notions of heterosexual virility, and ableist stereotypes about personal resilience. Drawing from an analysis of 10 years of media coverage of an iconic image dubbed the ‘Marlboro Marine’, the article outlines three specific myths linked to the ‘good American soldier’, in order to provide an insight into ideals of militarized masculinity and the gendered myths that shape American nationalism and identity. In developing this analysis, the article extends existing work on military masculinities by introducing the ‘good American soldier’ ideal type and explores the multiple myths associated with this ideal type. The article also demonstrates how a media narrative analysis that covers an extended period of time makes it possible to observe shifting narratives associated with the ‘good American soldier’.

Keywords

gender images masculinity media military masculinity narrative

This article centres on an image taken in Iraq in 2004, which came to be known as the ‘Marlboro Marine’.¹ The image is a close-up of former US Marine James Blake Miller; his face is dirty and he stares into the distance as a cigarette dangles from his mouth. Taken on its own, the Marlboro Marine image is somewhat ambiguous in terms of what it conveys. It is hard to decipher what service Miller belongs to, what war he is fighting in, or even what era it is. The image simply captures what appears to be a male service member, who is smoking and dirty. When the image was first printed in 2004 it was described as capturing ‘the new icon of the war in Iraq’ who was a ‘generic soldier, an everyman’ (Yates, 2004). However, within a few months after Miller had returned home to the US, he went public about his criticism of the Iraq war and his struggle with post-traumatic stress (PTS).² The media framed this transition as the ‘downfall of a US “icon”’ (Daily Record, 2006) and widely recast the Marlboro Marine image as a ‘symbol of pain and suffering’ (Harris, 2006).

Through a systematic analysis of 10 years of media coverage of this image, I demonstrate how the Marlboro Marine image was used to reinforce and then recover gendered narratives of the ‘good American soldier’ as a small-town, humble, heterosexual, able-bodied heartthrob. This analysis makes two core contributions. First, it explores the ‘good American soldier’ as a complex ideal type that is shaped by consistent narratives about American success in war, romantic notions of small-town working and white America, notions of male virility and heterosexual love, and stereotypes about ableism and personal resilience. Second, it models the value and possibilities of an extended media narrative analysis, which I define as a media analysis that covers several years – in this case over 10 – and includes images and text. A media analysis that covers an extended period of time makes it possible to observe shifting narratives associated with the ‘good American soldier’, as well as the ways that broader public sentiments about war changed over time in the US.

The Marlboro Marine image is certainly not the only famous Iraq war image to have multiple or evolving meanings attached to it. Another example is the image of George W Bush standing in front of a ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner, taken in May 2003. That image was initially treated as a symbol of military success and Bush’s masculinity and heroism. MSNBC’s Chris Matthew’s commentary on the photo summarized several tropes used to describe the image: ‘He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that . . . Women like a guy who’s president . . . The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It’s simple’ (quoted in Sehgal, 2011). The image was likened to the aesthetics of the movie Top Gun and PBS’s Gwen Ifill called Bush ‘part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan’. These meanings became contested as the war not only continued, but escalated from 2003. As a result, the image ‘came to encapsulate not just the war, but the mistakes of the Bush administration as a whole’ (Cline, 2013). Examining the Marlboro Marine image sheds light on the ways that iconic, or widely recognized, war images can become ‘blank canvases’ onto which the public projects current narratives about the war. Observing the shifts in these narratives over time signals broader evolutions in public conversations about, and support for, the ‘never ending’ war on terror. Like the ‘Mission Accomplished’ image, the Marlboro Marine became a national sensation, yet the subject of the photo – James Blake Miller – seemed to represent a challenge to the narrow narrative of the ‘good American soldier’ projected onto the image. Examining media discourse on this single image over time provides unique insights into how the ideal of the ‘good American soldier’ is constructed and recovered in the face of these challenges that Miller presents, as well as the ways that national sentiments about the broader ‘wars on terror’ shift over time.

This analysis builds on work that treats images as elements of discourse with unfixed meanings, as well as scholarship pointing to the ways in which national and war myths are often shaped by gendered tropes and ideal types that can be easily signalled in photographs, including ‘good soldiers’, ‘helpless victims’, and ‘national heroes’ (see Nira Yuval-Davis, 1993). It also builds on existing work on military masculinities and gendered ideal types (Connell, 2005; Wegner, 2021). The ‘good American soldier’ is introduced as an ideal type that is ever evolving, yet also well established and widely recognizable – particularly in an American context, but also internationally. That is, while the patterns of representation can shift, the ‘good American soldier’ is a long-standing familiar ideal type. This article outlines three specific narratives associated with the ‘good American soldier’ and, through an extended media analysis of an image of a soldier who has a ‘fall from grace’, maps the ways that public discussions about soldiers can construct, reconstruct, and reinforce this ideal type. The next section provides further details both about the Marlboro Marine image and James Blake Miller; this is followed by a section outlining the theoretical framework and methods used in the analysis that follows.

The Marlboro Marine image

Embedded Iraq war photographer Luis Sinco took the Marlboro Marine image. It was first published in the Los Angeles Times on 8 November 2004. The image was taken after a long night of intense combat during the ‘Second Battle of Fallujah’, which is widely regarded as one of the most intense combat operations during the US invasion of Iraq. The image of Miller became an instant sensation, and was reportedly printed in over 100 news sources within the first week of its initial publication (Eliscu, 2008). Sinco reported that, due to the publicity and attention to the image, Miller’s commander sought to remove Miller from the frontlines and offered to send him home. It was reported that Miller infamously refused, reinforcing his national image as a stoic and honourable service member (Sinco, 2007).

The story might have ended there if it were not for the internet and social media. Several months after being deployed, Miller returned home to Kentucky and was assigned to help conduct evacuations in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Miller recounted that, at this time, he was struggling with PTS and, during the assignment in New Orleans, he physically attacked another service member when he made a whistling sound that reminded Miller of an incoming grenade (Zucchino, 2006). As a result of his conduct, incredibly, exactly one year to the day after his image was first published in the LA Times, Miller was forced to take a medical disability discharge from the Marines. Miller went on to conduct interviews, trying to raise awareness about PTS. In one of his interviews he mentioned wishing he could have given his wife a proper wedding rather than the simple ceremony they had when he returned from Iraq. A California couple heard this and used social media to raise US$15,000 for a wedding for Miller and his wife Jessica, which was attended by national media crews. Only 10 days later, Miller filed for divorce, making headlines again (CBS News, 2007). Since then, Miller has tried to stay out of the media and has requested that the Marines refrain from using his images for recruiting purposes.

Images as discourse

Drawing from a range of scholars examining images and war, I argue that war images are open to multiple interpretations and become pretexts for reproducing existing narratives, myths and gendered ideal types associated with war (Fahmy, 2005; Hansen, 2015; Hariman and Lucaites, 2011; Mitchell, 2011) As such, war images – particularly iconic, or widely circulated images – hold analytic potential as vehicles through which to explore and better understand these narratives and ideal types.

A post structural approach to analysing images as a form of discourse assumes there can be no fixed meanings attached to images (Ahall, 2008; Shepherd, 2012). While meanings are unstable, there is potential for hegemonic narratives to emerge, which can converge around a nodal point, or empty signifier. While there is no single understanding of the ‘good American soldier’, it is possible to point to hegemonic narratives that constitute a coherent and stable, though unfixed, conception of the ‘good American soldier’.

Although there are many approaches to narrative analysis, including narratology, my use of the term ‘narrative’ primarily draws from International Relations scholarship, which tends to focus on narrative in similar ways to discourse analysis. There is considerable academic debate about the conceptual and methodological distinction between narrative and discourse; I draw from the work of Laura Shepherd (2012), who argues:

Our cognitive frameworks are (re)produced in and through the stories we tell ourselves and others. We glean ideas and ideals about the world and our place in it from the stories we are told . . . whether we call them myths, tales, fables, history, journalism or discursive formations they are all stories.

Narratives are understood here as complete, consistent, and often familiar stories told in order to make sense and offer explanations of political and social events. A narrative is not simply a story, it is a widely recognized and regularly reproduced account that is aimed at rationalizing, validating, or describing complex phenomena in a coherent and definitive manner. I treat narratives as stabilizing forces; they are the through line that emerges through multiple articulations of a problem or issue. This approach to narrative is useful because it allows for attention to the ways that the Marlboro Marine image was instantly described as representing the ideals of the ‘good American soldier’, but also how media discourses attempted to recover and stabilize evidence and information that disrupted this narrative over time. Even as Miller presented a problematic ‘good soldier’, media coverage recalibrated and reinforced a particular narrative about the ‘good American soldier’. Methodologically, my analysis seeks to identify coherent shared narratives that articulate evolving, but relatively stable and coherent, stories linked to the ideal of the ‘good American soldier’.

Military masculinities and a model of the ‘good American soldier’

I draw on an understanding of gender as an unfixed series of ideal types and norms (Connell, 2005). Gender is performative and relational; individuals perform and are judged according to norms, expectations, and ideal types linked to masculinity and femininity, which may be generally recognized within a particular society, though never perfectly performed by any single individual (West and Zimmerman, 1987). I rely on David Duriesmith’s (2014: 241) definition of masculinity as ‘a set of attributes that socially define the normal or acceptable range of behavior for those of the male sex’. Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) argued that ideals or models of hegemonic masculinity ‘express widespread ideals, fantasies, and desires’. Although there is no fixed set of expectations for the performance of masculinity and femininity, in some contexts there can emerge loosely configured, but widely understood, gender ideal types, including, for example, the ‘good soldier’.

The study of military masculinities, in part, explores the expressions of masculinities that are considered normal and acceptable within military institutions and in a militarized context, as well as ideal types associated with soldiering (Wadham, 2013). Nicole Wegner (2021) summarizes the ways that military masculinities refer to a series of ‘idealized traits’ associated with soldiers and soldiering that are continuously negotiated and ‘actively reproduced’. Work on military masculinities, which is largely focused on Western military institutions, has established a series of fluid, yet commonly recognized series of characteristics and ideals linked to idealized soldier masculinity, which include ‘strength, athleticism, aggression, (hetero)sexual conquest, and brotherhood’ (Bulmer and Eichler, 2017: 163) as well as being ‘tough, brave, ready for action and also hard drinking, heterosexual and physically fit’ (Duncanson, 2009: 65).

In my exploration of ‘the good American soldier’, I argue that, while there is no single, identifiable embodied example of a ‘good American soldier’, the term is used to signal a range of beliefs, stories, expectations, and ideas that are generally familiar within an American context and beyond. In doing so, it draws from existing work on military masculinities, and considers how the ideal type is constructed and reinforced through unfixed, but relatively stable nationally grounded narratives of the soldier as an able-bodied, heterosexual, humble heartthrob. My analysis of the narratives that make up a coherent model of the ‘good American soldier’ responds directly to Connel and Messerschmidt’s (2005) call to pay attention to the ways that fantasy, desire, and ideals form models of masculinity. It also builds on Maria Baaz and Maria Stern’s work, which argues that there are ‘mythologized and fixed identities demanded in the military’ (Baaz and Stern, 2009: 505; Whitworth, 2004).

My methods included an extended media narrative analysis of articles that printed the Marlboro Marine image between November 2004 and November 2017. News articles that were longer than one paragraph and were printed in English-language international newspapers between November 2004 and November 2017 were included. Several search terms, including ‘Marlboro man and Iraq’, ‘Marlboro Marine’, ‘Marlboro Soldier’, ‘Marine and Luis Sinco’ and ‘James Blake Miller’ were used within a ProQuest database to find the most instances possible where the Marlboro Marine image was published. The search terms resulted in dozens of articles; however, after removing those that were irrelevant – including articles that were reprints, and articles that referred to the Marlboro Marine but did not show evidence of being printed with the image – 39 articles remained. Of the 39 articles, 31 were printed in US media outlets. These results are somewhat surprising, since several news articles state that the image was printed over 100 times in the first week; however, there are likely instances where the image was published without a full article accompanying it. Despite the small sample, 39 articles that focus specifically on this particular image provide ample grounds for an analysis of the narratives linked to the image.

The narrative analysis draws attention to complete stories and meanings projected onto the image. This draws on Laura Shepherd’s (2008: 32) concept of discourse as ‘systems of meaning-production’. During the analysis, it became immediately apparent that articles generally fell into two distinct time categories: those published in the first months – between November 2004 and January 2005 – generally celebrated the image as iconic. After this, Miller began making public statements about his health and his criticism of the war. This seems to connect to a shift whereby articles published after January 2005 centre more on Miller’s life and his struggle with PTS. The analysis that follows separates the articles into these two time frames to help illustrate the dramatic transitions in the ways that the image was described. In addition to this narrative shift of celebrating the image and then using the image to convey struggle and tragedy, I identified three overarching and coherent narratives linked to the ideal of the ‘good American soldier’. These narratives centre on ‘the good American soldier’ as a subject that is fit and able, heterosexual and handsome, and a humble small-town hero. The following section explores these narratives and also the ways that these narratives were reinforced and held consistent, even as meanings ascribed to the Marlboro Marine image in media coverage shifted over time.

First months of the Marlboro Marine

In the first three months of media coverage, the image of the Marlboro Marine was immediately described as iconic/emblematic/symbolic. Shortly after it was published, news sources described the image as ‘an instant icon’ (Walters, 2004), having ‘quickly moved into the realm of the iconic’ (McDonnell, 2004) and ‘the new icon of the war in Iraq’ (Yates, 2004). One of the reasons Miller’s image became known as the Marlboro Marine/Man/Marine almost instantly is because the image is clearly similar to the image of the ‘Marlboro Man’, long used to advertise Marlboro cigarettes in America and around the world. In addition to comparing the image to the ‘Marlboro Man’ advertising image, several journalists compare Miller to Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne, with one journalist stating his ‘weary expression . . . seems to convey the timeless fatigue of battle . . . the cigarette, of course, drooping from the right side of his mouth in a jaunty manner that Humphrey Bogart or John Wayne would have approved of’ (McDonnell, 2004). The composition, the pose, and the expression of the Marlboro Marine image all signalled a particular type of masculinity and identity that was already familiar to many Americans. Bogart and Wayne are widely associated with a masculinity defined by toughness, stoicism, and an emotional guardedness (Nollen, 2021). Although almost nothing was known about Miller in the first few days that the image was circulated, journalists took ample liberty to project and assume aspects of his identity. These passionate and dramatic accounts are illustrative of narratives attached to ‘good American soldiers’. In the following section, I explore three narratives about the ‘good American soldier’ that came through consistently in the articles.

The narrative of the heterosexual heartthrob

Journalists initially used incredibly gendered language to describe the Marlboro Marine image, and Miller himself. For example, some characterized him as having a ‘manly swagger’ (Yates, 2004) and ‘film star features’ (Walters, 2004). Articles noted that the image had provoked a frenzy of attention from women ‘scrambling to find his address’ (Walters, 2004). When the image was first published, women apparently ‘paused only to swoon before they contacted the paper for his address’ (Pearson, 2004). These women are portrayed as wanting to know more about Miller, and to know if he was single. One female ‘admirer’ was quoted: ‘The photo captures his weariness, yet his eyes hold the spirit of the hunter and the hunted . . . His gaze is warm but deadly. I want to send a letter’ (McDonnell, 2004). In a longer feature article, gender and international relations scholar Jean Elshtain was asked to weigh in on the gendered aspects of the image. She states:

There is a part in many women, including young women, that yearns for a man to be a man . . . Men have been so sensitised to everything that they often come off as wimps, certainly in the modern academy . . . So the photo creates a safe, romantic distance, so to speak, an image of a handsome war-weary man and that is a lot easier to deal with than the guy next door – or in one’s bedroom. (cited in Pearson, 2004)

Reflecting her earlier work on gender and war, Elshtain positions Miller as an ideal soldier that reaffirms gendered expectations about roles men and women are expected to perform during war. These comments identify Miller as a romantic symbol of a ‘real soldier’ and an almost-extinct ‘real man’, who widely appeals to heterosexual women. In these articles, the emphasis is not on specific facts about James Blake Miller, but on a general narrative of the soldier as a heterosexual heartthrob.

The narrative of invincible and able-bodied soldier

In addition to being described as the ideal heterosexual man, in early media coverage Miller was conveyed as the ultimate, fit, combat soldier. Long before journalists knew anything about Miller, or his role in Fallujah, he was made into ‘a generic soldier, an everyman, lending his face to express the overall emotion in Fallujah’ (Yates, 2004). Claims about his ‘everyman’ soldier status were explicitly linked to his presumed battle experience, strength, and physical fitness and youth. His masculinity was associated with a toughness and ability to mentally and physically withstand combat with stoicism. When describing the image, journalists claimed Miller had a ‘concerned look in his eyes as the battle for Fallujah raged’, and that he was a ‘battle weary Marine in Fallujah’ with ‘eyes radiating weariness and determination’ (Austin American Statesman, 2004; Yates, 2004). Many of the articles describe Miller as battle-weary or combat weary, using terms like ‘gritty’, ‘war-hardened’, and ‘battle-hardened’ (Associated Press, 2004b; 2005; McDonnell, 2004). One article dramatically described the image as having been taken ‘after more than twelve hours of nearly nonstop deadly combat’ (McDonnell, 2004), with Miller depicted as having ‘his face coated in war paint, a bloody scratch on his nose, and a freshly lit cigarette hanging from his lips’ (Klein, 2004).

The emphasis on Miller as a combat soldier echoes a long American tradition of elevating combat soldiers as the ‘real warriors’ of military (MacKenzie, 2015). Katharine Millar and Joanna Tidy (2017:148) also point out the ways that combat soldiers occupy an esteemed place in the public imaginary. They argue that combat soldiers are heralded as stoic, hyper-masculine ‘real’ men who are the ultimate protectors of society: ‘“real men” pre-exist combat, and prove their mettle within it’ (see also Baaz and Stern, 2009; Duncanson, 2009). Until recently, US combat units have been male-only, and are seen by many infantry soldiers as ‘one of the last places where that most endangered of species, the alpha male, can feel at home’ (Andrew Exum, cited in MacKenzie, 2015: 91). Identifying Miller as having ‘the look of a seasoned combat veteran . . . a hard charger’ (Yates, 2004) locates him as occupying an exclusively male-only space and highly prioritized military role, one that has long presumed to require an able body, fitness, strength, and bravery.

The narrative of the humble, small-town hero

The final theme in media coverage of the Marlboro Marine image centred on Miller’s roots in small-town America. In the first month the image was produced, the majority of the articles note that Miller is from a small town in Kentucky. These portrayals do not simply mention the population of Miller’s town, but they construct an entire romantic narrative of rural America, with Miller portrayed as an all-American humble man. To understand the ‘humble hero soldier’ narrative, I draw from Carol Mason’s (2005) work on soldiering and the ‘hillbilly defense’. Mason centres race, class and sexuality in her analyses of the ways that small-town American soldiers are variously portrayed as humble heroes or uncontrollable hicks. Mason draws attention to the ways that ‘good’ small-town American soldiers are portrayed as humble, stoic, ‘noble in poverty, pure in intentions’ while dysfunctional or ‘bad’ soldiers are cast as ‘hillbillies’ who are ‘innately violent, and sexually wild’ (p. 41).

In her work on the ‘hillbilly defense’, Mason writes about the ways that the term ‘hillbilly’ can ‘reflect either heroism – bravery and loyalty to traditional ways – or a deviance, sadism, and primitivism that is said to fly in the face of modern progress’ (p. 43). Whiteness is central to the construction ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ‘hillbilly’. Miller is framed within long-standing narratives of white hard-working American settlers and labourers. Moreover, he is associated with a long line of white American iconic men who not only signify elements of ‘real’ masculinity, but also ‘real’ working-class Americans. Similarly, whiteness has been central to narratives that overwhelmingly cast the ‘good American soldier’ as a white, male officer (see Moore, 2013).

At least in the first months that his image was printed, Miller is clearly associated with this positive framing of ‘hillbilly’ as someone who is humble, hard-working, Christian, and patriotic. Miller is described as a ‘farm-raised country boy’ (Harris, 2004; see also Associated Press, 2005; McDonnell, 2004; Sinco, 2007) who ‘grew up working crops: potatoes, corn and green beans’ (McDonnell, 2004). Miller is depicted as having brought his small-town sensibilities to Iraq: ‘[Miller is] a country boy who likes to play bluegrass, he took a harmonica to Iraq and had his dad ship an acoustic guitar to him in the war zone. When he wasn’t being shot at, he would write and play songs with his friends’ (Associated Press, 2005). Journalists also note that Miller graduated from Shelby Valley High School and that he played football (Associated Press, 2004a, 2004b, 2005; McDonnell, 2004; Warren, 2006). Miller’s family is described as composed of typical, hard-working Americans; several note that Miller’s mother is a nurse and his father is a mechanic (Associated Press, 2004b, 2005; Gallahue, 2004; McDonnell, 2004; Walters, 2004; Zucchino, 2006).

In keeping with the small-town narrative, Miller is frequently described as being humble and overwhelmed by the attention his image garnered. One article portrays Miller as ‘a country boy from eastern Kentucky who has been thrust unwittingly and somewhat unwillingly into the role of poster boy for a war on the other side of the world from his home on the farm’ (McDonnell, 2004). Journalists were quick to note that Miller is ‘unassuming’ and that ‘he takes his share of small-town hic [sic] ribbing from a unit that includes Marines from big cities as well as small towns’ (McDonnell, 2004). Miller is rarely cited in these first articles, but the few available quotes reiterate this humility. Several articles quote Miller simply stating he does not understand ‘what all the fuss is about’ (Associated Press, 2004b, 2005; Austin American Statesman, 2004; McDonnell, 2004; Walters, 2004). In another interview, Miller states, ‘I’m just Joe Schmo from Kentucky . . . It is some of the most beautiful country you’ve ever seen in your life’ (Associated Press, 2005). This framing heralds Miller’s small-town humility and links it to his status as a ‘good American soldier’. This construction of Miller also presents rural working-class America in incredibly romantic ways. Later in the analysis, I note how subsequent articles unravel this iconic representation and link Miller to less positive aspects of the term ‘hillbilly’, including poverty, crime, and isolation.

The Marlboro Marine’s fall from iconic status

There are several shifts in the way the Marlboro Marine image is described in articles published after February 2005. One of the most notable shifts in news coverage is that Miller is quoted more regularly (in 77% of the articles as opposed to 41% of articles published in the first 3 months) and at greater length. Miller’s own account of the war stands in stark contrast to romantic depictions of the Iraq war and the ‘battle of Fallujah’. In interviews, Miller expressed conflicting emotions about the broader war on terror and recounted a time when he shot and killed a child, and the horror of seeing a cat ‘make a home in the open chest cavity of a dead Iraqi’ (Harris, 2006). He refers directly to his iconic image, noting, ‘When that picture was taken I see a day I don’t care to remember but I’ll never forget’ (Parry, 2006). Miller’s own voice complicates and adds nuance to the simplistic manner he was described in early articles. Miller consistently talks about his struggle with PTS, his failed marriage, his criticism and concerns about the Iraq war, and his lack of opportunities as an American veteran.

Another notable shift in the later cohort of articles is the dramatic change in the way that ‘iconic’ is used in reference to the Marlboro Marine image. Incredibly, every single article during this period refers to the image as iconic; however, the majority of the articles identify a change in the meaning of the image, or use iconic in the past tense. Journalists both acknowledge the previous iconic status of the image, and explicitly attach new meanings to the image. One article portrays the Marlboro Marine image as ‘capturing the essence of the Iraq conflict’, going on to state ‘but after the 15 minutes of fame subsided, a different picture began to emerge’ (Papps, 2006).

Articles clearly link the transformation in the meaning of the image with the changes that Miller has gone through publicly. Specifically, Miller’s public struggle with PTS, his open criticisms of the Iraq war, and his public divorce are referred to as evidence that he should no longer be described as an iconic US soldier, or a small-town hero. For example, one article notes, ‘Miller remains a symbol. But it is no longer that of the tough-as-nails Marlboro Man. It is of the human cost of war’ (Harris, 2006). One journalist wrote: the image ‘captured a moment when most Americans still thought the invasion of Iraq a worthy undertaking. Now Miller is a different symbol in a different time.’ Journalists are blunt in their description of the ‘downfall of a US “icon”’ (Daily Record, 2006). The following quote is striking in its portrayal of Miller and captures several of the shifts in how Miller and the image came to be described:

As the war has dragged on, Miller’s life has collapsed in the face of post-traumatic stress disorder. He draws a disability pension for his condition and his personal life is a wreck. He suffers from nightmares, panic attacks and survivor’s guilt . . . slumped into struggle and despair, divorcing childhood sweetheart. Marlboro man is no longer an icon for the American warrior ethic. He is a symbol of pain and suffering and the enormous problems endured by veterans returning home. He has become the public face of shell-shock. No longer the victor, Miller has become one of the war’s victims. (Harris, 2006)

This single quotation implies that Miller has a ‘failed’ body, marriage, mind, and ‘warrior ethic’. To this journalist, Miller is a victim who no longer protects the nation, but instead relies on the state for disability support. The following section outlines how these later articles strip Miller of his status as a ‘good soldier’, at the same time as they reinforce the three narratives about the ‘good American soldier’ as a fit, humble and heterosexual heartthrob.

The fall of Miller as the fit and able-bodied soldier

In the later cohort of articles, Miller is frequently interviewed and open about his symptoms of sleeplessness and nightmares. He is clear about his inability to cope with daily life, noting the ‘constant rollercoaster of flashbacks, sleepless nights and outbursts of anger’ (US Newswire, 2006). He also described ‘blanking out’ at times (Buncombe, 2006). Despite acknowledging his physical and emotional state, Miller contends that he is able-bodied and willing to work. He talks about the lack of job opportunities available to him as a young veteran living in rural America. He indicates that his PTS diagnosis acts as a ‘black mark’ on him for employers and limits his potential to move forward. In an interview he explains:

I’m only 21. I’m able-bodied as hell, yet I’m considered a liability. It’s like I had all these doorways open to me, and suddenly they are all closed . . . I can’t stand to look at that picture anymore . . . It’s like my life is over. (Zucchino, 2006)

Although Miller describes himself as able-bodied and ready to work and move forward, the media frame him as someone who has fallen, who is ‘struggling’ and who has deteriorated physically and emotionally. In short, he is not a ‘good soldier’ or the ‘Marlboro Marine’ any longer because he is not fit and able. One article summarizes how the Marlboro image

became an iconic image of the US soldier in Iraq. But 18 months later, Blake Miller is a symbol of another battle. The troubled former Marine’s life has been shattered by post-traumatic stress disorder. He can’t find work, drinks too much and is plagued by dreams of death. (Papps, 2006)

Miller is dismissed as someone who is ‘no longer an icon for the American warrior ethic’; he is, instead, ‘the face of shell shock’ (Harris, 2006). Another article noted that Miller had previously been characterized as ‘the tough guy symbol of the Iraq war’ and continued to claim, ‘today he just fights the demons in his mind’, noting his struggles with PTS (Parry, 2006). Several articles point out that Miller collects disability payments, and that these payments cause him embarrassment. What is explicit in these descriptions is the message that soldiers with PTS, addictions, and other physical or emotional diagnoses are not normal. Not a single article mentioned the wider statistics of PTS in US service members.

The way Miller is framed by the media reflects what Alison Howell (2012) has described as the general trend of pathologizing and individualizing PTS in the US military and by the American public. Howell points out that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was a diagnosis invented after the Vietnam war, which came to capture a series of symptoms and presumed impacts of war, including trauma and depression. The invention of PTS not only ‘placed trauma squarely as a psychiatric disorder’ (Howell, 2012: 215) but also characterized the disorder as a personal experience that must be treated on an individual basis. This understanding of PTS disconnected the diagnosis from broader questions about war and militarization, and manages to both generalize the impacts of war and individualize people’s recovery needs. Howell (2012: 216) summarizes: ‘Treating trauma as a medical problem has meant that it is approached as something to be cured, safely sequestering the experiences of . . . war, in the private realm, and removing them from political scrutiny and action.’

Although Miller tries to reclaim his narrative and counter common narratives about PTS, the overarching message of many of the articles is that Miller is weak, damaged, and dealing with personal symptoms of PTS. Interestingly, one article noted, ‘His struggles emerged on the day that another Iraq veteran, a double-amputee, made a triumphal run around the White House with President Bush, demonstrating the different hurdles thousands of Iraq war veterans have adapting to civilian life’ (Reid, 2006). This seemingly offhand comment conveys a clear message about the ‘good American soldier’ as someone who copes with trauma and injury in particular ways. Miller’s ‘struggles’ are compared directly to the ‘triumphal’ success of another veteran, with more visible signs of being impacted by war. Echoing recent tendencies to fixate on service members’ resilience and personal capacity, Miller’s failure to cope is contrasted to this double amputee’s ability to overcome the ‘different hurdles’ of Iraq veterans and ‘adapt’ to civilian life. In Howell’s (2012) analysis of PTS, she notes movement to put pressure on soldiers to be resilient, think positively, and develop coping skills. She concludes, ‘If a soldier does develop PTSD, then it can be claimed that the soldier simply was not resilient enough, placing the responsibility for the experience of traumatic events squarely on the shoulders of soldiers and veterans’ (p. 222). In the end, the ideal of ‘good’ soldiers as able-bodied, stoic, and masculine heroes is sustained by narratives that paint Miller’s experience with PTS as exceptional and a sign of individual weakness.

The fall of Miller as the humble hero

In the later set of articles, Miller is recast from a stoic ‘everyman’ with a humble life, to an emotionally complex ‘hillbilly’ with strained relationships and an unclear future. Rather than using terms like ‘farm-raised country boy’ and generic depictions of ‘small-town’ America, several articles in the later cohort specify that Miller is from the Appalachian hills and Pike County (for example, Jafari, 2006; Harris, 2006; Zucchino, 2006). This is significant because the term ‘hillbilly’ was originally used to refer to people who dwell in rural mountain areas, explicitly in Appalachia and the Ozarks. This negative use of hillbilly is often used interchangeably with ‘redneck’ or ‘white trash’, signalling again that whiteness is central to understanding narratives linked to Miller and the good soldier. The ways that Miller is evaluated against narratives of the ‘good American soldier’ are shaped by race and specific understandings of what it means for a white male to ‘fail’.

One article described Miller’s hometown as a ‘town where meth addiction is rampant, kids marry young, you either mine coal or go into the Marines’ (Sinco, 2007). Several articles note the lack of employment opportunities and poverty in Miller’s hometown. It is also made clear that, in Miller’s hometown, his celebrity status is limited: ‘Around Pike County . . . he’s just plain Blake Miller, 21 and a civilian again’ (Warren, 2006). Through these articles, Miller is reframed from a wholesome, humble, ‘everyman’ country boy, to an isolated, poor, Appalachian hillbilly. Mason’s conception of the ‘hillbilly defense’ is again useful here. For Mason, the ‘hillbilly defense’ is a narrative that is used to excuse some military behaviours as the product of an individual’s roots in rural America. In this case, the ‘hillbilly defense’ is used to paint Miller’s fall from iconic status as the product of his personal limitations and small-town sensibilities, rather than the product of his experience as a US service member.

Reclassifying Miller from a US icon to an individual failure is part of a larger trend of dismissing evidence of ‘bad’ soldiers as exceptional or outside the norm instead of acknowledging wider trends of PTS, depression, and addiction within the US military (see Howell, 2012; MacKenzie, 2020) Miller’s ‘collapsed life’ is presented as a ‘pity’, but a product of his own weaknesses, nonetheless (Harris, 2006). This is not unlike the ways that other types of endemic dysfunctional soldier behaviours, including hazing, intentionally killing civilians, assault, and ‘scandals’ like the torture at Abu Ghraib prison are classified as atypical (Gregory, 2016; MacKenzie, 2020) For example, when news broke that a group of soldiers from the 5th Stryker Brigade had been staging combat scenes in order to intentionally kill and maim Afghan civilians, the Pentagon responded by declaring that these soldiers had lost ‘their moral compass’ and that their actions were ‘contrary to the standards and values of the United States Army’ (DoD, cited in Gregory, 2016: 947). Similarly, after images of US service members and contractors torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib were released, then-President George Bush called the actions the result of ‘a few bad apples’ (The Economist, 2005). Much of the subsequent media attention focused on Lynndie England, not only because she was one of the few women involved, but also because of her ‘Appalachian heritage’. Mason argues that England was categorized as one of several ‘recycled hillbillies’ guarding prisoners at Abu Ghraib (Hersh, 2004: 41, cited in Mason, 2005: 49). Their actions were made sense of as the product of ‘guys from Cumberland’ (Hersh, 2004: 41) who ‘were too stupid to know any better’ (Mason, 2005: 49).

In this case, Miller’s PTS diagnosis, his violent behaviour, his horror stories from Iraq, his concerns about the war, and his failed marriage are framed as individual failures that stem from his rural background. Miller is pathologized as a problematic individual rather than considering his story as potentially illustrative of the epidemic of PTS in the US military, the impact of service on soldiers, the failures of the Iraq war, and poverty and inequality in America.

The fall of Miller as the American heartthrob

In later articles, Miller is recast from a heterosexual heartthrob to a lonely and troubled loner. While early articles described Miller as rugged, handsome, and stoic, subsequent articles reframed the image as one depicting an ‘exhausted’ (Associated Press, 2006; Barnett, 2007; Birmingham Post, 2006; The Canadian Press, 2006; Elsworth, 2006; The Irish News, 2006; Jafari, 2006; Johnson, 2006; Sinco, 2007; Warren, 2006; Zucchino, 2006) and ‘scared’ (Zucchino, 2006) man with a ‘bloodied, blackened face and faraway stare’ (Papps, 2006) and ‘lost, distant look’ (Zucchino, 2006). Moreover, as journalists and the public learn more about Miller’s mental health and resistance to the war, the image is described as representing a ‘grubby, exhausted Marine’ (Warren, 2006) with a ‘wan face’ and a ‘collapsed life’ (Harris, 2006).

Miller’s fall from his status as a small-town hero and heartthrob are frequently linked. Specifically, his depiction as a divorcé and as a ‘hillbilly’ are connected through multiple articles. For example, in one article he is described as a ‘young Appalachian husband who couldn’t afford a proper wedding for his wife’ (Jafari, 2006). Several articles note that Miller divorced his ‘childhood sweetheart’, placing emphasis on the collapse of a long-standing romance (Daily Record, 2006). The emphasis on Miller’s romantic relationship is used to signal other embedded American narratives surrounding heterosexuality, marriage, and American identity. One article described Miller’s wedding as follows:

Miller and his blushing ‘bride’ took their vows anew. He wore his Marine uniform. A huge American flag fluttered nearby. Television news crews recorded the day for posterity and prime time. That was 3 June. For a moment it seemed America – and Miller – would get a happy ending. (Harris, 2006)

Here, we see the narrative of the ‘good American soldier’ as a heterosexual heartthrob merge with wider fantasies about the American dream and American recovery from war. Miller’s life, it seems, had the potential to be a fairy tale, with Miller as a heroic veteran married to his rural childhood sweetheart. The reality of Miller’s divorce, his effort to raise awareness of PTS, his lack of employment, and his critical reflections on the war deflate this fairy tale. This seems to be a loss not just for Miller, but for an American public who were attached to these fantasies of the good war and the good American soldier.

Conclusion

Empirically, it could be easy to dismiss the Marlboro Marine image as merely a single image that became popular and had somewhat contested meanings attached to it. However, a media narrative analysis of this single image over an extended period of time provides an opportunity to observe the complex and interconnected narratives that shape the ideal of the ‘good American soldier’. Miller’s story is fascinating and compelling. His experience of military service and ‘post-conflict reintegration’ upon returning home to America is not merely an anecdote. The way that the media and the public attempted to make sense of Miller – as both a hero and a hillbilly – is illustrative of established narratives about ‘good’ and ‘failed’ soldiers. Through this analysis, we see that the ‘good American soldier’ is someone who is expected not only to be strong, but also resilient to injury and able to take personal responsibility for recovery. The ‘good American soldier’ is also presumed to be heterosexual, handsome, and a virile heartthrob. And, finally, the ‘good American soldier’ is a humble team player who originates from small-town America and embodies small-town American values. These three narratives of the good soldier as fit, heterosexual, and humble work together to reinforce an ideal type of a ‘good American soldier’ that is defined by masculinity, bravery, courage under fire, modesty, mystery, and presumed physical invincibility. The extended media analysis illustrates both how these narratives come to form the ‘good American soldier’ ideal type, but also how these narratives are reinforced, recovered, and sustained even in the face of experiences, evidence, or instances that counter these narratives. More broadly, an extended media analysis observing narratives associated with war images can help capture why some images are being widely circulated and the gendered national narratives and myths attached to them.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

This article has had a very long journey and the author would like to thank the many colleagues that read and provided feedback on early drafts, including Nicole Wegner, Jackie Dent, Lene Hansen, Rebecca Adler-Nissen, and all the members of the Images and International Security and Bodies as Battleground projects at the University of Copenhagen.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Some of this project was supported by: Independent Research Fund Denmark Grant number: DFF – 1327-00056B.

ORCID iD

Megan MacKenzie

Notes

Author biography

Megan MacKenzie is the Simons Chair in International Law and Human Security in the School for International Studies at Simon Fraser University, Canada. She is the co-editor, with Nicole Wegner, of Feminist Solutions for Ending War (Pluto 2021).

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