Cinema Class, War and MEDIA

Incorporating at least two relevant texts, discuss one of the following topics. Additional research may be helpful, but is not required for this first paper. Standard Operating Procedure, Saving Private Ryan, and other war films are on reserve at the library. In addition to being available on sites like Netflix, Triumph of the Will and Capra’s Why We Fight series can be found on YouTube. I’ve included a few additional readings (that would count among the relevant texts you can cite) on the course website in the “Assignments” folder. Non-academic sources (like Wikipedia or dictionary.com) are fine places to start, but should not be incorporated.
War & Photographic Documents (Abu Ghraib)
• Analyze Standard Operating Procedure (Errol Morris, 2008) and/or photographs of Abu Ghraib. If you prefer, you can analyze other images of war or atrocity that have galvanized large numbers of people. Limit your analysis to a few particular scenes or photographs so that you can describe and interpret them in depth.
• Some things to consider: How are the images or discussions around the images “framed” (visually/rhetorically)? In what ways does the caption, or other contextual information, shape our perception or reaction to an image? What is the difference between affect (i.e. shock) and understanding in terms of the viewer’s ability to respond to the images in a meaningful way? Discuss some of the ways these images are explained (either in the documentary or in official statements) and the ways this might satisfy or frustrate the viewer. How does Errol Morris present these events, and comment on our access to the “truth.”?
• Texts: Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others; Susan Sontag, “Regarding the Torture of Others” (in Assignments folder); Judith Butler, “Photography, War, Outrage”; Caetlin Benson- Allott, “Standard Operating Procedure: Mediating Torture.”
War & Propaganda
• Analyze a propaganda film from Leni Riefenstahl, Frank Capra, Robert Riskin, or John Ford, or a number of propaganda photographs—or, alternatively, focus on an anti-war project that responds to its particular climate (like Ernst Friedrich’s War against War!). As long as you work through the relevant texts, you are free to discuss more contemporary films that satirize or critique propaganda (like Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers).
• Some things to consider: Ernst Jünger—and others, like the Futurists—foresaw a new modern and dangerous era of total mobilization; warfare premised on speed, armor, and industrial weapons; and technological vision. Address Jünger’s understanding of the social and psychological implications of this, and how this rhetoric or imagery was/is used for propaganda—in Germany, the US, or elsewhere. In what ways does a filmmaker like Riefenstahl convey the power of the Nazi party and the role of the individual? How is propaganda approached differently (or not so differently) in the United States? If you want to approach this by focusing on an anti-war piece, discuss the ways it presents these images or rhetorics of propaganda, and then reveals them as hollow myths.
• Texts: Ernst Jünger, “On Danger,” “War and Photography,” On Pain; Anton Kaes, “The Cold Gaze: Notes on Mobilization and Modernity”; Thomas Doherty, “Leni Riefenstahl’s Contribution to the American War Effort”; Ian S. Scott, “Why We Fight and Projections of America.” And two in the Assignments Folder: Dora Apel, “Cultural Battlegrounds: Weimar Photographic Narratives of War”; Brigitte Werneburg and Christopher Phillips, “Ernst Jünger and the Transformed World.”
War & Cinema
• Analyze Saving Private Ryan (Steven Speilberg, 1998), with particular attention to the change in perspective/tone between the opening invasion scene and the remainder of the narrative. Or, use the film as a point of comparison to another war film or TV show of your choosing (The Longest Day, Band of Brothers, Flags of our Fathers, Apocalypse Now, The Hurt Locker, Jarhead, etc.)
• Some things to consider: In what ways can the film be interpreted as romanticizing or criticizing war? Using examples from the film, or texts surrounding the film (interviews, analysis, etc.), discuss how and perhaps why the filmmaker presents this particular view. Many times, these films are from a distinct historical distance from their subjects; what might the film be trying to convey about its particular era? Given Hollywood’s tendency to focus on a limited number of protagonists whom the viewer is intended to identify/sympathize with, how does this enhance, simplify, or obscure our understanding of what war is like?
• Texts: Pierre Sorlin, “War and Cinema: Interpreting the Relationship”; Bernd Hüppauf, “Experiences of Modern Warfare and the Crisis of Representation”; Robert Brent Toplin, “Hollywood’s D-Day from the Perspective of the 1960s and 1990s”; Krin Gabbard, “Saving Private Ryan Too Late”; Stacy Peebles, “Lines of Sight: Watching War in Jarhead and My War: Killing Time in Iraq”; Stacy Takacs, “Jessica Lynch and the Regeneration of American Identity Post 9/11.” In Assignments folder: Peter C. Rollins, “The Vietnam War: Perceptions Through Literature, Film, and Television.”
Feel free to email me questions or ideas at any time. To assure I have time to get back to you, please contact me before 11:00 PM, Wednesday, February 6.

Inyour writing consider the following:

1. What specifically (a film, issue, conflict, technological development) are you interested in? What do you feel strongly about?
2. What is appropriate for the length of your paper?
3. What readings and or objects support your argument? How might these texts differ from your point of
view?

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