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

Introduction

 1  Introduction  In a cartoon titled “One Type of Patriot” published in October 1898, the Chicago Inter Ocean commented on the effects of media during the Spanish-American War in mobilizing Americans into political action (figure i.1). The first frame depicts a prototypical white male patriot caught up in the exhilaration over the battle of San Juan Hill. Such fervor befit a reader of the Chicago Inter Ocean, a newspaper that prided itself on the motto “Republican in everything, independent in nothing.”1 As he reads his popular magazine, the American patriot imagines himself sporting the Stars and Stripes, brandishing his sword, and charging up the hill with shellfire bursting around him. But in the second frame his fantasy of patriotic participation fails to energize him to vote in the November elections. Despite a picture on his wall commemorating victory at the battle of Manila, he sits idly smoking a pipe and enjoying the paper. The caption states: “When he reads of San Juan he imagines himself glorying in the storm of shot and shell. But on election day he guesses it looks rather stormy and he doesn’t bother about going to the polls.” The cartoonist recognizes that the sensory and psychological enticements of patriotic media need not require engagement with the politics surrounding U.S. actions. He derides the ballyhoo of media production in the Spanish-American War, which, he claims, seems to provide a virtual reality that obviates the necessity for citizens to act or think. This is a remarkable reflection on the failure of media influence to galvanize popular political sentiment given the era of sensationalistic journalism from which it came and the swell of popular interest in the war. It challenges the assumption that readers consumed war- and imperial-related media out of support for those policies and inspires the central questions of this book: How did cultural producers promote attention to the projects of war and empire? Were their political messages effectively delivered? This book aims to show the strengths and limitations of media spectacle as a mechanism for manufacturing popular consent to war and imperialism in 1898–99. Upon its decision to intervene in Cuba’s struggle for independence from Spanish colonial rule in 1898, the United States demonstrated a willingness to use military force to exert its influence in the Western hemisphere. This significant turning point in American foreign policy culminated in a major step in the nation’s rise to power: the acquisition of an overseas empire. Editors, journalists, cartoonists, playwrights, filmmakers, advertisers , photographers, and showmen set the frames of reference for the way readers and viewers came to understand the implications of these actions. These “media makers” differed in their political inclinations, motivations, and methods of communication, but nonetheless , repetitive patterns of imagining the war and its participants emerged across all spheres of media production. Tracking this media content before, during, and immediately after the war illuminates how media makers shifted their strategies of representation in relation to unfolding political developments and emerging debates over colonial possession. This book moves beyond the presumed impact of “yellow” jouri .1. “one type of patriot.” Chicago Inter Ocean, october 27, 1898, 3.  3 introduction nalism to explore the interaction of a much wider array of cultural forms in the promotion of war and empire as spectacle.2 My analysis of the press includes news content, political cartoons, editorials, and advertisements from over forty newspapers and periodicals in both rural and urban settings across the country.3 I also examine a range of popular amusements, including stage plays, world’s fair attractions, Wild West shows, battle reenactments, parades, public celebrations, early cinema, souvenirs, and photography. As a commercial medium seeking readers and advertisers, the press often conveyed the news as entertainment for a mass audience. Functioning interdependently with the press, creators of popular amusements reproduced prominent news stories and presented them in an emotionally captivating way. But analyzing visual media in mainstream, high-circulation newspapers and mass entertainments inevitably yields only a partial picture. Although a wider international context shaped U.S. actions in 1898, I focus primarily here on media that white Americans produced for broad consumption.4 The media’s ideological power lies in the ability to “define” a situation and assign meanings to it. In their selection, emphasis, omission , and framing of media content, cultural producers decide what is (and is not) newsworthy and designate the most salient...