New Perspectives on the War Film

by Clïmentine Tholas (Editor), Janis L. Goldie (Editor), Karen A. Ritzenhoff (Editor)

Overview

New Perspectives on the War Film addresses the gap in the representation of many forgotten faces of war in mainstream movies and global mass media. The authors concentrate on the untold narratives of those who fought in combat and were affected by its brutal consequences. Chapters discuss the historically under-represented stories of individuals including women, African-American and Indigenous Soldiers. Issues of homosexuality and gender relations in the military, colonial subjects and child soldiers, as well as the changing nature of war via terrorism and bioterrorism are closely analyzed. The contributors demonstrate how these viewpoints have been consistently ignored in mainstream, blockbuster war sagas and strive to re-integrate these lost perspectives into current and future narratives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030230982
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	09/14/2019
Edition description:	1st ed. 2019
Pages:	301
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x 0.03(d)

About the Author

Clémentine Tholas is an Associate Professor of American Studies at Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle University, France. Her research interests focus on early motion pictures in the US, namely on WWI cinematic propaganda and the role of silent films as tools of progressivism. Clémentine Tholas published Le Cinéma américain et ses premiers récits filmiques (2014) and co-edited with Karen A. Ritzenhoff a collective volume entitled Humor, Entertainment, and Popular Culture during World War I (Palgrave, 2015).

Janis L. Goldie is Associate Professor and Chair of the Communication Studies Department at Huntington University at Laurentian, Canada. Her research focuses on the Canadian war film genre and the constructions of the Canadian military in media culture products such as video games, graphic novels and television advertisements. She co-edited with Karen A. Ritzenhoff, “The Handmaid’s Tale:” Teaching Dystopia, Feminism, and Resistance Across Disciplines and Borders (2019).

Karen A. Ritzenhoff is Professor, Department of Communication at Central Connecticut State University, USA. She is affiliated with the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program and cinema studies. She recently co-edited with Janis L. Goldie, “The Handmaid’s Tale:” Teaching Dystopia, Feminism, and Resistance Across Disciplines and Borders (2019). In 2015 she coedited The Apocalypse in Film with Angela Krewani; Selling Sex on Screen: From Weimar Cinema to Zombie Porn with Catriona McAvoy, and Humor, Entertainment, and Popular Culture during World War I with Clémentine Tholas (published by Palgrave, 2015). Ritzenhoff is also co-editor of Heroism and Gender in War Films (Palgrave, 2014) with Jakub Kazecki.

Table of Contents

Foreword; Michael Hammond
Introduction; Clémentine Tholas-Disset, Janis Goldie, and Karen A. Ritzenhoff
Section I. Children and Warfare
1. Walking Across the Bloodlands: Children and War in Surviving with Wolves by Véra Belmont (2007) and Lore by Cate Shortland (2013); Jakub Kazecki
2. Rebelle Rebel: Child Soldiers, Neo-Colonialism and Gender in Narratives of War; Janis L. Goldie
3. The Child as Target: (Un)Ethical Modern Warfare, Journalism and Terrorism; Karen A. Ritzenhoff
II. Challenging Constructions of Gender and Sexuality in the War Film
4. Shoulder Arms (1918), What Price Glory (1926), Wings (1927): Homosexuality and Gender Representations in Silent WWI Films; Clémentine Tholas-Disset5. Women and Nation in Films of the Great War: “How I wish I were a man, to help drive back those Germans.”; Thomas Saunders
6. “So long as they are maintaining a bona fide family relationship in the home”: Women in WWII American Government Documentaries; Zachary Baqué
7. Gender and Homecoming in Iraq War Films; Marianne Kac-Vergne
Section III. Reclaiming Sovereignty and Empathy in the War Film8. The Other Fights Back: Indigenizing the War Film; Jennifer l. Gauthier
9. Saved from the Fire: Haunted Lives and War Memories in Vietnamese Cinema; Thong Win
10. Black Skin, White Faces: Dead Presidents, Gangs, and the African-American Vietnam Veteran; Kathleen McClancy
11. Avanti Popolo: Israeli Filmmaker Rafi Bukaee and the ordinary Egyptian Soldier at the End of the Six-Day War; Yael MunkSection IV. New Faces of War and Terror
12. Sisters in Arms: Epic Narratives in The Baader Meinhof Complex and United Army; Elena Caoduro
13. The New Face of Fear: How Pandemics and Terrorism Reinvent Terror (and Heroes) in the Twenty-First Century; Dahlia Schweitzer

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“In this provocative volume, the authors urge a critical re-evaluation of the war film by highlighting the range of stories it recounts—as well as those it ignores—and the diversity of subjects it brings into focus. The collection encourages a renewed engagement with the genre through attention to perspectives and experiences often imagined to fall outside the frames of war and to conflicts that exceed the conflation of war with state-sponsored combat. In pushing past conventional conceptions of the war film, the book makes a timely and important intervention into our understanding of the complexities of violence both on the screen and beyond it.” (Jonna Eagle, Associate Professor of Film/Media, Department of American Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA)