A World of Extremes After reading this section, you should be able to:
contrast the war film to the musical, in terms of spectacle, "production numbers," and themes.
discuss the images of a GI stepping on a mine and of Russian roulette as figures for the absolutist worldview of war films.
Breaking Rules After reading this section, you should be able to:
describe the moral conventions of war films, in terms of both absolute and relative moralities.
distinguish the group-centered narrative focus of the war film from the individual-centered narration of other genres of film, and consider the place of individualism in the war film.
Sexual Combat: Masculinity in the War Film After reading this section, you should be able to:
discuss Oedipal father/son rivalry in the war film, and analyze the closing of Apocalypse Now in terms of this rivalry.
define "homosocial," and discuss the homosocial or homoerotic ways in which men interact with women and each other in war films.
discuss femininity in terms of vulnerability in the war film.
discuss the condition of masculinity in the war film, with attention to training sequences such as the boot camp of Full Metal Jacket.
describe films that deal with an overmasculinized soldier's return to the peacetime world, both in terms of sexual politics and processes of reintegration.
Crossovers: War and Genre After reading this section, you should be able to:
suggest several possible defining characteristics for the genre of "war film," taking into account the following considerations: hybrid genres (war comedies, war musicals), films made during wartime, films that allegorize or debate involvement in war, films about civilians living in wartime.
The Battle for Public Opinion: Propaganda and the Combat Film After reading this section, you should be able to:
discuss the history of pro- and anti-war films in the silent period, with attention to the ongoing debate on America's involvement in war between isolation and intervention.
analyze the film Sergeant York as an allegory of a shift in policy from isolationism to interventionism, and the film's solution to the ongoing debate between both sides.
discuss the figure of the "reluctant warrior," and consider the relationship between pro-war and anti-war sentiment in the war film.
describe the formation and functions of the Office of War Information.
compare the American narrative war film to the narrative or non-narrative qualities of propaganda films.
discuss the figures of journalists who are "educated" by their contact with war in war films of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.
describe the reversal of the educational process that takes place in films on the Vietnam war.
Race, Ethnicity, and the War Film After reading this section, you should be able to:
contrast the racially integrated ideal of the war film to the racially segregated society that it purports to represent.
discuss the strategies of displacement and effacement, both in films and in World War II-era culture, that allowed the war film to deal with the Japanese as racial others while continuing to affirm the ideal of American racial integration.
Conflicted: The Psychic Violence of War After reading this section, you should be able to:
contrast the position on war of the war film made during wartime to the war film made during peacetime.
discuss the ways in which films on the Vietnam war represent the enemy, with examples from specific films.
describe several films about Vietnam veterans dealing with the psychological aftermath of their war experiences.
The 1991 Gulf War and World War II Redux After reading this section, you should be able to:
describe recent films that have been shaped by America's experience in Vietnam, with attention to their attempts to understand the trauma of combat.
analyze Saving Private Ryan in terms of the relationship between memory and the trauma of combat.
discuss The Thin Red Line as reproducing the incoherence of war in its fragmented narrative structure.
discuss the ways in which both of these films treat individual and group identity.
Mediation and Representation After reading this section, you should be able to:
discuss the relationship between war and the war film, and name several ways in which the war film mediates the cultural experiences of war.
