War Films Research Articles

Romantic Narrative in the Film The Battle at Lake Changjin

Chen Kaige, a famous Chinese “scholar-type director”, usually contains rich cultural connotations in his films and his works are always full of Chen Kaige-style romanticism. Although he is good at narrative, making The Battle of Changjin Lake a pure war film is a challenge. Therefore, this article takes the film as the research focus. The analysis of aesthetic elements, such as scenes and scope, picture composition, color and so on, expounds into detail the narrative style of romanticism displayed by Chen Kaige in the film.

Mercenaries at the movies: representations of soldiers of fortune in Mexico and the Congo in American and European cinema

ABSTRACT This paper examines cinematic representations of mercenaries from the era of silent movies to the 1980s. It argues that cinema has been selective in the choice of historical periods to depict mercenaries and soldiers of fortune, ignoring for the most part the centuries of European state building in which mercenaries played a significant role. Most mercenary films are anchored in the near present and the paper focuses on Mexico and the Congo as terrains of political breakdown and external intervention. Since the 1950s, a range of films depict mercenaries in these terrains seeking money, adventure, and the thrills of killing, and the paper examines mercenary movies through the character structures of hero, anti-hero and villain. These three structures have shaped the portrayal of mercenaries in westerns and war movies as well as action and sci fi movies, where they have become hardened in the last two decades into range of stock stereotypes

The image of Latin America in Soviet and American Cold War Cinema

The article examines the peculiarities of the representation of Latin American images in Soviet and American cinema during the Cold War. The author concludes that there are certain similarities in the representation of Latin America in the films of the USA and the USSR: both of them mainly create the image of Latin American countries as being at a lower stage of social development. The inclusion of images of third countries, including Latin American countries, in the film narrative was intended to perform the following functions: to demonstrate the atrocities of the enemy (against the population of third countries) or the courage of "their", designed to protect allies from third countries in need. The fulfillment of these functions is conditioned by the specifics of the interpretation of Latin American countries in Soviet and American cinema as "third world countries": uncivilized, wild, and full of dangers. In turn, the activities of an opponent country in the international arena in the Latin American region are often viewed as harmful, hindering its political development. The difference between the images of Latin America in American cinema is their greater diversity, which became possible due to less strict regulation of film production, as well as due to the historical and geographical proximity of Latin America to the United States, which led to the persistent interest of cinematographers in Latin American issues. The specificity of Soviet cinema is, firstly, the desire to create a collective image of Latin America without differentiation by country. Secondly, the glorification of Latin American revolutionaries.

Popularna kultura kao poprište ideoloških borbi - uspon Skajvokera i povratak regresivnih vrednosti

Popular culture is a phenomenon that reflects the values of our societies and implies our active engagement in it. Thus, Star Wars films represent a special case. Since their appearance, the films created by George Lucas were double-coded - they included the critique of both current political and social climate. In the same manner, the books, video games and TV shows that developed from the original trilogy, attempted to emanate those same left-leaning values. Therefore, it did not come as a surprise that the new episodes of Star Wars starting from 2015, tried to preserve the same sentiments. This tendency reached its peak with The Last Jedi (2017), which directly addressed the problems of gender dynamics and discrimination, class struggles and war profiteering. However, this episode had a particularly polarizing effect on the Star Wars fandom. Those who negatively rated The Last Jedi as a form of spreading the "socialist agenda" have used their social media accounts to express their discontent, which has in turn resulted in the saga finale (The Rise of Skywalker, 2019) becoming the "greatest cultural theft of the decade". Therefore, the paper deals with the case study of The Rise of Skywalker, i.e. the correlation between the fandom and regressive values represented in the film. The main hypothesis is that popular culture, due to its active potential, becomes an ideological battlefield. The paper also intends to point out how The Rise of Skywalker has contributed to the collapse of continuity of the previous films, as well as of the Campbellian monomyth, which was the fundamental basis of Lucas' films, starting from 1977.

A Screenshot into the World: A Comparative Analysis of Star Wars Film Posters (1977-2019)

A screenshot into the world. That’s all the film poster allows an audience, showing the fine balance between constructing meaning and grabbing audience attention. This balance is explored throughout this research, which used the case study of Star Wars and took the form of two stages. On an academic level, it looked into how changes within the industry have resulted in two main variables of alteration, artistic style and composition for today's film posters, resulting in trends and stages of similarities across the traditional and contemporary promotional film landscape. Specifically, this research found that contemporary film posters have become formulaic with film and marketing industries using the same composition (what I term the 'celebrity pyramid') and art style (real images photoshopped) within the large majority of their posters, using the case study of Star Wars to study this change. I argue that this has resulted in audiences becoming less engaged with posters and many wanting posters to go back to the traditional style from the 1970s. On a second level, and going beyond an academic dissertation, this research undertook industry research into the marketing sector in order to develop the conclusions from the research into a practical and creative set of digital media artefacts beneficial to industry. Specifically, this project aimed to recreate the Star Wars sequel trilogy posters, which many fans saw as uninspired, using the style of traditional posters such as the original Star Wars trilogy. As well as this, I then aimed to explore how this can be pushed into contemporary society, adding moving elements to the posters which would make them stand out. In doing so, and with my academic conclusions asking the question of whether nostalgia impacts the success of posters, with ‘old school’ artwork and style having and greater positive result, this work explores a possible outlet for industry to develop a new trend of film posters, harnessing the possibilities that digital technology and social media have given us.

Skellig Michael, Co. Kerry: A Lonely Island Hermitage at the Edge of the World?

The spectacular monastic complex on the rocky island of Skellig off the south-west coast of Ireland is a UNESCO World Heritage site that has been subject to archaeological excavations and surveys since the 1980s. In recent years, it has been the location of episodes in the Star Wars films The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi which has led to some diminution of its cultural heritage and, in particular, its place in the history of universal monasticism. This article attempts to restore its significance to world monasticism by reading its location and landscape through the lens of monastic literature and monastic ideology.

Dedication Poems to Ukraine. Transl. from Chinese by T. Reheshuk

Deng Kangyan (邓康延), a well-known Chinese poet, film director, and documentary filmmaker, was born on August 5, 1958, in Xi’an. In 1977 he passed exams and entered Xi’an Coal Institute, the faculty of Geology, where he studied and worked at the same time. After graduating, in 1982 he became a geological engineer at the Xi’an Academy of Coal Sciences. In the same year, Deng Kangyan began his literary career. In 1977 first works of the writer began to appear in periodicals. Deng Kangyan did not limit himself to poetry, he also turned to prose and essays. In 1992, the writer left the research institute and moved to Shenzhen to pursue more creative work there. There, he served as Shenzhen Youth’s Managing Director for 8 years and was the Editor-in-Chief of Phoenix Weekly. In 2007, Deng Kangyan was the head of Shenzhen Yuezhong Film & TV Co. At the same time, he worked as a curator of multimedia exhibitions on the history of China. In early 2010, along with six fellow documentary filmmakers, Deng Kangyan flew to the National Museum of Washington in America to collect material for war films in Chinese and English. Deng Kangyan’s work has had a significant impact on the history of modern Chinese poetry and documentaries. He has won numerous literary and cinematographic awards and honorary titles, including the Outstanding Producer Award. This title was awarded to him by the Chinese Documentary China Association “Documentary China”. After the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in late March 2022, Deng Kangyan wrote a series of poems dedicated to Ukraine and its heroic people. This is very valuable for understanding the attitude of Chinese intellectuals to the war in Ukraine. Deng Kangyan, on behalf of the Chinese intelligent people, expresses his support for our country’s pursuit of freedom and independence. Deng Kangyan a well-known Chinese poet, film director, and documentary filmmaker, was born in 1958 in Xi’an. He studied at the Faculty of Geology and worked as a geological engineer. Later he was the editor-in-chief of Shenzhen Youth and Phoenix Weekly magazines. In 2007, Deng Kangyan was the director of Shenzhen Yuez-hong Film & TV Co. The company produced documentaries in Chinese and English. At the same time, he worked as a curator of multimedia exhibitions devoted to Chinese history. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, at the end of March 2022, Deng Kangyan wrote a series of poems dedicated to Ukraine and its heroic people.

타란티노의 <바스터즈>: 전쟁영화의 메타시네마적 재현

This paper analyzes Quentin Tarantino''s film Inglourious Basterds as metacinema. The film originated from the director''s idea of revenge against Hitler on behalf of his Jewish friends. The plot essentially depicts ridiculous special forces assassinating Hitler and Nazi leaders. Tarantino draws attention not to the history of WW2 but to the making of war films and their discourse in the Hollywood film industry. In fact, he partakes of and critiques old Hollywood’s genre conventions. Tarantino questions the old war film formulas of cinematic narratives that are subjugated to the illusion of history and representation of reality. Instead, in this film, he breaks the fixed framework of the genre, planting playful cinematic imagination into the representation of history, where political power and ideology have traditionally been used. For instance, the film deliberately employs languages that have long been excluded from realistic representation in Hollywood war movies as a suspenseful device. Moreover, the “film within a film” Nation’s Pride reveals the genre’s close relationship with Nazi propaganda aesthetics.

The Politics of Nostalgia: Colorization, Spectatorship and the Archive

Colorization describes the digitization and retrospective addition of color to photographic and film materials (celluloid nitrate, glass negatives) initially made and circulated in a black-and-white format. Revisiting the controversial 1980s colorization of 24 classic Hollywood studio titles, which incited debate over questions of copyright, authorship and artistic expression, this essay examines the use of colorization to interpret museum collections for new audiences. The aesthetics of colorization have been criticized for prioritizing image content over the history of film technologies, practices and exhibition. An examination of They Shall Not Grow Old (Jackson, 2018) finds a use of digital editing and coloring techniques in the colorization of First World War film footage held in the Imperial War Museum archives that is familiar to the director’s fiction films. Jackson’s film is a commemorative project, yet the “holistic unity” of authorial technique operates across fragments of archive film and photographs to imbricate of fiction and nonfiction, signaling vital questions around the ethics and ideologies of “natural color”, historiography, and the authenticity of materials and spectator experience.

“Das ist Walter”: The Evolving Figure of the Archetypal Hero Embodied by Velimir Bata Živojinović in the Yugoslav War Film

Velimir Bata Živojinović boasts a body of work which traverses 350 motion pictures from Classical Yugoslav Cinema over The New Film to Contemporary Serbian Cinema, historical epic to film noir, family comedy to radical avant-garde. A legendary actor and one of the most significant personalities of Yugoslav cinema, he is best remembered as the archetypal hero of the Partisan film. This research examines the ways in which Živojinović’s popular figure was constructed through the genre of the war film and the brand of Partisan film distinct to Yugoslavia. By situating Živojinović’s star image in the context of his oeuvre, defining Partisan aesthetics and closely analysing three different periods in the actor’s career, with respect to the films which are central in developing his image as the archetypal hero, namely Kozara (Veljko Bulajić 1962), Valter brani Sarajevo/Walter Defends Sarajevo (Hajrudin Krvavac 1972), and Lepa sela lepo gore/Pretty Village, Pretty Flame (Srđan Dragojević 1996), I demonstrate how the indestructible partisan figure embodied by Velimir Bata Živojinović was established in on-screen cinematic space, and how this figure continued to develop, transform, and evolve across films, and, finally, through off-screen public space.

Non-Stereotypical Female Librarians in the Library Wars Film

This research discusses non-stereotypical female librarian in The Library Wars movie. This research will examine the scenes on which features non-stereotypical female librarian and their interactions with their daily work environment. This study uses a descriptive qualitative method based on a visual representation analysis framework of social actors where the framework shows distance, relation, and interaction between social actors represented by the audience. The results of this study indicated that female librarian was indeed portrayed as non-stereotypical figures who were close to military training. The female librarian is described as a library guard who is a smart person, determined to defend what she thinks is right, and has the courage to take a stand on what she believes. Even so, female librarians are still portrayed as weak figures and female librarians are sometimes portrayed as frivolous and arrogant.

A city in flames: King’s Landing as artistic archive in HBO’s Game of Thrones

ABSTRACT As a study of the final two episodes of HBO’s epic medieval fantasy television series Game of Thrones (2011–19), this article seeks to examine the ways in which formal analysis of the televisual text can offer an insight into how the showrunners Dan Benioff and D.B. Weiss situate their production as an artistic archive. In this essay, I explicate my definition of the artistic archive as one in which directors and the showrunners service intratextuality by referring back to previous episodes in the series, alongside other intertexts in their construction of the series’ dramatic denouement, one that involves the destruction of the show’s primary city setting: King’s Landing. As part of this process, I analyse how the episodes respond to conventions set by Hollywood genres of the medieval film and the war film, with Robert Burgoyne’s notion of the ‘body in peril’ providing a lens through which to ascertain intertextuality pertaining to the latter.

The Construction of U.S. Armed Forces` Image Through Translation Activities in Hollywood Blockbusters

This paper studied 22 influencing Hollywood war films, and extracted translation behaviors among them. Some of the most influencing Hollywood blockbusters themed on wars would be examined to see the role they played in depicting the image of the United States Armed Forces hope to build through the plot(s) of translation activities performed in theatre. From such changes can see the change of people`s attention, as well as the effect Hollywood blockbusters contributed on the building of the U.S. Armed Forces` images. Video productions (especially films) are some of the most welcomed ones. The United States has one of the most powerful film-making industries in the world, which successful products of its are popular around the world, definitely have the American way of thinking and judgment spread and accepted by the film-lovers around the world. Research conducted on such films would reveal how the U.S. Armed Forces` image has changed on cinema screens, and provide a collection of data for translation researchers who has an interest in the field combining translation (behaviors) with the mass media.

Parameters of Disavowal: Colonial Representation in South Korean Cinema

Parameters of Disavowal: Colonial Representation in South Korean Cinema

Religion and Moral Injury in American Vietnam War Films

This essay focuses on the representation of religion in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987), Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July (1989), and Brian de Palma’s Casualties of War (1989). It explores how religion intersects with the experience of moral trauma at an individual level, and how the films portray moral injury to be as damaging an aspect of war trauma for Vietnam veterans as grievous physical harm. Further, the essay considers how moral injury is a fundamental component of the collective trauma the nation experienced and, in turn, the culture wars that erupted during and after the war in Vietnam.

Language Style Used by Tony Stark in the Avengers: Infinity War

Language styles create many impressions in the spoken form and writing. Therefore, language style becomes a form of inner expression that is typical of a speaker of the language. A person usually chooses a word or sentence in such a way as to achieve a specific goal for the listener. This study aimed to discuss the language style and its function that used by Tony Stark in the Avengers: Infinity War movie. The discourse of Tony Stark in Avengers: Infinity War movie were taken as the data for this study. The data has collected by observing and taking note the conversation of Tony Stark and other characters. It was analyzed by the Sociolinguistic theory from Holmes (2004). Based on the data analysis, the result shows that Tony Stark used more standard language to communicate with his Avengers partners. It is because this movie had a genre of action-science fiction which made Tony Stark face more serious and formal situations. There were also found five functions of language styles used by Tony Stark, there are: expressive function, directive function, referential function, phatic function, and poetic function.

Defa’-e Moghaddas(The Sacred Defense),Hamdeli va Mehrvarzi(Camaraderie and Love from Knowing the Other), and the Making of Social Cinema in Post-Revolutionary Islamic Iran

A publicity tool during the Iran–Iraq war (1980–1988), the cinema of the post-war period in Iran was expected to uphold Islamic, ethical, and symbolic values idealized by the government as defa’-e moghaddas (the sacred defense). The war film genre, which was launched during this period to promote these values, exclusively addressed the presence of men on the front lines. It barely made on-screen references to the role of women. Focusing on the gender dynamics of self-sacrifice and drawing on genres such as drama and melodrama, certain filmmakers used cinemay-e ejtema’i (the social cinema) to translate this ideal to the struggles back home. These films turned the gaze of the camera toward the hidden life of mazlooman (the oppressed). They thus shifted the meaning of defa’-e moghaddas and addressed socio-psychological suffering, oppressive cultural practices (‘ orf), and unjust sanction of legal codes of qisas (retaliation) as contradictory to Islam’s teachings on and cultivation of love, justice, and righteousness among ommat (the Islamic community). Focusing on the Iranian poetic vision of hamdeli va mehrvarzi (camaraderie and love from knowing the other), this essay traces affective states including affinity in struggle, rage, anger, and resistance. Linking instances of these states with Western feminist scholarship on the theory of affect, I discuss the cinematic process of claiming “the right to look” (Mirzoeff, Nicholas, The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011).

Over there: rethinking American First World War literature and culture – Introduction

ABSTRACT This Special Issue of First World War Studies considers the specifically American literary and cultural production of the First World War and what distinguishes it from other national war literatures and cultures. Together the articles seek to assess how we should characterize, theorize and categorize American First World War cultural production. Despite the many memorials and memory sites to American participation, and the impact of the recent centenary, public memory of the conflict in the US remains minimal, overshadowed by the Civil War on one side and the Second World War and the Vietnam War on the other. The Eurocentric focus of the key works of First World War cultural criticism – by Paul Fussell, Samuel Hynes, Modris Eksteins and Jay Winter – is perhaps due to what Hazel Hutchison notes as the strange place of the war in American cultural memory, as a war which ‘has never quite captured the public imagination’ (The War That Used Up Words: American Writers and the First World War, 2015). Instead it is usually focused through the ‘lost generation’ writers of the 1920s: Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, et al. Bringing together a range of scholars and drawing predominantly on literature and film by male and female non-combatants as well as participants, the case studies here consider American First World War novels, poetry, political papers, film, and screenplays. Interdisciplinary readings allow the contributors to find generic tropes and connections across different media. In this way we seek to contribute to an ongoing conversation about American First World War cultural production, and a critical field that is very much still in the process of formation and consolidation.

Forbidden zones: War Nurse (1930), women, and the Hollywood memory of the Great War

ABSTRACT While women working as nurses had been a staple in films with war settings since the beginnings of narrative film, the early 1930s saw a short cycle of Hollywood films which placed women at the centre of the war film. One of the first of these was War Nurse (1930), produced at MGM and directed by Edgar Selwyn. Another, a year later, was The Mad Parade, a film distributed by Paramount and directed by William Beaudine. The two films did unremarkable business and their critical reception ranged from lukewarm to outright hostile. Yet this cycle is an illuminating instance of the Hollywood system’s negotiation with the evolving public memories of the Great War. Both films were efforts to widen the appeal of the war as a film subject to the assumed interest of women audiences. They drew attention to women’s agency, their experiences and their ability to deal with male weakness and aggression, both physical and sexual, and in the process offered an alternative perspective on desire at the Front that had remained underexplored in the male adventure film. In these films the Front and the environments surrounding it were ‘a forbidden zone’ where the term was polysemic, forbidden in terms of the threat of death, sexual exploitation, and violence, but also in the promise of escape from moral strictures. In this environment, straight-talking vernacular was a coping mechanism. This chapter outlines how Hollywood scriptwriter Becky Gardner incorporated slang and wisecracking as a technique of realism and as a means of sidestepping censorship in constructing an alternative public memory of the Great War.

기억의 산업화 기념의 정치화: 2000년대 이후 한국전쟁 재현 전쟁영화의 역사적 의미

본 논문은 2000년대 이후 한국전쟁을 재현한 한국의 전쟁영화를 장르사적 관점에서 짚어보고 전쟁기억의 역사적 의미를 진단하는 것을 그 목적으로 한다. 더 나아가 한국전쟁 재현 전쟁영화의 역사를 거시적 관점에서 정치 ․ 사회사의 반복/소환 혹은 변용으로서 바라볼 것이다.<BR> 1950년대의 전쟁영화가 국가에 의한 공식기억의 시작이자 사실성에 입각했다면, 1960년대 전쟁영화는 공식기억의 심화이자 장르성의 발현으로 볼 수 있다. 1970년대 전쟁영화는 공식기억이 최고조에 달해 완전히 국책영화의 단계로 나아갔다. 1980년대가 ‘분단영화’의 시작을 알렸다면 1990년대에는 민주화와 탈냉전의 분위기 속에서 공식기억이 해체되고 아래로부터의 전쟁기억이 비판적 리얼리즘으로 분출한 시기이다. 1950년대와 1990년대는 영화적 사실성이라는 점에서 조응하나 전자는 공식기억의 발원, 후자는 그 해체로 파악 가능하다. 2000년대 〈태극기 휘날리며〉(2004), 〈웰컴 투 동막골〉(2005) 등의 전쟁영화는 기억 자체를 산업화 ․ 상품화시켜 장르 규칙에 가둔다는 점에서 1960년대 전쟁영화를 떠올리게 한다. 그러나 1960년대가 애국주의와 반공주의라는 공식기억이 심화한 시기였다면, 2000년대는 냉전시대의 공식기억은 물론 1990년대의 아래로부터의 전쟁기억마저 무화시키는 상업주의의 시대였다.<BR> 이러한 경향은 2010년대 이후에도 지속되었지만 보수정권의 국가적 지원 속에 제작된 〈포화 속으로〉(2010), 〈인천상륙작전〉(2016)은 예외적이었다. 이 영화들은 1970년대 국책 전쟁영화의 애국주의, 반공주의를 재소환함으로써 냉전시대의 공식기억을 복원한다. 결론적으로 2000년대 이후 전쟁영화가 전쟁기억을 산업화 ․ 상품화시켰다면, 2010년대 보수정권 지원하의 전쟁영화는 전쟁기억을 국가적 기념으로 정치화시켰다고 할 수 있다.