Angles New Perspectives on the Anglophone World 10 | 2020 Creating the Enemy Jacob Maillet and Cécile Dudouyt (dir.) Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/angles/279 DOI: 10.4000/angles.279 ISSN: 2274-2042 Publisher Société des Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur Electronic reference Jacob Maillet and Cécile Dudouyt (dir.), Angles, 10 | 2020, « Creating the Enemy » [Online], Online since 01 April 2020, connection on 23 September 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/angles/279 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/angles.279 This text was automatically generated on 23 September 2020. Angles est mise à disposition selon les termes de la Licence Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Video introduction to issue 10 Cécile Dudouyt and Jacob Maillet ‘The deformed imp of the devil’: John Foxe and the Protestant fashioning of the Catholic enemy Isabelle Fernandes The Hollywood Indian Stereotype: The Cinematic Othering and Assimilation of Native Americans at the Turn of the 20th Century Martin Berny The “Great Meme War:” the Alt-Right and its Multifarious Enemies Maxime Dafaure Cannibals, Monsters and Weasels: Creating a French Enemy in the United States during the 1790s Quasi-War and the 2003 Iraq War Diplomatic Crisis Hervé-Thomas Campangne Graphic Interlude: Creating the Enemy Theodor Seuss Geisel, Rick Smolan and David Cohen Crossing Enemy Lines in Ken Loach’s Ae Fond Kiss/Just A Kiss Representing Muslims and New Ethnicities in the Shadow of 9/11 Kristine Chick Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know? Hoodies in Contemporary British Horror Cinema Anne-Lise Marin-Lamellet The Enemy Within: The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Enemy Pictures Olivier Maheo Meeting the Enemy British-German Encounters in the Occupied Rhineland after the First World War Tom Williams The Evil Savage Other as Enemy in Modern U.S. Presidential Discourse Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy Angles, 10 | 2020 2 Video introduction to issue 10 Cécile Dudouyt and Jacob Maillet This media file cannot be displayed. Please refer to the online document http:// journals.openedition.org/angles/283 Transcript: 1 The concept of the enemy image was developed at the end of the Cold War by psychologists working on international relations such as Ralph K. White and Jerome D. Frank. What’s interesting about this concept is that it links discourse analysis and image analysis to psychological mechanisms that are common to all humans and human societies. Even though the concept was inherited from the Cold War it remains relevant today given the fact that we are constantly bombarded with enemy images. 2 This collection of articles does not purport to be an exhaustive catalogue of all enemy images. Rather, it provides insights into the articulation between 1) the fundamental anthropological process of othering, 2) its product: enemy images as weaponised products of othering, 3) and their strategic political use in the politics of fear. 3 Enemy images come out of an in-group/out-group dynamic in human societies. Within this framework, stereotypes develop when there is a strong rejection of a specific other by a given community. In time, such stereotypes coalesce into “enemy images,” that is, caricatures, images to be hated. This is where the image often becomes distinct from the enemy itself, because its characteristics become far removed from reality. 4 Because the mechanisms at work, psychological and political, are always the same, enemy images are often similar. The enemy is barbaric, animalistic, primitive, aggressive… It must be legitimate to hate him, kill him, or even, in the nuclear era, annihilate him. 5 From a literary perspective, since part of the thrill of fiction is to live other lives vicariously, things are usually less clear-cut. There can be a glamour, a dark attraction to the enemy. Angles, 10 | 2020 3 6 There are tropes to the creation of enemy images: a spectrum that goes from ridiculing a debased enemy (as in a Donald Duck clip from World War II) and building up the enemy as fearsome and deadly (as in a clip from the movie Rocky). 7 One pattern that emerges from the collection of articles presented here is that the enemy is often male. Male enemies are either ridiculed as not manly enough or presented as a bugbear of hyper masculinity. A recurring theme is that of the male enemy ravishing a more or less naked or defenceless female figure. 8 Another trope is the dehumanising of the enemy and presenting him — or it — as non human, usually a pest or vermin. 9 The articles collected here fall into two categories: the ones that explore the building of enemy images, and those which look at how it can be subverted. 10 Typical enemy images have often been linked to religion and nationalism, as with Isabel Fernandez’s article about the enemy image of the Catholic in John Foxe’s writing. We also have the civilization angle in Martin Berny’s article about the stereotypes of Indians in Hollywood movies or even in Maxime Dafaure’s article about the alt-right’s memes today. And we have the nationalistic with the French enemy in Hervé Campangne’s article comparing 1793 and 2003. Kristine Chick, in her analysis of Ken Loach’s Ae Fond Kiss shows how the film holds the mirror to the implicit Irish “us”: you think of the Muslim “them” as religious fanatics, but what about “us” Catholics? Anne- Lise Marin-Lamellet, in “Mad, Bad and Dangerous hoodies in Contemporary British Horror films,” explores the pragmatics of the enemy image. Behind the spectacular depiction of angry young men, there is the hidden pointing hand, a political agenda actively stereotyping a whole social class, leading to her conclusion that “the worst enemy of the nation may be the excommunicators themselves”. Olivier Maheo in “The Enemy within” discusses the role played by photographs in the long Civil Rights Movement and shows that, implicit in every enemy image there is a narrative: vilified bad guys (them) and implicit good guys (us). That article explores two ways of fighting enemy images: through proposing another enemy (racist white trash / violent black nationalist), but also through images of solidarity and kindness to children. Thomas Williams in “Meeting the Enemy”, about British-German Encounters in the Occupied Rhineland after World War I explores another factor of the dissolution of enemy images, as real-life encounters with the enemy forces the narrative to evolve. 11 The modern era has accelerated the political time as technological developments have made communication faster and easier. Politicians have been quick to seize the opportunity to consolidate their power and legitimacy by demonising enemies, both within and without their own societies. 12 We want to believe that the worst excesses are already in our past, but as Jérôme Viala- Gaudefroy’s article on US presidential discourse shows, even democracies are not immune to the politics of fear. The media's taste for sensationalism further amplifies the phenomenon, creating the impression that the world is a violent and dangerous place. 13 Images of enemies have multiplied. With the internet, anyone can now spread fear and hatred to advance their own cause. Movements based on hatred themselves generate further hatred and distrust, fuelling political polarisation and activism. Eventually, “both sides” of any argument become virtually indistiguishable and rational discourse and compromise prove almost impossible. Angles, 10 | 2020 4 14 In the end, the only way to break the cycle is to expose the enemy images for what they are: fictions born from prejudice and fear. ABSTRACTS This video introduces the thematic contributions on ‘Creating the Enemy’. La vidéo présente les contributions thématiques sur « L’image ennemie ». INDEX Mots-clés: ennemi, image ennemie, littérature, histoire, politique, media Keywords: enemy, enemy image, history, literature, politics, media AUTHORS CÉCILE DUDOUYT Guest editor of Issue 10. Cécile Dudouyt is assistant Professor at Paris 13 where she teaches French-English Translation and Translation Studies. Her research explores the reception of Sophocles in English and in French from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. Contact: cecile.dudouyt[at]univ-paris13.fr JACOB MAILLET Guest editor of Issue 10. Jacob Maillet teaches legal English and Constitutional Law at Paris University. He has worked on the influence of the enemy image on both American domestic and foreign politics, from the Cold War to the present day. Contact: jacob.maillet[at]parisdescartes.fr Angles, 10 | 2020 5 ‘The deformed imp of the devil’: John Foxe and the Protestant fashioning of the Catholic enemy Isabelle Fernandes 1 From the 16th century onwards, anti-Catholicism has been an important characteristic of the religious and political thought in some strata and geographical areas of English society — the term anti-Catholicism refers to the polemical statement that the Roman Catholic Church is a doctrinally false and politically dangerous anti-Church (Streete 2017: 4). In the early modern period, one of the most striking features of 17th century England is “the strength and persistence at all levels and among all classes of society of anti-Catholicism. […] Despite the growing strength of the intellectual case for toleration there is very little sign that popular hatred of popery diminished in the second half of the century.” (Coward 2017: 353) The paradox is that this hatred turned into paranoia – as testified by the Titus Oates plot and the ensuing Exclusion Crisis in 1678 – though there actually were very few Catholics in Auteur0000-00-00T00:00:00AEngland. The papist threat was a “minority challenge” indeed (Cottret 2013: 99), but “what people perceived to be the case was at least as important (and even more so) than historical reality” (Coward 2017: 323). This irrational attitude can be accounted for by real current or past events, both in England and Europe, such as the Sun King’s expansion and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in October 1685 that led to the equation between Catholicism and arbitrariness, the 1666 Great Fire in London, the 1641 Irish Rebellion, the 1605 Gunpowder Plot, the 1588 Armada, or the 1572 Bartholomew Day’s massacres.