Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Foreign Domestics: The Filipino 'Homefront' in World War II Hollywood

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 8; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1179/147757010x12658885872251

1741-2676

Camilla Fojas,

Philippine History and Culture

AbstractIn Hollywood film and media culture of World War II, the Philippines acted as a 'homefront' or a space of identification through the presence of an 'American way of life'. World War II Hollywood films set in the Philippines — Texas to Bataan (1942), Corregidor (1943), Bataan (1943), They Were Expendable (1945) and Back to Bataan (1945) — establish a dynamic of foreign domesticity by grafting domestic signifiers onto the foreign space of the Philippines and across Filipino bodies; particularly through the trope of US heroism as signified by General MacArthur, references to the Alamo and the genre of the Western, and domestic cultural objects and practices. These films served related purposes: they recruited a public into a foreign war, created a recognizable war zone 'homefront', and consolidated the image and ideology of control over the formerly 'insurgent' colony.Keywords: WORLD WAR IIPHILIPPINESFILIPINOSIMPERIALISMHOLLYWOODOFFICE OF WAR INFORMATION