WAR

LAW, POLITICS AND POPULAR CULTURE 

generally

LAW AND POLITICS IN POPULAR CULTURE: COMICS AND CARTOONS

LAW, POLITICS AND POPULAR CULTURE: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE SEXES

CIVIL RIGHTS

WAR

The legality of war has become a common topic of discussion in film. From accounts of "just wars" against heretics, invaders, or supposed oppressors, to war justified in terms of humanitarian rhetoric, the choice to fight with weapons instead of words is always controversial. Some of the wars which have occasioned the most heated discussion both in popular discourse  and in scholarly writing include the U.S. Revolutionary War (1776-1783), the U. S. Civil War (1861-1865)(also called the War Between the States), the Spanish-American War (1898), the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), World War II (1939-1945) and the American intervention in Vietnam (1961-1975). Equally, many anti-war films focus on the effects of real and imagined wars (nuclear holocausts for example) and on the effects of such wars on the people left at home (Medium Cool, Born on the Fourth of July, Coming Home, The Best Years of Our Lives, Mrs. Miniver).

Another topic of interest is the responsibility of those who make war. Judgment at Nuremberg, Prisoners of the Sun, Death and the Maiden, and other films explore the ethical and moral culpability of those, particularly those in charge of the legal system, who make or justify war.

Websites

• Catch 22

• The Civil War Website. See also materials on Andersonville.

• Film Studies and the Spanish American War

• Other Films and Videos on the Spanish Civil War

• The Spanish-American War in Motion Pictures (from the Library of Congress)

• A Guide to the Good War (from the Archives of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin)

• The Vietnam War in Film

• The Vietnam War on Film

• Responses to War Home Page; War and Film (from the University of Adelaide)

• War Film

• War, Peace, and Security Guide: World War II

• World War I Films: Sources

• Post-War Australian Film

 Bibliography

• American Science Fiction and the Cold War: Literature and Film (David Seed, ed.; 1999).

• Chambers, John Whiteclay Chambers II and David Culbert, World War II, Film and History (1996).

• Dick, Bernard F, Star-Spangled Screen: The American World War II Film (1996).

• Fisher, John, The Film of War

• Hart, David, War Film Bibliography (web publication).

• The War in Vietnam and the Movies (From the University of California, Berkeley, Libraries)

ARTICLES

Tal, Kalí, The Self-Reflexive War: War Looking at Film Looking at War

CIVIL RIGHTS

Nearly all civil rights issues have been examined in popular culture and literature. Among the topics are the history of segregation and  integration in the United States, native and aboriginal rights around the world, and the right of privacy, right to counsel, right to a fair trial and capital punishment.

WEBSITES

A Recaptured Past: The 1953 Baton Rouge Bus Boycott

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bracey, Earnest N., American Popular Culture and the Politics of Race in Dr. Seuss' The Sneetches, 10(2) Popular Culture Review 131-137 (August 1999).

Chin, Timothy S., 'Bullers' and 'Battymen': Contesting Homophobia in Black Popular Culture and Contemporary Caribbean Literature, 20(1) Callaloo 127-141 (Winter 1997).

Geist, Christopher D., and Angela M. S. Nelson, From the Plantation to Bel-Air: A Brief History Black Stereotypes, in Popular Culture: An Introductory Text 262-276 (Jack Nachbar and Kevin Lause eds.; 1992).

Nesteby, James Ronald, The Tarzan Series of Edgar Rice Burroughs: Lost Races and Racism in American Popular Culture (Dissertation, –).

Nies, Betsy Lee, Eugenic Fantasies: Racial Ideology in the Literature and Popular Culture of the 1920s (Dissertation, University of Florida, 1998).