Citizen Spielberg

4. "The World Has Taken a Turn for the Surreal": Spielberg's World War II Combat Films

4 “The World Has Taken a Turn for the Surreal”: Spielberg’s World War II Combat Films The World War II Combat Film The films discussed in this chapter—1941 (1979),Empire of the Sun (1987),and Saving Private Ryan (1998)—all conform to Kathryn Kane’s basic definition of the World War II combat film genre as encompassing movies set during the Second World War that focus on “uniformed American soldiers fighting uniformed enemy soldiers on foreign soil” (1). Because Spielberg’s other films situated during this era,Schindler’s List and the Indiana Jones trilogy,use combat between uniformed soldiers only as a backdrop, I have placed them in other chapters.The three films considered here all contain uniformed German or Japanese military personnel. 1941 confronts them humorously, with a mixture of servicemen and civilians; Empire of the Sun shows the awe and fear of noncombatant prisoners of war; and Saving Private Ryan tells its story with equally matched squads of servicemen.To grasp how Spielberg’s combat movies incorporate conventional tropes and deviate from traditional World War II movies—those made during the conflict itself and those constructed over the subsequent decades—it is useful to establish the boundaries and borders of this genre, a important category of production, reception, and exhibition that has received relatively little scholarly attention. As highlighted repeatedly in books by Kane,Jeanine Basinger,and Thomas Doherty,World War II marked a significant turning point in how the Hollywood film industry conceived of itself and, even more importantly, how the general public responded to the studios’ products. As Doherty aptly notes, “The nature of the contract between Hollywood and American culture was world war ii combat films · 181 rewritten during 1941–1945” (4).Prior to that time,sophisticated discussions of movies beyond their entertainment and commercial values surfaced only in limited ways, even though eruptions of moral outrage from various quarters regularly shook the industry.Moving pictures had been mostly consigned to the lower rungs of the arts ladder and championed by only a few lively intellectuals, such as Vachel Lindsay. This benign neglect disappeared once the Hollywood studios eagerly enlisted in the war effort. Manufacturing countless reels of stridently ideological footage, the well-oiled and prolific dream factories assembled fictional and documentary productions to inspire the troops abroad and hearten the folks waiting for them at home. As Gen. George Marshall astutely noted, “‘The war had seen the development of two new weapons: the airplane and the motion picture’” (qtd. in Doherty 266). The war also permanently altered the status of the Hollywood cinema and, by extension, the role that the mass media played in American culture. As a result of its activity from 1941 to 1945, “the motion picture industry became the preeminent transmitter of wartime policy and a lighting rod for public discourse” (Doherty 5). The significance of film’s power to engage and motivate audiences became increasingly evident to the government, the American public, and moviemakers themselves during the turbulent and traumatic war years, causing a pronounced shift in the perceived social role of filmmaking.No longer conceptualized as merely innocent entertainment, films often became hotly contested sites of cultural confrontation between various political forces and pressure groups philosophically at odds with each other. For example, the emerging worldviews that first drove the youth rebellion of the 1960s and 1970s and the conservative counterreaction of the 1980s found their most memorable distillations in the imagery of American films. As Doherty insightfully observes about the war films of the 1940s, “American culture was more satisfyingly nourished by popular entertainment than state propaganda” (85), a statement that remains as true for wars today as it was during the years of fighting the Axis powers. If World War II had not occurred, Hollywood would probably have invented it: “More than any other war—more than any other twentiethcentury American experience—it was motion-picture friendly” (Doherty 271).The subject matter and the visual opportunities it offered were perfectly suited for the movies.As Basinger puts it,the fighting during this time “seems to be the combat that speaks to the American soul” (World War II 81). How could it not? The pictures of men from across the United States slogging their way through jungles on remote Pacific Islands and trudging through the wartorn cities of Europe, fighting enemies who threatened American security, 182 . citizen spielberg could not help but mesmerize...