Metered

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd Decker
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Extreme Case ◽  
First Century ◽  
War Films ◽  
Film Scores ◽  
Thin Red Line ◽  
Green Zone ◽  
Fathers And Sons ◽  
The Military ◽  
Red Line

Having set aside the military march, serious post-Vietnam war films have explored other strongly metrical musics. Three World War II films have turned to triple-meter, or waltz-time, themes. Band of Brothers and Flags of Our Fathers alike use tuneful waltz-time music to support a sentimental transgenerational agenda linking fathers and sons. The Thin Red Line supports the philosophical ruminations of soldiers with a group of triple-meter melodies that create a zone of quiet reflection. Twenty-first-century war films use beat-driven music to excite the audience physically and also to characterize new sorts of soldierly action—such as work at a computer—as exciting combat action. Beat-driven combat film scores for Black Hawk Down, United 93, and Green Zone are compared. Finally, an extended combat sequence from The Thin Red Line scored to a stately ostinato musical cue is considered as an extreme case of music taking the place of diegetic sound.

Hymns for the Fallen

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd Decker
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
War Films ◽  
Thin Red Line ◽  
Commercial Space ◽  
Sound Effects ◽  
Combat Films ◽  
Red Line ◽  
War Film ◽  
Vietnam War Films ◽  
Film Sound

Hymns for the Fallen listens closely to forty years of Hollywood combat films produced after Vietnam. Ever a noisy genre, post-Vietnam war films have deployed music and sound to place the audience in the midst of battle and to stimulate reflection on the experience of combat. Considering landmark movies—such as Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line, Black Hawk Down, The Hurt Locker, and American Sniper—as well as lesser known films, Todd Decker shows how the domain of sound, an experientially rich, culturally resonant aspect of the cinema, not only invokes the realities of war, but also shapes the American audience’s engagement with soldiers and veterans as flesh-and-blood representatives of the nation. Hymns for the Fallen explores all three elements of film sound—dialogue, sound effects, music—and considers how expressive and formal choices on the soundtrack have turned the serious war film into a patriotic ritual enacted in the commercial space of the cinema.

Soldiers’ Song

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd Decker
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Country Music ◽  
First Century ◽  
War Films ◽  
Soul Music ◽  
Class Differences ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Racial Mix

The use of popular music in post-Vietnam Hollywood war films has varied depending on the war being depicted. Swing, the popular music of World War II, goes almost entirely unrepresented in films depicting that war. Films about Vietnam have exploited the rich resource of popular music from the 1960s to characterize significant racial and class differences among American soldiers, typically pitting black Motown and soul music against white country music. Draft scripts for Apocalypse Now reveal how that film might have used late 1960s rock to emphasize the pathological nature of the American effort in Vietnam. Popular music in films about the all-volunteer, post-hip hop military suggest that racial tensions have abated, with a racial mix of soldiers enjoying a variety of musics. Films about twenty-first-century soldiers have almost no popular music, eliding well-documented practices of contemporary soldiers and denying civilian audiences potential points of connection by way of popular culture.

scholarly journals The Destinies of German-Born People in Russia at the Turn of the Millennium

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gunnar Thorvaldsen
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
First Century ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Post Secondary ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The People ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Military

This article studies the stories of Russian citizens who were born in Germany but reside in Russia. Most of them had relocated to Russia as a result of the withdrawal of Russian troops from Germany after 1990. Analysing individual data from the 2002 and 2010 censuses, the author traces the lives of children born into the families of Soviet military men based in East Germany after World War II. Over 140,000 such migrants can be found in the 2002 census, far more than from any other country that was not part of the Soviet Union. Repatriation was accomplished from 1991 to 1994; and even though Germany financed part of the operation, it was necessary to solve the problems of accommodation and employment of the military men and their families locally. As a result of the study, the author manages to determine the territories inhabited by Russians born in Germany in the early twenty-first century. The number of people among them who speak foreign languages and have post-secondary education is higher than average, which testifies to the fact that the joint effort of the two countries was more beneficial for the future of the people born in Germany than might have been expected. The competence and education they acquired, together with the social networks between those repatriated, added significantly to their human capital and their contributions to Russian society.

Guatemala: The Military in Politics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita Isaacs ◽  
Rachel A. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
First Century ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Political Control ◽  
Army Officers ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

Since the mid-20th century, the Guatemalan military has played a prominent role in the country’s political life. Yet, this was not always the case. During Guatemala’s first century of independence, the armed forces operated largely as the pawn of personalist rulers and oligarchic elites, utilizing coercion to quell labor unrest and impose order in the countryside. Developments during the Cold War era, however, transformed the Guatemalan military into a centralized source of political and economic power and the key protagonist in domestic politics. Following World War II and on the heels of popular uprising, nationalist junior army officers ushered in a series of popular reforms, which included land redistribution. A 1954 CIA-orchestrated coup supported by the Guatemalan oligarchy and reactionary military factions toppled Guatemala’s “Democratic Spring,” reversed the reforms, and paved the way for four decades of hardline military rule. The subsequent rise of a leftist insurgent movement and the outbreak of armed conflict (1960–1996) gave the armed forces a pretext to dramatically expand their power. They consolidated formal political control over the Guatemalan state and pursued a counterinsurgent campaign, which escalated into genocidal violence in the predominantly Mayan indigenous highlands. Pulled between the political protagonism of civil war and the subordination to civilian rule required in liberal democracy, the Guatemalan military struggled to redefine its institutional identity with the end of armed conflict. It lurched reluctantly toward peace and democracy following a split in its ranks between a moderate institutionalist faction and right-wing groups wary of ceding political control. Despite peace accord provisions to reduce the military’s size and budget and to confine its institutional activities to external defense, military officials, particularly those from intelligence, continued to wield extraordinary control in the postwar era. Challenging the strictures of peace and democracy, they have fought to maintain key interests, notably impunity for war crimes, political decision-making influence, and wartime sources of illicit enrichment.

scholarly journals The Thin Red Line and the World War II Hollywood Tradition

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleftheria Thanouli
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
World War ◽  
Thin Red Line ◽  
Cinematic Adaptation ◽  
James Jones ◽  
The World ◽  
Red Line

THE THIN RED LINE AND THE HOLLYWOOD WORLD WAR II TRADITION The Thin Red Line is a three-hour epic about the World War II, directed by Terrence Malick, who made his comeback to the film industry after 20 years with a subject that had been neglected for almost as long.(1) The film is based on James Jones' novel, published in 1962, which was first adapted for the big screen by Andrew Marton in 1964 rather unsuccessfully. For many years, the book seemed to defy cinematic adaptation due to its deliberately choppy, episodic storyline, its lack of a single heroic protagonist and the multiplicity of perspectives.(2) However, Malick tried to overcome these obstacles by creating a film which broke "most of the commercial rules about narrative and drama"(3), as a critic observes. My interest in The Thin Red Line is therefore twofold: firstly, I will try...

Cinema's Military Industrial Complex

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Mobile Technologies ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Physical And Mental Health ◽  
World War ◽  
Film Exhibition ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Military Industrial Complex ◽  
The Military

Cinema’s Military Industrial Complex examines how the American military has used cinema and related visual, sonic, and mobile technologies to further its varied aims. The essays in this book address the way cinema was put to work for purposes of training, orientation, record keeping, internal and external communication, propaganda, research and development, tactical analysis, surveillance, physical and mental health, recreation, and morale. The contributors examine the technologies and types of films that were produced and used in collaboration among the military, film industry, and technology manufacturers. The essays also explore the goals of the American state, which deployed the military and its unique modes of filmmaking, film exhibition, and film viewing to various ends. Together, the essays reveal the military’s deep investment in cinema, which began around World War I, expanded during World War II, continued during the Cold War (including wars in Korea and Vietnam), and still continues in the ongoing War on Terror.

Catastrophic narratives

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Kahn ◽  
Mark Lipovetsky ◽  
Irina Reyfman ◽  
Stephanie Sandler
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Criticism ◽  
Russian Literature ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
First Century ◽  
Holocaust Literature ◽  
World War ◽  
Important Trend ◽  
Narrative Forms ◽  
Personal Trauma

The chapter considers how, beginning with the Revolution and continuing across the centry, new narrative forms in prose and poetry fashion a discourse of national destiny. As narratives conceptualize historical change and convey the meanings of catastrophe, they develop new plotlines, metaphoric systems and mythological visions. The chapter argues that Russian literature on the Great Terror, collectivization, and Gulag achieves a focus on historical and personal trauma comparable to Holocaust literature. Soviet narratives of World War II also form an important trend from the 1940s through twenty-first century, serving simultaneously as the source of social criticism and the sustained attempt to redefine national identity.

"Thin Red Line"

1895 ◽  
Vol s8-VII (163) ◽  
pp. 116-116
Author(s):  
R. P. H.
Keyword(s):  
Thin Red Line ◽  
Red Line
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