Robert Burgoyne. Film Nation. Minneapolis: University of Press, 1997. ix + 137 pp. $39.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8166-2070-8.

Reviewed by Ron Briley

Published on H-Film (March, 1999)

In Film Nation Robert Burgoyne, professor of Burgoyne's essay on Glory emphasizes the English and flm studies at Wayne State Universi‐ flm's politics of racial identity. The Black soldiers ty, argues that popular flm plays a crucial role in of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment are confront‐ formulating the imagined community of the na‐ ed with visions of identity from above (nation- tion state. According to Burgoyne, Holly-wood state) and identity from below (racial and ethnic), flmmakers, along with consensus historians, are and critics of Edward Zwick's flm assert that in responsible for articulating the national narrative the blaze of glory and death at Fort Wagner, of American progress. However, as many contem‐ which concludes the flm, a new myth of national porary historians observe, this narrative tends to consensus regarding racial integration and marginalize many citizens along the fault lines of progress is forged. However, Burgoyne interprets race, gender, and social class. the text as ambiguous, placing slavery and race at In an analysis of fve selected titles from the its center, and from the perspective of a racially- 1980's and early 1990's--Glory, Thunderheart, conscious present, "... the national narrative is Born on the Fourth of July, JFK, and Forest Gump-- hauntingly evoked not as a triumphant story of Burgoyne credits recent Hollywood directors, like social progress, but as a collective narrative of so‐ , with providing a counternarrative of cial loss" (p. 37). ethnic, racial, and gender struggles to create a The master story of American progress is also more inclusive national story. Using the tradition‐ called into question by Michael Apted's Thunder‐ al genre of the Western, war flm, and the melo‐ heart, which focuses upon the 1890 and 1973 drama, the author contends the texts selected for Wounded Knee resistance by the Sioux nation to analysis ofer a "... model of civic pluralism that American cultural and territorial imperialism. holds a nation should be a home to all, and race, Burgoyne praises the picture for its positive depic‐ color, religion, and creed should be no bar to be‐ tion of the Sioux people and their alternative val‐ longing" (p. 11). ue system of time and place, but the author laments that Thunderheart provides this appreci‐ H-Net Reviews ation through the traditional vehicle of the West‐ Burgoyne's thesis that flm continues to play a sig‐ ern genre, supporting war myths that render the nifcant role in constructs of national identity. Native Americans more acceptable to the domi‐ Grounded in the language of postmodernism nant culture. and deconstructionism, Burgoyne's short text is a In his most complex essay, Burgoyne employs difcult, but rewarding, read. While his interpre‐ the Freudian concept of the rescue motif to argue tations are sometimes ambiguous and may pro‐ that Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July al‐ vide more questions than answers, Burgoyne's lows hero Ron Kovic () to serve as the Film Nation takes popular flm seriously, and, to savior of the nation, " ... restoring the myth of the paraphrase Jacques Barzun's oft-quoted comment nuclear family as an emblem of promised com‐ regarding baseball, those who seek to understand munity" (p. 59). Burgoyne argues that Born on the America must frst study Hollywood and its role Fourth of July may be best understood as a melo‐ in developing American consciousness and identi‐ drama in which the male protagonist, following ty. Robert Burgoyne's provocative book is an im‐ Vietnam and paralysis from a war wound, recog‐ portant contribution to that historical process. nizes the gap between the reality and promise of This review is copyrighted by Film & History: the American dream. The nation, symbolized as a An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Televi‐ woman, is corrupted by competition and commer‐ sion Studies and the Historians Film Committee, cialism, but the hero will provide redemption by http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~flmhis/. It may be re‐ creating a new cultural, political, and sexual or‐ produced electronically for educational or schol‐ der fulflling the nation's promise and including arly use. The Film & History reserves print rights all of America's citizens. Burgoyne's reading of and permissions. (Contact: P.C.Rollins at the fol‐ Stone's JFK produces a similar sense of ambiguity. lowing electronic address: [email protected]). The nonnarrative structure of the flm refects modernist perceptions that historical truth is rela‐ tive and notions of an imagined federal communi‐ ty are illusionary, yet in Jim Garrison's (Kevin Costner) eforts to uncover the mystery of Kennedy's assassination there is a quest to recon‐ fgure the national myths and recover a sense of unisonance. In his fnal essay, Burgoyne tackles the im‐ mensely popular Forrest Gump, describing the flm text as providing prosthetic memory, an ef‐ fort to divorce sensual memory from historical context. Thus, Burgoyne reads Forrest Gump as a conservative text in which emotional understand‐ ing of the past is therapeutic, but often at odds with reality. The traditional interpretation provid‐ ed by Gump runs counter to the more inclusive notions of imagined community refected by Glo‐ ry, Thunderheart, Born on the Fourth of July and JFK, but this cinematic discourse demonstrates

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Citation: Ron Briley. Review of Burgoyne, Robert. Film Nation. H-Film, H-Net Reviews. March, 1999.

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