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REVIEWS
95
student interest and classroom discussion. Today's students may relate less enthusiastically to
the more overtly political sections. In any case, neither book
is
sufficient alone.
Northern Essex Community College Elizabeth
J.
Wilcoxson
Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory
D.
Black. Hollywood Goes
To
War: How Politics, Profits
and
Propaganda SluqHd World War
II
Movies. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University
of
California
Press, 1990. Pp. x, 374. Paper, $12.95.
We, and especially our students, are living in an increasingly visual
age.
Film and
television, entertainment videos and those for instruction, video games, computer displays, and
virtual reality simulations are almost a natural part
of
our high-tech daily lives in this last
decade
of
the twentieth century. Naively,
we
have accepted this mediation
of
our existence
without any real preparation
or
critical evaluation
of
its growing impact.
It
has become a
significant aspect
of
our evolution into post-modernism. Yet, we often look without seeing.
watch without comprehending. and, consequently, react without thinking.
Although there has been considerable historical scholarship on the uses
of
media for the
support
of
totalitarian regimes like Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and Maoist China, there
has been comparatively little done on the utilizations and effect
of
this media in freer societies.
One such recent work which has
now
appeared in a paperback edition
is
Hollywood Goes To
War:
How Politics, Profits
and
Propaganda Shaped World War
ll
Movies by Oayton R. Koppes
and Gregory
D.
Black. The authors are well-qualified to treat this important topic: Koppes is
an endowed professor
of
history and humanities at Oberlin College, and Black is a professor
of
communications at the University
of
Missouri, Kansas City.
As
its subtitle indicates, this book is more than a film history.
It
is a thorough
consideration
of
the impact
of
government influence plus industry self-censorship on American
filmmaking during the Second World War (1939-1945) when Hollywood produced an estimated
2,500 pictures. After reading this fascinating volume, it becomes clear that the film industry's
efforts during these years were fully integrated into the American war effort.
With strong government urging and strict censorship, developed and enforced by a "tight
corporate oligarchy," wartime films quickly went beyond merely boosting morale and stimulating
patriotism to blatant propaganda. While this
was
done largely in response to the demands
of
an all-out war, the Hollywood moguls never lost sight
of
the bottom line, grasping the
opportunity to expand their vertical control over the industry and to increase their profits by
giving the viewing public what it wanted to see and eventually came to expect.
The authors begin with the state
of
the industry in 1939 and trace the unfolding
of
these
trends to the war's conclusion. In the process, many now-classic films from early efforts like The
Great Dictator and Sergeant York to later ones like
Mrs.
Miniver and Guadalcanal Diary are
discussed in detail. Such films darkly sharpened the images
of
the German and Japanese
enemies while remaking those
of
America's British, Soviet, and Chinese partners in the name
of
Allied solidarity.
Hollywood Goes To War is clearly and concisely written, making it a very readable
mix
of
American wartime, corporate, and
film
history. Although it
is
thoroughly researched and
documented in notes and a bibliographical essay, an appendix, containing a chronological listing
of
the major films discussed would nevertheless
be
helpful. This book will appeal to anyone
interested in the American homefront effort during World War II and in war
films.
It
can be
particularly useful for teachers who wish to understand better the effects
of
propaganda on a
free society during times
of
crises. It
will
help them explain some
of
those vintage films they
Teaching History 17(2). DOI: 10.33043/TH.17.2.95-96. ©1992 Dennis
Reinhartz
96
TEACHING
HISTORY
might
be
using
in
their classes. Finally, the
book
will
be
useful
in
helping teachers
to
understand
the
impact
of
commercial visual media
on
their students in general.
The
University
of
Texas
at
Arlington Dennis Reinhartz
William IL Chafe.
The
Unfuaish«J
Journey: America Since World War
II.
New York & Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1991. Second edition. Pp. ix, 537. Cloth, $35.00; Paper, $17.95.
This is
an
updated
edition
of
a popular text
by
the
noted
Duke
University historian
William H. Chafe.
The
original 1986 volume closed with
the
re-election
of
Ronald
Reagan; the
second edition carries the reader through
the
presidential campaign
of
1988. Chafe's new
material depicts a beleaguered Reagan
hard
pressed by the Iran-Contra scandal, the abortive
nomination
of
Robert
Bork
to
the Supreme Court, and a weakening American economy, who,
consistent with his legendary luck, nevertheless manages
to
rehabilitate his reputation with
the
INF
Treaty
with
the
Soviets and an almost miraculous thaw
in
the
Cold War. Still, Reagan
comes across as little
more
than
an "acting" president, a simple,
if
committed
ideologue playing
a role
others
have carefully scripted for him.
The
Gipper, as Chafe portrays him, calls
to
mind
Mark
Twain's
comment
that
the only two traits essential for success in life
are
confidence and
ignorance. George Bush fares
no
better
in Chafe's account
of
the 1988 election, in which the
candidates ignored substantive issues without treating voters
to
any particular elegance
of
style.
Chafe decries the decline in the length
of
the average sound
bite
from 45 seconds in 1980
to
nine seconds
in
1988. Anything less,
he
suggests, and campaigns might well
be
airing only
subliminal messages,
but,
he
writes, "in a sense, that was the whole point
of
the Willie
Horton
ad."
One
should not expect sympathetic treatments
of
Reagan
and
Bush.
The
Unfinished
Journey
is dedicated
to
"the beloved community,• Chafe's term for the contemporary liberals and
reformers who fought
to
end
racial segregation,
to
win equal rights for American women, and
to
stop the war
in
Vietnam. Chafe, as
he
explains his approach, uses "the categories
of
race,
class, and gender as a gauge
to
measure change
and
to
understand what has
occurred
in
our
society.• Chafe's preoccupation with the victories and failures
of
liberalism produces a less
methodical coverage than
that
found in the ordinary text, and allows for some distortion.
The
politics
of
the conservative 1950s receive perfunctory treatment. Chafe skillfully describes the
struggle for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968,
but
says much less about
the
Republican contest, although
it
produced the eventual winner, Richard Nixon. A careless
student
reader
might conclude
that
the New Left outnumbered
the
Silent Majority. Chafe,
to
be
sure, makes no such claims, and for the most
part
he
manages
to
combine successfully the
new social history with traditional political and diplomatic history.
There
are
two strong
chapters
on
the
origins and early years
of
the Cold War; Chafe argues persuasively
that
anti-
Communist paranoia effectively throttled liberal impulses in the 1950s.
There
is also an
excellent
chapter
on
the civil rights movement, and a lively, if overly sympathetic, section
on
John
F. Kennedy.
Chafe writes well, with an eye for the telling fact, as his figures about the shrinkage
of
the
sound
bite
suggest.
We
learn, for example, that the wrestler Gorgeous George was actually a
patient
at
New York's Bellevue psychiatric hospital.
We
also learn that by the mid-1980s, the
interest
on
the national
debt
equalled the combined budgets
of
the departments
of
Labor,
Commerce, Education, Agriculture, and five
other
major departments. Unfortunately, Chafe
also repeats the old
canard
that President Eisenhower insisted
on
making every decision
on
the
basis
of
a one-page memorandum. Despite the occasional lapse, however,
The
Unfinished
Journey
remains
one
of
the two
or
three best surveys available
on
recent American history.