This essay critiques the representation of drone warfare in Good Kill (2014).

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From the conclusion:

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"Good Kill is a particularly clear example of the ways in which hegemonic popular culture defangs, reincorporates, and rearticulates critique of military hardware, personnel, and geopolitical activity. Pop culture artefacts can articulate a limited critique of war whilst also remaining sympathetic to the military personnel who conduct it and, indeed, to broader foreign policy aims. It shows drone operations as continuous with other forms of martial identity in terms of both the conduct of violence and the experience of participants, and it does so in order not to critique drones as a historical continuation of a tradition of violent colonial airpower but rather to defuse and absorb such a critique by showing that drones represent, simply, war as usual."