International Politics and Film: Space, Vision, Power

2 BORDERS

Borders, as John Agnew has reminded us, are integral to the making of the nation-state (2008). The modern nation-state’s evolution depends in large part on clearly delineated borders. Various technologies of the state, such as passport and citizenship laws, help to regulate and identify the limits of such states. Borders demarcate notions of the ‘national’ and ‘international’ and other distinctions between the ‘citizen’ and the ‘alien’. They also serve as both ‘bridges’ and ‘barriers’, which in turn regulate the movement of people, ideas, goods and, as many governments now acknowledge, terrorist networks. The border and accompanying border zones are usually recognisable by the presence of security officers and associated infrastructure; checkpoints, gates and signage expressing territorial ownership, regulatory authority and associated restrictions on movement. It is, then, physical, material and tangible, whilst also being symbolic, discursive, metaphorical and performative. The status of the border can therefore generate expressions of fear and hope – fear of exclusion, and hope that for some it might lead to the prospect of a better and more secure life.

Border politics, therefore, can be considered as the ways in which states and state-sanctioned authorities control (or seek to control) the movement of people and goods through border politics. Indeed, the ability to control one’s borders can be seen as one of the key powers of the state; ‘Modern nation-states … rest their strength and legitimacy fundamentally on their capacities to monitor and control the flow of people and resources into and through their bounded territories’ (Herbert 2008: 1). This, however, introduces a contradiction into the heart of the capitalist state. On the one hand, capitalism requires the relatively free flow of capital, goods and, to a lesser extent, people. On the other, states seek to police their borders to limit obligations to their citizens alone.

Prior to 9/11 then, for many Western states including the United States, the primary concern was keeping out ‘illegal immigrants’, justified on the basis of protecting domestic labour markets and the distribution of resources. The need to control the border zone was thus a major element in the domestic political life of European and North American countries throughout the latter half of the twentieth century (more particular, and perhaps peculiar, border issues were also raised in the context of the Cold War, not least in Berlin – see the discussion on The Lives of Others in chapter five for more on this). Hollywood films such as The Border (1982) and Flashpoint (1984) actively reflected the specific concerns of border security between the US and Mexico in Reagan’s America. After 9/11, however, this border, and borders more generally, became far more a site for anxiety about terrorists and terror groups and the danger posed to the domestic societies of Western states. Earlier optimism about globalisation sweeping away borders in the 1990s, especially prominent in neo-liberal readings of the global economy (see Ohmae 1999, for example) was hurriedly replaced with a new discourse based on security and the integrity of national territory.

Political geographers make an important distinction between borders and boundaries (see Newman and Paasi 1998). The latter is generally considered to be a strict line of separation between two distinct territories. The border, which is our preferred term, emphasises a space of interaction and gradual separation between two sovereign entities. In this sense, borders are a paradoxical space – being both the line along which two political entities are separated, but also being the zone of connection and crossing between these distinct political entities. The management and regulation of borders thus becomes an important aspect of how states ‘see’ their populations and territories, as well as how they ‘see’ the citizens of other states (see Scott 1998). Borders thus become sites of conflict and negotiation. Such conflicts arise over the rules that govern access across borders, the specific practices of enacting these rules, and the attempted subversion of these rules by a range of actors. Put crudely, state-based agencies alongside private organisations, on the one hand, are charged with patrolling and protecting border zones; while, on the other hand, others might seek to subvert and undermine such management through the smuggling of people and commodities, including drugs, weapons and money ’(see, for example, No Country for Old Men (2007) and Border Run (2012)).

This in turn produces unequal geographies of access. People cross borders daily; but for some their spoken language, dress and even appearance may impede and even prevent their progress. For the poorest and most desperate, the border crossing can be a dangerous and furtive affair as detailed in Courtney Hunt’s portrayal of illegal immigration, indigenous politics and working-class border life in Frozen River (2008). For those attempting to enter the United States from Mexico or Europe from Africa, the desert and sea respectively represent formidable environmental barriers to even be in sight of the border. Even at that point, safety is not assured as the refugee and migrant navigate the perils posed by people smugglers, border patrol staff and even vigilante citizens, especially on the American side of the border. But, as Louise Amoore (2006) has also noted, the border is also increasingly biometric in form. The collection and assessment of biographical data via retinal scans and fingerprinting at checkpoints is becoming increasingly the norm for both citizens and non-citizens alike. This data is then catalogued and distributed to various government and international agencies through shared databases. Information on an individual and their border crossings is a major source of concern in the contemporary era.

Cinema, alongside other forms of media, has played a critical role in sustaining and reproducing what might be termed border narratives and representations (see Mains 2004). In the case of Hollywood, the most notable cinematic border is the US/Mexican border, which has generated a significant number of films. Ranging from Border Incident (1949) to Babel (2006) and, more recently, Crossing Over (2009) and Monsters (2010), generic traditions associated with police procedural, film noir and the action-thriller blend and blur with one another as these films confront the unequal geographies and political contexts of the border. What film is able to do, in these aforementioned examples, is to dramatise the everyday displays of sovereign power by the state – to patrol, to regulate, to police and to resist border crossings. As Michael Kearney has noted, ‘It is in the border area that identities are assigned and taken, withheld and rejected. The state seeks a monopoly on the power to assign identities to those who enter this space’ (1991: 58).

Other cinematic traditions have also produced their own border films. In the case of Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers, for instance, the so-called ‘roadblock movie’ has considered in a variety of ways from the action-thriller to satirical comedy the role that border-crossings play in shaping everyday life – examples include Al qods fee yom akhar (Rana’s Wedding, 2002), Paradise Now (2005) and Beit-Lehem (Bethlehem, 2013) (see Zanger 2005; Gertz and Khleifi 2007). In South Asia, there is a rich and varied tradition that has considered the enduring legacies of partition and the subsequent conflicts involving East and West Pakistan. The War on Terror has also generated a new series of cinematic engagements which invoke the presence of the border other, including A Wednesday (2008) which involves a Mumbai-based storyline containing terrorists trained and financed from Pakistan. The border and the kinds of films that it has inspired are multiple in generic and narrative forms. There is no one ‘border film’ per se.

This chapter considers how film reminds us how the demarcation and management of the border and border politics more generally is enacted through the visual. The border (whatever its form) is never a neutral line of separation. The first theme concerns border management in the confined space of the airport. As the film The Terminal suggests, borders can be constraining but it is their management that produces seemingly ridiculous displays of sovereign power. Second, we reflect on one material manifestation of border management – the checkpoint. In the Palestinian film Divine Intervention, it is the checkpoint and the Israeli border guards who are critical in managing mobilities in and around the border zone. The third example addresses border entanglements – demarcation and management. Using Traffic we consider how drugs, people and the border are connected to US/Mexican relations, the nuclear family and the drug-dependent nature of parts of US society.

The Airport and the Bordered Individual

Borders represent not only sites of sovereign power but also sites of resistance, subversion and transgression. When borders are violated then, it can cause a profound sense of crisis for a state and its population. In the aftermath of the September 11th 2001 attacks, airports within the United States were shut down and flights entering the country were diverted. When airports re-opened, security measures were noticeably heightened with new restrictions placed on hand luggage and more pointed questioning at immigration control regarding visitors’ travel plans within the United States. The state, in this case the US, sought to re-impose itself, especially at the border (which, of course, is not always to be found simply at the ‘edges’ of a state’s territory).

In the comedy-drama The Terminal, the airport as a space of ambiguous sovereignty is explored through tracing the dramatic experiences of a man trapped in New York’s JFK international airport. He is denied entry into the United States and at the same time he cannot return to his native country because of a sudden revolution. He is, in effect, imprisoned in the airport, subject to the capriciousness of events and procedures both there and further afield. The film itself was inspired by the real-life experiences of a young Iranian refugee called Mehran Karimi Nasseri who was a long-term resident at Charles de Gaulle international airport in Paris between 1988–2006. The border, as manifested within the airport, is a site and space of struggle over identity and belonging.

The film opens with officials from US Customs and Border Protection, preparing for newly arriving visitors. As the passengers arrive, they are asked the usual questions: ‘what is the purpose of your visit?’ and ‘what are your travel plans?’ In the control room, the airport security staff monitor the unfolding movements of the passengers. Victor Navorski (Tom Hanks), from the fictional country of Krakozhia, discovers on his arrival, that his country of origin has been overthrown by a revolution and that this act has invalidated the status of his passport. He is taken away from immigration control and questioned in a side room. He eventually meets Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci), the head of US Customs and Border Protection at the airport.

Through his limited understanding of English he finally learns the consequences of the coup in Krakozhia: he is now both stranded and stateless. Dixon tells him: ‘The State Department has revoked your visa, which was going to allow you to enter the United States.’ The invalidated status of his passport, which a state is of course not obliged to issue (and can take back as well), exposes a powerful fiction contained within the front page of this document, namely the ‘request in the name of Krakozhia to all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance and to afford him/her every assistance and protection of which he/she may stand in need’. As Victor learns to his apparent cost, when the authority of the issuing state disappears so does that explicit commitment. Victor’s arrival in effect brings into formal existence a relationship between two sovereign states – Krakozhia and the United States and not Victor and the United States. And even then there is no automatic right of entry. As Dixon tells him, ‘You don’t qualify for asylum, refugee status, temporary protective status, humanitarian parole, non-immigration, work travel or diplomatic … you are at this time unacceptable. You have fallen into a small trap in the system.’ Victor has exposed the limits of the classification system deployed by the state to regulate ‘aliens’.