War and Its Effect on Pop Culture
War has a great impact on popular culture within a society and in fact, infiltrates every aspect of pop culture including music, television, film, and even video games that children play. This has been highly evidenced during the present ongoing war in Iraq which culminated following the tragic events of September 11, 2001 however; the impact of war on popular culture can be traced back to World War I in the United States and even further in world history.The work of Betty Warner Sheinbaum entitled: "Warner's War: Politics, Pop Culture & Propaganda in Wartime Hollywood (2002) states that Hollywood "believes in America as firmly as any community or any business believes in it..." (2002) Sheinbaum states a belief that Hollywood has "an ever-present duty to educate, stimulate and demonstrate the fundamentals of free government, free speech, religious tolerance, freedom of press, freedom of assembly and the greatest possible happiness for the greatest possible number." (2002) Sheinbaum states her father held that the screen "should attempt to explain the why and wherefore of the current struggle and not repeat on formula proved profitable. There are forces in this land who would like people
" (Russell, 1999) Swartz relates that country music is an aspect of popular culture that tends to "be more patriotic. To be at war is to be interconnected with the enemy. " (Barkawi, 2004) War is also stated to be "interactive. Strangelove" because it captured everybody's imagination of its humor along with its expressing the very real possibility of nuclear annihilation. That's true of war and peace, scandal. " (ABC News, 2005) The work of Richard Kolb entitled: "Portraying Contemporary War Vets in Popular Culture" states that veterans "have seen newspapers, films and television shows [which] portray them as victims and villains, but seldom as victors on the battlefield. OTHER POP CULTURE EFFECTS OF WAR Video games also exhibit wartime pop culture characteristics and for example the Xbox 360 game of simulated combat "Frontlines: Fuel of War" "takes players into a global war over oil. DRIVERS OF MEDIA PORTRAYAL OF WARAnne Collins Smith, a professor of philosophy at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania states that movies concerning war are lucrative and that this is the reason for the re-emergence of the portrayal of World War II in the media. " (Russell, 1999) The impact of this movie including the creation of a "sensation. If there is one denominator common to all the products of the purveyors of popular culture, it is the absence of battlefield courage. " which transforms war "in diverse ways, in a dialectic between war and society. " (Kolb, 2006) According to Kolb "Heroism in war is anathema to the politically correct mindset. These were based on court records and thereby these held enough basis in facts to avoid being charged with propaganda.
Common topics in this essay:
Globalization Studies,
Wartime Hollywood,
SUMMARY CONCLUSION,
Revolutionary Napoleonic,
Soviet Union,
INTRODUCTION War,
Values American,
War II,
Kolb Heroism,
World War,
pop culture,
popular culture,
world war,
music television,
video games,
world war ii,
war ii,
social context,
film video,
war iraq,
television film,
aspect pop culture,
film video games,
television film video,
music television film,
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