The Lure of Discipline: Military Aesthetics and the Making of the First World War Civilian Soldier

Abstract

Much research on the British experience of the First World War relies on literary accounts. This article looks instead to the role of press photographs in constructing a popular discourse of the wartime male body. Sequenced body movements used in official training manuals, were taken up enthusiastically by the weekly and daily press in 1914 to promote active service among the British public. Narratives of bio-political control became prevalent as the war found men's bodies increasingly viewed an official resource. On the pages of popular newspapers, the language of military discipline enacted the visual transformation of civilians to working soldiers. It is clear that press images of recruit training, used to unite public opinion during the First World War, were inspired by the uniformity of military discipline. This article explores how these photographs worked in the context of a whole discourse that aestheticized the military body. It not only draws attention to a wartime visual culture that supported a project of collective discipline but offers insights into why the politics of militarized display troubled later debates about the representation of servicemen in public war remembrance.