America First: Naming the Nation in US Film
2008; Oxford University Press; Volume: 49; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/screen/hjn043
ISSN1460-2474
Autores Tópico(s)French Historical and Cultural Studies
ResumoThe relationship between American filmmaking and broader American culture has been the subject of scrutiny since the medium's commercial diffusion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Mandy Merck's edited collection is a novel intervention in this field, examining a practice almost as old – that is, the branding of particular American films through their titles. The history of the American film industry's engagement with notions of ‘Americanness’ is examined through a series of essays that focus on films ranging from 1917's The Little American (Cecil B. DeMille) to American Splendor (Shari Springer Burman and Robert Pulcini, 2003). (In the introduction, Merck delves further back into the catalogue of hyperbolically ‘American’ products to include early travelogues such as the 1903 Niagara film, American Falls from the Canadian Side [pp. 4–5]). One's initial reaction might be to wonder at the idiosyncrasy of this survey of American identity as presented by the nation's movies. For example, of the fourteen films covered, only one is a Western (George B. Seitz's 1925 The Vanishing American), the genre that, historically speaking, most forcefully and consistently declared its Americanness, though not necessarily in its titles. However, America First: Naming the Nation in US Film achieves a coherent arc of historical analysis, particularly impressive is as it takes the form of an edited collection, a format that is in its makeup inherently (though often rewardingly) disparate. This historical analysis is rewarding in relation to two main strands: Hollywood's presentation of national identity at times of war, and issues of race, particularly with regard to the definition of a normatively white American identity in relation to its internally ‘other’ ethnic identities.1
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