Virtue Through Suffering: The American War Film at the End of Celluloid
The World War II combat films made in Hollywood in the late 1990s and early 2000s demonstrate nostalgia for the celluloid-based, documentary-inspired techniques of the 1940s, while at the same time reveling in the possibilities of computer-generated imagery. This potential contradiction converges on the body of the American soldier, whose physical suffering is illustrated with […]
How to Recognize a War Movie: The Contemporary Science Fiction Blockbuster as Military Recruitment Film
My essay examines how the military has increasingly turned to the tropes of science fiction in order to create compelling narratives about military service that might be used for recruitment purposes. Finding the messages of contemporary war films set in Iraq or Afghanistan to be either outwardly hostile to the military or at least morally […]