scholarly journals Distressed Glamour. Genres and Political-Social Context in Hungarian Cinema of the 1930s and 1940s

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-193
Author(s):  
Zsolt Pápai
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Second World

AbstractThe article focuses on Hungarian films produced between 1939–1944 by examining how they tend to refrain from representing conflicts, and scrutinizing the political as well as social issues. However, directors started to revise this avoidance of conflicts by employing a so-called noir sensibility from the beginning of the Second World War in certain films, especially in “doomed love movies” such as Deadly Spring (Halálos tavasz, 1939), Mountain Girl (A hegyek lánya, 1942), and A Woman Looks Back (Egy assszony visszanéz, 1942), or melodramas, such as At the Crossroads (Keresztúton, 1942), Lent Life (Kölcsönadott élet, 1943), and Black Dawn (Fekete hajnal, 1943). The essay also offers a case study of the banned Hungarian movie Half a Boy (Egy fiúnak a fele, shot in 1943, but only shown in February 1946) by D. Ákos Hamza, which represented and protested against the stigmatization of Jewish people. Half a Boy is an often-cited emblematic film of its era. It is also an enigmatic one: it is a work full of social and political-historical reflections. Its humanistic point of view makes it outstanding in its era, nevertheless it is also rather ambivalent in terms of its orientation of values.

The State and the Jews: Reflections on Difficult Freedom

2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 109-130
Author(s):  
Annette Aronowicz
Keyword(s):  
Jewish People ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern State ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
Second World ◽  
Do So

AbstractThis essay examines the contrast between two conceptions of the universal, one represented by the modern State and the other by the Jewish people. In order to do so, it returns to the collection of essays on Judaism Levinas wrote in the approximately two decades after the Second World War, Difficult Freedom. Its aim is to focus specifically on the political dimension within this collection and then to step back and reflect on how his way of speaking of the political appears to us a full generation later. As is well known, Levinas's approach to the political has a way of escaping that realm, while nonetheless remaining relevant to it. This is what we shall try to capture and to evaluate.

scholarly journals German Expellee Organizations between “Homeland” and “At Home”: A Case Study of the Politics of Belonging

Refuge ◽  
2001 ◽  
pp. 52-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Wolff
Keyword(s):  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Cultural Organizations ◽  
Ethnic Germans ◽  
Second World

Since the expulsion of more than ten million ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe after the end of the Second World War, the political and cultural organizations of the expellees have advocated the interests of this segment of the Federal Republic’s population. The article examines the various ways in which activists in the expellee organizations have used the ambiguity of homeland and belonging in the political process in Germany and increasingly in Europe to further a political agenda that, while it has undergone major changes, remains deeply problematic in some of its objectives and many of its implications.

scholarly journals El teatral regreso de Celestina a Italia y las políticas culturales fascistas durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial

2021 ◽  
Vol 98 (4) ◽  
pp. 357-374
Author(s):  
MARÍA BASTIANES
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Political ◽  
European Identity ◽  
World War ◽  
Publishing Houses ◽  
Second World ◽  
Satisfactory Manner

The return of Celestina to Italian publishing houses during the Second World War has been examined in a series of recent research publications. These studies have not, unfortunately, described in a satisfactory manner the reasons underpinning this interest in a foreign piece; nor have they explained how it came to be one of the most regularly performed Spanish classic texts in twentieth-century Italy. The aim of this article is to settle this critical deficit, taking into account the political, cultural and theatrical contexts which enabled said return. Seen from this broader perspective, the reappearance of Celestina offers testimony to the cultural relationships between Spain and Italy in times of fascism, along with providing ways of approaching and appropriating a morally challenging text. Celestina, I argue, is a particularly revealing case study for understanding the role of classics in the construction of European identity throughout the twentieth century.

Turning Aliens into Socialists

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-93
Author(s):  
Jessica Moberg
Keyword(s):  
Outer Space ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Swedish History ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Highly Evolved

Immediately after the Second World War Sweden was struck by a wave of sightings of strange flying objects. In some cases these mass sightings resulted in panic, particularly after authorities failed to identify them. Decades later, these phenomena were interpreted by two members of the Swedish UFO movement, Erland Sandqvist and Gösta Rehn, as alien spaceships, or UFOs. Rehn argued that ‘[t]here is nothing so dramatic in the Swedish history of UFOs as this invasion of alien fly-things’ (Rehn 1969: 50). In this article the interpretation of such sightings proposed by these authors, namely that we are visited by extraterrestrials from outer space, is approached from the perspective of myth theory. According to this mythical theme, not only are we are not alone in the universe, but also the history of humankind has been shaped by encounters with more highly-evolved alien beings. In their modern day form, these kinds of ideas about aliens and UFOs originated in the United States. The reasoning of Sandqvist and Rehn exemplifies the localization process that took place as members of the Swedish UFO movement began to produce their own narratives about aliens and UFOs. The question I will address is: in what ways do these stories change in new contexts? Texts produced by the Swedish UFO movement are analyzed as a case study of this process.

“Product Not Available in Pre-War Quantities – but Quality Remains the Same”: Remarks on Advertisements as Historical Sources

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
World War ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
The Past ◽  
German Press ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

The article focuses on advertisements as visual and historical sources. The material comes from the German press that appeared immediately after the end of the Second World War. During this time, all kinds of products were scarce. In comparison to this, colorful advertisements of luxury products are more than noteworthy. What do these images tell us about the early post-war years in Germany? The author argues that advertisements are a medium that shapes social norms. Rather than reflecting the historical realities, advertisements construct them. From an aesthetical and cultural point of view, advertisements gave thus a sense of continuity between the pre- and post-war years. The author suggests, therefore, that the advertisements should not be treated as a source for economic history. They are, however, important for studying social developments that occurred in the past.

scholarly journals Will the World’s Glass after the Coronavirus Pandemic Be Half-Empty or Half-Full?

Südosteuropa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 274-281
Author(s):  
Dubravka Stojanović
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Great Crash ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

AbstractThe author comments on the political and economic options in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic that started at the beginning of 2020. She revisits responses to the crises of the First World War, the Great Crash of 1929, and the Second World War, sorting them into ‘pessimistic’ and ‘optimistic’ responses, and outlining their respective consequences.

scholarly journals SPIRITS, POWER AND THE POLITICAL IMAGINATION IN LATE-COLONIAL GABON

Africa ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Cinnamon
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Colonial Administration ◽  
Political Imagination ◽  
World War ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
Second World

ABSTRACTThrough narratives of an anti-‘fetish’ movement that swept through north-eastern Gabon in the mid-1950s, the present article traces the contours of converging political and religious imaginations in that country in the years preceding independence. Fang speakers in the region make explicit connections between the arrival of post-Second World War electoral politics, the anti-fetish movements, and perceptions of political weakening and marginalization of their region on the eve of independence. Rival politicians and the colonial administration played key roles in the movement, which brought in a Congolese ritual expert, Emane Boncoeur, and his two powerful spirits, Mademoiselle and Mimbare. These spirits, later recuperated in a wide range of healing practices, continue to operate today throughout northern Gabon and Rio Muni. In local imaginaries, these spirits played central roles in the birth of both regional and national politics, paradoxically strengthening the colonial administration and Gabonese auxiliaries in an era of pre-independence liberalization. Thus, regional political events in the 1950s rehearsed later configurations of power, including presidential politics, on the national stage.

La citoyenneté et la construction de l'Europe : discussions théoriques

Res Publica ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 36 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 361-380
Author(s):  
Paul Magnette
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The European Union ◽  
World War ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
European Citizenship ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Second World

This paper examines the evolving ideological content of the concept of citizenship and particularly the challenges it faces as a consequence of the building of the European Union. From an epistemological point of view it is first argued that citizenship may be described as a dual concept: it is both a legal institution composed of the rights of the citizen as they are fixed at a certain moment of its history, and a normative ideal which embodies their political aspirations. As a result of this dual nature, citizenship is an essentially dynamicnotion, which is permanently evolving between a state of balance and change.  The history of this concept in contemporary political thought shows that, from the end of the second World War it had raised a synthesis of democratic, liberal and socialist values on the one hand, and that it was historically and logically bound to the Nation-State on the other hand. This double synthesis now seems to be contested, as the themes of the "crisis of the Nation State" and"crisis of the Welfare state" do indicate. The last part of this paper grapples with recent theoretical proposals of new forms of european citizenship, and argues that the concept of citizenship could be renovated and take its challenges into consideration by insisting on the duties and the procedures it contains.

Philosophical Ideas of Yanaihara Tadao:Nationalism, Pacifism and the Concept of the “Just War”

2021 ◽  
pp. 187-197
Author(s):  
Anna D. Bertova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
World War ◽  
Postwar Japan ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
The One ◽  
Second World

Prominent Japanese economist, specialist in colonial politics, a professor of Im­perial Tokyo University, Yanaihara Tadao (1893‒1961) was one of a few people who dared to oppose the aggressive policy of Japanese government before and during the Second World War. He developed his own view of patriotism and na­tionalism, regarding as a true patriot a person who wished for the moral develop­ment of his or her country and fought the injustice. In the years leading up to the war he stated the necessity of pacifism, calling every war evil in the ultimate, divine sense, developing at the same time the concept of the «just war» (gisen­ron), which can be considered good seen from the point of view of this, imper­fect life. Yanaihara’s theory of pacifism is, on one hand, the continuation of the one proposed by his spiritual teacher, the founder of the Non-Church movement, Uchimura Kanzo (1861‒1930); one the other hand, being a person of different historical period, directly witnessing the boundless spread of Japanese militarism and enormous hardships brought by the war, Yanaihara introduced a number of corrections to the idealistic theory of his teacher and proposed quite a specific explanation of the international situation and the state of affairs in Japan. Yanai­hara’s philosophical concepts influenced greatly both his contemporaries and successors of the pacifist ideas in postwar Japan, and contributed to the dis­cussion about interrelations of pacifism and patriotism, and also patriotism and religion.

scholarly journals Vera Lynn on Screen: Popular Music and the ‘People's War’

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
KATE GUTHRIE
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
A Site ◽  
Second World

AbstractBy the outbreak of the Second World War in Britain, critics had spent several decades negotiating the supposed distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow culture, as recent scholarship has shown. What has received comparatively little attention is how the demands of wartime living changed the stakes of the debate. This article addresses this lacuna, exploring how war invited a reassessment of the relative merits of art and popular music. Perhaps the most iconic British singer of the period, Vera Lynn provides a case study. Focusing on her first film vehicle,We'll Meet Again(1942), I explore how Lynn's character mediated the highbrow/lowbrow conflict – for example, by presenting popular music as a site of community, while disparaging art music for its minority appeal. In so doing, I argue, the film not only promoted Lynn's star persona, but also intervened in a broader debate about the value of entertainment for a nation at war.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document