Abstract
In Cinema’s Military Industrial Complex, editors Haidee Wasson and Lee Grieveson provide a fascinating collection of essays examining the US military’s engagement with cinema from the era of the First World War right through to the so-called post-9/11 ‘war on terror’. Featuring 18 diverse chapters which cover a range of topics from the presence of non-theatrical cinema venues in US Army bases (both domestic and abroad) throughout the 20th and into the 21st century, to the use of military-produced informational films disseminated throughout post-WWII Europe to promote continental unity under the auspices of the Marshall plan, the book showcases important new interdisciplinary research which considerably broadens out our historical understanding of cinema’s use in wartime.
Predicated upon the conceptual discourse of ‘useful cinema’ as defined and explored by Acland and Wasson (2011) in a collection of the same name, the book’s central ambition is to explore the US military’s engagement with cinema as an ‘industry, technology, media practice, form, and space to service its needs and further its varied interests’ (p. 1), i.e. its specific ‘use’ and value within a military and wartime context. Moving away from more conventional (and arguably exhausted) studies of cinema’s wartime role through a methodological reliance upon textual analysis and criticism of wartime feature films produced for mainstream audiences, Cinema’s Military Industrial Complex instead seeks to examine how film technology, exhibition practices and spectatorship were specifically shaped for and by the US military in particular historical, cultural and political circumstances. As Wasson and Grieveson suggest in their introduction to the collection, such research ultimately seeks to contribute towards the ‘growing interest in thinking about cinema less as an art or as commercial entertainment and more as a deployment of particular technologies, forms, practices, and spaces that have coalesced as “cinema” to forward particular social, economic, and political objectives’ (p. 3).
The book is divided into four distinct sections, a consequence of the collection’s diverse range of subjects, periods and methodological approaches. Part One – ‘The Military’s Cinema Apparatus’ – examines the US military’s appropriation and use of media technologies within specific historical settings and circumstances. Wasson, for example, traces the use of projection equipment in military settings during WWII, such as the mobile JAN P-49 projector as well as the JAN P-299, a contained unit which showed rear-projected film on a television-style screen. Elsewhere in this section, Andrea Kelley examines the use of the ‘Panoram’ machine for educating and training soldiers during WWII, whilst Rebecca Prime charts the US military’s engagement with ‘Cinerama’ technology and exhibition, examining the production of military-supported films such as Search for Paradise (1957) during the Cold War era. Such chapters offer concrete examples of how the US military adopted film technologies for specific (often location dependent) reasons, which readily situated the medium within contexts beyond the conventional commercial sphere in order to train, inform and also entertain war-weary men and women in need of respite whilst residing in camps and bases far removed from civilian life.
Part Two – ‘Strategies of Viewing’ – outlines the US military’s ideological appropriation of and engagement with cinema as a medium for propaganda throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. In this section, Tom Rice, Kaia Scott, Nathaniel Brennan and Vinzenz Hediger, respectively, examine the American Legion’s post-WWI appropriation of film for institutional promotion, the use of cinema to treat soldier trauma within military psychiatric practice during WWII, the US military’s systematic study and analysis of German films held by the Museum of Modern Art during WWII, and the Bush administration’s absurdly unique consultation of Gillo Pontecorvo’s iconic Battle of Algiers (1966) as a reference point for counter-insurgency strategy and response in the midst of the early 2000s post-9/11 climate. A particular highlight of the collection, these chapters (although somewhat niche, micro-studies of film and military history) readily contribute towards a greater understanding of the US military’s conceptualization of the medium’s potential social, cultural and political dimensions, and functions beyond commercial exhibition. Indeed, research such as that embodied by this section considerably expands our understanding of cinema’s ideological and political appropriation during times of war.
Part Three – ‘Military-Made Movies’ – focuses upon the US military’s own ventures into filmmaking, exploring the production of fiction and non-fiction films alike, including Florian Hoof’s study of machine-gun training films produced for the military by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth during WWI, Noah Tskia’s examination of the US military’s ‘cultivation of documentary as a form of “useful cinema”’ (p. 192) in WWII, and Susan Courtney’s wonderfully enlightening analysis and theorization of film footage documenting the US military’s nuclear tests and the symbolic power and value of such imagery during the tense political climate of the Cold War.
Part Four – ‘The Military and its Collaborators’ – concludes the book by tracing the US military’s cinema-related engagement with external bodies and institutions including the distribution wings of foreign film industries in post-WWII Europe and the engagement of film stars and pop culture personalities for fundraising and morale-boosting efforts during the First and Second World Wars. It also begins with Lee Grieveson’s chapter ‘War, Media, and the Security of State and Capital’, which offers a substantial and engaging overview of the US government and military’s developing policies regarding media, propaganda and the dissemination of state ideology over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries. Arguably the least thematically coherent of the book’s different sections, Part Four nonetheless features some insightful research on the subject of the US military’s cinematic engagement with external ‘collaborators’.
However, the incoherent grouping of chapters in Part Four arguably highlights the collection’s broader, if more subtle incoherency, a consequence of the sheer diversity of case studies, methodologies and subject periods presented. Organized thematically rather than chronologically, the book’s transitions between chapters on WWI, WWII, the Cold War, the Korean War, Vietnam and the early 2000s ‘war on terror’, and those which offer overviews of multiple conflicts and time periods, result in a somewhat disjointed reading experience, frequently shifting between micro and macro historical studies and methodological approaches. This is an aspect of the collection that the editors have admittedly acknowledged, readily alluding to the fact that different chapters ‘operate at different scales’ whilst also suggesting an alternative structure for ‘readers who prefer chronological pathways’ (p. 18). Despite this, it is difficult to fault the work’s overall ambition, given the quality of the research being showcased, even if chapters on WWII-era projection technologies sit somewhat disjointedly alongside the studies of film/photo journalists on assignment during the Vietnam conflict. What this academic diversity does emphasize, however, is the potential scope for future work within this disciplinary field based on this discourse of ‘useful cinema’, and for dedicated studies of individual conflicts or historical moments to provide further insight into the US’s (and, indeed, other nation’s) military engagement with the medium of cinema. As such, Cinema’s Military Industrial Complex makes for an elucidating and ultimately exciting first major step in this direction which will undoubtedly be of interest to both film scholars and military historians alike.