scholarly journals War in the Tropics

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Greg Jericho
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
War Films ◽  
Tropical Island ◽  
Historical View ◽  
Box Office ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Tropical Areas ◽  
The Tropics

In the Home Box Office mini-series Band of Brothers (2001), one of the soldiers on a troop ship bound for England remarks: "Right now some lucky bastard's headed for the Pacific, get put on some tropical island, surrounded by six naked native girls, helping him cut up coconuts so he can hand feed them to flamingos". This paradisiacal view of the Pacific and tropical areas has existed for centuries, and despite European settlers' developing familiarity with the area, it is a misconception which has continued to be propagated in war films set in the tropics. These war films depict the tropics as antipodean utopias which become corrupted by the ravages of war. Thus, while many of these films attempt to display war realistically, they still hold to the historical view of the tropics as unspoiled and pure—until, of course, war intrudes onto the scene. These films rarely examine the effect of the war on the local inhabitants, but rather deal with soldiers coping with the disjunction between their preconceived notions of the area and the reality before them. Crucially as well, war is depicted as a greater crime against nature (both human and environmental) when fought in the tropics rather than in Europe. This view is promulgated in the representation of battles fought in these films. In films set in the Pacific theatre during World War Two, and more recent ones set during the Vietnam War, the battle for American and Australian soldiers is as much about coping with their surroundings as with fighting the enemy, who are often rarely seen, or only viewed in long shot. War films set in the tropics depict 'war as hell' because of the environment, which is by turns remote, mystifying, and generally rural, rather than urban, 'civilised' and familiar, as it is in the case of the majority of war films set in Europe.

‘A war film with a difference’: Adrian Brunel's Blighty and Negotiation within the British Studio System of the Late Silent Period

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josephine Botting
Keyword(s):  
Silent Period ◽  
Home Front ◽  
World War ◽  
War Films ◽  
Box Office ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Studio System ◽  
To Come ◽  
First World ◽  
War Film

The creation and viewing of war films was one of the elements in the process by which Britain attempted to come to terms with the horrors of the First World War. During the interwar period, war films took two main forms: those which reconstructed famous battles and melodramas set against a wartime backdrop. However, the film Blighty, directed by Adrian Brunel in 1927, took a slightly different approach, focusing not on military action but on those who stayed behind on the Home Front. As a director during the silent period, Brunel trod a stony path, operating largely on the fringes of the industry and never really getting a firm foothold in the developing studio structure. He remains well regarded for his independent productions yet also directed five features for Gainsborough at the end of the silent period. Of these film, his first, Blighty, is perhaps his most successful production within the studio system in terms of managing a compromise between his desire to maintain control while also fulfilling the studio's aims and requirement for box office success. Brunel's aversion to the war film as a genre meant that from the start of the project, he was engaged in a process of negotiation with the studio in order to preserve as far as possible what he regarded as a certain creative and moral imperative.

Anti-Japanese activities in North Borneo before World War Two, 1937–1941

2001 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danny Wong Tze-Ken
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
The State ◽  
Pacific War ◽  
World War Two ◽  
Chinese Community ◽  
World War ◽  
The North ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
North Borneo

Anti-Japanese activities in North Borneo before the Pacific War were part of a larger anti-Japanese campaign waged by the Chinese in Southeast Asia. In North Borneo one of the most important outcomes was politicisation of the Chinese community. During this period the North Borneo Company, which had previously welcomed Japanese capital and labour, also began to take steps to curb Japanese activities in the state.

scholarly journals The Enduring Influence of Female Special Operations Executive Agent Biopics on Cultural Memory and Representations in France and Great Britain

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. WLS144-WLS168
Author(s):  
Sylvie Pomiès-Maréchal
Keyword(s):  
Central Place ◽  
Specific Aspect ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
War Films ◽  
Special Operations ◽  
Jean Paul ◽  
The Social ◽  
Post War ◽  
Fictional Representations

Seventy-five years have elapsed since the end of World War Two. Yet, the memory of the conflict still occupies a central place in British and French collective consciousness. Fiction and film representations of the war act as powerful ‘vectors of memory’, to borrow an expression from French historian Henry Rousso, and as such, they have deeply contributed to shaping popular and cultural memories of the war. This article investigates a specific aspect of World War Two representations, namely the cinematic representations of the female agents from the SOE F section, focusing on the ‘generic’ or archetypal figure of the female SOE agent as generated by the post-war cultural industry. After a brief contextualisation focusing on Churchill’s clandestine organisation, the article will analyse the contribution of Odette (Herbert Wilcox, 1950) and Carve Her Name with Pride (Lewis Gilbert, 1958) to the construction of a World War Two ‘mythology’. It will then address more recent films, concentrating on Charlotte Gray (Gillian Armstrong, 2001) and Female Agents (Jean-Paul Salomé, 2008). How did the fictional construction of the female spy come to influence the social and cultural perception of the SOE agent? Are the tropes developed in such post-war films as Odette or Carve Her Name with Pride still current or have they evolved with time? The analysis of these fictional representations will reveal the permanence or evolution of certain representational patterns and also allow us to approach different perspectives on the cultural representation of World War Two on both sides of the Channel.

World War two broadcasting in the Pacific

1983 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-62
Author(s):  
K.R.M. Short ◽  
Namikawa Ruō ◽  
Frans Nieuwenhof
Keyword(s):  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
The Pacific

scholarly journals Tropical Island Imaginary

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Torre
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Pacific Islands ◽  
Historical Survey ◽  
Tropical Islands ◽  
Tropical Island ◽  
Western Literature ◽  
Truth Claim ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Tropical Australia ◽  
The Tropics

This paper opens with a historical survey of the imaginary representation of islands in Western literature and then proceeds to a selective account of the island imaginary in largely ‘middlebrow’ writings and photography about the tropics. Complexities and paradoxes in the significances and semiotics of islands can be found in much writing about the Pacific islands of tropical Australia. E.J.Banfield largely established the paradisal perspective on tropical islands and extolled the lifestyle of the ‘beachcomber’. The often challenged ‘truth claim’ that ‘the camera cannot lie’ is most pertinent to Hurley’s work: what we see there is not only a speculum but more often a spectacle of the island imaginary; indeed the staging and replication of content so as to reflect what Hurley wanted to see in his subjects amounts to the substitution of a hyperreal, which then establishes itself in the discourse of the tropical island imaginary. Norman Lindsay tapped into some persistent motifs of the island imaginary: the excitement created by shipwreck and survival; the romance and salacious possibilities afforded by the attractions between a heroine and her suitors; and the realities of human nature stripped of civilised manners. Paradoxically, the popular works of Ion L. Idriess problematize the boundaries between material fact and textual discourse, tapping into what may well be a paradigm for the island imaginary in general—a space where contraries multiply and fantasies materialize. Lastly, Frank Clune’s ‘counterfeit adventures’ similarly play around persistent binaries and stereotypes in the island imaginary, and perpetuate a reification of the complexity and elusiveness of their subject.

scholarly journals The Western and the War Film: Clint Eastwood’s „American Sniper” as Genre Hybrid

2017 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 105-119
Author(s):  
Martin Holtz
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
World War ◽  
War Films ◽  
Westward Expansion ◽  
Moral Ambiguity ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
War Film

The article explores the similarities of Westerns and war films and the ways in which the two genres have cross-fertilized each other since World War II. Central to their similarities are their efforts to render violence as a “regenerative” Slotkin means to establish or defend American civilization. Since the Vietnam War, however, the Western has taken a revisionist turn, and its subsequent evocations in war films expose the frontier ideology of justified violence in the name of the advancement of American civilization as a failed ideological project and highlight the imperialist aggression that connects America’s westward expansion with its military efforts. Using the example of Clint Eastwood’s film American Sniper 2014, the article argues that the use of Western elements in contemporary films about the Iraq War adds a sense of moral ambiguity to the portrayal of the hero, who exhibits a pathological obsession with a Western image of the righteous protector of civilization that is ultimately destructive to himself and the society he wants to protect.WESTERN A FILM WOJENNY — SNAJPER CLINTA EASTWOODA JAKO GATUNKOWA HYBRYDAArtykuł jest eksploracją podobieństw między westernem a filmem wojennym i sposobów, w jakie obydwa gatunki wzajemnie się przenikały od czasu II wojny światowej. Głównym ich podobieństwem jest próba prezentowania przemocy jako „odradzającego się” Slotkin środka służącego ustanowieniu bądź obronie amerykańskiej cywilizacji. Jednakże od wojny wietnamskiej western przeszedł rewizjo­nistyczny zwrot, a jego kolejne ewokacje w filmach wojennych eksponują ideologię Pogranicza bę­dącą usprawiedliwieniem przemocy w imię zaawansowania amerykańskiej cywilizacji jako projektu ideologicznego upadłego i ukazują imperialistyczną agresję, która łączy amerykańską ekspansję na zachód z jej militarnymi wysiłkami. Na przykładzie Snajpera Clinta Eastwooda 2014 niniejszy esej przekonuje, że zastosowanie westernowych elementów we współczesnych filmach o irackiej wojnie przydaje moralnej dwuznaczności portretowi bohatera, przejawiającego patologiczną obsesję wester­nowym image’em prawego obrońcy cywilizacji, skrajnie destrukcyjnego wobec siebie oraz społeczeń­stwa, które chce osłaniać.                                                                                              Przeł. Kordian Bobowski

scholarly journals U źródeł japońskiego nacjonalizmu i militaryzmu — doktryna kokutai w życiu politycznym Cesarstwa Japonii w latach 1867–1945

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 27-58
Author(s):  
Michał A. Piegzik
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
National Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Legal Regulations ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The World

The main goal of this article is to present the historical development of the kokutai doctrine pol. national policy, which emerged in the Empire of Japan in 1867–1945 and which was one of the ideological foundations of the Japanese internal and foreign policy. Its formulation and subsequent consolidation in the form of legal regulations is closely related to the period of modernization and rivalry with the European colonial powers and the United States for influence on the political map of East Asia. The kokutai doctrine embodies concepts such as chauvinism, nationalism, racism, militarism, expansionism and statism. Attempts to put them into practice led to the outbreak of the World War Two in the Pacific and the total defeat of Japan against the Allies.

Film Melayu: Nationalism, modernity and film in a pre-World War Two Malay magazine

2009 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-70
Author(s):  
Timothy P. Barnard
Keyword(s):  
The Philippines ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
War Films ◽  
Publishing Community ◽  
Made In

Prior to World War Two many of the Malay-language films released in Singapore and Malaya were made in Java and the Philippines. Beginning in 1940 the Shaw Brothers began producing Malay films in Singapore for distribution to their theatre network throughout Malaya. The first Malay film magazine, Film Melayu, which began publishing in May 1941, documented the production and release of a number of these pre-war films in Singapore, providing one of the few avenues for a better understanding of the origins of Malay cinema. More importantly, this periodical was firmly ensconced within the Malay publishing community and thus reflects debates over issues ranging from the proper script to use in publishing to technology and its relationship to the nation (or community, bangsa).

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document