Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

Review of: Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. Slotkin, Richard.

https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=9798&context=annals-of-iowa

Gunfighter Nation: the Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America

The three Allied powers that occupied West Germany from 1945 to 1955 subjected the feature film legacy of the Third Reich to a process of denazification The origins and implementation of this project are examined here along chronological and comparative lines Part One looks at British and American dealings with Third Reich feature films until 1945 It explores whether general suggestions of ill-prepared occupation plans apply here; what role the wartime “reeducation” debate played in Anglo-American planning efforts; and to what extent British and American plans, partly informed by the perspectives of emigres such as Siegfried Kracauer and Heinrich Fraenkel, confirmed the notion of a dichotomy between a few “political” Nazi features and a large group of “unpolitical” Third Reich features Part Two compares Western Military Governments’ policies from 1945 to 1949: legislation and official regulations; determination of ownership rights to seized films; censorship policies; destruction or shipment abroad of banned films; and the circulation of approved films, often in somewhat cut versions The September 1949 lists of hundreds of cut and banned German feature films are shown to form a legacy of years of Allied purging efforts Part Three concentrates on the Allied High Commission period (1949-1955), when the Western Allies supervised a continuing process of denazification of Third Reich feature film stock Representatives of the former UFI/UFA and other film industry members, many of whom seemed to hold on to the notion of a largely “unpolitical” Third Reich cinema, now aimed for a removal of individual features from the list of forbidden feature films Submissions to and approvals by the semi-official German FSK were often based on drastic cuts The AHC was sometimes internally divided (Harlan, Titanic), but accepted most of the FSK approvals Still, several hundred features remained banned

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The Western Allied project to denazify Third Reich feature film stock

Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America

In the two decades following its demise, the GDR—in both historical and popular representation—was largely depicted as an isolated, autarchic entity. A recent wave of research into the global Cold War has begun to challenge this assertion, highlighting the GDR’s links to the extra-European world. Such perspectives nevertheless retain some of the older tropes of the isolationist narrative, viewing the GDR’s engagement with these countries through the narrow lens of a search for legitimacy among its own population. This thesis seeks to expand the scope, viewing the GDR’s relations with what was viewed as a “proto-socialist” world in Africa, Asia and Latin America not a simplistic, historically-fixed policy directed toward a domestic audience, but rather as part of an active political project to reshape global relations. GDR elites viewed their state as fundamentally unviable without international integration: once the project for a united Germany was abandoned in the 1960s, the GDR’s global ambitions took on paramount importance. Rather than an attempt to build legitimacy, this turn was rather imagined through the lens of sovereignty; legitimacy was not a concept in GDR elite’s political arsenal, but they did worry about their nation’s sovereignty, and sought to buttress it through engagement with the proto-socialist world. This thesis examines such engagement from five different vantage-points: looking at how the ideological basis for the project was constructed by foreign policy elites; how the GDR sought to create foreign adherents to the project through educational exchange; how the proto-socialist world—specifically Cuba—became a site for socialist leisure; how citizens engaged with domestic solidarity campaigns which sought to turn them into active participants in the project; and how the proto-socialist world was depicted on television. In doing so, it will show how early hopes for a global socialist world in the 1960s metamorphized as the Cold War progressed, fragmenting into an archipelagic network of increasingly isolated states by the 1980s.

Global GDR? Sovereignty, Legitimacy and Decolonization in the German Democratic Republic, 1960—1989

Danish television is a phenomenon. Notwithstanding the fact that the country stands for one of Europe’s smallest television markets, numerous Danish series have lately met with critical acclaim. Da...

Writing and producing television drama in Denmark. From the Kingdom to the killing

Abstract The “golden age” of Scandinavian television has often been associated with Nordic Noir crime dramas, yet many of the acclaimed serials also engage with geopolitical themes such as migration, cross-border crime, military conflicts, and global terrorism. In this article, we examine the ways in which Nordic Noir contributes to discourses on such topics. We look specifically at the dramas Okkupert [Occupied] (NRK, 2015–), Ørnen [The Eagle] (DR, 2004–2006), Nobel – fred for enhver pris [Nobel – Peace at any Cost] (NRK, 2016), and Kriger [Warrior] (Netflix, 2018–) as they explore potential threats to Scandinavian society and the Nordic welfare state through the distinct figure of the vigilante veteran. Returning soldiers, as we argue, are particularly productive of geopolitics because they are shown to be adept (even well suited) to dealing with the geopolitical uncanny. They, in fact, problematise the positive Scandinavian self-image. While Scandinavian society, as can be inferred from the dramas, has become hypocritical and complacent owing to a very high standard of living, the veterans are the only people adept at responding to threats and crises.

/pdf/the-geopolitics-of-nordic-noir-representations-of-current-23wkm0z6fm.pdf

The Geopolitics of Nordic Noir: Representations of current threats and vigilantes in contemporary Danish and Norwegian serial drama

In the Third Reich, theoretical discourse was rarely presented out of genuine epistemological interest. It was rather linked to national objectives in the service of National Socialism. The same can be said about the realm of film: theoretical engagement with cinema (at the time often referred to as film ‘dramaturgy’) was situated at the crossroads of art, technology, ideology and economy. This article investigates how it was especially the duality between profit and propaganda that informed film theory and criticism during the Nazi years in Germany. In so doing, it goes beyond the role of Goebbels and his Propaganda Ministry by drawing attention to a new generation of authors who fundamentally shaped discourses on film. Our investigation in particular concentrates on the writings by Hans Traub, Gunter Groll, Bruno Rehlinger, Fritz Hippler, Peter von Werder, Leonhard Furst, Wolfgang Liebeneiner, Frank Maraun and Hans Weidemann. It was not only through monographs or articles in high-profile trade journals ...

Third Reich Cinema and Film Theory

Der deutsche Musikfilm. Archäologie eines Genres 1914–1945

Besides other public intellectuals, no less a person than Bertolt Brecht was very enthusiastic about wireless broadcasting. In his 1932 speech ‘Radio as an Apparatus of Communication’, he considere...

Tobias Hochscherf

Papers

Writing and producing television drama in Denmark. From the Kingdom to the killing

The Geopolitics of Nordic Noir: Representations of current threats and vigilantes in contemporary Danish and Norwegian serial drama

Third Reich Cinema and Film Theory

Der deutsche Musikfilm. Archäologie eines Genres 1914–1945

Radio Beyond Boundaries: An Introduction