Visual consumption, collective memory and the representation of war

Abstract

Conceiving of the visual as a significant force in the production and dissemination of collective memory, we argue that a new genre of World War Two films has recently emerged that form part of a new discursive “regime of memory” about the war and those that fought and lived through it, constituting a commemoration as much about reflecting on the present as it is about remembering the past. First, we argue that these films seek to reaffirm a (particular conception of a) US national identity and military patriotism in the post–Cold War era by importing World War Two as the key meta‐narrative of America’s relationship to war in order to “correct” and help “erase” Vietnam’s more negative discursive rendering. Second, we argue that these films attempt to rewrite the history of World War Two by elevating and illuminating the role of the US at the expense of the Allies, further serving to reaffirm America’s position of political and military dominance in the current age, and third, that these films form part of a celebration of the generation that fought World War Two, which may accord them a position of nostalgic and sentimental greatness, as their collective spirit and notions of duty and service shine against the foil of what might frequently be seen as our own present moral ambivalence.

Keywords:

• collective memory
• film
• mediated representation
• regime of memory
• World War Two

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Gavin Jack, Jo Brewis, Pauline Maclaren, Jonathan Schroeder and the three anonymous reviewers for their insightful commentary upon earlier versions of this material. We hope that they will see the benefit we have taken from their efforts in this version of the text. Inadequacies that remain are, of course, all our own work.

Notes

1. Films in this genre include: Saving Private Ryan (1998), U‐571 (2000), Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (2001), Charlotte Gray (2001), Enemy at the Gates (2001), Enigma (2001), Pearl Harbor (2001), The War Bride (2001), To End All Wars (2001), Hart’s War (2002), The Pianist (2002), Windtalkers (2002), Saints and Soldiers (2003), The Great Raid (2005), Flags of Our Fathers (2006).

2. Especially World War Two, which had not received a great deal of attention by Hollywood since the end of the Vietnam War.

3. A research group established within the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Culture Studies in the 1970s.

4. Whilst recognizing the limitations of such a brief review, our purpose here has merely been to set up the films that are the focus of this paper. For a more extensive review of the Vietnam genre, the reader is directed to the work of Easthope (1988), Walsh and Louvre (1988), Jeffords (1989), Desser (1991) and Storey (2003).

5. As West (2000, 61–62) notes, the Vietnam War challenged America’s very sense of nationhood. Its identity “since independence [has] been closely reliant on a sense of superiority demonstrated in successive military victories.”

6. Something Spielberg conveniently side‐steps by simply having no black characters in the film at all. Elsewhere in this genre of films, however, such issues are addressed: In Hart’s War the experience of black service men in the US military during World War Two is explored; Windtalkers does something similar but in the context of the Navajo code talkers.

7. An important scene when juxtaposed with the representations of Vietnam during the 1980s, which frequently lay the blame for defeat squarely at the door of the bureaucracy of the military and political hierarchy.

8. A term employed by Tom Brokaw (1998) to describe the generation that fought World War Two.

9. Recognizing the multiplicity of readings of any given text, Moses (2002) offers an alternative reading of Saving Private Ryan that is worth considering briefly. For Moses, the project of Saving Private Ryan is one far removed from erasing Vietnam but actually one that reinforces the dominant narratives in its reconstruction on film. Moses highlights the numerous scenes in Saving Private Ryan that turn around the decision of whether to shoot unarmed German prisoners (specifically, as discussed with regard to the opening scenes but also during the radar assault and in the final scenes in which Upham shoots the SS soldier, discussed below). This narrative structuring depicts, he argues, “Spielberg’s greatest generation, in spite of its bravery and patriotism … in a manner more closely resembling that of American troops at My Lai than that of John Wayne in World War II epics of an earlier age.” Moses further suggests that the key element of the radar site scene is not the way that order is finally restored but the dissent and near mutiny of Miller’s troops (reminiscent of many a Vietnam film). The decision to release the SS soldier at this point, only to have him return later in the film to kill both Mellish and Miller, Moses suggests, can be read as a moral justification for the shooting of prisoners, in the context of war. Upham’s final resolution to shoot the SS soldier then can be read as a necessary and acceptable action. This view is also supported by Hammond. He argues that the depiction of the soldier in films such as Saving Private Ryan is structured in such a way as to offer an “equivalence” between the World War Two and Vietnam genres. He goes on to argue that his reading of the middle section of the film, the hunt for Private Ryan, whilst indeed resembling the: “B‐movie plot in its deployment of all of the conventions of the 1950s combat film” also resonates with the Vietnam genre: the break‐up of the band of brothers at the radar site, the continual resistance the men show to a mission they don’t understand. These, Hammond argues, are classic tropes of the Vietnam film. He goes on to cite Spielberg who claims: “Without Vietnam I never could have made Ryan as honestly as I did because Vietnam sort of showed everybody, and sort of prepared audiences to accept war for what it was” (2002, 71).

10. Although, it is important to note that not all films in the genre are American‐centred: Charlotte Gray (2001), Enigma (2001), The War Bride (2001) and To End All Wars (2001), for example, all recount stories of British exploits in World War Two. However, in thinking through the discursive effects of this genre, the big‐budget Hollywood films that depict America’s involvement in the war have certainly been the most popular and widely seen (based on box office receipts).

11. The codename used for the Normandy invasion.

12. The following year, Michael Apted’s Enigma (2001) would be released. This film tells a “British” version of events surrounding the Enigma code machine, albeit one equally tainted by historical revisionism. The historical figure Alan Turing, one of the real Enigma code‐breakers, is replaced in the film by the fictional character of Tom Jericho: Turing was a homosexual who later committed suicide. Replacing this figure with the fictional Jericho enables the story of the code‐breakers to be told in the context of a (heterosexual) love story.

13. An interesting representation of this theme occurs in To End All Wars (2001), a film that tells the story of British POWs in a Japanese prison camp. Whilst the film recounts the brutality of the Japanese guards, it does so in a way that seeks to “justify” their actions, most forcefully through the idea that this is simply “Japanese culture,” that it is a product of their warrior history, as codified in Bushido. The film also moves to suggest that all “men” are capable of such actions. At the film’s end, when the prisoners are liberated, we see some of them exacting their revenge on their captors by employing the same forms of brutality and violence that they have experienced themselves: “When I look into my enemies’ eyes I see a reflection of myself” muses Gordon, the film’s key protagonist.

14. Although this may have more to do with the marketability of the film: Japan is the second largest importer of Hollywood films, and a negative representation of its nation will not receive a warm welcome at the box office. In fact certain scenes and dialogue were re‐shot for the Japanese cut of the film.

15. A term coined by American journalist Tom Brokaw’s (1998) book The Greatest Generation in which he (seemingly uncritically) elevates and celebrates the generation that was born in the aftermath of World War One, lived through the Great Depression, fought during World War Two and gave birth to the “baby boomers.” This generation, captured by Brokaw in photos, oral histories and testaments becomes the apotheosis of human moral righteousness, courage and decency, set against the individualism, lethargy and greed that is often used to describe younger generations.

16. Interestingly, at this point, we learn a little more about the identity of the German soldier. His insignia identifies him as a member of the SS, the faction of Hitler’s army responsible for the conduct of the Holocaust. Is the slow torturous death of Mellish (a Jew), at the hands of an SS soldier, in some way an acknowledgment of that terrible persecution?

17. We see many “copies” of Upham in Vietnam films.

18. The opening scene of the film is a present‐day shot of an elderly man, and his family, visiting a war cemetery, in Normandy. As he stares at a specific gravestone, whose details we cannot yet read, the camera slowly zooms into the man’s eyes and when they zoom out we have gone back in time, to the morning of the D‐Day landings and the face we see is Captain Miller’s, who we now presume to be the elderly man at the grave‐site. So whatever else happens in this film, we know Tom will make it!

19. Miller’s death in the film is an interesting one. First, it adds that shock component; we don’t expect Tom Hanks to die. Second, the nature of his death is symbolic. Stunned by an explosion, Miller staggers to his feet and walks around aimlessly until shot by the SS soldier. His death serves no purpose, there is no point to it; he did not die to save a buddy, or to block an oncoming assault. His death is a waste and to have Miller die in this way, we would argue, is symbolic of the waste of all human life in this, and indeed all conflicts.