Dramatizing the Italian-Turkish War (1911–12): reports of atrocities, newsreels, and epic films in Italy and the USA

Abstract

In discussions about warfare and modern media mobilization, the so-called Italian-Turkish War (1911–12) stands as a largely ignored case study. This essay examines its remarkable and yet often understudied media currency in newspapers and film periodicals across the Atlantic in relationship to conflicting news about Italian crimes against local populations. Filtered through the concomitant rise of newsreel and feature-length film productions, early reports about Italian atrocities soon gave away to a pro-Italian coverage that relied on the literary and geopolitical trope of Western civilization against Eastern barbarism and that stressed the Ottoman empire’s use of civilians as shields and the press. The essay details the coverage of contemporary melodramas of national sacrifice, war newsreels, and actualités as well as of historical and literary film epics that revived the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage, Aeneas’ travel from Troy to Rome, or even the Crusades. By projecting Rome’s timeless moral gravitas and Italy’s religious history, Euro-American newspapers and trade periodicals shifted public attention from criminal news reporting to familiarly reassuring anti-Oriental narratives.