Mediating War and Identity 66531_Purse531_Purse & WWolfel.inddolfel.indd i 006/10/206/10/20 55:28:28 PPMM 66531_Purse531_Purse & WWolfel.inddolfel.indd iiii 006/10/206/10/20 55:28:28 PPMM Mediating War and Identity Figures of Transgression in 20th and 21st Century War Representation Edited by Lisa Purse and Ute Wölfel 66531_Purse531_Purse & WWolfel.inddolfel.indd iiiiii 006/10/206/10/20 55:28:28 PPMM Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © editorial matter and organisation Lisa Purse and Ute Wölfel, 2020 © the chapters their several authors, 2020 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 11/13 Monotype Ehrhardt by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and printed and bound in Great Britain. A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 4626 6 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 4628 0 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 4629 7 (epub) The right of Lisa Purse and Ute Wölfel to be identified as the editors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). 66531_Purse531_Purse & WWolfel.inddolfel.indd iivv 006/10/206/10/20 55:28:28 PPMM Contents List of Figures vii Acknowledgements ix Notes on the Contributors x 1 Introduction 1 Lisa Purse and Ute Wölfel 2 Momentary Rupture? Dawn (1928) and the Transgressive Potential of the Edith Cavell Case 14 Claudia Sternberg 3 ‘An act of wilful defiance’: Objection, Protest and Rebellion in the Imperial War Museum’s First World War Galleries 37 Rebecca Clare Dolgoy 4 Figures of Transgression in Representations of the First World War on British Television 54 Emma Hanna 5 The End of Transgression: Fritz Bauer as Traitor on the German Screen 75 Ute Wölfel 6 ‘Just another Kraut’? The Wehrmacht Traitor as ‘Good German’ in Hollywood’s Decision before Dawn (1951) 97 Patrick Major 7 Religious Pacifism and the Hollywood War Film: From Sergeant York (1941) to Hacksaw Ridge (2017) 117 Guy Westwell 8 Military Masculinity and the Deserting Soldier in Stop-Loss (2008) 135 Thomas Ærvold Bjerre 66531_Purse531_Purse & WWolfel.inddolfel.indd v 006/10/206/10/20 55:28:28 PPMM vi CONTENTS 9 Activist, Mother, Filmmaker: Competing Transgressions in the Syrian War Documentary 152 Lisa Purse 10 Marie Colvin – The War Hero and the ‘Nasty Woman’ 171 Agnieszka Piotrowska Index 192 66531_Purse531_Purse & WWolfel.inddolfel.indd vvii 006/10/206/10/20 55:28:28 PPMM Figures 2.1 ‘Woman and the War Machine’: a proto-feminist peace politics? Still from Dawn (1928). (Source: Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique.) 23 2.2 ‘We killed’: Mars and the fugitive boy soldier. Still from Dawn. (Source: Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique.) 24 2.3 At eye level: Cavell’s residual agency before death. Still from Dawn (1928). (Source: Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique.) 29 4.1 Percy Toplis (Paul McGann) impersonating a dead officer. Still from The Monocled Mutineer (BBC, 1986). 59 4.2 A scene from the deserters’ camp. Still from The Monocled Mutineer. 60 4.3 Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy, right) comforts Danny ‘Whiz Bang’ (Samuel Edward-Cook). Still from series one of Peaky Blinders (BBC, 2014). 70 5.1 Karl Angermann as an outsider in his wife’s conservative family. Still from Der Staat gegen Fritz Bauer (2015). 88 5.2 Bauer and Hell with the ‘salon’ in the background: ‘A reckoning with the past is necessary not because the old Germany deserves it, but because the new Germany needs it.’ Still from Die Akte General (2016). 90 5.3 Angermann and Bauer in Bauer’s modernist flat with a Feininger painting. Still from Der Staat gegen Fritz Bauer (2015). 91 6.1 Karl Maurer/Happy (Oskar Werner) sacrificing himself to save the mission. Still from Decision before Dawn (1951). 102 6.2 ‘So die all TRAITORS TO THE FATHERLAND!’ Wehrmacht drumhead justice. Still from Decision before Dawn. 106 6.3 Hilde (Hildegard Knef): ‘there are thousands and thousands like me’. Still from Decision before Dawn. 107 66531_Purse531_Purse & WWolfel.inddolfel.indd vviiii 006/10/206/10/20 55:28:28 PPMM viii FIGURES 6.4 Hitler Youth Kurt (Adi Lödel). Still from Decision before Dawn. 108 6.5 Lt Rennick (Richard Basehart). Still from Decision before Dawn. 108 7.1 York joins the religious community and embraces pacifism. Still from Sergeant York (1941). 123 7.2 York determines to reconcile his pacifism with the need to defend his country. Still from Sergeant York. 126 7.3 Doss’s pacifism sanctifies military violence. Still from Hacksaw Ridge (2016). 130 8.1 Ryan Phillippe as Staff Sergeant Brandon King in charge of roadblock duty in Tikrit, Iraq. Still from Stop-Loss (2008). 142 8.2 Staff Sergeant Brandon King and Channing Tatum as Sgt Steve Shriver. Still from Stop-Loss. 145 8.3 Staff Sergeant Brandon King and Sgt Steve Shriver on their way back to Iraq. Still from Stop-Loss. 147 9.1 Raghda in a moment of introspection, silently contemplating her youngest child. Still from A Syrian Love Story (2015). 158 9.2 The bound feet of a toddler killed in the Syrian war. Still from For Sama (2019). 164 9.3 A mother carries her dead child, Mohammad Ameen, from the hospital. Still from For Sama. 165 10.1 Marie Colvin on holiday in France in 2008. Image courtesy of Richard Flaye. 172 10.2 Marie Colvin on the Thames, on the old boat she shared with Richard Flaye. Image courtesy of Richard Flaye. 175 10.3 Marie Colvin and Richard Flaye at a family party in 2008. Image courtesy of Richard Flaye. 179 10.4 Marie Colvin on a river walk in Hammersmith near her home in 2010. Image courtesy of Richard Flaye. 188 66531_Purse531_Purse & WWolfel.inddolfel.indd vviiiiii 006/10/206/10/20 55:28:28 PPMM Acknowledgements Thank you to Gillian Leslie, Richard Strachan and the rest of the team at Edinburgh University Press for their excellent work preparing this book for publication and their patience as it was brought to fruition, and to Richard Flaye for giving permission to reproduce photographs from his private collection for the final chapter in the volume. This book finds its origins in the lively discussions arising from a research workshop at the University of Reading in 2015, which was co-organised by the Department for Languages and Cultures and the Department of Film, Theatre and Television and hosted by the School of Law. The workshop was supported by the Rights and Representation Research Theme, in what was then the Facul ty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. We would like to thank the workshop’s supporters and its participants, Thomas Ærvold Bjerre, Andreas Behnke, Susan Breau, Hilary Footitt, Alexander Hastie, Beatrice Heuser, Suheyla Tolunay İşlek, Karol Jóźwiak, Charles Leavitt, Sue Malvern, Jessica Sage, Heike Schmidt and Claudia Sternberg. More broadly, the book is the result of a dynamic interdisciplinary network of scholars working on war, conflict and representation at the University of Reading and elsewhere. We would like to thank the Heritage and Creativity Research Theme and in particular Roberta Gilchrist for encouraging this enriching interdisciplin- ary exchange in word and deed, and Jonathan Bignell, John Gibbs and Anna McMullan for their support throughout the writing process. Lisa Purse thanks the students of her Representing Conflict on Stage and Screen module for willingly reflecting on often challenging films; Teresa Murjas, Sonya Chenery and Christina Hellmich for thought-provoking dis- cussions on aspects of conflict representation, Iris Luppa for thinking breaks, Tamzin Morphy and Sandra and Rodney Purse for writing time, and Mia for being here. Ute Wölfel is grateful for the patience of her students on the War on Screen module who never tired of discussing lengthy theories on war, genre and treason. Her special thanks go to John Sandford who has accompanied all thinking and writing over the years with a scrutinising eye and inspiring challenges. 66531_Purse531_Purse & WWolfel.inddolfel.indd iixx 006/10/206/10/20 55:28:28 PPMM Notes on the Contributors Thomas Ærvold Bjerre is Associate Professor in American Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. His research focuses on American popular culture with a particular interest in representations of 9/11 and the ‘war on terror’ in film, photography and literature. He has published on these topics in Visualizing War (2017), Journal of War and Culture Studies and Orbis Litterarum. He co-wrote the first Danish book about the American Western and has also published widely on southern literature and film in Mississippi Quarterly, The Appalachian Journal, American Stud- ies in Scandinavia as well as in Rough South, Rural South: Region and Class in Recent Southern Literature and the forthcoming The South in Fiction and Film: Essays in Adaptation. Bjerre has also co-edited Southern Exposure (2017) and The Scourges of the South (2014). Rebecca Clare Dolgoy was recently appointed Curator of Natural Resources and Industrial Technologies at Ingenium (Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation). She brings an interdisciplinary perspective to the portfolio. Her research on memory and museums explores relation- ships between material culture and public memory. She is committed to collaborative research and to developing creative processes of stakeholder engagement, partnership development and public scholarship. After com- pleting her DPhil in Oxford, Rebecca has been Ottawa-based since 2015.