Corpse Parade
I watched the airplanes hit the twin towers through sleep rheumed eyes on the black and white TV we kept in the dining room. The dust cloud obscuring Manhattan, the people screaming, and the blood streaming down survivors’ faces played in color on the CRT hung in my 5th grade classroom. Weapons of mass destruction, tanks rolling over sunbaked sand, 20-somethings in desert colored body armor dominated the news, as well as trickling into episodes of Malcolm in the Middle, Scrubs, and Family Guy. The president — affable with a disarming accent — understood the existential threat we, Americans, faced half a world away, and assured us the men, the tanks, the weapons straight out of the year 2005, and, if necessary, some from the year 1945 would keep us safe. He comforted us with our ability to wipe out a continent, and patted us on the back for our restraint in believing in the possibility to change their hearts and minds. Veterans would speak over the scream of warplanes while slideshows of those too unlucky to gain that title played on the enormous screen over football fields: honoring them in making “the ultimate sacrifice”. One of these strong jawed, unsmiling, beige-bedecked sacrificed was Pat Tillman, a sad casualty of friendly fire. His image illuminated the perfectly manicured field which had already made him a hero to many Americans. I can’t say he regretted trading his lucrative NFL career for duty but he is quoted as saying that these wars were “fucking illegal”. A sentiment the American war machine buried and danced his corpse atop. A few years after the fact, I’ve had time to clear the rheum from my eyes thanks in part to The Blood Brother’s and their cutting scrutinization of the same sordid display I, in my childlike wisdom, so ignorantly cheered on. Properly disgusted the band chanted, “death’s just death no matter how you dress it up” in “Lift the Veil, Kiss the Tank” making clear that the American war machine was using the people they killed to drive more people to get killed.
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The above mentioned song has a cartoonish lyrical style — the title evoking a Looney Tunes-esque gag: a hunter relentlessly in pursuit of a rabbit, only to fall victim to a series of elaborate traps; a duck’s bill whipped fully around its head; lifting a veil, expecting to kiss one’s beautiful partner, only to have a tank’s cannon explode in their face. These are all hilarious when they happen to cartoon animals or bumbling idiots, but probably not one’s pet or endearingly stupid friend. The opening lines: “here comes the man with concussions in his pocket /…with a laser guided rocket” are reminiscent of another cartoon, G.I. Joe. While still cartoonish in its depiction of violence, it caricaturizes war as well. As G.I. Joe and friends “charge into battle, muscles rippling” against the statedly evil COBRA they wouldn’t need “the man with a fistful of pills so [they] can kill with no remorse /With no recourse,” or to “dance on [their] conscience until it’s a corpse.” The Blood Brothers here remind a generation grown on war propaganda that war is not the heroic fantasy of G.I. Joe but one in which a conscious is a hindrance, as it is never so clear the evil in which the enemy is participating. The enemy needs to be characterized as “young machetes in lingerie charm us all into a frenzy”: an image of violence to convince soldiers they’re acting in self defense, “So [they’ll] charge into battle, muscles rippling, tanks tingling” like Joe and his companions. Heroic as that sounds, with bullets crossing the battlefield, sand crackling under tank treads, and high on whatever pills the medic handed them, it’s likely that “before [a soldier] fire[s] a shot a white flash feels up [their] flesh/ and cloaks [them] in a robe of blood” upon entering the battlefield and the other soldiers leave them “for dead in the desert”: not an especially heroic ending for someone’s child, or particularly meatheaded friend. Punctuating all of this is the repeated refrain, “they want you!” — reminiscent of the “I want you!” Uncle Sam recruitment posters — highlighting the comparison of the American war machine’s cartoonish tactics, and their real world consequences.
“War never ends, war never begins,” as sung in the chorus as well as the song’s character being left “for dead in the desert” evokes a specific time in American history: the era of the War on Terror. In their timeline of the war for Mother Jones, Tim Dickinson, and Jonathan Stein, elucidate not only the long lead up to the war, but also the difference in time between the events leading up to the invasion and when they were reported. While lying by omission is egregious enough — considering the consequences — the American government created a narrative that Iraq was developing, stockpiling, and using a variety of terrifying weapons as well. The above in combination with the rhetoric surrounding the September 11 attacks, “allowed [Americans] to be suckered into the most audacious bait and switch of all time”. Some would say the resultant wars were “illegal, unjust, [and] fucking retarded” as The Blood Brothers’ singer, Johnny Whitney explained in a 2007 interview. For others the lies used to convince people to risk their lives for this war were more than illegal. They were infuriating. Private Jessica Lynch, a “little girl Rambo from the hills of West Virginia who went down fighting”, if one believed the “siege by media all repeating the story” at the time. “It was not true.” “In fact, her weapon jammed so she put her head down and prayed.” To rescue Lynch was Pat Tillman’s first mission. One which soured his — not necessarily patriotic but dutiful — outlook on the Military. In a journal entry Tillman explains, “I do believe this to be a big Public Relations stunt”. Later, talking to a friend, he feared that if something similar were to happen to him he wouldn’t “want them to parade me through the streets”, or, as The Blood Brothers said, “Dress my corpse up in a low-cut dress.” These lies not only got people killed but prolonged the suffering of those involved; Lynch having to defend herself against people who “try to discount the realities of [her] story”, and Tillman’s mother having to watch her son’s funeral turn into “an attempt to dupe the public and promote this war and get recruitments up.” As congressional hearings, deep dive reporting, and unclassified documents revealed these dishonest recruitment tactics to Americans a frustration grew. One which Whitney explains was “integrated into the tapestry of how our lyrics are written”, and so cathartically howled in the closing lines of “Lift the Veil, Kiss the Tank”.
After a particularly gory description of a corpse dressed in drag by some outside force, and the defiant chant about death as quoted above, the song ends with atonal, yet pleasant, strumming guitar; rising in frequency; falling; rising again, more frantic this time; the peaks and troughs squeeze together, then abrupt silence. Not having died myself I cannot claim to say this coda is anything like those final moments. However, it does give us an opportunity to reflect on the preceding moments of chaos: disturbing imagery, quickly changing lyrical themes, and jarring transitions. Having an imagination I can take this aforementioned opportunity to speculate that this is how one’s final moments may be. As Pat Tillman — or any soldier for that matter — lay dying, a slide show plays, one hopes a pleasant one: of the last family dinner, a kiss from romantic partner, or particularly great football play, but, more likely, one filled with the gunfire, dust, and unseen enemy of the previous few moments, haunted by images of his corpse dressed in heroism, fearing its use in a morbid recruitment campaign to dupe more people into the same fate. The Blood Brothers remind us that death, regardless of whether it is dressed in heroism, made up with a drizzle of lipstick, or dipped in cheap cologne; whether seen as a relief from poverty, disease, terror, and war, or a tragedy of a life cut too short; whether killed in combat or by friendly fire and used as a tool for recruitment to further feed the eternal meat grinder of U.S. foreign policy; is just death.
Author’s note: This was an English 100 essay where the prompt was to “write about a song”. It got an ‘A’ and the professor was very complimentary; saying things such as, “nice balance of evidence and argument”, and “well said”. If I were to do this specific essay again I’d try to include more from Pat Tillmans’ brother’s essay, as well as more quotes from him, especially the “he’s fucking dead,” quote he yelled toward John McCain at funeral they put on for his brother. If I had to do the prompt again with different song I’d probably do “Poison Oak” by Bright Eyes and use it as a spring board to talk about the recent and historical attacks queer people and their effects on the psyche of those still in the closet or prevented from knowing the language to describe themselves. It was fun so who knows I might, someday, make a playlist where I pick a song and go off about it for 1500 words. Any who, hoped you liked it and I’ll finish up the articles I put off while writing this soon. Thanks for reading!
