{"title":"‘Not suitable for exhibition’: Cinema Censorship and International Intervention in Argentina, 1939–1945","authors":"C. G. Mizala","doi":"10.1080/17526272.2021.1967552","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17526272.2021.1967552","url":null,"abstract":"During the Second World War, Buenos Aires’s Government censored a number of films that they viewed as potentially having a detrimental effect on the political outlooks of its people of Buenos Aires. These bans, which were later extended to the whole nation, were due to the intervention of international and local politicians and diplomats in an attempt to influence the citizens' opinion of the Axis powers. Films such as Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939) and The Great Dictator (1940) were only screened once the war was over. Through specialized cinema magazines published in Buenos Aires, this article problematizes the different geographical scales in which censorship took place in Argentina during the Second World War. Moreover, it discusses the reasoning and discourses of culture and morality as the main ideas behind the censorship of these films in Buenos Aires, and Argentina more generally.","PeriodicalId":42946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of War & Culture Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73253650","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Some British Musical Responses to the Spanish Civil War","authors":"K. Bowan","doi":"10.1080/17526272.2021.1950964","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17526272.2021.1950964","url":null,"abstract":"When writing on the Spanish Civil War for the Guardian in 2007, Eric Hobsbawm remembered it was the artists, writers and poets who documented it by means of ‘the pen, the brush and the camera’. Absent in Hobsbawm’s recollections is any mention of music or musical performance. Taking Alan Bush’s 1939 Popular Front spectacle, Festival of Music for the People as a point of departure, this article explores some of the myriad musical responses to the Spanish Civil War, including a commission for the young Benjamin Britten, Frida Stewart’s work with the Basque refugee children’s choirs and the activism of the celebrity singer Paul Robeson. These responses involved music in fundamentally different ways, from the creation of new art music for a political cause to the use of music in social action. Taken together they provide a glimpse of Britain’s diverse and multifaceted musical response to the question of Spain.","PeriodicalId":42946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of War & Culture Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83154156","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Victoire de la vie and L’Espagne vivra by Henri Cartier-Bresson: Two Different Musical Strategies at the Service of Republican Propaganda","authors":"J. Rossi","doi":"10.1080/17526272.2021.1950962","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17526272.2021.1950962","url":null,"abstract":"From 1936 to 1939, the Spanish Civil War gave several film directors the opportunity to stand side by side with Republican soldiers by filming them in combat. Henri Cartier-Bresson first movie Victoire de la vie (Victory of Life, 1937), then, one year later, as the nationalist side was gaining ground, L’Espagne vivra (Spain shall live, 1938). The music for Cartier Bressons’s two films follows two contrasting strategies: for Victoire de la vie, French composer Charles Kœchlin composed an original soundtrack in a relatively homogeneous style, whereas in L’Espagne vivra, Louis Saguer made use of a compilation of pre-existing symphonic pieces. This article intends to analyse how these two musical approaches align themselves with the contrasting but complementary analyses of the Spanish Civil War provided by Cartier-Bresson's two films.","PeriodicalId":42946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of War & Culture Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86272957","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Ol’ Man River’ at the Front: Paul Robeson, Music, and Blackness in Republican Spain","authors":"Carol A. Hess","doi":"10.1080/17526272.2021.1950957","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17526272.2021.1950957","url":null,"abstract":"Several scholars have discussed the impact of the Spanish Civil War on the Black singer, actor, and activist Paul Robeson, including his brief 1938 tour of Republican Spain. Yet none has considered the tour in musical terms, nor taken into account Spanish reaction. Drawing on coverage in the Republican press, along with recent work on vocality and identity, I argue that the tour challenged prior notions of blackness in Spain. Spanish journalists addressed Robeson’s singing from the standpoint of the ‘suspect whiteness of Spain’ (to borrow Fra-Molinero’s apt description) while Robeson himself linked blackness and flamenco and reformulated the ‘sorrow song,’ as W. E. B. Du Bois called the spiritual. I also analyse Robeson’s performances of ‘Ol’ Man River’ from the musical Show Boat in terms of Republic ideology. In sum, Robeson challenged Franco’s vision of ‘blood purity’ (limpieza de sangre) while calling for racial justice worldwide.","PeriodicalId":42946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of War & Culture Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91304940","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Transnational Networks of Communist Musical Propaganda in the Spanish Civil War","authors":"Diego Alonso","doi":"10.1080/17526272.2021.1950963","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17526272.2021.1950963","url":null,"abstract":"A unique figure within Spanish music circles of the 1930s, the Berlin-born Jewish musicologist Otto Mayer-Serra was a central figure in a transnational network of communist musicians actively engaging with musical propaganda in support of the Republic during the Spanish civil war. Hanns Eisler, Ernst H. Meyer, Ernst Busch, Grigori Schneerson, Ferencz Szabó and several members of the Union of Soviet Composers belonged to this network. The article’s first section examines Mayer-Serra’s attempts to introduce in Spain a number of propagandistic musical practices that had been central in the communist splinter group of the German Workers’ Music Movement before 1933. In the second section I discuss Mayer-Serra’s intensive promotion in wartime Spain of the genre of overtly propagandistic ‘battle songs’ composed by members of this network. These practices and repertoires are also studied as part of the powerful movement of Catalan nationalism in 1930s Spain.","PeriodicalId":42946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of War & Culture Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74358315","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Spanish War as Dress Rehearsal for Paul Robeson’s Political Song","authors":"Grant Olwage","doi":"10.1080/17526272.2021.1950956","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17526272.2021.1950956","url":null,"abstract":"During the time Paul Robeson lived in Britain he became a global star: a singer, film and stage actor, and in due course a political activist. It is to this time that scholars attribute his political awakening, which entailed, a broadening of his outlook to encompass an internationalist perspective. The Spanish Civil War galvanized the singer to action. His involvement in the war, which included regular appearances at rallies in Britain and singing to the troops in Spain in early 1938, was, by the singer’s own estimation, a turning point in his life, and a catalyst for the singer’s turn to activism. The claim I make is that Robeson’s internationalist politics was not only expressed in song but emerged through it. I identify several strands to Robeson’s musical internationalism, showing how the field of war provided a platform for the song strands to coalesce into a meaningful statement.","PeriodicalId":42946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of War & Culture Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86436811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Shostakovich's Music for Salute, Spain! Discoveries and Perspectives","authors":"G. Kopytova","doi":"10.1080/17526272.2021.1950965","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17526272.2021.1950965","url":null,"abstract":"In this article I examine the theatre production of Salute, Spain! by A. Afinogenov, in Leningrad, 1936, with music by Shostakovich. Afinogenov's heroic and romantic piece was a response to the struggle of the Spanish people against fascism, and was perceived by the ideologues of Soviet culture as a gift to the Extraordinary VIII All-Union Congress of Soviets of the USSR, which approved the new (‘Stalin’) constitution. I show how the play was then removed for ideological reasons in connection with the persecution of Afinogenov and his exclusion from the Party. Inspired by the ideological attitudes of the political system, this work about the opposition of the Spanish people to fascism was banned and never returned to the stage. Finally, I examine the fate of Shostakovich's musical score, returned to him from the Drama Theater upon his request in 1964, and suggest that his revived interest in his music, written 30 years earlier, coincided with a wave of information in the Soviet press about political events in Spain in the mid-1960s.","PeriodicalId":42946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of War & Culture Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79564894","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Memorializing RAF Bomber Command in the United Kingdom","authors":"H. Hughes","doi":"10.1080/17526272.2021.1938840","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17526272.2021.1938840","url":null,"abstract":"This article traces the ways in which RAF Bomber Command has been memorialized in the UK since the 1940s, focusing on those who have organized memorials and associated commemorations. Distinct phases can be identified. Until the 1970s, the Command was accorded a prominent role in official memorial and ceremonial activities. Veterans’ activities reflected this acknowledgement. From the 1980s, in the face of debates about the morality of area bombing of German cities, however, veterans’ organizations and families began to articulate the view that Bomber Command’s wartime contribution had been overlooked. In consequence, they embarked upon activities to revise official memory. This included distinctive forms of memorial activity on the part of veterans and the postmemory generation, including the widespread appearance of ‘small memorials’ and, in the twenty-first century, two large-scale memorial sites, in London and in Lincoln.","PeriodicalId":42946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of War & Culture Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74181626","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Football Remembers’ — the Collective Memory of Football in the Spectacle of British Military Commemoration","authors":"Daniel Fitzpatrick","doi":"10.1080/17526272.2021.1930701","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17526272.2021.1930701","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines two major rituals of contemporary national life in the UK: association football and military commemoration. It explores the ways in which remembering is enacted and performed within UK football and how these processes are related to issues of power, agency and identity in Britain today. Employing the concepts of collective memory and spectacle, this article argues that ‘memory entrepreneurs’ have sought to embed football as ‘site of memory’ in the performance of military commemoration. It concludes that this has contributed to the transformation of military commemoration, from a ritual that is observed to a spectacle that is consumed. This paper thus contributes to emergent debates on the militarization of civilian space, the shifting nature of civil–military relations in the twenty-first century, and the role of military remembrance in the reproduction of Britishness.","PeriodicalId":42946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of War & Culture Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80343258","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Before Babylift: Female Photojournalists and Vietnamese-American ‘Orphans’ in American Print-media, 1971–1973","authors":"Georgia Vesma","doi":"10.1080/17526272.2021.1928384","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17526272.2021.1928384","url":null,"abstract":"President Ford’s announcement of ‘Operation Babylift’, a plan to airlift over 2,000 Vietnamese ‘orphans’ from South Vietnam to the United States in March 1975, prompted a wave of interest in adoption of Vietnamese children by American families. This was the culmination of years of growing interest in adopting Vietnamese ‘orphans’. Contemporary newspaper reports credited television and photographs with motivating potential adopters. Adding to scholarship which explores how photographs create discourses of ‘rescue’ and ‘responsibility’ in humanitarian contexts, this article examines how arguments for transnational adoption as a solution to Vietnam’s ‘orphan problem’ developed in the years leading up to Babylift. It notes stark differences in depictions of white-Amerasian and black-Amerasian children in keeping with racial discourses of early 1970s America. The work of female journalists in Vietnam has historically been marginalized; this article redresses this, arguing that American women photographers offered a specific perspective on the ‘orphan problem’.","PeriodicalId":42946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of War & Culture Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85329408","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}