Title:
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Remembering and forgetting : women and disabled veterans in British and American silent cinema
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'Remembering and Forgetting: Women and Disabled Veterans in British and American Silent Cinema' examines the representation of women and disabled ex-servicemen in British and American popular cinema of the 1920s. Images of injured veterans and women’s war work are central to Hollywood fictional narratives but suffer a proportional absence in British cinema of the same era. I argue that historically the iconic soldier has held a privileged place in the Western understanding of the Great War, but that in the immediate aftermath of the conflict a transatlantic cultural memory was in contestation with different social groups vying for a place in that memory. Through a comparison of Hollywood and British fictional film narratives, as well as government and trade publications, popular press, and newsreels, I illustrate the representational differences and similarities regarding injured ex-servicemen and women. I have uncovered the titles of over 250 films – some still well-known, others forgotten – and aim to: 1) revise the dominant belief that the war genre in the 1920s was primarily concerned with the heroics of men in the trenches, 2) advocate that a transatlantic approach is essential to understanding a cinematic memory of the war, and 3) expose the diversity of representations and understandings of the Great War in British and American films of the 1920s. Ultimately, I demonstrate that women and disabled veterans in a cinematic memory of the Great War occupied a space somewhere between remembering and forgetting.
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