Reading done on January 26 2019
"The Warrior Image: Soldier in American Culture from the Second World War to the Vietnam Era"
- by Andrew J. Huebner - 2008
In this book, Huebner discusses the American cultural representation of soldiers, forming the "warrior image" from the 1940s to the late 1970s.
"Throughout history people have created images of soldiers randing from the heroic to the pitiful, and in doing so have said much about their own societies[5]" (Huebner 2008, 2).
The imagery of popular films such as "Perching's Crusaders" celebrated traditional soldierly virtues of duty, honor, and manliness (Huebner 2008, 5).
"[...] the most salient aspect of war imagery was sympathy and identification with the soldiers, and not necessarily with the war effort itself" (Huebner 2008, 11). (the entire span of WWII and to the beginning stages of the Korean War).
"News reports - or films or novels or photographs - may contain a broad range of meanings, tones, and implications, beyond whatever grand theme or message they appear to be advancing" (Huebner 2008, 12).
"Rather, in the words of media scholar Susan Carruthers, news audiences - and I would add audiences of movies and novels and other media - "can resist intendeded, surface meanings and find instead subversive interpretations, uses, or 'gratification' from media they consume"" (Huebner 2008, 12).
"More and more designers of the warrior image stressed the plight of the individual over the cohesion of the collective, the damaging rather than the edifying consequences of battle, the isolation of the soldier instead of the enveloping presence of the military leadership, the government, and the home front" (Huebner 2008, 12).
During World War II federal and military authorities exerted tight control over the dissemination of photographs [...]" (Huebner 2008, 16).
"Detached body parts, typically excluded from Hollywood depiction of combat, often littered the battlefield" (Huebner 2008, 17-18).
"The radio and film industries, for instance, cooperated readily with government officials [...]; they showed little blood, little psychological breakdown, and plenty of patriotism, good will, teamwork, and camaraderie [15]" (Huebner 2008, 18).
"[...] It is true that throughout World War II, the strict censorship of words and images from the combat zone portraits of simple, heroic, humble American GIs abounded. In this imagery, war and the military positively transformed the soldier from a boy into a man" (Huebner 2008, 18).
Note:
- Possibly here relate photos of the child soldiers "turning into men"
- Also, how the IS is only focusing on showing fighters as happy heroes (US governmnt during WWII as the IS media organization
"While military officials censored journalists during the Second World War and for most of the Korean War, no official control of the media occured at any point during the Vietnam War" (Huebner 2008, 174).
"Some informal methods of control, however, did restrict reporters in Vietnam. Members of the media often faced official requests to withhold news of troops movements and graphic depictions of the dead and wounded" (Huebner 2008, 174).