War Films Research Articles

German Ways of War: The Affective Geographies and Generic Transformations of German War Films.By Jaimey Fisher. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2022. 250 pages + 41 b/w images. $150.00 hardcover, $37.95 paperback or eBook.

German Ways of War: The Affective Geographies and Generic Transformations of German War Films.<i>By Jaimey Fisher. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2022. 250 pages + 41 b/w images. $150.00 hardcover, $37.95 paperback or eBook.</i>

German Ways of War: The Affective Geographies and Generic Transformations of German War Films By JaimeyFisher, Rutgers University Press. 2022. pp. 250. $150.00 (hardback), $37.95 (paperback), $37.95 (ebook)

German Ways of War: The Affective Geographies and Generic Transformations of German War Films By JaimeyFisher, Rutgers University Press. 2022. pp. 250. $150.00 (hardback), $37.95 (paperback), $37.95 (ebook)

John Williams to Non-Williams

John Williams may have dominion over the Star Wars film scores with eighteen hours of music across nine films, but the mantle of responsibility for the Star Wars musical canon en masse has been undertaken by scores of many different composers, especially video game composers. Scholars of John Williams’s music such as Frank Lehman have analyzed Williams’s nine film scores, but there has been little research into the more than 100 Star Wars video game scores, which raises the question: how has Star Wars music developed without the guidance of its progenitor John Williams? Frank Lehman’s “Complete Catalogue of the Themes of Star Wars: A Guide to John Williams’s Musical Universe”1 cataloged the themes, motifs, source music, and thematic relationships of the nine films and proved musicologically insightful as well as incredibly useful when one seeks an understanding of the intricacies of Williams’s Star Wars film scores. Lehman’s research provides an ideal foundation for the ludomusicological inquisition of the hundred plus Star Wars game scores. The interactive nature of gaming mandates that the scores take player input into consideration leading to many unique methods of musical deployment that have changed from game to game. This research preludes the creation of a Star Wars sound and music anthology, similar to the Norton Anthology of Western Music, where ludomusicality found within scores from video games in the Star Wars universe are analyzed, cataloged, and explored. Each game/series would get its own unique catalog within the greater anthology consisting of a collection of analyses of the motifs, themes, and anything else of particular ludomusical interest. This poster presents a preliminary analysis of the deployment of motifs in the video games Star Wars Chess (1993) and Star Wars: X-Wing (1993), the first steps taken toward cataloging these video game scores. This proposed catalog will include analyses of ludomusicality within the Star Wars video game scores, showing how the player and computer interact to customize the listening experience of original and borrowed themes from the Star Wars movies. Combining Lehman’s method of cataloging with methods of ludomusicological analysis2 will be useful for understanding the plethora of themes, motifs, source music, thematic relationships, lyrics, diegetic music, and ludomusical methods found within the scores of each game. To present an example of this combination of analyses, Lehman’s motifs (denoted by quotation marks) are presented in combination with original analyses and transcription by the author, demonstrating the overlap between the musical material of the Star Wars movies and video games. This series of catalogs would be an excellent resource for all future Star Wars ludomusicological research as well as further expanding the literature in the field.

SPEAKING BODIES, VISIBLE VOICES: NARRATIVE TENSION IN COPPOLA’S APOCALYPSE NOW: REDUX (2001)

Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now: Redux (2001), a 2001 re-release of his 1979 Vietnam War epic, sparked significant discussions among both academic scholars and mainstream media. The extended version, which features almost an hour-long addition of new scenes, challenged the question of the film’s continued relevance within the evolving Hollywood industry. While the original version may have highlighted the horror and dehumanization of the Vietnam War, it was also criticized for depicting women as one-dimensional sexual objects and effectively silencing their voices. However, by utilizing Verstraten’s notion of filmic narrative, Mulvey’s visual pleasure, and Stark’s narrative voicelessness, this research aims to show how narrative tension is displayed in Apocalypse Now: Redux and how it highlights the representation of the female characters’ subjectivity. We argue that the Redux version offers a notable difference from the stereotypical portrayal of women in war film. By incorporating the newly added scenes, Apocalypse Now: Redux provides the female characters with more agency and individuality, allowing them to move beyond the limitation of being mere decorations.

The sound of war: A comparison between Apocalypse Now (1979) and Farha (2021)

For a long time, filmmakers have used war movies as a potent tool for probing the human condition, the results of battle, and the psychological effects of war on individuals and communities. While Apocalypse Now (1979) by Francis Ford Coppola and Farha (2021) by the contemporary director Darin Sallam both explore the raw reality of battle, they were made decades apart. In this comparison, we will look at how both movies use sound to express the fright and tragedy of battle. This study examines the political context, setting, style of music, style of direction, and conclusion of two war films and finds many points of similarity between them. The argument made in this report is that regardless of the historical and contextual distinctions between the Vietnam War and the Palestinian Nakba, Apocalypse Now and Farha successfully portray the experiences of people and the long-lasting effects of war, surpassing the particular actual incidents they present.

The Constructed Past in a Galaxy Far, Far Away: Nostalgia in the Star Wars Films

Star Wars (1977-2019), directed by George Lucas, is a science fiction (fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological advances and major social or environmental changes) saga that takes place in the outer space universe. The whole story is an intergalactic adventure surrounding the ongoing battle between the Jedi Order, which represents the bright side and the Sith Order, which represents the dark forces. Despite that were massive number of studies done on them as films of science fiction, few have looked at Star Wars from a perspective that would categorize them instead as nostalgia films. According to Fredric Jameson, a theorist and critic of North American culture and literature, the nostalgia film is a separate category (from historical films) that does not directly employ historical objects but exhibits a resemblance of them to reflect a longing for the historical past. Combining sections from the Star Wars films with Fredric Jameson's theory on nostalgia films, this essay attempts to explore the purpose of George Lucas blending elements of the past with futuristic designs and seeks to argue that nostalgia was the intended overall atmosphere of the franchise.

The changing dynamics of Indian nationalism in contemporary Hindi movies

ABSTRACT Nationalism, an ideological concept that people of shared national identity adopt, is one of the most explored genres of the Hindi film industry. The theme of nationalism which once demanded a sacred and elevated treatment from cinema-makers has faced a comparatively light-hearted, ordinary, and relatable approach in contemporary times. Rather than confining the notion of nationalism within the nation's territory, such new-age movies depict how exiles and immigrants redefine the notion of nationalism. Replacing the exaggerated, parochial, and exclusive depictions of hyper-nationalism in early Hindi war movies with what Benedict Anderson calls ‘long-distance nationalism’, contemporary movies have the potential to expand the idea of the nation beyond its borders. Two such movies that depict characters redefining the notion of nationalism through their acts of transnationalism are Meghna Gulzar's Raazi and Raja Krishna Menon’s Airlift. Both the films refrain from engaging in the classical discourse of nationalism to reveal how dispersed immigrants contribute to the spirit of Indian nationalism through their acts of political participation.

The Motherland and the Fight with Fascism: War Cult and War Film under Brezhnev (1965–82)

AbstractThis article, based on extensive archival documentation, newspapers, and periodicals, examines the impact upon the Soviet film industry of shifts in top‐level policy relating to representation of the war. It contends that Leonid Brezhnev’s May 8, 1965, speech on the eve of Victory Day propounded an inclusive vision of the war (later sections of the speech comprise an exhaustive inventory of different representatives of military and civilian society who had been responsible for victory). Yet, in lending encouragement to participants of all kinds to consider their experience valid, the speech opened up a discursive space in which validity might be contested. Further, the emphasis in the film industry upon innovation and the need to avoid predictability ran directly against the requirement that commemoration of the war should fit highly ritualized and easily recognizable patterns. The article traces the results of these overall contradictions in the arguments about overall policy on the war film between representatives of the High Command, film managers at Goskino, cinema’s central bureaucracy, and filmmakers themselves, and the controversies around individual films, including Iurii Ozerov’s Liberation (1968–72), Andrei Smirnov’s The Belorussian Station (1970), Aleksei German’s Operation “New Year” (1971, released as Checkpoint, 1985), and Larisa Shepit'ko’s Ascent (1977).

Hollywood Cold War Cinema, Critical Hostility, and Rocky IV (1985)

Hollywood Cold War Cinema, Critical Hostility, and Rocky IV (1985)

The insecure subjects: battlefield experiences of the soldiers in Apocalypse Now (2001; 1979) and Don’t Burn (2009)

This paper continues the discussions on landscape and subjectivity in war films from a comparative perspective. By juxtaposing the battlefield experiences of the soldier as subjects in two films, Apocalypse Now Redux (2001; 1979) and Don’t Burn (2009), the article demonstrates how the landscape contributes to the creation of insecure subjects with experiences of strangeness and danger, where their desires and hopes are shattered. In contrast to previous studies on Vietnam War films that primarily focus on genre, theme, Vietnamese imagery, gender, and ideology, this article employs the theoretical lens of subjectivity as rooted in Deleuze and Guattari to explore the connections that constitute subjects through sensory perceptions, memories, dreams, traumas, and fears manifested through the battlefield landscape as experienced by the characters in the films. This comparative perspective not only challenges previous notions of Don’t Burn [2009] as a film that reflects the views and policies of the state, wherein individual subjectivity is emphasised to promote nationalism as a propagandistic purpose, but also offers multidimensional reflections on the Vietnam War while deeply questioning the ideological system constructed by state institutions within the context of the Cold War.

The Battle at Lake Changjin: The Influence of Korean War Memory on Contemporary Chinese War Films

Abstract The 2021 film The Battle at Lake Changjin (长津湖) is China’s highest-grossing film. Together with its sequel, its success as a political tool rests on appealing to a broad audience while engaging with familiar themes embedded in collective memory. The Chinese Communist Party, which commissioned the films, leveraged preexisting tropes regarding the conflict and repackaged them for a modern audience. This paper will proceed in three parts. First, it will trace the deliberate development of collective memory of the conflict from its inception up to President Xi Jinping’s gaining power in 2012. Next, it will explore the new emphasis on the Korean War in the 2010s and 2020s, and the political objectives Xi seeks to achieve by propagandizing the Korean War. Finally, it will provide a thematic analysis of the films and how the intended political messaging interacted with the embedded collective memory.

Arctic cinema: War films, detective stories and comedies

This third article examines such genres of cinema as war films, detectives and comedies the latest in the line of Arctic films. Thereby we draw a line under Arctic films, that have not received due attention from film critics and the public until now. The need to return to the past to take a fresh look at the solar, including its storyboard, taking into account the deep rethinking of the war and the direct depiction of what was experienced, to show a truthful and accurate image of the war on the example of the fate of one or many of its participants. Cinematographers constantly return to the theme of the war, its individual episodes, the people who took part in it, who noted their heroism in it, its new reading caused by changing socio-political views and access to previously censored circumstances, what is now called «trench truth».«Another war» in pleacetime was reflected in the Arctic detectives. The enemy appears in them as criminal elements, sometimes was sophisticated and insidious plans, which in the conditions of the north require a special approach to solve then. Comedies have no geographical boundaries. Humor and laughter in the snow and ice is special, very often associated with the behavior of animals, especially dogs.

Book Review: The New American War Film

Book Review: The New American War Film

Introduction: Transnationalism and the War Film Genre

ABSTRACT This introduction offers a comprehensive context for this special issue of the Journal of War and Culture Studies. I define the concept of transnationalism as it is reflected in the scope of the articles included, all of which discuss non-American film productions about the American military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. I also argue that our understanding of the war film genre can only benefit from taking into account an array of different national cinematographies. The introduction contains summaries of the articles which discuss Iraqi, Afghan, British, German, Danish, Polish, Spanish, and Australian depictions of the American wars in the Middle East.

‘War is Like This’: Jirga, History and Genre Tropes

The critically acclaimed 2018 Australian film Jirga follows an ex-Australian soldier, Mike Wheeler, who returns to Afghanistan three years after a firefight during which he kills a civilian. Wheeler returns at risk of his death to confess his guilt to the man's community and the film examines themes of forgiveness and revenge, guilt, trauma, justice, and, as one Afghani tells Wheeler when he explains what he is doing back in Afghanistan, whether ‘war is like this’. ) This article will explore the ways Jirga uses the generic forms of the war film to convey meaning; it interrogates the usefulness of positioning films as either adhering to or subverting generic tropes, and instead points to the historically contingent evolution of generic tropes across time and place. With this understanding we can see genre tropes as complex, ambiguous, and sometimes even contradictory, attempts to develop meaning out of wartime experience.

Ethical Encounters: Transnational Feminism, Human Rights, and War Cinema in Bangladesh by Elora Halim Chowdhury (review)

Ethical Encounters: Transnational Feminism, Human Rights, and War Cinema in Bangladesh by Elora Halim Chowdhury (review)

Study on Subtitle Translation of the Battle at Lake Changjin under Translation Shifts Theory

As an important medium of cultural communication, film plays an important role in promoting Chinese culture to go abroad. The Battle at Lake Changjin is a war film with the background of the second battle of resist U.S. aggression and aid Korea, which restores the real scene on the battlefield to the greatest extent and shows the heroic and tenacious fighting spirit of the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army. Since its release, the film has been well received at home and abroad. The subtitle translation plays a vital role in it. Based on Catford’s translation shifts theory, this paper takes the Battle at Lake Changjin as an example to analyze the application of level shifts and category shifts in subtitle translation, in order to provide some references for film subtitle translators.

У войны – женское лицо. Образ женщины в советском военно-патриотическом кино периода Оттепели (1954–1964)

The aim of the article is to identify the main features that make up the image of women in the military-patriotic cinema about the Great Patriotic War on the big screens of the USSR in 1954–1964. In recent years, the interest of scientists (sociologists, historians, art historians and culturologists) in the study of the problems of the reflec-tion of the historical past in cinema art has grown tremendously. The study briefly analyzes feature films made by Soviet directors during the Thaw. Based on the methods of visual anthropology and imagological tools, the image of a Soviet woman in the war is defined, as well as the features of its representation that correspond to the historical realities of the era of liberalization of public relations. It was during the Thaw in Soviet cinema that the approach to the military genre was changed: now in the foreground are not monumental ideological values, not the relief heroism of war films of 1941–1945, but the victims and hard-ships of war, trials and hardships, the destroyed destinies of millions of Soviet people.

Study on Gender Ideology Evolution in the "Star Wars" Film Series

With the progression of time, female roles in science fiction movies have become increasingly significant, showcasing notable changes in both their quantity and character traits. Spanning 42 years, the "Star Wars" film series of 11 movies exhibits marked differences in female character portrayal. Over several years of development, female roles have gradually moved away from the singular identity of being "objects of gaze," no longer solely passive "desires of objects" or mere carriers for the flat representation of male characters in the audience's eyes and within the films. In the current narrative mechanism of Star Wars movies, the patriarchal center has been significantly challenged, and the "female discourse subject" with agency and independent will is gradually emerging. This study aims to explore the relevant connections between these female characters and the feminist trends of the time. By decoding the imagery of women in mainstream commercial films under the patriarchal framework, it analyzes the underlying gender ideologies and attempts to explore the future trajectory of constructing female discourse.

Screened Jews of the Russian World : Race, Fate, and History in Putin's Heroic War Films

ABSTRACT: The paper analyzes how Jewish representations in Russian government-supported war films from 2010 to 2018 have been engaged in the assertion of Vladimir Putin's foreign and domestic political agenda. The paper argues that the re-emerged heroic war genre—the principal Russian ideological medium—has employed Jewish representations and Jewish historical narratives in order to instrumentalize and re-interpret them for the benefit of the new Russian imperialist ideology and Vladimir Putin's current political agenda. Using such films as The Match (Malyukov, 2012), Battle for Sevastopol (Mokritsky, 2015), Sobibor (Khabensky, 2018), and others as illustrations, the paper infers that contemporary film representations of Jewish identities are inspired by the Soviet models adjusted to transmit the idea of Russian state messianism. The paper explores how Jewishness , represented primarily on a racial account, is culturally downplayed compared to some privileged Russianness , until it comes to the recognition of the allegedly universal values of the latter and the readiness to share its historical destiny.