The 1942 Film Wake Island: Features of the Propaganda and Visualisation of World War II in the United States

Abstract

In contemporary studies in war history, the study of the specifics of the discourse in question is a fairly popular area of research. The evolution of the process of visualisation and mythologisation of World War II in American cinematography is analysed using the methods of historical imagology. It is hard to grasp the peculiarities of the evolution of and interaction between US cinema and propaganda without exploring the basic principles, methods, mechanisms, and tools of this process. The main research goal is to establish the features and methods of propaganda used in the film Wake Island. Wake Island combines old and new methods of war propaganda and visualisation. Wake Island is a good example of the early evolution of both US state propaganda through cinema and the development of the visual image of World War II, which was influenced by both the social mythology associated with the US historical past and foreign policy failures, such as the collapse of US-Japan negotiations in 1941, the attack on Pearl-Harbor, and the defeat in the Battle of Guam in December 1941, as well as socio-economic changes in the country. The film Wake Island created a new image of the Marine: a universal hero for a series of films from 1942–1945.