From Liberation to Conquest: The Visual and Popular Cultures of the Spanish-American War of 1898

3: Socializing the Politics of Militarism: The Spanish-American War in Popular Culture

 87  3 Socializing the Politics of Militarism the spanish-american war in popular culture  this is an awfully funny war. . . . what a great big burlesque it all is! what a caricature poor old rickety spain has made of herself. she is the champion cartoonist of the nineteenth century, with herself as the subject. it is funny, awfully funny, at every step, and from whatever point you look at it. spain started out with several hundred thousand men to whip a handful of half armed subjects and made a glorious fiasco of that. . . . funny? well i should say it was! i have been laughing ever since the darned thing started. Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 18, 1898 After the declaration of war, President McKinley called for 125,000 volunteers to supplement regular army units. The response was staggering. The Maine disaster and the humanitarian crisis in Cuba inspired thousands of young men across the nation to enlist. “This is one of the most popular wars we have ever had,” claimed a small midwestern paper. “Everybody wants to go to Cuba.”1 This spirit led newspapers across the country to embed illustrations of flags, eagles, and the phrase “Remember the Maine” in their front-page banners.2 Many young men conveyed their enthusiasm for the war by inscribing patriotic tattoos on their bodies. One Philadelphia man got a panorama of the battle of Santiago inked across his chest. Many others had portraits of Admiral George Dewey, “Fighting Bob” Evans, and Consul-General Fitzhugh Lee tattooed on their arms along with icons of patriotism such as flags and eagles.3 This popular fad reveals the creative ways in which military imagery of the Spanish-American War found expression in American visual culture. With special emphasis on the war’s three central battles (Manila 88  chapter three Bay, San Juan Hill, and Santiago), this chapter examines the construction and dissemination of the spectacle of war in a range of popular forms and maps its lingering effects through public consumption .4 Cultural producers promoted a heightened national feeling of triumphant militarism by shaping war as a spectacular diversion in an array of cultural forms for audiences of all ages.5 In the proliferation of battle reenactments, motion picture views, and other war-themed amusements during and after the conflict, cultural entrepreneurs framed battle representations within a theatrical rubric of flamboyant spectacle, manly heroics, and thrilling action. They fashioned an aesthetic of “spectacular reality” that utilized sensational effects and staging to produce the illusion that the images and actions were taking place in reality, involving actual participants, places, and events.6 Popular newspapers substantiated these reality claims in their advertisements for these mass entertainments while they reproduced the same sensationalistic narratives in their own accounts of U.S. military achievements. Despite their insistence on the accuracy of their battle scenes, media makers ultimately furnished audiences with strikingly “unreal” visions of war. President McKinley took steps to invite the press into the White House in order to manage media relations, but he did not create a government agency to direct the production of war propaganda as President Woodrow Wilson would later do in World War I with the creation of the Committee on Public Information. McKinley’s administration installed censors in U.S. colonies to prevent war correspondents from printing vital military information but left the production of war-related imagery and commercial amusements on the home front virtually unfettered.7 This left cultural producers free to design war-related media to suit their own political or financial agendas. They exploited the political circumstances in order to establish their particular craft as a reliable apparatus for informing the public of political events. Having already fixed audience attention on the impending conflict through the narratives of Cuba Libre and “Remember the Maine,” the makers of American print, visual, and popular culture exploited the patriotic and military spirit of wartime to boost their consumer appeal. Intentional or not, this had the effect of accentuating the nation’s military successes and masking its failures.  89 socializing the politics of militarism The Battle of Manila Bay As the army mobilized for war, local military organizations stirred public anticipation by turning the drilling of new recruits into a spectator sport. Press imagery enhanced the appeal of these military entertainments by sensationalizing the excitement of the crowds at these events. These scenes illustrate the military exercises, but more important , they foreground the...