Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

KIDDING THE KAISER

2006; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 4; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17460650601002446

1746-0662

David Huxley,

Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies

Abstract Britain produced a large number of largely neglected propoganda animations during the First World War. Although often crude in technique they combined lively satire with an illustrative tradition in the work of practicioners such as Lancelot Speed and Dudley Buxton. Many had more in common with the broad humorous milieu of the comic strip and postcard than the official propoganda of the time which attempted to demonise the 'evil hun'. In their portrayal of the Kaiser, in particular, these animations demonstrated the power of ridicule in the propoganda war. Notes 1. McCay regarded himself as the inventor of the animated cartoon, although this was not strictly the case. His career as a comic strip artist, editorial cartoonist and animator is detailed in Cannemaker, J. (1987) Winsor McCay: His Life and Art, Abbeville Press, New York. 2. Jeavons, C. (1974) A Pictorial History of the War Film, Hamlyn, London, p. 25. 3. Lutz, E.G. (1920) Animated Cartoons: How They are Made, Their Origin and Development, Charles Scribners, New York, p. 93. 4. Quoted in Crafton, D. (1990) Emile Cohl, Caricature and Film, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, p. 76. 5. This description is from a review of Thomas Sidney Cooper's 1847 painting The Defeat of Kellerman's Cuirassiers and Carabineers, quoted in Hichberger, J. (1988) Images of the Army: The Military in British Art, 1815–1914, Manchester University Press, Manchester. 6. The War Illustrated, November 1914, p. 321. 7. Although a majority of atrocity stories were manufactured or the result of wild exaggeration, their history is complex and is examined in Horne, J. and Kramer, A. (2001) German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. 8. Laffin, J. (1988) World War I in Postcards, Alan Sutton, Gloucester, p. 60. 9. Laffin, World War 1 in Postcards, p. 58. 10. In fact the more direct inspiration for the science fiction element of the cartoon may have been Edger Rice Burroughs' 'At the Earth's Core', published in All Story magazine in April 1914. The shape of the vessels in The U Tube is also similar to the projectile in Georges Melies' famous film adaptation of Jules Verne's A Trip to the Moon of 1902. 11. Haste, C. (1977) Keep the Home Fires Burning, Allen Lane, London, p. 46. 12. Chaplin was such a famous and popular figure that his image may well have been used without permission. He appeared, more officially, in the British comic The Funny Wonder from 7 August 1915 onwards, and in American animation by Otto Messmer for the Sullivan studio in 1916, as well as some other (probably unauthorized) American cartoons. Tchernigov, a town in the Ukraine, may well have been in the news due to the Ukraine gaining independence from Russia in 1918. 13. Smoodin, E. (1993) Animating Culture: Hollywood Cartoons of the Sound Era, Roundhouse, Oxford, p. 72. 14. Quoted in Taylor, P.M. (1999) British Democracy in the Twentieth Century: Selling Democracy, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, p. 18. 15. Smoodin, Animating Culture, p. 81. 16. Doob, L.W. (1935) Propaganda: Its Psychology and Technique, Holt & Co., New York, p. 3. 17. Debate continues about the extent to which newsreel footage was faked during the First World War, but it was certainly the case that the vast majority of 'combat' films consisted of 'reconstructions'. 18. Bioscope, 1 July 1915, p. 103. 19. Darracott, J. (1974) The First World War in Posters, Dover, New York, p. ix. 20. Thomson, O. (1977) Mass Persuasion in History: An Historical Analysis of the Development of Propaganda Techniques, Paul Harris, Edinburgh, p. 22.