Hostage Crisis as Captivity Narrative in Iran

Student Comment

In Bound for Glory: the Hostage Crisis as Captivity Narrative in Iran, Catherine Scott offers public discourse and media coverage of the 1979-81 Iran Hostage Crisis as an updated version of the enduring "captivity narrative", an essential element of American national identity formation.

Captivity narratives pitting heroic, virtuous American hostages against their savage, irrational captors date back to the earliest days of European settlement of the American continent and, according to Scott, have been "a central and recurring motif in the foundations of American mythology."[1] The Puritan settlers who launched wars of extermination and dispossession against Native Americans were presented in the early narratives as victims - civilized, free and Christian - struggling against savage, un-free, pagans responsible for unimaginable atrocities against innocent Europeans.[2][2] Early Puritans drew strength from the afflictions and trials of settler hostages: captivity narratives gave settler communities a sense of meaning and mission and, by reversing the chief protagonists in the American story, a justification for American colonial expansion at the expense of Native Americans.[3][3] Such was these early narratives’ appeal that a popular early narrative, Mary Rowland's account of her 1676 captivity by Native Americans, went through four editions when it was published in 1682.[4][4]

These early captivity narratives have enduring implications for American identity formation and foreign policy. On the one hand, the narratives played a key role in constructing an identity for European Americans as heroic victims, courageous in the face of adversity, blessed with strong, righteous leadership, and driven by a moral mission and purpose. This sense of purpose remains deeply ingrained in American popular culture today, as figures like presidential candidate John McCain use their captivity as examples of both their vulnerability and their ability to face adversity against all odds. On the other hand, the discourse also creates a racialized "other" in opposition to American victims: uncivilized, darkened captors seeking to violate innocent Americans and destroy the American way of life. 

Predictably, captivity narratives have impacted American public opinion and the public's perception of America in the world and, Scott writes, we should not be surprised when frontier cultural myths about American exceptionalism, heroic leadership, and threats of captivity forged by conquest, paternalism, and claims of innocence on a domestic frontier, travel beyond America.[5][5]

Thus, while the specific identities of the "other" have changed over time, their essential "otherness" has not, and a construct initially applied to "devilish [Native] American savages" transferred easily to "wild-eyed Iranians" when the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was stormed.[6][6] Viewed in this light, the discourse surrounding the Iran hostage crisis “can be placed in the larger context of efforts to secure an American identity over and against fundamentalist threats, a practice grounded in zero-sum analysis of international action and a willingness to draw lines of superiority and inferiority between us and them.”[7][7]

The application of the captivity narrative to the Iran Hostage Crisis is particularly apt comparison to make because, by the time of the hostage taking, orientalists had already constructed the Middle East as a place of fundamental otherness and insinuating danger.[8][8]  Media reports on the Iran hostage crisis drew on familiar orientalist tropes. The news magazine Time, for example, deployed a familiar image of Muslim danger when it depicted Khomeini as a "dour old man," with "hooded eyes that glare out so balefully."  The magazine repeatedly referred to Iranian "mobs,"[9][9] invoking images of irrational masses prone to thoughtless violence - and Iranian Shiites were dismissively cast in the role of dupes: while Time noted that Iranian Shiites viewed Khomeini as an Imam, the magazine immediately undermined their belief by positioning these Muslims in opposition to the "hundreds of millions of others" who view Khomeini as "a fanatic whose judgments are harsh, reasoning bizarre and conclusions surreal."[10][10]  Moreover, Time was not alone in this approach: the New York Times was reduced to essentialist ruminations about "complexities of the Persian mind" as well. [11][11]

In the Iran hostage crisis captivity narrative, this dangerous Iranian Muslim "otherness" constructed by the U.S. media and commentators stood in stark opposition to the images of American heroism and steadfastness in the face of victimization and danger.  Indeed, writes Scott, the "fervent patriotism and moral and religious superiority of America that define prophetic dualism reverberated in stories, editorials, songs, t-shirts, and comic strips about Khomeini, Islam and the students who seized the hostages."[12][12]   Rallying around the flag in this context meant resisting the "devilish savages" of Islam.[13][13]   Notably, the captivity narrative functioned to dissolve President Carter's image as a weak leader as he stood firm against the hostage takers and refused to apologize for U.S. support for the Shah; in the first few months after the hostages were taken, 66 percent of Americans rated the President’s handling of the crisis as "just right." [14][14]

Scott’s analysis provides a fascinating lens through which to view both identity formation and racialization in the United States and the relationship between racial formation and foreign policy.In the domestic context, just as Scott writes that it should come as no surprise if cultural myths pitting the United States against an alien racialized “other” beyond the frontier travel beyond our borders, surely it is also unsurprising if those same myths are applied by dominant groups inside our borders to more vulnerable communities in our midst.Indeed, as other scholars have shown, orientalist tropes have frequently been deployed in the United States both before and after 9/11 as constructed racial identities have been imposed on Arab, Muslim and South Asian citizens and immigrants; the fact that these communities have little in common besides their “otherness” to other Americans notwithstanding.  The implications of this racialization process are deeply concerning: public discourse pitting Arabs, Muslims and South Asians against dominant American society has led to a permissive environment for both institutionalized and private discrimination as well as hate crimes against these groups.[15][15]

Finally, Scott’s analysis also contributes to an understanding of U.S. foreign policy outside the hostage crisis context, as the various themes she identifies as recurring in captivity narratives (including racialization of an enemy “other,” pitting rational American morality against irrational barbarity, rallying around a heroic leader, drawing strength and a sense of mission from torment and adversity and so on) also appear in foreign policy discourse in other contexts.For example, parallels can certainly be drawn between the between the identities constructed during the Iran hostage crisis and those constructed in the wake of September 11 and the subsequent wars on Iraq and Afghanistan.For example, the image of a civilized, victimized but free, Christian United States on a heroic mission not only to protect its way of life but export its "democracy" to savage, unfree peoples (Muslims in this instance, not Native Americans) clearly deploys the essentialist dichotomy of the old captivity narratives.Since, as Scott identifies, captivity narratives are an enduring and necessary part of American national identity formation, it should come as no surprise that this process is accompanied by exhortations to rally around the flag (“you’re either with us or against us”),depictions of the heroics of both ordinary Americans and the strength and righteousness of American leaders, and the zero-sum approach to international affairs.