Linking Aviation and Cinema

Linking Aviation and Cinema | Mohan Uday Mohan American University Linking Aviation and Cinema Michael Paris. From the Wright Brothers to Top Gun:Aviation, Nationalism and Popular Cinema. Manchester, U.K. Manchester University Press, 1995. (distributed in the U.S. by St Martin's Press. 218 pages. Bibliographical references and index. $69.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-719-04073-6; $18.95 (paper), ISBN 0-719-040734.) inema and aviation share several historical linkages. Emerging concurrently, the two technologies were perhaps the most socially transformative of the last fin-de-siecle era. Both generated technological wonder in the popular imagination, realigned notions of time and space, and had "golden ages" that lasted into the 1950s. Cinema and aviation have also shared striking entanglements with nationalism, and this connection is the subject of Michael Paris' book. Paris, a senior lecturer in history at the University of Central Lancashire, attempts to show how cinema has both reinforced and helped shape popular thinking about aviation as the sine qua non ofnational technological achievement and a means ofmass destruction. To make his point, Paris offers succinct, but sometimes far too brief, thematic summaries of more than 500 aviation films, from the 1901 A la Conquête de l'Air to the Reaganite entertainments of the 1980s. This survey of almost a century of cinematic aviation focuses on Hollywood and British cinema, but Paris occasionally adduces Soviet, German, Italian, and Japanese film productions. To make some of his points, the author also uses the limited secondary literature on the subject, though—surprisingly—he omits some recent relevant work on war films by Jeanine Basinger and Thomas Doherty. At a very general level Paris' argument that aviation, cinema, and nationalism have been intertwined in some way from the start seems reasonable. But having offered this insight, he approaches the topic in a surprisingly naive and narrow way. A chronological survey begins with the trick films that explored the novelty of aviation, which filmmakers eventually situated in either comedie or dramatic formats. By about 1909 an additional style and content had emerged, as aviation became embedded in narrative and the narratives served both to acclimate the public to aviation as a common societal feature and to address the potential destructiveness ofaviation as a way ofbringing war to population centers from the air. Fear of aerial destruction became a partial reality with World War I, but aviation films helped to boost morale by celebrating the accomplishments ofa new national and cinematic hero, the air fighter; by displaying the breakthroughs of aviation technology; and by linking aviation to the fighting spirit of the nation. Wartime mythmaking and propaganda strengthened the ties between cinema, aviation, and nationalism , further marginalizing an earlier internationalist perspective on aviation and providing images and themes for the airwar films of the 1920s and 30s. The stories of duty, sacrifice, and technological accomplishment in the films of the interwar years served national propaganda purposes well during a time of drift and depression. For subsequent decades Paris describes some general shifts in aviation film content diat relate to the onset of World War II and to the Cold War peace, but he breaks little new analytical ground. For example, he provides a few generic descriptions of civil aviation films, but then attaches to this subgroup offilms his familiar list of the nationalist features of the war film—duty, risk, discipline, heroism—thus reducing civil aviation movies to little more than nationalist - article continues page 99 Vol . 26, No. 1-4, 1996 | 97 Regular Feature | Book Reviews demonstrates, the Times consistently offered a comprehensive , and accurate reportage over these four days, increasing its readership in die process; its edition ofApril 19, centering on exclusive (if sneakily obtained) interviews with the Titanic s and Carpathia's wireless operators, did much to establish the national and international reputation not only of the Times but ofNew York journalism in general. In the last third of the book, Heyer turns from Titanic as news to Titanic as metaphor, from media which provided information about the disaster to media that has attempted to plumb the meaning of the event. He provides a comprehensive summary of significant works in a variety of media —poetry, popular novels...