Martial Culture, Silver Screen analyzes war movies, one of the most
popular genres in American cinema, for what they reveal about the
narratives and ideologies that shape U.S. national identity. Edited by
Matthew Christopher Hulbert and Matthew E. Stanley, this volume explores
the extent to which the motion picture industry, particularly Hollywood,
has played an outsized role in the construction and evolution of
American self-definition.
Moving chronologically, eleven essays highlight cinematic versions of
military and cultural conflicts spanning from the American Revolution to
the War on Terror. Each focuses on a selection of films about a specific
war or historical period, often foregrounding recent productions that
remain understudied in the critical literature on cinema, history, and
cultural memory. Scrutinizing cinema through the lens of nationalism and
its "invention of tradition," Martial Culture, Silver Screen considers
how movies possess the power to frame ideologies, provide social
coherence, betray collective neuroses and fears, construct narratives of
victimhood or heroism, forge communities of remembrance, and cement
tradition and convention. Hollywood war films routinely present broad,
identifiable narratives--such as that of the rugged pioneer or the "good
war"--through which filmmakers invent representations of the past,
establishing narratives that advance discrete social and political
functions in the present. As a result, cinematic versions of wartime
conflicts condition and reinforce popular understandings of American
national character as it relates to violence, individualism, democracy,
militarism, capitalism, masculinity, race, class, and empire.
Approaching war movies as identity-forging apparatuses and tools of
social power, Martial Culture, Silver Screen lays bare how cinematic
versions of warfare have helped define for audiences what it means to be
American.
