Cultural Identity & Cinematic Representation

Issue 14: Cultural Identity & Cinematic Representation

Examining Representations of Adoption - Donovan Krill The Cinema of Consumption in Wartime Britain - Richard Farmer Book Discussion - Women and Turkish Cinema - Eylem Atakav Kurt Maetzig Biography - Richard McKenzie Reportero: A Documentary by Bernardo Ruiz - Elke Weesjes Rabat: A Film by Jim Taihuttu and Victor Ponten - Elke Weesjes

FOCUS The United Academics Journal of Social Sciences is interdisciplinary, peer reviewed and interactive. We provide immediate Open Access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. In doing so, this journal underlines its publisher’s ethos, which is to ‘Connect Science & Society’. United Academics is an independent platform where academics can connect, share, publish and discuss academic research. Furthermore it facilitates online publications while respecting the author’s copyrights.

We will publish themed issues bimonthly, each consisting of a collection of articles, work-in-progress pieces and book reviews showcasing the broadest range of new (interdisciplinary) research in Social Sciences from both established academics as well as students.

While many academic journals are online and a growing number are available in openly accessible venues, the internet has not been utilized to its full extent. Therefore we have created a journal which truly does tap the power of the web for interactivity.

To begin with research papers and other contributions published in this journal, contain interactive media such as videos maps and charts in order to make research more accessible and engaging.

Secondly, in order to extent the peer review system, which is currently still limited with only a few colleagues reviewing papers, we invite the United Academics community to submit commentaries. By opening up the commenting and feedback process we will foster better critique of work. We want to encourage researchers to interact with the research, provide feedback and collaborate with authors.

CREDITS Editor-in-Chief: Elke Weesjes Executive Editor: Ruth Charnock Design Cover: Michelle Halcomb Lay-Out: Ruth Visser Editorial Board: Mark Fonseca Rendeiro, Anouk Vleugels, Ruth Charnock, Danielle Wiersema Daphne Wiersema Questions and Suggestions: Send an e-mail to: journal@united-academics.org Advertisement : Send an email to: journal@united-academics.org United Academics: Oudezijds Voorburgwal 274 1021 GL Amsterdam The Netherlands 2012-vol.2-issue14

CONTENTS EDITORIAL

02

ARTICLE ONE

05

ARTICLE TWO

25

BOOK DISCUSSION

57

BIOGRAPHY

63

DOCUMENTARY & MAKER

79

FILM & MAKER

87

Issue 14: Cultural Identity & Cinematic Representation Reel Adoption: Examining Representations of Adoption in Popular Contemporary Cinema By: Donovan Krill Food Fight!

The Cinema of Consumption in Wartime Britain By: Richard Farmer Women and Turkish Cinema: Gender Politics, Cultural Identity and Representation By: Eylem Atakav West Germany “Forgets to Remember” Kurt Maetzig, German Film Maker 1911-2012 By: Richard McKenzie

Reportero: A Documentary by Bernardo Ruiz By: Elke Weesjes Rabat: A Film by Jim Taihuttu and Victor Ponten By: Elke Weesjes

2

Editorial Issue 14 november/december

Cultural Identity & Cinematic Representation

L

ast year, the actor Nasrdin Dchar won the Golden Calf award for best actor for his role in the road movie Rabat. Dchar, who is the first Moroccan Dutch actor to win this prestigious award, gave an unusual acceptance speech. Besides speaking about passion, love and dedication, he spoke about irrational fear and, in particular, how the Dutch are filled with this kind of fear. In response to a speech by former deputy prime minister Maxime Verhagen who had infamously stated that Native Dutch people's fear of foreigners was 'understandable', Dchar replied; "What if I would tell you, Mister Verhagen, that I worry about the fact that you are defending people's fear of foreigners? Can you understand my worries?

No, you probably can't. Because I am a proud Dutch Muslim, with Moroccan blood who speaks to his parents in Arabic. In short, 'your' Dutch people are scared of me too. Their fear creates a distance between me and them. And you think this fear is understandable? Well Mister Verhagen and Geert Wilders [Dutch far-right politician) and all those people who stand behind you, I am Dutch, I am a Dutchman. I am very proud of my Moroccan blood. I am a Muslim! And I have a fucking Golden Calf in my hands, so, yes, go ahead and fear me!"

3

The speech garnered much media attention, with many praising the actor as a role model and spokesperson, representing an often misunderstood and marginalized community. Dchar's words also relate to the film itself. Rabat is about love, honesty, family and friendship, but is also about fear and discrimination. Rather than conforming to facile stereotypes, the film reflects the challenging times we live in and is, as such, a breath of fresh air, since there are so many clichĂŠs when it comes to the depiction of Moroccans or Muslims in cinema.

Moroccans and Muslims aren't the only ones who suffer from negative cinematic representation. Racial, ethnic, gender and cultural stereotypes are still widespread in movies. Whether appearing in disparaging roles or not appearing at all, minority groups, especially in Hollywood blockbusters and American sitcoms, are often the victim of an industry that relies on old ideas to appeal to the majority - at the expense of the “insignificant.�

It would be ignorant to put all the

blame on the white males who run (and finance) the industry. The cycle of negative stereotyping which has been in place since the dawn of cinema needs to be broken.

Positive developments are visible, particularly in independent film where the number of (minority) film makers who are thinking more critically is growing. Young writers/ directors like Jim Taihuttu and Bernardo Ruiz, whose work is discussed in this issue, are trying to break through stereotypes.

Besides addressing and discussing cinematic stereotypes, contributors also examine the power of film and how this medium can be a platform for social change.

YOUR JOURNALS

Powered by UA We bring your open access research to the mobile marketplace.

See our website www.united-academics.org/publishing/poweredby

ARTICLE ONE

Article One

T

he conventional and dominant concept of ‘the family’ is a heterosexual couple with their own biological offspring.

Under this rationale, families created by adoption are classified as nontraditional, and thereby are situated outside the norm, despite the fact that adoption is a common practice in the contemporary construction of the North American family.1 Whether or not we are from an adoptive family, most of us absorb our ideas about adoption from a variety of sources, including both popular and professional media.

The vast majority of the public is not exposed to adoption except through the popular news and entertainment media.2 I am aware that Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Madonna, Nicole Kidman, and Sandra Bullock are all adoptive parents, not because of my scholarly research from adoption journals, informational meetings or political policy debates but because of popular culture.

The current wealth of adoption stories is not confined to the realm of news media, as there has also been a noticeable prolifer-

ation in contemporary fictional film narratives. For example, films such as The Blind Side (2009), Thor (2011), What To Expect When You’re Expecting (2012), and the pop culture phenomenon of the Twilight series (2007-2012), all feature prominent adoption storylines.

Being an adopted person myself, I am acutely aware of how this subculture of adoption is portrayed within these films.

By exploring various examples of popular contemporary cinematic representations of adoption I will highlight various cultural myths and stigmas surrounding the subject, as well as create points of identification for both adopted individuals and those who are not. By integrating various methodologies with my lived experiences of adoption I hope to create a new interdisciplinary approach to looking at cinema via a lens of ‘adoption criticism’. 3 In doing so, I intend to generate a deeper understanding of the relationship between mainstream cinema and adoption, and thereby locate the connection within a historical, cultural, and social context.

8

Examining Representations of Adoption in Popular Contemporary Cinema

Adoption Stories Cultural and communication studies suggest that audiences are active in the interpretations of texts and that texts are invariably polysemic. Within this framework I will explore the active choices, uses and interpretations audiences can make of representations of adoption on film. In doing so, I reinforce the cultural studies paradigm of the active audience and Stuart Hall’s theories of encoding and decoding cinematic texts.4 The Continution of a Greek Tragedy Jean Paton, an influential figure of the adoption movement notes, ‘In Greece, about twenty-four hundred years ago, there was written the first adoption life history’.5 Thus, Sophocles’ Greek tragedies of Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus are often regarded as some of the first adoption narratives. Many centuries later, modern film narratives continue to associate adoption with tragedy. For example, Secrets & Lies (1996) is a drama in which, after the death of her adoptive mother, a

young woman begins a search to find her biological family. As the title implies, the search journey is equated with secrecy and deception. Another film, Flirting with Disaster (1994), tells a similar story of an adopted male’s search for his biological parents. Despite being a comedy, the title, as well as the film, suggests that searching for one’s biological parents will only lead to misfortune.

‘Lost’ and ‘found’ are also pivotal concepts in many Greek tragedies, including the story of Oedipus. However ‘losing’ and ‘finding’ are also dominant themes in the lives of adopted individuals, so much so that Betty Jean Lifton’s seminal text is titled Lost and Found: The Adoption Experience (1979). Contemporary adoption film titles also reflect these concepts by utilizing such titles as Losing Isaiah (1995) and Then She Found Me (2008). The connection between adoption and Greek tragedy is never more evident than with the contemporary adoption films Mighty Aphrodite (1995) and Juno (2007). Mighty Aphrodite is a story in which an adoptive father seeks out

Article One

the biological parents of his adopted son.

In addition to the Greek reference in the film’s title, Mighty Aphrodite (1995) is also set up as a Greek tragedy by having a Greek chorus commenting on the action of the contemporary central narrative.

Although the film is presented as a Greek tragedy, Mighty Aphrodite (1995) is in fact a comedy.

In Juno (2007), the title character explains that her father named her Juno due to his fascination with Greek and Roman mythology. Juno (Hera in Greek) is the goddess of fertility, childbirth and marriage. In a Homeric version of one of the many myths surrounding Juno/Hera, she throws her newborn son Vulcan (Hephaestus in Greek) off of Mount Olympus after seeing his ugly appearance. After falling to Earth, Vulcan/Hephaestus is adopted into a family of humans.6 Correlations between

this Homeric mythology and the film of a young girl who decides to give up her baby for adoption can undeniably be made. In doing so, the film is suggesting that it is more of a modern tragedy than comedy.

The Search for Origins For centuries, western literature and mythology have told us of stories of quests and searches for one’s ‘true’ self. Whether it is the medieval quest for the Holy Grail, The Odyssey, The Divine Comedy or Marlow’s trip up the Congo River in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness all these stories are ’ultimately really a search for one’s self, for one’s own identity and heart of darkness’.7 Cinema has continued with this narrative tradition with arguments being made that Citizen Kane (1939) is the quintessential ‘origin story’ film in that it is an exploration into the origins of a character’s identity.8

10

Examining Representations of Adoption in Popular Contemporary Cinema

In recent years there has been a marked increase in the number of films that have presented particular characters’ origin stories, especially characters already familiar to viewers. Recently we have seen how Batman began, how James became Bond

and even a trilogy entitled ‘Origins’ to explain the X-Men characters. The fascination with the origins of fictional characters reinforces the collective belief in genealogical authenticity as a measure of who we really are.9

Article One

However, the question of ‘Where did I come from?’ is very different from the much more loaded question that Oedipus asks himself, ‘Who am I?’ Thus, origin narratives typically carry more weight among adopted individuals than those who are raised by biological families.10 Adoption narratives suggest that finding one’s biological parents coincides with the collective acknowledged expectation of discovering one’s self and one’s identity. Therefore, these search narratives are essentially about equating identity with kinship. As sociologist Katarina Wegar argues: The emancipatory discourse of self-discovery [in adoption search narratives] reflects a broader cultural preoccupation with the search for identity or the individual’s moral right to embark upon his quest. Ideological or not, the pursuit of “finding oneself”[…] has become not only acceptable but perhaps even normative to the way Americans perceive the quest for identity.11 In doing so these adoption narratives reinforce Arjun Appadurai’s term ‘ideolo-

gies of authenticity’ - referring to the notion that there is a truth of identity to be found somewhere in origins or blood ties.12 Sandra Lee Patton notes that it is this prevailing sociopolitical allegory of identity that underlies the social understandings of the relationships between self, family, community, culture, race, nationality, ancestry and social inequality.13 The Traumatic Birth Story In Superman Returns (2006), as Jor-El and Lara launch their son Kal-El on a spacecraft to Earth, they both die as their home planet Krypton is destroyed. In Batman Begins (2005), an eight-year old Bruce Wayne watches helplessly as his parents Thomas and Martha are mugged and murdered after leaving the opera. Throughout the Harry Potter film series (2001-2011) it is revealed that a one-year old Harry watched as his parents, James and Lily Potter, are murdered by a powerful killing curse from Lord Voldemort. From these stories, it would seem as though a traumatic birth narrative comes as part of being adopted.

12

Examining Representations of Adoption in Popular Contemporary Cinema

The traumatic birth history is one of the most prominent myths regarding adoption.14 Representations of birth stories for adoption have a tendency to concentrate on the most dramatic and traumatic of events, despite the reality that many of these stories are devoid of such tragedy. Waggenspack notes that ‘in the case of adoption, the means by which families come together is often portrayed […] as mysterious, somewhat seedy, and often involving undesirable social conditions’.15 The birth stories of various films perpetuate this notion that adoption must involve tumultuous cir-

The traumatic birth history is one of the most prominent myths regarding adoption

cumstances. In doing so, representations consequently ignore the overwhelmingly constructive aspects that many birth origin stories hold.16 However, perhaps these representations of traumatic birth stories are necessary. John Simmonds notes that for an adopted individual the birth story is one that ‘is complex, painful and maybe unpalatable. It is a story in which rejection, abandonment and failure are realities and a happy ending cannot be routinely written into the script’.17 It is not until the painful narratives of the birth parents, the adoptive parents and the child are woven together that the adoption story can be given a happy ending.18 Therefore, perhaps the violent and traumatic aforementioned origin stories in these contemporary texts are necessary to accept and understand the truth regarding adoption.

As the colloquial saying goes, ‘the truth hurts’ and maybe the same can be said about the birth stories surrounding adoption. In Superman mythology, the only thing that harms the mighty Superman is kryptonite, a piece of his home planet. Per-

Article One

haps this is a metaphorical warning in that the only thing that can truly hurt adopted individuals is part of their past.

Visualizing Adoption Marianne Novy notes that ‘[a]doptee status is, in some ways, the most invisible minority status. There are no telltale gestures, skin colors, or identifiably shaped features that in themselves reveal a person is adopted.’19 Therefore film provides a useful me-

dium in which such a complex and indistinguishable issue, such as adoption, can be made visible.

One of the most common ways in which film is capable of visualizing adoption is with the means of fantasy, special effects and/or animation. For example, in the animated film Kung Fu Panda (2008) an interspecies family is presented as the central character of Po is a panda bear and his father, Mr. Ping, is a Peking duck, therefore making it impossible for the father and son to be biologically connected.

The film uses this observation mainly for a source of humor, as the issue of adoption is never fully addressed in the film, until the sequel Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011) in which the plot is propelled by Po’s discovery of being adopted and subsequent identity crisis. Many other animated films such as Dinosaur (2000) and Ice Age 2: The Meltdown (2006) use this adoption theme to elicit humor from the sight gag that two completely different species cannot be a part of a biological family.

It must be acknowledged that secrecy

14

Examining Representations of Adoption in Popular Contemporary Cinema

in adoption is a vexed issue in that ‘a kinship bond may be threatened rather than preserved by hiding from the child the truth about how that bond was initiated’.20 Thus, I wonder if the many adopted individuals whose adoptive parents lied or denied them the truth of the identity of their biological parents would be able to share the humor presented in these sequences.

An example in which the interspecies adoption is explicitly played is in the film Stuart Little (1999). The film is altered from E.B. White’s classic book in that Stuart, the mouse, is now adopted rather than being born into the Little family. The Littles select Stuart from an orphanage clearly knowing that he is a mouse and not a human child. The central message of the film is an affirming one, especially for young viewers, in that you do not have to look like your parents in order to be a part of the family.

Furthermore, when examining the visibility of adoption on screens one issue that inevitably arises is that of interracial adoptions. Marianne Novy observes, ‘…in

a family group physical contrasts between parents and child usually identify transracial adoptees’.21 Therefore when animated texts present an interspecies adoption it is often equated to interracial adoptions, particular those that came after US congressional reforms of the mid-1990s that prohibited the use of race as a factor in public adoption placements.22

‘…in a family group physical contrasts between parents and child usually identify transracial adoptees’ The Language of Adoption As images create a symbolic representation of our world, so do words. The language of

Article One

adoption is constantly changing and is often a controversial area of contention. Respectful Adoption Language (RAL) (also know as Constructive Adoption Language and Positive Adoption Language) emerged in the 1980s and established a ‘politically correct’ set of terms used in relation to adoption. Some attribute origins of the new language to a single social worker, while others suggest that adoptive families who grew frustrated with the social response and secondary status of their families helped to create this new language.23 Over the past few decades there has been a noticeable shift in the discursive practices of adoption to reinforce this new vocabulary and I would argue that cinema has generally reflected this. Currently such terms as ‘illegitimate’, ‘blue-ribbon babies’, ‘natural parents’ and ‘bastard child’ are rarely used. Nonetheless, despite the emergence of this new language, there are still terms that cause offense to some and are acceptable to others. Therefore, as Beth M. Waggenspack argues, there is ‘a symbolic crisis of adoption’.24

Throughout adoption literature I have discovered an inconsistency in the language used for adoption. For example, whilst some refer to someone who was adopted as an ‘adoptee’, others prefer the term ‘adopted individuals’ or as some use the term ‘placed for adoption’, others choose ‘relinquished’. In examining cinematic adoption narratives I have found similar inconsistencies with adoption vocabulary. Realistically, terminology cannot appease everyone, however one of the most objectionable adoption terms that I have observed to be continually used within contemporary media is the term ‘real parents’. For example, in the film Elf (2003) the main character of Buddy uses such terminology by declaring that his ‘papa’ tells him of his ‘real father’.

In adoption circles, the term ‘real parent’ is offensive as it implies that the adoptive family is an artificial and unnatural construct. The terms ‘birth’ or ‘biological’ parents are much more preferable.

Undeniably, language is a powerful tool that has the ability to shape cultural opinion. In recent years society has been

16

Examining Representations of Adoption in Popular Contemporary Cinema

alerted to the feelings of various minority groups, such as people of different races and sexualities, and has made efforts to adapt a vernacular language to avoid a range of demeaning words and tones.25 Therefore, my primary suggestion for this symbolic crisis is to give similar respect to those affected by adoption.

The Characters of Adoption The Problem Child One of the most common myths surrounding adoption is that an adopted individual is ‘far more likely than non-adopted peers to manifest psychiatric disturbance, receive psychological services, psychotropic medication and residential treatment’.26 In fact, the results of empirical and meta-analytic studies have suggested that, in general, adopted people are well adjusted.27 However, contemporary adoption films tend to perpetuate this fallacy that adopted individuals are disturbed people.

For example, due to the trauma of not be-

ing raised by one’s own biological parents the character of Vesper in Casino Royale (2006) equates being adopted with being ‘maladjusted’.

In Batman Returns (1992) the villain of The Penguin is presented as a ‘bad seed’ by genetically inheriting the errant tendencies of his biological parents. A further exemplification of this is in the film The Avengers (2012), where the character of Thor in justifying the murderous rampage of his brother Loki states a single throwaway line of: ‘He’s adopted’ as a sufficient explanation for such behavior. These cinematic examples accentuates the tendency of portraying adopted individuals as troubled people, and the dangers connected with adopting a child whose genetic heritage is unknown.28 Nature vs Nurture The notion of the ‘bad seed’ brings us to the long-standing question of nature versus nurture which continues to be addressed in scientific communities, as well as society at large.29 The nature versus nurture debate

Article One

has special significance in relation to adoption since many people want to know how much of a child’s personality and behavior is a result of genetics and how much is due to how the way the child was raised.30

Most contemporary adoption narratives present conflicting arguments towards this debate. Films such as Batman Returns (1992) and the Stars Wars film series (1978-1983) choose the side of nature

18

Examining Representations of Adoption in Popular Contemporary Cinema

whilst others, such as Mighty Aphrodite (1995) and Flirting With Disaster (1994) choose nurture. Perhaps these conflicting narratives are a way of highlighting that both parts are important and contribute to the development of an individual.

The Role of Women Women in contemporary adoption narratives tend to be limited to the role of mothers. Despite the fact, as Katarina Wegar has noted, that adopted individuals ‘who do search are predominantly white, middle-class females in early adulthood.’31 Countless examples such as Flirting with Disaster (1994), Elf (2003), and Hercules (1997) portray adopted males on search journeys, and very few present similar journeys for women. Even in the original Star Wars film trilogy (1978-1983) where twin adopted individuals are presented, it is the male sibling Luke Skywalker who is given the heroic self-discovering journey, and the female sibling Princess Leia is given the archetypical gendered role of the passive victim.

Within their roles as mothers in adoption narratives, women are polarized between the figures of the ‘bad birth mother’ and the ‘good adoptive mother’. Betty Jean Lifton notes of this Freudian insight in her article ‘Bad/Good, Good/Bad: Birth Mothers and Adoptive Mothers’ that ‘everyone has two mothers, according to Freud: the good mother and the bad mother. The psychological task is to bring them together as two parts of the same woman’.32 However, she further notes that adopted individuals literally do have two mothers: ‘a birth mother’ and an ‘adoptive mother’.

She notes that “[i]n the eyes of society, the married adoptive mother is good and the unmarried birth mother is bad”.33 The ‘bad birth mother’ and the ‘good adoptive mother’ mirror the virgin-whore dichotomy of women and are continually perpetuated by depictions of these mother figures in popular media.

Within cinema, the evil birth mother is such a common character that it could be added to the list of archetypal characters alongside the handsome prince or

Article One

the damsel in distress. One such contemporary example is in the fantasy film The Golden Compass (2007). The film centers on Lyra, an orphan who possesses the key to destroy a dangerous plot by a mysterious organization. At the beginning of the film the audience is introduced to Mrs. Marisa Coulter, a cold, controlling and abusive woman. Lyra soon learns that this woman is not only her arch enemy but also her biological mother. Mrs. Coulter is presented as a widow, however it is revealed Mrs. Coulter had an affair whilst being married and Lyra was the subsequent result. These characteristics attributed to Mrs. Coulter depict her as the epitome of evil and perpetuating the myth of the ‘bad birth mother’. Lifton notes that ‘even today, when society has relaxed its sexual mores, the biological mother remains cast in the role of the bad mother. She is a loose woman, who not only had a baby out of wedlock but gave that baby away’.34 In other words, it can be interpreted that a woman who relinquishes her child is often viewed as cold and unfeeling.

As cinematic texts perpetuate the stigma of the ‘bad birth mother’, I argue that these texts also perpetuate the notion of the ‘good adoptive mother’. Motherhood is culturally presented as essential, normal, and natural for all women.35 Therefore, perhaps the figure of the ‘good adoptive mother’ is presented in direct opposition to the cold and unfeeling woman who is able to reject motherhood, thereby equating being ‘good’ with what is ‘normal’. The adoptive mothers of Vanessa in Juno (2007), Mrs. Little in Stuart Little (1999), and Kala in Tarzan (1999) are all depicted as warm, caring and protective figures. As Lifton notes, ‘the adoptive mother is the virtuous woman who rescues an abandoned child and saves her from the orphanage, or the gutter, by making the child her own’.36 The Good Adoptive Parents & The Bad Birth Parents Contemporary adoption films tend to not only polarize portrayals of mothers, but also of the adoptive and biological parents.

In these representations, the texts tend to

20

Examining Representations of Adoption in Popular Contemporary Cinema

exalt the adoptive parents, whilst degrading the biological parents. One of the most distinct examples is within Juno (2007) in which the film equates parenthood to a specific age, class and gender37. The film supposes that the best suitable parents for the unborn child are the middle-class Caucasian couple, Mark and Vanessa. Jessica L. Willis notes ‘the contrast between Juno and the selected adoption couple is significant because it speaks to social and cultural ideas about who is best suited to raise a child’38. Therefore in the film, the young, unmarried, working-class, Juno is deemed unsuitable for motherhood when compared with the traditional heterosexual middle class couple of Mark and Vanessa.

The most extreme example of the representation of the good adoptive parents and the bad birth parents is in the film The Tie That Binds (1995). The film tells the story of two criminal fugitives who abuse and abandon their young daughter. After she has been adopted into the home of a happy nuclear family, the birth parents

turn to violent means in order to locate and reclaim their daughter. Although this is an exaggerated example, the polarization is clearly evident and is repeated in many other adoption media texts such as in Losing Isaiah (1995), Meet the Robinsons (2007) and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008).

Conclusion Throughout my examinations of filmic texts I have been given the opportunity to explore, analyze and reflect on what it means to be adopted. I have been able to, as Adrienne Rich calls it, better understand the assumptions in which our culture has been drenched,39 and thereby have been given the great gift of being able to know myself a little better.

With the current plethora of available, and as such upcoming films as Les Miserables (2012), Admission (2013) and Man of Steel (2013) suggests, a continuing growth in adoption films, there will be many more examinations that can be conducted in relation to cinema and adoption. I urge you

Article One

to further explore how the cultural institution of cinema contributes to shaping conceptions of reality and influencing attitudes and behaviors concerning adoption.

Endnotes 1 Beth M Waggenspack, “The Symbolic Crises of Adoption: Popular Media’s Agenda Setting.” (Adoption Quarterly. Vol 1 (4). June 1998) p. 57.

2 Beth M Waggenspack, “The Symbolic Crises of Adoption” p. 59.

3 Marianne Novy, Reading Adoption: Family and Difference in Fiction and Drama. (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI 2 005). p. 30.

4 Stuart Hall, “Encoding/Decoding.” Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks. Eds. Meenakshi Gigi Durham & Douglas Kellner. (Wiley-Blackwell, Malden, MA 2006). pp. 163-173.

5 Jean Paton, Orphan Voyage. (Cedaredge: Country, 1980). p. 50.

6 Amy T Peterson & David J. Dunworth, Mythology in our Midst: A Guide to Cultural References.

(Greenwood Publishing Group, London 2004) p. 6.

7 Vincent J Cheng, Inauthentic: The Anxiety Over Culture and Identity. (Rutgers University Press, New York 2004). p. 66.

8 Vincent J Cheng, Inauthentic: The Anxiety Over Culture and Identity. p. 67.

9 Vincent J Cheng, Inauthentic: The Anxiety Over Culture and Identity. p. 65.

10 Vincent J Cheng, Inauthentic: The Anxiety Over Culture and Identity. p.65.

11 Katarina Wegar, Adoption, Identity and Kinship: The Debate Over Sealed BirthRecords. (Yale University Press, New Haven 1997). p. 81.

12 Arjun Appaduari, “Putting Hierarchy in its Place.”

(Cultural Anthropology. Vol. 3, No. 1. Feb. 1998). p. 36.

13 Sandra Lee Patton, BirthMarks: Transracial Adoption in Contemporary America. (NYU Press, New York 2000). p. 105.

14 Beth M. Waggenspack, “Four Media Myths About Adoption.” (Adoptive Families. 01 April 2009. www. adoptivefamilies.com/articles.php?aid=608).

15 Beth M Waggenspack, “The Symbolic Crises of Adoption” p. 67.

16 Beth M. Waggenspack, “Four Media Myths About Adoption.” (Adoptive Families).

17 John Simmonds, “The Adoption Narrative: Stories that We Tell and Those We Can’t.” The Dynamics of Adoption. Eds. Amal Treacher & Ilan Katz. (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London 2000). pp. 30-31.

18 John Simmonds, “The Adoption Narrative.” p. 31.

19 Marianne Novy, Reading Adoption. p. 47.

20 Marianne Novy, Reading Adoption. p. 31.

21 Marianne Novy, Reading Adoption. p. 47.

22 Christine Ward Gailey, “Urchins, Orphans, Monsters, and Victims: Images of Adoptive Families is U.S. Commercial Films, 1950-2000.” Adoptive Families in a Diverse Society. Ed. Katarina Wegar.

(Rutgers UP, London 2006). p. 80.

23 Pamela Anne Quiroz, Adoption in a Color-Blind Society. (Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, MD 2007). p. 41.

24 Beth M Waggenspack, “The Symbolic Crises of Adoption.” p. 61.

25 Kathy Lancaster, Keys to Parenting an Adopted Child. (Barron’s Educational Series, New York 1996). p. 26.

26 Lawrence C. Rubin, “Superheroes and Heroic Journeys: Re-claiming Loss in Adoption.” (Journal of Creativity in Mental Health. 1: 3, March 2007). p. 242.

27 Lawrence C. Rubin, “Superheroes and Heroic

22

Examining Representations of Adoption in Popular Contemporary Cinema

Journeys.” p. 242.

28 Beth M Waggenspack, “The Symbolic Crises of Adoption” p. 73.

29 Marlou Russell, Adoption Wisdom: A Guide to the Issues and Feelings of Adoption. (Broken Branch Productions, Los Angeles 1996). p. 38.

30 Marlou Russell, Adoption Wisdom. p. 38.

31 Katarina Wegar, Adoption, Identity and Kinship. p. 81.

32 Betty Jean Lifton, “Bad/Good, Good/Bad: Birth Mothers and Adoptive Mothers.”

“Bad” Mothers: The Politics of Blame in TwentiethCentury America. Eds. Molli Ladd-Taylor & Lauri Umansky. (NYU Press, New York 1997). p.191.

33 Betty Jean Lifton, “Bad/Good, Good/Bad.” p.191.

34 Betty Jean Lifton, “Bad/Good, Good/Bad.” p.192.

35 Anne Woollett & Harriette Marshall, “Motherhood and Mothering.” The Handbook of the Psychology of Women and Gender Ed. Rhoda K. Unger. (John Wiley, New York 2001). p. 171.

36 Betty Jean Lifton, “Bad/Good, Good/Bad.” p.191.

37 Jessica L. Willis, “Sexual Subjectivity: A Semiotic Analysis of Girlhood, Sex and Sexuality in the Film Juno.” (Sexuality & Culture. 27 September 2008. St. Lawrence University). p. 254.

38 Jessica L. Willis., “Sexual Subjectivity.” p. 254.

39 Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence. (W.W. Norton, New York 1979). p. 35.

Biography Donovan Krill applied his love of cinema to his tertiary education by completing a Bachelor of Arts in Film Studies from the University of Alberta, followed by a Master of Arts in Media Production from Ryerson University.

His thesis Adopting an Identity examined contemporary representations of adoption in mainstream media. He currently resides in Amsterdam where he works as a Project Manager for Viacom International Media Networks.

ARTICLE ARTICLE TWO ONE

Article Two

T

he introduction of rationing in Britain during the Second World War promoted the idea of a common national diet and linked the State to the individual consumer in such a way that the principles of food control could be used to define the British as a coherent and specific group. This process was both advanced and reflected in the cinema of the period, for whilst the publicity that the Ministry of Food (MoF) exhibited in British auditoriums helped to further the appeal of a collective gastronomic agenda, commercial feature films also used food imagery in their attempts to create “authentic” representations of contemporary Britain. However, whilst many films were happy to toe the official line and advance the idea of a uniform diet, others preferred to use food to remind audiences of both the gratification offered by individual indulgence and the pleasures of the flesh. This paper will explore some of the different ways in which British films of the war years used food, and will suggest that the frequent use of food imagery in British wartime cinema is linked to a wider cultur-

al and societal interest in the subject.

Film and the Construction of a Communal Idea This paper can be understood as contributing to the ongoing debate that surrounds the construction of British identity during the Second World War, and proposes that food was one element in a more general attempt to imagine the British nation in communal and collective terms. By proposing that food was intentionally foregrounded within the national community in order to assist in the construction of a consensual and communal ideal, this paper chimes with the ideas of writers such as Margaret Butler and James Chapman, who have both pointed to the importance of the community in the advancement of the idea of the “People's War.”1 Wartime cinema screens frequently featured images of communal activities: from scenes of group singing in San Demetrio London (1943) and dancing in The Demi-Paradise (1943) to the newly established communities of underground shelterers seen in I Thank You (1941) or

26

Food Fight! The Cinema of Consumption in Wartime Britain

Gert and Daisy’s Weekend (1942) and the village of Bramley End pulling together to defeat German invaders in Went the Day Well? (1942). In the same way that military-themed films such as The Way Ahead (1944) used scenes centred on group consumption in the mess or at a NAAFI canteen to complement those which featuring drill or team-building military exercises, Home Front films seemed equally willing to show that a collective approach during leisure hours helped to build an esprit de corps which could be sustained as civilians went about their war work. As such, the formation of a common, rationing-defined diet – and the creation of new dining establishments which allowed for dining en masse – helped Britons to understand themselves in relation to each other and the State, promoting a collective ideal.

However, whilst the intricacies of the rationing system have been explored in great detail by scholars such as R. J. Hammond and Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, relatively little scholarly work has taken as its theme the cultural prominence of food

and the huge amounts of publicity issued by the MoF. This is still the case, even though, as Hammond noted as early as 1951, the subject “deserves a specialist monograph to itself.”2 Similarly, gastronomic imagery has yet to be extensively investigated by historians studying British cinema of the war years. Indeed, discussion of the way in which food has been used in film – in different cultures, genres and periods – is still quite rare, although there is some evidence to suggest that the subject is now receiving more attention.3 Understandably, much of this scholarship has tended to focus on films such as Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) or Like Water for Chocolate (1992) which use gastronomic motifs as central narrative devices or allow food to define character or identity. What I am more interested in is the incidental use of food, the use of alimentary imagery as a single and often subtle element of an imagined cinematic reality, for food, diet and popular attitudes towards both have a historic specificity which needs to be understood if their use in film is to be satisfactorily explored.

Article Two

As such, Second World War British cinema provides a fascinating opportunity for historians interested in food and film, for both subjects were of elevated importance between 1939 and 1945,4 and their frequent commingling provides ample scope for film historians to observe how this subject was harnessed by both official and non-official filmmakers to serve particular ideological purposes.

Second World War British cinema provides a fascinating opportunity for historians interested in food and film Controlling the National Diet Those who lived in Britain during the war might have found it difficult to ignore the work of the Ministry of Food. Not only did the MoF control the national diet through its administration of the ration-

ing system, it was also a major cultural producer during the war, issuing thousands of pieces of publicity in numerous different media in the hope of inspiring British consumers to act in a food-conscious manner.

Rationing of certain – often imported – foodstuffs was first introduced in January 1940, and the scheme was extended and refined thereafter. Such was the significance of the Ministry's work, and so ubiquitous was its presence in wartime British kitchens, that Lord Woolton – Minister of Food between 1940 and 1943 – was described in an early script of the documentary feature World of Plenty (1943) as "the unseen guest at ten million breakfast tables."5 Further, recognising the importance of food to both the mental and physical wellbeing of the Home Front, and hence the nation’s ability to successfully prosecute the war, Hubert Beaumont MP insisted that "next to the Fighting Forces the Ministry of Food will play the most important part in the war."6 Rationing was a key site of dialogue between the individual and a State that

28

Food Fight! The Cinema of Consumption in Wartime Britain

in wartime played such a decisive role in determining many elements of public and private life. By restricting the individual's right to consume, the government demonstrated its willingness to implement radical and potentially unpopular changes to pre-war norms showing that sacrifice was necessary if Britain was to win the war.

Woolton and his colleagues were convinced that in order for British consumers to trust the MoF, the MoF would need to talk to the public. As such, the Ministry orchestrated an extensive publicity campaign to inform the public about the nature and purpose of the rationing system. This campaign would serve to provide practical information about rationing and the work of the MoF, build a bond of trust between the Ministry and the people, and establish food as a prominent aspect of wartime culture, encouraging Britons to recognise the strategic and martial importance of the subject and thus encourage them to realise the significance of food in wartime.

The publicity issued by the MoF also sought to position individual consumers

as part of a wider group. The Ministry used food's associations with mutuality and collectivity to integrate the private individual into the public body-corporate and the national struggle, thereby building the foundations of a communalist gastronomic paradigm. Indeed, Robert Boothby, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food, described his hope that during the war "comradeship in matters of food – a sort of community of “food companions” – might grow."7 Boothby's phrase brings to mind the title of J. B. Priestley’s The Good Companions – popular as a novel, a stage play and in 1933 as a feature film – and so situates this community of gastronomic equals in the cultural mainstream.

Although during the first months of the war the MoF issued its publicity through the Ministry of Information (MoI), and although the Ministry of Food would on occasion continue to make use of the MoI, Woolton realised that such was the quantity of material that his department would need to issue, and such was the speed with which it would need to reach the public,

Article Two

that the MoF should co-ordinate its own publicity. Thus the MoF became one of only two government departments – the other was the National Savings Committee – to run publicity campaigns independent of the MoI. In order to create a truly comprehensive publicity campaign, the MoF's Public Relations Division (PRD) made use regular use of all of the media at its disposal. Regular radio, newspaper and magazine advertisements and short cinema films were complemented by stand-alone single-issue campaigns and one-off publicity stunts.

The PRD was entrusted with vast sums of money, and in 1943-44 spent very nearly £600,000 on publicity, a figure equivalent to almost 50% of the MoI's entire home publicity budget.8 The Kitchen Front In June 1940, two months after Woolton took up his position as Minister of Food, the MoF, working in a partnership with the BBC that would not always prove to be entirely harmonious, launched The Kitchen

Front, a five minute radio programme that was broadcast to the nation six mornings a week at 8.15.9 The timeslot was the envy of all other government publicists, for it followed on from the main morning news bulletin and secured huge audiences: the Corporation’s own estimates suggested that by October 1940 each edition of The Kitchen Front was attracting almost five and a half million listeners.10 From mid1943 the MoF was forced to allow other departments to use two of the six weekly slots, but for three years the Ministry of Food enjoyed a highly privileged position vis-à-vis the national broadcaster, a position that it exploited in an attempt to keep food at the forefront of British wartime culture.

As well as boosting audience figures, by scheduling the programme for broadcast at 8.15 the MoF and the BBC also ensured that the show was listened to by many families as they gathered to eat their breakfast, placing issues of food and consumption in a familial context. The immediacy of these live broadcasts helped listeners to understand themselves as part of a wider na-

30

Food Fight! The Cinema of Consumption in Wartime Britain

tional community, for although each show was most often heard in the privacy of an individual's own home, the knowledge that millions of other listeners in millions of other homes were simultaneously tuned in helped to establish a bond amongst the soldiers on the The Kitchen Front.

The programmes also attempted to adopt a genial and light-hearted tone wherever possible. Lord Woolton, who took a great interest in the publicity work of his Ministry and who was a regular and popular voice on British radio during his tenure, believed that as "the public was either going to laugh or cry about food rationing … it was better for them that they should laugh – even if it was only a somewhat wry smile – than that they should contemplate too much on the misery of the position."11 The humour evident in many of the broadcasts served to make The Kitchen Front – and the MoF more generally – seem both sympathetic and approachable.

Indeed, the Ministry intended that its radio programmes be understood not simply as a chance for the MoF to lecture the public,

but instead as part of a national dialogue concerning food in wartime. As such, British consumers were provided with many opportunities to contribute to the show.

Ordinary Britons were encouraged to use The Kitchen Front to exchange cooking tips and hints, or to send in recipes or foodrelated stories. Indeed, so popular did the show become that the Ministry suspected that some correspondents – one, for example, wrote a letter detailing his adventures with a "teeny-tiny cauliflower" – were sending in "obviously concocted" stories in the hope of getting them read out on air.12 Food Facts Material submitted by the public also constituted a significant element of the second of the MoF's second major publicity campaign, the “Food Facts” advertisements which were printed each week in more than a thousand separate publications. Many of these advertisements were also designed to encouraged readers to contribute. In October 1942, for example, readers were asked to submit recipes as part of a "Potato Coun-

Article Two

ty Championship" in which cooks from different town attempted to "win honour‟ for their county.13 First printed in late July 1940, the “Food Facts” advertisements were so positively received that an initial three month trial was extended indefinitely. Only in 1950, after more than 500 advertisements had been issued, was the series discontinued. As opposed to The Kitchen Front, the “Food Facts” could be cut out and kept for later and repeated consultation. Consequently, the MoF believed that part of the series" success was that despite the huge number of advertisements printed each week – more than 40 million – the “Food Facts” helped the MoF save paper, for in many instances they could replace leaflets the MoF would otherwise have had to print.14 Adopting a magazine format, the “Food Facts” advertisements crammed as much topical information into each edition as possible, discussing the changing distribution situation, changes to the Points Rationing system and giving cooking hints

and recipes. On occasion, though, a less busy style was adopted, and the starker, bolder advertisements so produced gave out a sterner message, most often pointing to the dangers Britain's merchant marine faced in importing food into the country in an attempt to encourage readers not to waste it.

Such an ambitious campaign came at a significant cost, though. Whilst the PRD selected papers to carry “Food Facts” and its other advertisements based on strict criteria for ensuring maximum coverage for minimum cost, and although the MoF enjoyed a government discount, the bill for the MoF's print advertising campaigns was still large.15 Peaking at an annual total of £531,712 in financial year 1942-43, press advertising accounted for more than 90% of the Ministry's publicity budget.16 Food Flash Films By contrast, cinema advertising was able to reach a comparable number of consumers for a much smaller cost. Early in the war, the members of the Cinematograph

32

Food Fight! The Cinema of Consumption in Wartime Britain

Exhibitors Association (CEA) agreed not only to include a certain number of government films in their programmes, but to screen these films free of charge. The MoF took advantage of the CEA’s generosity by requesting that a short film about a rationing-related topic be screened in British cinema each week: between March 1942 and November 1946 more than two-hundred short Food Flash films – most of which were between twenty and thirty seconds long – were produced and exhibited.

The MoF's own research suggested the reach of this particular medium. Eventually exhibited in more than 3,000 cinemas, the Ministry estimated that each Flash was watched by approximately 20,000,000 cinemagoers.17 Given that the MoF enjoyed approximately £85,000 worth of screen time gratis each year, the cost of the campaign – £10,352 in financial year 1942-43, for instance – was relatively small when compared to the massive sums spent on “Food Facts” advertisements.18 Understanding that the multi-subject magazine format that had characterised

many “Food Facts” would not work if used in the Flashes, the films instead offered a brief, and frequently humorous, explanation of a single point of rationing policy.

As a visual medium, the Flashes were especially well-suited to short instructional subjects and offered advice on subjects as diverse as how to bone a fish or measure a level teaspoon.

The Food Flashes were not, however, the MoF’s sole intrusion onto British screens. Short films like Queen’s Messengers (1941) – which detailed the work done by mobile emergency canteens in bombed out areas – and The Way to His Heart (1942) – a pastiche of silent cinema which promoted potato consumption – also helped to ensure that food and rationing were explicit components of many cinema programmes. The regular screening of films in cinemas also helped the MoF to position the audience – consumers of both food and film – in a communal context, encouraging cinemagoers to recognise the significance of collective experience as an essential aspect of wartime life and of wartime diet.

Article Two

Running parallel to these regular campaigns were occasional publicity campaigns and stunts designed to promote single issues. Whilst many of these took the form of conventional advertising – for example a print advertisement aimed at women which suggested that cabbage was essential to a healthy complexion19 – others were one-off stunts, such as the potato fair held in Oxford Street in December 1942, or the installation of a machine to waft the smell of products baked with National Flour into the faces of shoppers on Piccadilly. Most of these campaigns appear to have enjoyed a fair degree of success,20 but their real significance lies in the MoF's willingness to enhance its visibility. The PRD worked hard to make sure that food was brought centre stage and spot-lit: the British public could not plead ignorance of the food situation given the continual emphasis the government placed on the subject.

Communal Dining The foregrounding of food served both a

practical and an ideological function. For whilst MoF publicity encouraged British consumers to recognise the importance of food to the war effort, rationing – and attendant publicity – also helped to construct British consumers as a distinct group, as an identifiable community defined by a common diet. Indeed, rationing might be described as a “secular communion,” a gastronomic expression of the nation's coherence and identity.

One very clear instance in which this ideological construct was given concrete form was in the communal dining establishments created during the war. To complement the food that each individual was guaranteed under the rationing system, and to produce savings of time and fuel, numerous factory canteens and British Restaurants – both subsidised – were opened in order to provide cheap, hot meals. Any company with more than 250 employees was after 1940 required by law to provide a canteen for its staff, whilst British Restaurants were developed in order to provide a similar service for people who worked in

34

Food Fight! The Cinema of Consumption in Wartime Britain

smaller industrial and business concerns, as well as catering to the general public.

It is believed that the majority of those who ate at such establishments had previously either eaten at home or had taken packed meals to work with them, meaning that the rising number of meals taken in canteens and state-run restaurants can be viewed as an increase in the number of meals eaten outside the home, rather than just as a redistribution of where such meals were consumed.21 By increasing the visibility of dining in the public arena, by

establishing a context in which personal consumption was understood communally, and, further, by linking such consumption to the idea of increased wartime production, canteens and British Restaurants helped promote the idea of a collective gastronomy, one in which the communal ideals of the wartime nation were expressed on the long benches and corporate eating spaces of its newly created refectories.

Although I will discuss Eating Out with Tommy Trinder (1941) and Millions Like Us (1943) as examples of films which

That images of these new facilities, of public dining en masse, feature in so many films, both government shorts and longer commercial productions, suggests that state-sponsored eating spaces gained enough cultural capital to be recognised as an element of everyday life as understood by British filmmakers.

Article Two

celebrated the importance of communal consumption in British Restaurants and works canteens respectively, it should be noted that these institutions also featured in numerous other films, for instance Old Mother Riley, Detective (1943) and The Lamp Still Burns (1943). That images of these new facilities, of public dining en masse, feature in so many films, both government shorts and longer commercial productions, suggests that state-sponsored eating spaces gained enough cultural capital to be recognised as an element of everyday life as understood by British filmmakers.

Eating Out with Tommy Trinder Released in May 1941, Eating Out with Tommy Trinder was part of the Ministry of Information's “Five Minute Film� series.

Accordingly, it would have been screened in thousands of cinemas across Britain and is likely to have been seen by tens of millions of people. The film promoted not only the concept of public dining, but also a newly created brand. Until early 1941

British Restaurants had most often been called "communal feeding centres," a bureaucratic name that Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared to be "suggestive of communism and the workhouse."22 Released just months after a new name was adopted, Eating Out with Tommy Trinder sought to raise the profile of the British Restaurants by demonstrating the benefits that the scheme brought to both consumers and the State.

In the film, popular music hall comedian and newly-minted film star Tommy Trinder treats his fiancĂŠe's family to a meal at the Byrom British Restaurant in Liverpool. Noting somewhat pointedly that the food available at the British Restaurant is

36

Food Fight! The Cinema of Consumption in Wartime Britain

superior to that cooked by his prospective mother-in-law, Trinder also explains the benefits of the establishment – namely savings of time, food and fuel – and shows that communal dining is a Good Thing for the community. Further, British Restaurants fulfilled an ideological function.

Winifred Williams' diary entry regarding a trip to a British Restaurant in 1943 provides a glimpse at the sense of communal purpose fostered by the establishments: "Black coats and blue overalls seemed to mingle without being aware of their difference in status. This is a very democratic place, I thought, looking to see what my neighbour's paper was saying about Stalingrad."23 Despite the democratic and egalitarian ideals of the British Restaurant, Trinder is allowed to dominate the film, and it is his interest in and approval of the Restaurants which is supposed to persuade Britons to make use of them. Trinder's everyman star persona is central to the film's attempt to appeal to British consumers, for whilst his fame lent his recommendations a degree of

glamour, his working class, wisecracking image foregrounded both his own and the Restaurant's ordinariness, and thus rendered more believable his boosting of such an establishment.

In the film, Trinder plays himself. He is first seen whilst performing on a music-hall stage, and it is his position as an entertainer, as a public figure, as public property, which helps to make both familiar and exciting the public space of the restaurant. Indeed, so comfortable does Trinder appear in the British Restaurant that the film leaves the viewer with the impression that patrons could reasonably expect to dine alongside a star of stage and/or screen should they choose to eat there themselves. Trinder's final line reinforces the linkage between his stage act and the act of eating, for when he delivers his catchphrase – "You lucky people!" – straight to camera, the restaurant and the stage are conflated, the act of public dining shown to be just another enjoyable public performance, one which all could consume and participate in.

The British Restaurant to whichTrin-

Article Two

der takes the family Jones is presented and described as being safe and enjoyable for "Mr Jones, Mrs Jones and all the other Joneses." Attempting to persuade British consumers to overcome a deep-seated reluctance to dine in public, the British Restaurant is presented as a place where individual, family and community could come together to enjoy a good meal and celebrate a sense of shared belonging.

Within this arrangement, though, the family remains paramount: the Joneses, previously seen eating in the privacy of their own home, retain their close familial bond when at the restaurant. When they dine publicly, however, the family is surrounded by other people – most shots of family members contain unidentified co-diners in the background – and is explicitly positioned as part of the wider community that constitutes the nation.

The cleanliness and convenience of the British Restaurants are also much in evidence. In contrast to the tight, static shots which dominate earlier sequences set in the Jones' house, the British Restaurant

is constructed in wider, more expansive shots by a more mobile camera intent on communicating notions of space, energy and purpose. The scale and nature of food preparation is also shown, with huge, gleaming metal machines operated by single members of staff wearing spotless white uniforms, pointing to the efficiency of modernity and demonstrating the savings gained when industrial methods are utilised to cook for hundreds.

As if aware that the continual emphasis on the mechanistic nature of large-scale food production might encourage viewers to regard the Restaurants as sterile and impersonal, the film takes pains to point out the alimentary benefits of the system as enjoyed by the consumer. The sequences in the Restaurant contain shots of the meals taken by Trinder and his in-laws seemingly designed to speak to a hungry audience composed of cinemagoers eager to fill their bellies. Although such shots clearly served a promotional purpose, they were not mere fantasy; in reality, many of those who ate at the Restaurants were

38

Food Fight! The Cinema of Consumption in Wartime Britain

pleasantly surprised with both the quality and – especially – the quantity of food on offer. Frank Edwards, who kept a diary for Mass-Observation, was clearly impressed with the "exceedingly generous" amount of food dished out to patrons and assumed that the establishments' evident popularity could be ascribed to the size of the portions and the efficiency and pleasantness of the staff.24 (Predictably, not everyone was so impressed. Frances Partridge described Swindon's British Restaurant as "a huge elephant-house where thousands and thousands of human beings were eating … an all-beige meal," whilst a Conservative MP insisted that „one needs to be British to “take it” in a British Restaurant."25 However, whilst such critics might sneer at the food, they also point to the essentially communal nature of the British Restaurant experience.)

The food that Trinder and his in-laws enjoy is presented via high-angle, pointof-view shots that mirror similar shots seen earlier during the sequence set in the family home. Presenting food in a subjec-

tive manner, the small, mean portions one might find chez Jones are contrasted with the much more satisfying meals available in the British Restaurants. Such a contrast is intriguing, for at one level it seems to suggest that the rationing system is incapable of adequately feeding the nation. However, I think that a different interpretation is more useful: the British Restaurants are promoted as part of the rationing system, not as being entirely separate from it. The film therefore showed that those who chose to fully participate in the rituals of group consumption and the national diet could expect to eat properly, whereas those who continued to hold onto their pre-war gastronomic expectations might go hungry.

Millions Like Us Although the largest British Restaurants were often expansive, they were unable to match the factory canteens for size. Indeed, in Millions Like Us the works canteen seems to be almost as large as the machine shop where the film's protagonists work, a point noted when similar establishing shots are

Article Two

used to introduce both spaces. In the film, Celia Crowson (Patricia Roc) is conscripted to work in a factory which manufactures aeroplane parts. Whilst there, she comes to terms with her separation from her biological family by positioning herself within a familial community of fellow workers. It is

only when she accepts her new life – and, by extension, her position within the wartime economy and her contribution to the nation – that she blossoms, gaining confidence and finding love with Fred Blake (Gordon Jackson), the RAF sergeant who she marries. Millions Like Us returns time and again to the idea that during the war the individual is best defined as a member of a wider community and that the curtailment of a certain amount of personal freedom is both desirable and necessary if the war is to be won. The film does not shy away from confronting the disruption that the conflict is causing – both to individuals, their families and British society in general – but through its repetitious use of inclusive imagery declares that a collective approach can not only compensate for the disruption of pre-war familial norms, but replace these peacetime certainties with the stability offered by new forms of communalism.

It is therefore not surprising that the factory canteen is important within the film, for by setting scenes in this location

40

Food Fight! The Cinema of Consumption in Wartime Britain

Millions Like Us declares its intent to present viewers with a “realistic� representation of wartime life and in so doing underlines the idea of communality so integral to the film's message. By normalising the temporary intrusion of extraordinary events into ordinary lives, the film suggests that it is possible for the factory to temporarily replace the emotional sustenance more usually offered by the family. However, as a familial and familiar environment, the canteen also operates as a space in which the continued importance of the personal can be demonstrated. Operating as a massive family dining table, the canteen provides, within a factory dedicated to wartime production, a place where an individual can express personal emotions.

The first of the canteen-based scenes is interesting in that it establishes the factory's refectory as a busy place, a site of energetic consumption integral to an environment dedicated to tireless and continual production. The majority of the scene is dedicated to a conversation about the sartorial intricacies of Celia's forthcoming

wedding to Fred, an event complicated by clothes rationing. Whilst Celia seems somewhat embarrassed by the prospect of discussing her honeymoon attire in the canteen, in the presence of co-workers she has only recently befriended, the intimate ambience created by the shared act of eating establishes a small personal space within the collective ideal of the factory and makes permissible the potentially delicate subject of what underwear to don on the wedding night. Yet the scene is careful to allow this private conversation to take place within a carefully established collective framework, for in the three establishing shots that precede the conversation, Celia's friend Gwen Price (Megs Jenkins) moves through, and is obscured by, hundreds of workers, thereby positioning the film's protagonists as being part of and defined by the wider community in which they work.

In the first of the three shots, Gwen receives a tray of food and walks into the main space of the canteen before becoming lost in a crowd of fellow diners. The

Article Two

sole individual that the viewer is expected to recognise loses her identity and merges with the gestalt entity of the factory community. There follows a cut to a high-angle shot of the canteen in which Gwen remains unidentifiable. This second shot not only demonstrates the size of the canteen but also insists that the viewer understand the film's main characters as part of a larger group of anonymous but equally important co-workers. The table at which Gwen and Celia sit, eat and discuss their lives is just one amongst many; the film's narrative might easily have focussed on characters seated at another table. In the third shot, Gwen's arrival at the table is framed by those already seated nearby, making it clear that the meal Gwen eats in the company of her friends is also eaten in the presence of the rest of the canteen, standing here for both the factory, the war effort and, by extension, Britain as a whole. In this way the canteen is shown to be a space in which the individuality so often associated with consumption can be expressed in such a way as not to threaten the collectivity of

the nation at war whilst at the same time suggesting that there is still space for an appropriate private life within the public realm of wartime production. By sharing their mealtime, the women further the communal ideal, demonstrating that it is possible for private desire and public duty to coexist.

At the end of the film, another scene set in the canteen provides the emotional climax of Millions Like Us. Following her marriage to Fred, Celia takes her new spouse and carefully selected underwear to the coast for her honeymoon before moving to private lodgings in order to embark on a life of connubial bliss. Soon after the wedding, however, Fred is killed in action during a raid over Germany. Celia, alone in a house that had so briefly represented both her present and her potential future happiness, is for a short period completely isolated by her grief. Whereas before her loss Celia has almost always been shown as a member of a larger unit – as part of a marriage, a family, a friendship group, a workforce or, indeed, a nation – after

The Food Companions:

Cinema and Consumption in Wartime Britain, 1939–1945 A Book by: Richard Farmer

F

ood does not simply sustain the body, but also engages the mind and the

senses. As such, food is at once a material presence and a pervasive cultural phenomenon in the individual’s experience of the society in which they live. In Britain, this was especially true during the Second World War, when rationing, food shortages and an acute scarcity of what had by the late-1930s become readily available consumer goods combined to bring the issue of consumption to the forefront of the national consciousness.

films and the cinematic experience do not exist solely in the moment of consumption; the experience of and pleasure taken from them exist also in anticipation and memory, and as both of these are shaped upon the anvil of the commonplace, the meaning of the cinema can only be fully comprehended in conjunction with the quotidian concerns of everyday life. Food imagery in popular cinema was, therefore, infused with and understood in the light of personal and public discourse about rationing; food was so important that

The Food Companions explores the cultural prominence of food and rationing

snatches of dialogue or seemingly unimportant elements of mise-en-scène that mean nothing to the modern viewer were

in Britain between 1939 and 1945, using a wealth of archival materials and a wide

exceedingly meaningful to the wartime consumer.

range of commercially-produced and government propaganda films to locate British cinema culture in this period in

The prominence of food as an element of everyday life both prompted and grew out of the growing prominence of

the context of wider debates concerning consumption, and demonstrating that an

food in popular culture. The Ministry of Food conducted extensive and expensive

awareness of these debates makes possible richer and deeper readings of the films produced during the war. For like food,

publicity campaigns across a wide range of media, most notably in the newspapers (weekly ‘Food Facts’ advertisements),

on the radio (daily Kitchen Front broadcasts) and at the cinema (weekly Food Flash films). The publicity produced by the Ministry of Food – which, unusually, issued its propaganda directly rather than through the Ministry of Information – was a ubiquitous presence in wartime Britain, and was intended both to inform the people of Britain about the nature and institutions of food control, but also to use the (theoretically) shared diet that arose from rationing to construct a communal and consensual vision of British society in wartime, a society of egalitarian ‘food companions’.

However, despite widespread support for and belief in rationing and the relative effectiveness of Ministry of Food propaganda, individual desire – often castigated as selfishness – was not absent from food culture in the period. The real-

escape from food control as it did frustration with clothes rationing. The tensions evident in the debates about food during the Second World War make clear both the general adherence to and obvious limitations of rationing, and it is this tension that motivates so much of the gastronomic imagery visible in British cinema of the period.

Rationing was, of course, founded upon the organisational expertise of civil servants and the nutritional needs (and occasionally the gastronomic desires) of the British people. These elements of food control have been widely and productively written about. However, rationing was also a cultural phenomenon, and it is this element of the British war experience that is explored in The Food Companions. The army of the British Home Front marched on its stomach, and in so doing made

ity of the black market was attested to by a series of wartime thrillers that took it as

deep and numerous imprints on wartime culture; by analysing these imprints, it is

their theme, whilst the massive popularity of Gainsborough’s costume melodramas spoke as much about the desire for an

possible to gain a better understanding of popular attitudes to and experience of rationing.

44

Food Fight! The Cinema of Consumption in Wartime Britain

Fred's death she is shown on her own, the lingering shots of her solitude communicating her lack of energy and purpose.

However, this isolation is temporary, for in the film's final scene, Celia comes to realise that despite the loneliness she feels as a result of her loss, the community for which her husband was fighting, and for which she has been working throughout the film, can provide her with emotional support.

Although it is not surprising that Millions Like Us ends with Celia's reintegration into the wider (national) family, the fact that this reconciliation with the communal ideal occurs in the factory canteen speaks volumes about the prominence of food in British culture and the importance of gastronomy to notions of the British community during the war.

Having started back at work after a short period of compassionate leave, Celia's return to the factory is represented not by a shot of her at her machine, but instead by her entry into to the canteen. Celia's grief does not privilege her, though, and she queues (in democratic wartime fashion) to

receive her food, before she enters the canteen proper looking for seats and companionship amongst the tables. Celia finds her friends at a table surrounded on all sides by other workers, placing her once more into the heart of the community. As the women eat, they listen to and join in with a singer who performs popular music hall songs on a stage which has been set up in the canteen. When the singer launches into "Waiting at the Church," a song played at Celia and Fred's wedding reception, Celia looks like she is about to break down. Gwen, who is sat next to Celia, glances nervously at her friend, and prompts her friend to join in the masses chorus. Hesitantly at first, but soon with growing conviction, Celia joins in the singing, as if understanding that in order to face up to the challenges of the present and future she can take strength from the past. Setting this scene in the canteen, though, ratchets up the emotional tension and adds a degree of poignancy to the scene. Celia, whose private grief is still almost overwhelmingly raw, is forced to confront and accept her loss in this most

Article Two

public of settings, but is also made to realise that, as a member of this wider community, she is not entirely alone. Gaining emotional sustenance from the compassion of her new-found family of co-workers, and physical sustenance from the meal that the factory has provided for her, Celia comes to recognise that Fred's death, no matter how painful for her personally, was a sacrifice made on behalf of the nation, and that it is her duty to rejoin the battle and fight for the community as represented by the canteen's collective gustatory ideal.

Films like Millions Like Us and Eating Out with Tommy Trinder are testament to wartime attempts to establish a communal gastronomic paradigm by positioning state-sponsored group dining as a vital component of the war effort, as a way in which British consumers could contribute to and understand themselves as a part of the national group. However, within a heavily regulated wartime society, other films preferred to glorify the personal, using narrative, aesthetic and emotional excess to remind viewers of the pleasures

of individualism and sensuality. In some costume films and melodramas, food was mobilised as an element of a more general fantasy, offering the illusion of escape from the harsher elements of the government's regulation of food, clothing and the right of Britons to pursue pleasure at the expense of the needs of the community. Such films presented consumption – not only of food, but also of clothing, and perhaps most importantly of pleasure and sensation – in ways which offered a contrast to the idea of wartime Britain being a nation of consensual, communal consumers.

Whilst the costumes and the emotional excess evident in these films have been commented upon elsewhere,26 the films" use of food has attracted less interest. Representations of consumption in this sequence of films are also worthy of mention.

For just as one industry insider could insist in the immediate aftermath of the conflict that costume melodramas needed to be understood, in the context of wartime and post-war poverty, as offering "an escape from the drabness of this present day world

46

Food Fight! The Cinema of Consumption in Wartime Britain

of clothes coupons and austerity,"27 so too, I would argue, did continued food shortages contribute to an audience's understanding and enjoyment of the film. The appeal that extravagant on-screen costumes held for cinemagoers tired of clothes coupons is obvious; less immediate, perhaps, is the pull that images of unrestrained and unapologetic consumption had for patrons sick of the sight of their ration books and fed up with governmental appeals for stoical self-restraint and an ascetic utility lifestyle.

The Wicked Lady The Wicked Lady was released in late 1945, just after the war but whilst the rationing system was still in fully operational. The film tells the story of the adulterous affair between bored - Restoration - housewife cum - transvestite - highwayman Barbara Worth (Margaret Lockwood) and the dashing bandit Captain Johnson (James Mason). Compared to the dull worthies that surround them, Barbara and Johnson light up the screen, their relationship setting the

tone for the rest of the film. So natural and impulsive is the lovers' passion that it is introduced through the association of two essential pleasures of the flesh: food and sex.

Having met during a violent robbery, Barbara and Jackson repair to the Leaping Stag, a country inn with a name suggestive of mating and the hunt. The tavern is full of highwaymen, bandits and ne'erdo-wells, but despite its association with a single (criminal) industry, this is no works

Article Two

canteen – the roistering atmosphere is dedicated to hedonistic, self-indulgent consumption not worthwhile state-dictated production. Having eaten, Barbara and Jackson consummate their relationship, establishing a pattern in which food and sex are linked. The most blatant and satisfying association of these two pleasures occurs soon after, when Jackson describes his passion for Barbara: "When I'm with you it's like enjoying a meal prepared by the Gods. I eat and eat until I can't face another morsel. Then I look at you again and before I know it I'm clamouring for another helping."

Barbara's ambrosial qualities aside, describing such wanton and unrepentant sexual freedom in terms of overeating takes on additional meaning when it is remembered that Britain's food was still heavily regulated at the time of The Wicked Lady's release. The film thus presents both a coded critique of rationing and a challenge to conventional modes of morality, presenting food and sex as twin acts of consumption – as pleasures in which contemporary British

society was unable or unwilling to (openly) indulge. The unapologetic foregrounding of sex, however euphemistically, helps to establish The Wicked Lady as a film which celebrates the physical aspects of human existence, prioritising sensual experientialism above the rote-learned, dutiful catechisms of “conventional” State-regulated asceticism.

That said, The Wicked Lady presents the lovers' relationship – so obviously sexually enjoyable for both parties – in a relatively chaste manner. This in itself is not surprising, given censorship norms at the time. What is more intriguing is the fact that food, so often discussed in association with sex during the course of the film, is also largely absent from the screen. Indeed, most of the food shown on-screen during the film has restrictive, workaday connotations, whilst the indulgent and sensually satisfying meals are referred to but not seen. Corporeal gratification is thereby displaced into the realm of fantasy. Within the escapist framework of this melodrama, food and sex are both largely unrealisable

48

Food Fight! The Cinema of Consumption in Wartime Britain

In The Wicked Lady the idea of food is linked to the idea of sex, and the entrancing way in which both are positioned, as representatives of freedom, individualism and unapologetic indulgence, provides the film with much of its sensuality pleasures, but no less enjoyable for that, for pleasure enjoyed in the imagination is unlikely to disappoint. In The Wicked Lady the idea of food is linked to the idea of sex, and the entrancing way in which both are positioned, as representations of freedom, individualism and unapologetic

indulgence, provides the film with much of its sensuality.

Madonna of the Seven Moons Food is also used in Madonna of the Seven Moons (1944) to distinguish between “normality” and “fantasy,” between duty and excitement, between the State's right to dictate consumption and the pleasure of self-expression. The film examines the two, diametrically opposed personalities which emerge after an Italian schoolgirl is attacked and sexually assaulted. The first half of the film details the life of Maddalena Labardi (Phyllis Calvert), respectable wife and mother whose life in Rome is defined by self-denial and her commitment to the church. Mid-way through the film, however, a stressful incident triggers a change and Maddalena is transformed into her alter ego Rosanna, who moves to Florence to live as a thief, free spirit and sexually active mistress of underworld kingpin Nino Barucci (Stewart Granger). Unable to resolve the conflict between respectable self-restraint and free-spirited sensuality,

Article Two

Maddalena/Rosanna dies in a conclusion which proposes that if they are to live happily, individuals need to negotiate a posi-

tion somewhere between these extremes rather than destructively embracing just one or the other.

Whilst Rosanna's life in Florence is sensually satisfying – both for her and, I would suggest, the viewer – the life from which Maddalena escapes is staid, respectable and dull. More, it is notable for its familiarity: to all intents and purposes the Labardis are British. Despite living in Rome, Maddalena and her family act as if their house is in the Home Counties: the family has British friends, speaks and writes in English (as opposed to Italian, the written language of choice for Rosanna and her criminal cohorts), and has sent its only child to be privately educated in England. Thus it is from a notably British existence that Maddalena flees when she becomes Rosanna and escapes to Florence. It is easy, therefore, to see Maddalena’s rejection of this proper, respectable, restrained lifestyle as a rejection of Britain, or at least of those elements of wartime Britishness which encouraged consumers to sublimate pleasure and associate denial with virtue.

Having worked to transplant a microcosm of British society to the Roman suburbs, Madonna of the Seven Moons

50

Food Fight! The Cinema of Consumption in Wartime Britain

provides the Labardis with an essentially food-free lifestyle. The family consumes endless polite little cocktails but the Labardis' cook insists that „the only meal anybody's likely to get in this house is a piece of my mind,” a feast described as "indigestible.” By contrast, in the “foreign” Florentine mis-en-scene, food is not merely an afterthought, something to be displaced and dismissed, but rather a central component of the milieu, for the viewer's introduction to the San Gimiano district in which Rosanna and Nino live contains not only a fruit stall but also old ladies peeling potatoes and plucking chickens.

The freedoms that Rosanna enjoys

in Florence, and which the film suggests Maddalena is unable but subconsciously yearning to enjoy in Rome (read: Britain), are physical, sensual, and vital. Once in Florence, Rosanna makes up for lost time and sets about enjoying both Nino's manly charms and all manner of different foods – for instance she is seen both tucking with great gusto into a massive platter of tagliatelle and munching an apple with lip-smacking relish. Casting off the shackles of her repressed Romano-British existence, Rosanna rejects attempts to straightjacket consumption in communalist terms and instead looks upon eating as a sensual adventure.

Rosanna and Nino's disorderly and unconventional passion for each other, and for life and sensation more generally, is celebrated in such a way as to conjure Rosanna's Florentine fantasy as a world of unrestricted consumption, a world where individuals are free to indulge themselves without the explicit approval of the State.

When the pair's criminal existence ends violently, as surely it must in a 1940s melo-

Article Two

When Britain began to look forward to its post-war future, an increasingly large number of people came to regard rationing and food-control with an increasingly sceptical eye drama, it becomes clear that Madonna of the Seven Moons has celebrated Rosanna's rejection of conventional mores concerning sex and consumption with far greater conviction than it has condemned her impropriety: for while Maddalena/Rosanna's inability to reconcile the two halves of her personality is shown to have cost her her life, the film also asserts that appropriate self-indulgence and the enjoyment

of physical sensation (in terms of sex and food) are crucial if an individual is to live contentedly.

Both Madonna of the Seven Moons and The Wicked Lady proved to be hugely popular, and as such would seem to suggest that the British population harboured the desire to escape from, or at least to fantasise about the escape from, restriction, regulation and the relentless promotion of potato-based meals. Whilst many Britons were prepared to tolerate communal consumption and a State-regulated diet as aspects of the war effort, others, it would appear, dreamt of the day when excess and individuality might again be celebrated, when eating would be regarded primarily as a pleasure rather than as a duty. This was especially true as the war entered its final years and the prospect of victory became more immediate. Whilst the country had been fighting for its very existence, shortages and rationing were easy to justify; when Britain began to look forward to its post-war future, an increasingly large number of people came to regard rationing

52

Food Fight! The Cinema of Consumption in Wartime Britain

and food-control with an increasingly sceptical eye.

Conclusion Representing consumption without restraint in a largely positive manner, both Madonna of the Seven Moons and The Wicked Lady suggest that self-indulgence and the gratification of individual desires could be enjoyable and, what's more, should not necessarily provoke guilt. As such, they ran counter to the communal sumptuary paradigm which the rationing system in general and Ministry of Food publicity in particular worked to advance. However, although government in films like Eating Out With Tommy Trinder, commercial features like Millions Like Us and the Gainsborough melodramas all used food in different ways and to different ends, the fact that all can be understood as having made valid contributions to contemporary discourses concerning the politics of gastronomy, consumption and state control suggests that the government was successful in foregrounding food as an important

element of wartime culture. The food fight which took place between Tommy Trinder and The Wicked Lady was significant not so much because of the different agendas that each party advanced, but because these films and many others like them ensured that food became as much a part of British wartime cinema as it was of British wartime life.

Endnotes 1 Margaret Butler, Film and Community in Britain and France: From La Regle du Jeu to Room at the Top (I. B. Tauris, London: 2004). Butler describes communal imagery as being "intrinsic to British wartime culture," p. 11; James Chapman, The British at War: Cinema, State and Propaganda, 1939-1945 (I. B. Tauris, London: 1998). Chapman has observed that „images of the British at war presented through the cinema were a powerful and dramatic means of constructing the people as united in their common struggle.� p. 254 2 R. J. Hammond, Food, 3 vols. (HMSO, London: 195162), quote from Vol. I: The Growth of Policy (HMSO, London: 1951), p. 58; Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Austerity in Britain: Rationing, Controls, and Consumption, 1939-1945 (Oxford University Press, Oxford: 2000).

3 See, for example, Jane F. Ferry, Food in Film: A Culinary Performance of Communication (Routledge, London: 2003); Anne L. Bower (ed.), Reel Food: Essays on Food and Film (Routledge, London: 2004); Gaye Poole, Reel Meals, Set Meals: Food in Film and Theatre (Currency Press, Sydney: 1999).

Article Two

4 The rationing system and the huge sums spent by the MoF promoting its work ensured that food was an important cultural theme during the war, whilst cinema attendance increased by nearly 50% between 1939 and 1945. For statistics, see H. E. Browning and A. A. Sorrell, „Cinemas and Cinemagoing in Great Britain,” inJournal of the Royal Statistical Society, 117:2, 1954, p. 134.

5 The National Archives (TNA): INF 1/214: “The Strategy of Food,” 27 January 1942, p. 13.

6 18 July 1940. Parliamentary Debates: House of Commons, 5th Series, vol. 363, col. 527 7 Robert Boothby, quoted in Manchester Guardian, 21 September 1940, p. 9.

8 3 February 1944. Parliamentary Debates: Commons, 5th Series, vol. 396, col. 1405; TNA MAF 138/162: "Notes for the use of the Accounting Officer on the Ministry’s Vote Appropriation Account for 1943-44,” p. 25; Report from the Committee of Public Accounts (HMSO, London: 1945), p. 180.

9 In a memorandum dated 5 August 1943, the BBC described the MoF as having gained the „position of would- be dictators.” Quoted in Asa Briggs, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Volume III: The War of Words (Revised edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford: 1995, First published 1970), p. 37, n. 145.

10 R. J. E. Silvey, „Listening in 1940,‟ in BBC Handbook, 1941 (Hazell, Watson and Viney, London: 1941), p. 79.

11 Lord Woolton, The Memoirs of the Rt. Hon. The Earl of Woolton (Cassell, London: 1959), p. 251.

12 TNA MAF 102/59: The letter from “E. M. L. T.” of Bristol is discussed in an undated summary of correspondence.

13 “Food Facts” No. 119, week of 12 October 1942.

14 TNA MAF 75/67: "Work of the Publicity Branch, 1939-50,‟ p. 7; MoF Bulletin, No. 141, 5 June 1942, p.

1. The MoF estimated that it had printed 12 million fewer leaflets as a result of British consumers retaining “FoodFacts” columns 15 TNA MAF 75/67: "Work of the Publicity Branch, 1939-50,‟ pp. 3-4. Only papers with a circulation of more than 5,000 and with a maximum advertising rate of 6d per single column inch per thousand circulation were employed to carry MoF advertisements. On occasion, the MoF would cease to place “Food Facts” in newspapers whose advertising rates were not considered to be justified by circulation.

William Mabane, 29 July 1943. Parliamentary Debates: Commons, 5th Series, vol. 391, col. 1813.

16 TNA MAF 138/161: "Notes for the use of the Accounting Officer on the Ministry’s Vote Appropriation Account for 1942-43,‟ p. 22.

17 TNA MAF 75/67: "General Account of the Work of Public Relations Division, 1939-50,‟ p. 5.

18 TNA MAF 138/161: "Notes for the use of the Accounting Officer, 1942-43,‟ pp. 22, 24.

19 MoF advertisement S.101, week of 30 September 1944 promised cosmetics-starved women that cabbage "does remarkable work in clearing the complexion, making cheeks pink, lips red and infusing you with fascinating vitality.‟ 20 For example, the £130,000 spent on promoting potatoes in 1942-43 was believed to have brought about a 500,000 ton increase in sales compared to the pre-war average, with many of the potatoes being prepared and consumed in ways suggested by the MoF. TNA MAF 138/161: "Notes for the use of the Accounting Officer, 1942-43,‟ p. 24.

21 See, for example, The Times, 22 August 1942, p. 5; 7 March 1946, p. 6.

22 Memo from Churchill to Woolton, 21 March 1941.

Reprinted in Winston Churchill, The Second World War, Volume III: The Grand Alliance (Cassell, London: 1950), p. 663.

54

Food Fight! The Cinema of Consumption in Wartime Britain

23 Winifred Williams, quoted in Juliet Gardiner, Wartime: Britain 1939-1945 (Headline, London: 2004), p. 586.

24 Diary entry by Frank Edwards of Birmingham, 13 February 1943. Quoted in Sandra Koa Wing (ed.), Our Longest Days: A People’s History of the Second World War (Profile, London: 2008), pp. 155-6.

25 Frances Partridge and the unnamed Conservative MP are both quoted in Gardiner, Wartime, pp. 586, 178.

26 See Sue Aspinall and Robert Murphy (eds.), Gainsborough Melodrama (BFI, London: 1983); Sue Harper, Picturing the Past: The Rise and Fall of the British Costume Film (BFI, London: 1994); Pam Cook, Fashioning the Nation: Costume and Identity in British Cinema (BFI, London: 1996).

27 Mark Ostrer in Kinematograph Weekly, 20 December 1945, p. 64.

The Food Companions: Cinema and Consumption in Wartime Britain, 1939-1945 By: Richard Farmer Manchester University Press, 2011 ISBN: 978-0-7190-8313-6, ISBN10: 0-7190-8313-3 (website: http://www.manchesteruniversitypress. co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9780719083136)

Biography Richard Farmer has taught at University College London, where for two years he was Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, and the University of East Anglia. As well as The Food Companions: Cinema and Consumption in Wartime Britain, 1939-45, he has published a number of articles on different aspects of British cinema and leisure culture. He is currently writing a history of wartime cinemagoing – provisionally entitled The Utility Dream Palace – which will published

by Manchester University Press.

ARTICLE ONE

BOOK DISCUSSION

Women and Turkish Cinema

ROUTLEDGE STUDIES IN MIDDLE EAST FILM AND MEDIA

Women and Turkish Cinema Eylem Atakav

an informa business

ISBN 978-0-415-67465-2 www.routledge.com

,!7IA4B5-ghegfc!

Gender Politics, Cultural Identity and Representation Eylem Atakav

Book Discussion

F

ollowing a decade of increased and violent polarisation between Left and Right in Turkish politics, the army decided to intervene and put an end to what appeared to be incipient civil war. The military intervention of September 12th, 1980 aimed towards a period of depoliticisation in society as it crushed all political parties and particularly leftist organisations, while temporarily suspending democracy and thereby bringing normal political life to a complete halt. I, Atıl Eylem, was born a year after the coup. My name is extremely politically resonant and literally means ‘go for action.’ It has an overt link with the leftist political activism that both my parents were involved in. As I explain in detail in the introduction to my book: “The story behind my name does not only refer to the name of one of the left wing journals (Atılım) which had to be published clandestinely, but also assigns me the role and pride of carrying the keywords of the left wing activists who fought, and at times were either killed or went through

serious physical and mental torture, for their ideas. I was born a year after my father lost his comrade (arkadaş) who was shot while being carried wounded in his arms (still trying to voice his ideas); and after my mother and father had cried for their books which died in the cold damp cellar of a friend’s house, while being hidden from the police, who were inspecting every house to find censored books. Whoever had a copy of Das Kapital, was to be stamped as leftist, and hence needed to be under strict scrutiny by the police. These books full of ‘dangerous’ ideas should be burnt. Those who had managed to read them did so by covering them with gazette papers or hiding them behind the covers of other non-dangerous books. I was born on a day when no newspapers were published, because it was a religious holiday.”

This personal background informs my initial interest in analysing this decade’s political, social and cultural environment from a critical perspective. In the repressive and depoliticised atmosphere of the

58

Women and Turkish Cinema - Eylem Atakav

post-coup period, the first social movement that emerged to articulated its demands was the women’s movement. It expanded the scope of pluralism and democracy in Turkey through different concerns communicated by women in the public realm.

Although feminist ideology is overtly political, in this period of depoliticisation the movement was only able to exist because its activists sought to free themselves from both the Right and the Left and any other clearly partisan political label and they did not found any institutions seeking to increase women’s political representation.

Following the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923, women had been given rights by the state through what is often termed state feminism. In the 1980s, women were, for the first time, raising their own independent voices through campaigns, festivals, demonstrations, publications of journals and the forming of consciousness-raising groups.

Profoundly affected by the social and political milieu, Turkish cinema went through a period of change in the 1980s.

Overtly political or social realist films were censored, banned or destroyed as a result of the forcible depoliticisation in the aftermath of the coup. Women’s lives and issues (perceived as neither left-wing nor right-wing and hence apolitical) became prominent in Turkish cinema and this led to the production of an extensive body of women’s films.

This brings me to the central proposition of this book, that is: the enforced depoliticisation introduced after the coup was responsible for uniting feminism and film in 1980s Turkey. The feminist movement was able to flourish precisely because it was not perceived as political or politically significant. In a parallel move, in the films of the 1980s there was an increased tendency to focus on the individual, on women’s issues and lives, in order to avoid the overtly political.

Analysing the field of visual reresentation requires an understanding of the political and the social. It is for this reason that in Chapter One I provide a political and social framework to the study of 1980s

Book Discussion

Turkey, the women’s movement and cinema. In Chapter Two, the questions that frame my analysis are: what is the link between the women’s movement and representation of women in Turkish cinema in the 1980s? Were cinema and the women’s movement both affected in the same way in the post-coup political milieu? Were films affected by the movement or were they simply marginalising political issues by focusing on women’s lives? In Chapters Three to Six I analyse case study films in depth by employing textual analysis. I examine the operation of cinematic signifiers and elements of plot, characterisation and narrative structure in four films: Dünden Sonra Yarından Önce/After Yesterday Before Tomorrow (Nisan Akman, 1987), Mine (Atıf Yılmaz, 1982), Asiye Nasıl Kurtulur?/How can Asiye Survive? (Atıf Yılmaz, 1986) and Kurbağalar/The Frogs (Şerif Gören, 1985).

Indeed, women’s films of the 1980s do not merely reflect

some unitary patriarchal logic but are sites of power relations and political processes through which gender hierarchies are both created and contested.

In the final chapter of the book, I focus on contemporary women filmmakers in Turkey who tend to concentrate on a range of issues around political, cultural and ethnic identity as well as memory. It is also in this section that I offer a further study into the representation of women of Turkey in several documentaries made by women directors who live outside Turkey, which place the relationship between religion and women’s place in Turkey at the centre of their narratives. Olga Nakkas’ 2006 film Women of Turkey: Between Islam and Secularism, for instance, draws on interviews with women and examines the individual and political resonance of the headscarf and veiling.

Binnur Karaevli’s 2009 film Voices Unveiled: Turkish Women Who Dare provides

60

Women and Turkish Cinema - Eylem Atakav

a critique of the ban on headscarves whilst also touching upon issues including female officers in mosques; violence in the name of Islam; lack of education and economic dependence of women; women and Turkey’s EU candidacy and the tensions inherent between Muslim and Western cultures.

There are a growing number of publications on the cinema of Turkey and although there are publications on women and Turkish cinema in English, these are articles in books or journals. This is the first volume in English on the topic.

Every book is and offers a journey. On a final note, I would like to say that whatever journey the reader takes through the volume, I hope that it is one structured by explorations, interconnections and new discoveries.

Women and Turkish Cinema - Gender Politics, Cultural Identity and Representation By: Eylem Atakav Routledge (2012) ISBN: Hardback: 978-0-415-67465-2 (website: http://www.routledge.com/books/ details/9780415674652/)

Biography Dr Eylem Atakav is Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the University of East Anglia.

She is the editor of Directory of World Cinema: Turkey (2012). She is currently working on two co-edited collections Women and Contemporary World Cinema and From Smut to Soft Core: 1970s and World Cinema. She is on the editorial board of Sine/Cine: Journal of Film Studies. She teaches Women, Islam and Media; Women and Film and World Cinemas modules at UEA. Her current research interests are on the representation of ‘honour’ based violence in the media. She writes regularly on issues around gender and womanhood for the Huffington Post (UK) and for her co-authored blog on women’s cinema: Auteuse Theories.

UA Journal of social sciences call for papers Christianity & The Western World UAJSS invites research papers from the various disciplines of the social sciences and humanities that reflect on aspects of Christianity and The Western World.

Papers in (intellectual) history, sociology and theology are welcomed, but also papers exploring the connection between political structures and Christianity will be positively considered.

Deadline: 20 March 2013 See our website www.united-academics.org/journal for submission & guidelines

Send an email to the editor elke.weesjes@united-academics.org

SUBSCRIBE TO

UA M AG A Z i n e

ON YOUR iPAD

See our website www.united-academics.org/magazine

ARTICLE ONE

BIOGRAPHY

Biography

T

he 1979 showing of the American movie Holocaust on West German TV became an occasion for a mass outpouring of grief and shock as a reaction to the stark depiction of the Holocaust in Germany and Europe. Jewish commentator Julius Schoeps said of the reaction that “[f]or many people in the Federal Republic, “Holocaust” was an emotional introduction, the first encounter with the almost incomprehensible horrors of the Nazi regime. More than just a few became aware for the first time that they had repressed the murder of the Jews that was committed in the name of the German people and had previously avoided dealing with the past.” 1 It was claimed by many that the film presented the Holocaust for the first time to the German public. However, the emotional reaction that greeted the film may also be taken as evidence that, to borrow a phrase from BBC Radio 4, the West Germans had “forgotten to remember” the work of the earlier Trȕmmerfilm (Rubblefilm) directors such as Kurt Maetzig, who became the

most prolific director of the genre. He would go on to become one of the GDR’s leading directors from the 1940s to the 1970s and died this year on the 8th August. His three DEFA [Deutsche Film Aktiengesellschaft] Trȕmmerfilms; Ehe Im Schatten( Marriage in the Shadows) 1947, Die Buntkarierten (Girls in Gingham) 1949 and Der Rat der Götter (Council of the Gods) 1950 revealed the daily miseries of the Holocaust and took German history to task as he strove to remind Germans - East and West- of their bitter past. Born in Berlin on the 25th January 1911 Maetzig’s own life story was imprinted with the collapse of Weimar and the struggle against fascism. When he was interviewed about his life in the 1990s he described his life history thus “[I] lived under the Kaiser and experienced the First World War, went to school in the Weimar Republic and had my first political experiences during that period. Miraculously I survived fascism and the Second World War and in 1945 went to the place I felt I could be most actively involved in fighting the root causes of fascism and saw my

66

West Germany “Forgets to Remember”

own future in a state struggling to achieve socialism. I saw its mistakes early on and stayed because I thought it could be reformed. I experienced its disintegration and rightful collapse and now I’m living in a capitalist society again […] in the interests of us all, I sincerely hope that I will be spared a revival of fascism.” 2 Remembering Rubble In 1947 Der Spiegel described the new Trümmerfilm genre as one where films “deal with the problems of today from the point of view of the little man”3 and which are political but do not necessarily point the “finger of guilt”4 at any one person or group. The magazine was clear that these films were an important step in dealing with the Nazi past and the “berubbled and crazy present” of the Occupation period.5 The genre is one that spans both sides of the ever- firming Iron Curtain in the 1940s but is closely associated with the first films of the Soviet Zone of Occupation (SBZ) whose DEFA film studios had the remit to ”take part in the fight for the democratic

reconstruction of Germany, and the root and branch removal of fascism and militarism from the minds of every German…”.6 Filmmakers like Maetzig and his colleagues in the SBZ chose the path of combining storytelling with a strong message to create a “critical cinema”7 as called for by the returned exiled playwright Friedrich Wolf.

In this vein even in August 1945 the Soviet Occupation forces called together a nascent film group under the Zentralverwaltung für Volksbildung, (Central Organisation for the People’s Education) made up of German politicians and practitioners who had either been members of the KPD or in the socialist resistance during National Socialism. This group of cultural leaders8 then called a film group together to create the Filmaktiv (Filmactive). With his background in the socialist resistance and film making technology Kurt Maetzig was a key member of this group and together with the other film makers would go on to develop, not only the Trȕmmerfilm genre but also establish anti-fascism as the key guiding principle of Maetzig and the other

Biography

DEFA film makers.

It is possible to argue that Kurt Maetzig was born into the film industry and would have been prominent in the National Socialist Bablesberg film factory had it not been for his mother’s Jewish heritage.

His father purchased a movie film duplication company in the 1920s which exposed Maetzig to the full range of film technologies from an early age. He studied in Munich and at the Sorbonne in Paris during the early 1930s. Following a short traineeship in film production he opened his own animation studio which produced cartoons and titles for films in 1935. These first steps in the film industry were halted, however, when in 1937 he was banned from making films by the Nazis for being half Jewish. This banning would eventually give Maetzig a unique standing amongst Trȕmmerfilm directors as of the 35 directors who would go on to produce Trȕmmerfilme only four, Maetzig, Slatan Dudow, Peter Lorre and the little known Erich Freund would have no career under National Socialism. The remaining Trümmerfilm directors would all

have some sort of National Socialist UFA past. Despite being half Jewish he avoided deportation through the ministrations of influential friends and he made his living running a chemical company which was

The film makers of DEFA were driven by a powerful motivation to, as another DEFA director put it, “answer the question of how Fascism could have come to Germany” involved in the film industry. He joined the underground Communist Party (KPD) in 1944. The capitulation saw him attempting to resurrect the German film industry by trying to restart a derelict Luftwaffe propaganda studio near Berlin, but he quickly abandoned this and moved to the eastern sector of Berlin. The film makers of DEFA were driven by a powerful motivation to,

68

West Germany “Forgets to Remember”

as another DEFA director put it, “answer the question of how Fascism could have come to Germany”.9 Maetzig stands out from his fellow fellow DEFA Trümmerfilm pioneers; Gerhard Lamprecht, Wolfgang Staudte, Georg Klaren and Peter Pewas, not only in his zeal for examining this question but also in remaining in East Germany throughout his career rather than fleeing westwards. When questioned about this, following the collapse of the Wall Maetzig replied that “I never considered leaving the German Democratic Republic, because I felt that I could only fight for the kind of democratic socialism I was hoping for from within the system and not from without”10 . Maetzig would remain a key film maker and film functionary for the first 30 years of DEFA’s existence and would morph into a key commentator on DEFA’s output in the post-unification period.

Four Seasons of a Film Career Maetzig’s film career had four seasons, that of Trȕmmer pioneer, unwilling Socialist Realist propagandist, functionary

filmmaker and rebel, then finally cultural commentator when the wall came down.

His first season is, perhaps, the most significant and the one where Germany’s culpability and sin was most vehemently examined and criticised by Maetzig. In this Stunde Null (Year Zero) atmosphere of a

Biography

berubbled new beginning Maetzig began not as a feature film director, but as the director of DEFA’s newsreel Wochenschau [The Week in Review]. Maetzig was director, chief reporter and voice-over artist who was determined to present the news in such a way as to counter the syrupy melodramatic kitsch of the Nazi’s news output. He coined Wochenschau’s powerful strapline “See for yourself, hear for yourself, judge for yourself”. He continued making Wochenschau and its successor Der Augenzeuge [Eye Witness] until 1959 but it would be as a feature film director that he would make his mark.

In 1946 he was one of the four directors to hold a license to make movies in the Soviet Zone. He began with a powerful piece of Vergangenheitsbewȁltigung, (‘coming to terms with the past’) and grappling with the memories of a destructive century. His first feature film, Ehe Im Schatten, tells a story which mirrors his own backstory and is based on the biography of prominent German film actor, Joachim Gottschalk, who committed suicide with his Jewish

wife in 1941 because of the pressure that this brought on the pair as he struggled for work and she was threatened with deportation. Maetzig has described that when the original idea for the film was put to him by theatre director Hans Schweikart it “shocked me very deeply because I had seen in my own circles many such tragedies. My mother had died fleeing from the Gestapo and I had many friends who I had seen persecuted.”11 He fictionalised the story and set it in the context of a domestic relationship between fictional German actor Hans Wieland and his Jewish wife Elisabeth Maurer. Maetzig claimed that he wanted to “open up people’s hearts”12 to the horrors of the Holocaust. The Holocaust is shown through a series of domestic vignettes rather than through a broad depiction of the horrors of the concentration camps. The most telling vignette is played out in the Berlin Jewish ration card office. Elisabeth Maurer is shown queuing for her ration cards with those yet to be deported. Initially there are two queues of people waiting to receive their cards. One

70

West Germany “Forgets to Remember”

is for Jews only and the other is for people who are married to non-Jews or are half Jewish. Eventually the queue for the “pure bred” Jews disappears and eventually the numbers in the queue for mixed race Jews slowly diminishes to hardly any people at all. As with the Gottschalks, Weiland and his wife see no way out and finally commit suicide. The film ends with a dedication to Gottschalk and his wife.

The dedication to the Gottschalks may have been the most shocking part the film in 1947. Following his suicide in 1941, Gottschalk simply became a “non-person” in Nazi Germany and few people knew the truth of his fate. So affecting was the first showing of the film, which was the first DEFA film to be simultaneously premiered in all four sectors of Berlin, that Der Spiegel commented “not a hand moved when the curtain came down. It wasn’t possible to tell whether this was because of the audience’s trepidation, or shock at having seen the horror of the last 12 years played out before them.”13 Emotions around the film ran strong. When it was given its West Zone

Maetzig’s film was so effective in highlighting the Holocaust that, although the British were to ban all films made in the SBZ from presentation in its zone in 1948, Ehe im Schatten with its powerful and measured storytelling fitted perfectly with the British view of re-education and remained free for presentation in the cinemas of the British Zone premiere in Hamburg there were protests amongst the audience when the premiere was gate-crashed by Viet Harlan who had directed the infamously anti sematic Nazi film Jud Sȕß (Germany, 1940) and who had not been invited14. Maetzig’s film was

Biography

so effective in highlighting the Holocaust that, although the British were to ban all films made in the SBZ from presentation in its zone in 1948, Ehe im Schatten with its powerful and measured storytelling fitted perfectly with the British view of re-education and remained free for presentation in

the cinemas of the British Zone.15 The film was seen by 10 million people in Germany16 and after Ehe Im Schatten it would be impossible for the German public to say “Wir haben es einfach nich gewuβt…. [we simply didn’t know]…”.

His next Trȕmmerfilm; Die Buntkarierten, examined Germany’s history from the 1890s to the capitulation. It shows German history through the story of the film’s main protagonist , a working class woman, Guste, whose family is slowly destroyed by capitalism and war until a new start is made in 1945. Such an obviously didactic film, pushing a strongly socialist view of German history might be assumed to only find favour in the SBZ, however it won plaudits in the West as well. The SED’s official organ, Neues Deutschland, welcomed the film saying “ a 100% YES to this film..” but surprisingly the American Zone’s Neue Zeitung described it as a “fantastic epic..” too. Even Der Spiegel reviewed the film as a “..romp through history with spirit and humour.” 17 Maetzig’s final Trȕmmerfilm Der Rat der Götter 1950 accuses Ger-

72

West Germany “Forgets to Remember”

man industry of supporting and benefiting from fascism. With the division of Germany formalised in 1949 with the creation of the GDR and Federal Republic the western press was much less fulsome in its welcome. Der Spiegel claimed that when the curtain went down the audience refused to applaud. 18 From the perspective of the 21st century it may appear that these DEFA films must have been influenced and controlled by the Soviet occupation authorities. Maetzig however was at pains to emphasise that at the beginning of DEFA’s production from1946 to around 1949 film makers had total freedom to make the “critical” films they wanted.19 This freedom to make the “critical” films was not, however, to last. The establishment of the GDR in 1949 forced film makers to change direction as Maetzig commented that “ this wonderful first period lasted only three or four years, then everything changed with the creation of the GDR and censorship pass[ing] in to the hands of the new State authorities…”20.

It was in this period, post 1949, of strong state control that the doctrines of So-

cialist Realist film making came to the fore.

In this second season of his career Maetzig changed, or was forced to change, from making edgy and angry Trȕmmerfilme to being the unwilling director of the hagiographical and propagandist Ernst Thȁlmann films, Ernst Thälmann - Sohn seiner Klasse (Ernst Thälmann – Son of his Class) 1954 and Ernst Thälmann - Führer seiner Klasse (Ernst Thälmann – Leader of his Class) 1955. Maetzig would later claim that the films gave him “red ears”21 of embarrassment when he thought about them afterwards. He claimed that he had been selected to direct the film, rather than having chosen the project himself and that he simply set out to make a biopic about Thälmann. The result was somewhat different and the film was to bring him into gentle conflict with the General Secretary of the SED and the GDR’s leader Walter Ulbricht. As a convinced Stalinist, Ulbricht felt he had the right to involve himself in the production of the movies and such was his interference that Maetzig warned him that “if you are on the operating table and the

Biography

doctor is about to make the first incision it is not a good idea to tell him where to make the first cut.”22 Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalinism in 1956 and the slow puncturing of the Socialist Realism aesthetic allowed Meatzig to catch the New Wave of film making in the 1960’s and move in to his third season of film making.

The 1960s and 1970s saw Maetzig change direction to direct East Germany’s first science fiction film, Der schweigende Stern (‘The Silent Star’) 1960 and end his career with his final film Mann gegen Mann (Man against Man) in 1976. As a film maker and part of the DEFA censorship process he is regularly quoted in the documents of the East German film censor but it is as the director of the 1965 film Das Kaninchen bin ich (‘The rabbit is me’) that he became most famous. The film, a love story which criticises the East German legal system fell foul of the SED when DEFA’s output was aggressively criticised at the now infamous 11th Plenum of the SED in December 1965.

In his speech to the Plenum the future General Secretary of the SED, Erich Ho-

necker, said “these works of art [... ]hinder the development of a socialist consciousness on the part of the working classes […].

The matter is quite straightforward […] we cannot afford to propagate nihilistic, defeatist and immoral philosophies in literature, film, drama and television.”23 This

74

West Germany “Forgets to Remember”

blistering attack on DEFA and, in particular, Maetzig’s film caused most of DEFA’s 1965 output to be shelved. His film gave its name to all the shelved DEFA films, which are now commonly known as “Kaninchen” films. Despite this set-back, Maetzig continued. However his output slowly declined until he made his final film in 1976.

His own “Kaninchen” film would remain unseen until 1990 when the collapse of the GDR allowed Das Kaninchen bin ich to be seen in public for the first time.

“Lest We Forget” Paradoxically, the collapse of the GDR gave Maetzig a new career direction. The final season of his career was not as a film maker but as creative commentator and defender of DEFA film making in the new unified Berlin Republic. At the end of his life he became the de-facto spokesman for the DEFA, speaking at conferences and giving interviews explaining his career and the motives behind his films. This role of “representative” and practitioner of “critical cinema” make him a pivotal character

in the narrative of post war German film making. The DEFA Stiftung, which controls and promotes the DEFA archive, in its obituary of him described him as a director whose works “reflect like no other the tumultuous history of GDR film and whose films reflect the shadows, arguments and fears of East German film makers”.24 This description omits the fact that he was the most prolific of all the Trȕmmerfilm directors who’s own back story and early films cannot fail to remind Germans of the horrors of National Socialism and the daily consequences of the Holocaust.

This and other obituaries clearly forgot that his Trümmerfilme highlighted the old sins of National Socialism and pointed to a new socialist future of the “critical” citizen, this all at a time when socialism was seen as a positive choice for Europe’s citizens. His Trümmerfilme pushed Maetzig in to the front line of the battle for German memory, but by 1979 and the broadcast of Holocaust his confrontation with the past had seemingly been forgotten by the comfortable burgers of the Federal Republic.

Biography

Memory is flexible but what is clear is that Maetzig’s Ehe Im Schatten powerfully presents the daily terrors of the Holocaust and that we dare not “forget to remember” his Trümmerfilme again.

Endnotes 1 Source: Julius H. Schoeps, “Angst vor der Vergangenheit? Notizen zu den Reaktionen auf ‘Holocaust’” [“Fear of the Past? Notes on the Reaction to ‘Holocaust’”]; reprinted in Peter Märtesheimer and Ivo Frenzel, eds., Im Kreuzfeuer. Der Fernsehfilm ‘Holocaust.’ Eine Nation ist betroffen [In the Crossfire.

The Television Film ‘Holocaust.’ A Nation is Moved].

Frankfurt am Main, 1979, pp. 325-27. Translation: Allison Brown 2Brady, Martin (1999) Discussion with Kurt Maetzig: In Allan, Seán and Sandford John (Eds)DEFA East German Cinema 1946-1992, New York and London, Berghahn Books p 78 3 Spiegelonline.de, (1947 ), Stimmen aus Parkett und Rang, Man Mag keine Ruinen, http://www.spiegel.de/ spiegel/print/d-38936605.html (Accessed 23/6/2012) 4 Spiegelonline.de, (1947), Ein Auto fährt durch zwölf Jahre Menschen in unmenschlicher Zeit http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-41122894.html (Accessed 29/09/2012) 5 Spiegelonline.de, (1947), Von der krummen Tour auf den Kran,Und über uns der Himmel http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-41123921.html (Accessed 29/09/2012) 6 Berghahn, Daniela, (2005), Hollywood behind the Wall, The cinema of East Germany, Manchester, Manchester University Press. p 38 7 Allen, Seán (1999) DEFA: An Historical Overview:

In Allan, Seán and Sandford John (Eds) DEFA East German Cinema 1946-1992, New York and London, Berghahn Books p 3 8 The Zentralverwaltung für Volksbildung consisted of: Carl Haucher, Willy Schiller, Kurt Maetzig, Alfred Lindemann, Adolf Fisher and Hans Klering .

FIlmaktiv also included the above plus Fredrich Wolf, Gerhard Lamprecht, Wolfgang Staudte, Georg Klaren and Peter Pewas.

9 Kunert, Joachim (2010) Letter to author 10 Brady, Martin (1999) Discussion with Kurt Maetzig: In Allan, Seán and Sandford John (Eds) DEFA East German Cinema 1946-1992, New York and London, Berghahn Books p 84 11 Brady, Martin (1999) Discussion with Kurt Maetzig: In Allan, Seán and Sandford John (Eds) DEFA East German Cinema 1946-1992, New York and London, Berghahn Books p 81 12 ibid 13 Spiegelonline.de, (1948), Butter frisch vom Gras Zonengebundene Heiterkeit http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-44417116.html (Accessed 29/09/2012) 14 Spiegelonline.de, (1948 O), Kompensation auf weißer Wand, Premiere mit Zwischenfall http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-44416428.html Accessed 21/11/12 15 (Foreign Office (1947-1950) FO1056/266) 16 Brady, Martin (1999) Discussion with Kurt Maetzig: In Allan, Seán and Sandford John (Eds) DEFA East German Cinema 1946-1992, New York and London, Berghahn Books p 81 17 Spiegelonline.de, (1949), Siebzig Jahre mit Buntkarierten, Vom Funk auf die Leinwand http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-44437283.html (Accessed 29/09/2012) 18 Spiegelonline.de, (1950), IG-FARBEN, Die

76

West Germany “Forgets to Remember”

volle Wahrheit http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/ print/d-44448749.html (Accessed 29/09/2012) 19 Brady, Martin (1999) Discussion with Kurt Maetzig: In Allan, Seán and Sandford John (Eds) DEFA East German Cinema 1946-1992, New York and London, Berghahn Books p 83 20 Ibid 21 Brady, Martin (1999) Discussion with Kurt Maetzig: In Allan, Seán and Sandford John (Eds) DEFA East German Cinema 1946-1992, New York and London, Berghahn Books p 84 22 .Kurt Maetzig: Stalinistische Ästhetik im zweiteiligen Propagandafilm über Ernst Thälmann, Gedächtnis der Nation Youtube channel http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=MOCEZvA30HU&feature=relm fu accessed 14/11/12 23 Allen, Seán (1999) DEFA: An Historical Overview: In Allan, Seán and Sandford John (Eds) DEFA East German Cinema 1946-1992, New York and London, Berghahn Books pp12-13 24 Defa Stiftung http://www.defa.de/cms/docs/ attachments/95afb5b5-7260-4396-9cbb09291687d2af/PM-Kurt-Maetzig-8.8.2012.pdf Accessed 20/11/12

Biography Richard McKenzie studies at Reading University where his Phd, “Looking at the foundations of a ‘New Germany’ – An investigation of East and West German genre films dealing with World War II”, will investigate the Trümmerfilm genre on an East/West and gendered basis. Richard has published in United Academics and runs a resource in English reviewing German War films www.germanwarfilm.co.uk.

He also speaks regularly on the subject at various film conferences around the UK. Richard’s MA examined two critical East German war films, Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt and Ich war neunzehn. He has studied in Reading, Göttingen and Kiev and relaxes by standing for election in unwinnable constituencies.

ARTICLE ONE

Documentary & Maker

Documentary & Maker

O

n the 30th of November, the turbulent six-year tenure of Mexican President Felipe Calderón came to an end. During his reign, according to the public policy think-tank Mexico Evalua (Mexico Evaluates), Mexico had at least 101,199 homicides. Amongst those who died were politicians, police officers, musicians, activists and journalists. The violence forced thousands of people to flee the country with record numbers applying for US asylum. A new government regime doesn't mean the violence is over, some experts even say that the slight decrease in violence these past few weeks is the so-called calm before the next 'narco storm'.

1

One of the groups particularly affected by the violence is the press. Since 2006 almost 50 journalists have been killed and many others have disappeared. Criminal groups exert pressure on the press as their control has spread across the country and almost every aspect of society. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists: "Pervasive self-censorship by news media

in areas under drug traffickers' influence is a devastating consequence of violence and intimidation."2 One news outlet which hasn't buckled under this pressure is Zeta. This weekly news magazine, founded in 1980 by Jesús Blancornelas who is known as "the spiritual godfather of modern Mexican journalism", is distributed primarily in Baja, California.

Since its founding two of the magazine's editors, Héctor Félix Miranda and Francisco Ortiz Franco have been murdered and Blancornelas was attacked and nearly killed. Despite this violence, the paper continues to be a prime example of independent reporting and publishing.

The documentary Reportero follows veteran member of Zeta's editorial team

80

Reportero - A Documentary by Bernardo Ruiz

Sergio Haro and his colleagues. It examines what it means to report on the activities of organized crime groups or corrupt politicians and tries to find answers to questions such as: what goes through a reporter's mind when her or she is about to break a story that is highly controversial? and why do these

"It is a wake for Sergio's colleagues who have paid for their work with their blood. It is also an act of translation - but translation where fragments and testimonies from one

why do these journalists persist when the risks are many and the benefits few?

journalists persist when the risks are many and the benefits few? 3 Film-maker Bernardo Ruiz describes his documentary as an act of remembrance:

place are granted a new life, in an entirely new and different place. The film is an act of celebration, for Sergio Haro and his many colleagues, who stubbornly persist".

The social importance of this wellresearched documentary, which is both thoughtful and troubling is evident; it makes the viewer painfully aware of the violent world of Mexican journalism. As such, Reportero reaffirms the potency of documentary both as an art form and as a powerful medium for illuminating the oft-unseen implications of conflict.

Besides Reportero, Ruiz has produced several critical documentaries that examine

Documentary & Maker

social and cultural issues. In 2007, he started QUIET Pictures - a production company which develops and produces innovative and socially relevant media across all platforms.

Q & A Bernardo Ruiz After 10 years of working as a freelance director/producer, you founded QUIET Pictures in 2007. This production company, develops and produces 'innovative and socially relevant media across all platforms'.

How important is it for you to produce these kind of films?

I actually started working in film production as a teenager. As a 13-year old I was cast in the lead role of a Columbia University thesis narrative film. During the course of filming, my voice changed and I lost the baby fat in my face, causing a lot of continuity issues for the filmmakers. I realized two things about myself. The first was that I didn’t want to be in front of the camera.

The second was that I was much more interested in the process of putting a film

together –in how the production staff were working together to build something. This was much more interesting than the fiction we were creating. I started QUIET in 2007 because I wanted the infrastructure to do my own work. I have survived by doing a mix of things—commissioned work and then by building, slowly, and over time— purely independent work—like Reportero.

Speaking of which, you just came back from Amsterdam where Reportero was being screened on the International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA). What was it like and what kind of reviews did the film receive?

IDFA was an excellent venue for the film.

We had four packed screenings, at least one was sold out. So far, I have found Dutch and generally European audiences to be very receptive to a film like Reportero. I hope to be able to screen more of my work in Europe. I have also begun to explore the option of co-productions with European broadcasters.

82

Reportero - A Documentary by Bernardo Ruiz

Your projects educate your audience. Would you call yourself a man with a mission?

I don’t know that I have a mission. I am most interested in getting out of the way of a story. I have a set of concerns, some of them have to do, broadly, with Mexico, with Latin America, and with the relationship of those places to the U.S., but by no means are those concerns fixed. I believe that I am at my best when I leave no obvious traces of my handiwork. I see myself as a gatherer or collector of fragments. I go out into the world and harvest elements, then translate those elements into something new. In this case, I see translation not as a simple act of conversion from one language/culture to another, but as an act of re-interpretation, reimagining. There is more power than the obvious in the act of translation.

With that in mind, QUIET Projects must contrast significantly with what you did as a freelancer before you founded the company?

If the metaphor is a kitchen, then much of cable television is fast-food.

QUIET Pictures is my restaurant with 4 tables. We don’t serve large numbers, but we make food the way we want to make it.

As a gun for hire, typically you are painting by numbers, making work for set formats.

Cable non-fiction or the genre known as ‘factual entertainment’ thrives on overstatement. These projects are heavily narrated, with accompanying sound effects (the cable networks love sonic booms) and a musical score that leaves little doubt about where the story is headed. Work-

Documentary & Maker

ing independently has allowed me, for the most part, to work in a different way. I am able to take spend more time on a film. I am also able to work by myself or with a small team of trusted collaborators. If the metaphor is a kitchen, then much of cable television is fast-food. QUIET Pictures is my restaurant with 4 tables. We don’t serve large numbers, but we make food the way we want to make it.

You mainly focus on Latin American or U.S. Latino subjects: The Sixth Section (co-Producer), Roberto Clemente (director/producer) Reportero (Director/Producer), The

Graduates/Los Graduados (executive producer). Would you call yourself a Latino film-maker?

In Reportero I was interested in producing a deeper story than what I was seeing in the cable news. Cable coverage of Mexico has been non-existent or shallow and without context. It has been a kind of “rubbernecking” or worse, “vulture journalism” focusing on the dead bodies, decapitations and not providing any context. During the presidential debates here in the U.S., neither candidate discussed Mexico and the U.S. news media didn’t push the issue. Arguably, a neighboring country with a conflict that has claimed over 100,000 lives should be a foreign policy priority. But discussing Mexico would have meant discussing gun control and drug policy in the U.S.— two issues neither candidate was willing to address head on.

I believe we need a more sustained and coherent journalism about Mexico and Central America. Especially given the

84

Reportero - A Documentary by Bernardo Ruiz

demographic shifts in progress, and those to come. At the moment, I am executive producing a new bilingual series called The Graduates/Los Graduados. I am working with a very talented group of collaborators that includes producer Pamela Aguilar, co-producer Katia Maguire, editor Carla Gutierrez and cinematographer Antonio Cisneros, among others. The project will air on Independent Lens in the fall of 2013.

The series is a look at the Latino/a faces that make up our country’s future. It is an exciting project, and I hope part of public media’s growing commitment to telling more Latino stories.

Endnotes 1 http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_22159407/ experts-fear-new-wave-violence accessed on 14-122012 2 http://www.cpj.org/ 3 Reportero Press Kit 2012

Biography Bernardo Ruiz was born in Guanajuato, Mexico and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Mexico. Ruiz studied photography with Joel Sternfeld at Sarah Lawrence College. For nearly a decade he worked as a freelance director/ producer for a variety of media outlets, including PBS, National Geographic, Planet Green and MTV, among others.

In 2007 he founded QUIET pictures (www.quietpictures.com).

ARTICLE ONE

FILM & Maker

Film & Maker

T

his past October the Dutch film Rabat was the big winner at the International Euroarab Film Festival Amal 2012, held in  Santiago de Compostela, Spain. It came away with the awards for Best Film, Best Actor (Nasrdin Dchar) and Best Director.

The first feature film for directors Jim Taihuttu and Victor D. Ponten, Rabat has been a great success and has won several prizes over the course of 2011-2012.

This truly multicultural film, with Dutch, Arabic, French, Spanish and English dialogues, follows three Dutch boys of North African origin who travel by car from the Netherlands to Morocco. Emotionally charged and thought provoking, packed with character development; the film has all the features of a good road movie.

Rabat is essentially about friendship, love, honesty and what it means to grow up between two cultures. It tells the story of three best friends, Abdel (Achmed Akkabi) from Tunisia, soccer fanatic Zakaria (Marwan Kenzari) and Nadir (Nasridn Dchar) both of Moroccan origin, who drive 2200

kilometers across Europe in order to deliver a taxi in Rabat. Their journey is both geographical as well as personal as the film explores the dynamics between the three protagonists who come from a similar cultural background but couldn't be more different personality wise.

Rather than conforming to stereotypes, the film toys with the audience's expectations of how men of their background, religion and age would behave in the face of different circumstances. While the film confronts issues related to sexuality, faith, and morality, it does not give in to the standard depictions audiences are accustomed to.

Q & A Jim Taihuttu Since the success of the film Shouf Shouf Habibi! (Hush Hush Baby) in 2004 the Dutch film industry discovered the potential of Moroccan stories and the demand for Moroccan actors has increased. Why did it take so long before the industry realized films about (second generation)

88

Rabat - A Film by Jim Taihuttu and Victor Ponten

immigrants weren't so called 'box office poison'?

The film industry in the Netherlands has been (and still is to some extent) a white elitist affair run by forty-somethings who probably don't know any immigrants. Which is why it took so long before Moroccan stories and characters were developed in film.

Half of the youth in the bigger cities in the Netherlands are of a different ethnicity than Dutch, so it is remarkable that it wasn't until about a decade ago before the first films about immigrants were produced.

Back in the day, when the first socalled Moroccan-Dutch movies came out, films were written, financed and directed by ethnic Dutch people. Is this still the case and if so; where are the Moroccan film makers?

I think that within this context, things are slowly changing. I am myself part of a new generation of young film makers who come from a much more varied ethnic back ground. Around me, nowadays, I see Surinamese directors and young Arab script

writers. All we have to do now is wait until they get the chance to prove themselves.

Their time will come and it will be the end of the low standards of the last 20 years in Dutch Cinema.

I am myself part of a new generation of young film makers who come from a much more varied ethnic back ground Mimoun Oa誰ssa, Moroccan-Dutch actor and screenwriter, summarized the emergence of immigrants in film as follows: Step 1: There aren't any 'foreigners' on the silver screen. Step 2: There are, but these characters are seen through 'white eyes' and get a maximum of one stereotypical scene;

Film & Maker

either they shoot someone, or they help an old lady crossing the street.

Step 3: ClichĂŠs and stereotypes get explored in depth like in Shouf Shouf Habibi!. Step 4: They get treated as humans. It doesn't make a difference for the story line what kind of roots the character has. Like in the French film Taxi, in which a Algerian guy plays the lead, without this being emphasized or even referred to. " Do you agree with these steps and if so, where would you place Rabat?

Do you think Dutch film has already arrived at step 4?

Rabat is on step 4, but Shouf Shouf Habibi! is in my opinion on step 2. Throughout the Netherlands, we are often at step 2. Step 3, as Mimoun outlines it, is just part of step 2 only the actors have a few more lines.

After Dchar won the Golden Calf award for best actor, Elsevier columnist Liesbeth Wytzes said that the bar has been set very low for non-

ethnic Dutch artists. She wondered if society would have praised Dchar in a similar way if he hadn't been from Moroccan descent. She commented that it was a prime example of the mechanism of internal feelings of white superiority. People are basically acting surprised that a Moroccan is good at something, according to Wytzes. Do you agree with this statement?

Nasridn is one of the better actors in the Netherlands, regardless of his Moroccan roots. Rabat his first chance to show this, to play a 'normal' person. But I think that overall, for winning the Golden Calf, the bar is low. I feel that is something people should worry about more.

You are currently making a sequel to Rabat. Rather than a feel- good-roadmovie , this film is much darker. Can you tell us more about the story line and how it correlates to Rabat?

Rabat is a loving and fun story, the main character is for many Dutch people the

90

Rabat - A Film by Jim Taihuttu and Victor Ponten

perfect second generation immigrant.

During the research period for Rabat and throughout the contact I had with young people after the film came out, I realized that many stories don't end well; young second and third generation immigrants are having a hard time in the Netherlands and that concerns me. This is broadly what my new film titled "Wolf" is about. It isn't a sequel to Rabat, as such, it is more the other side of the coin. I think the two films together put forward a good portrayal of immigrants' children's lives in this day and age.

Biography Jim Taihuttu is 31 years old and lives with his wife and newborn son in Amsterdam. Together with Victor Ponten he founded Habbekrats, a Dutch advertising agency, in 2004.

He is currently working on a new project about the Dutch Indies (Indonesia). The film Wolf will be released in September 2013.

U n i t e d acAdemics BOOKSTORE See our website www.united-academics.org/bookstore

GET PUBLISHED contact & Submissions

We wish to emphasize that the United Academics Journal of Social Sciences publishes work of post-graduate and postdoctoral researchers. To encourage the cross-fertilization of disciplines we have chosen a plurality of fields and facilitate a productive interaction between the widest possible range of post-graduate authors and the public. The Social Sciences are the disciplines that explore aspects of human society. This term includes anthropology, archeology, geography, history, law, linguistics, psychology, political science and sociology. To maintain a high academic standard, articles submitted should be based on research undertaken during postgraduate or post-doctoral studies. Articles should be original in approach and subject matter.

Guidelines The journal is dedicated to a specific topic, but we also encourage academics to submit on any facet of Social Sciences. Articles should be sent as an email attachment to: elke.weesjes@united-academics.org.

• Provide a brief abstract of approximately 250 words.

• Articles should be based on original research.

• If you have any ideas for media that you would like to be part of your article, please send them in an attachment along with where you would like them to be placed.

We encourage creativity and feel that the more ideas you have in this context, the better your article will look.

• Articles should be between 2500 and 3500 words, book reviews should be no more than 1000 words and a WIP piece should be no more than 1500-2000 words in length.

• All quotations in the text should be in single quote marks (double for quotes within quotes) and long quotes should be indented without quotation marks.

• Use footnotes. In respect of references, give full details. E.g. Arend Lijphart, the politics of accommodation, pluralism and democracy in the Netherlands in the Netherlands (University of California Press, Berkeley Los Angeles 1975) 17-18. Subsequent references should give the author’s name, short title and page number.

• Spell out numbers to twenty, centuries and percentages.

• Try to avoid jargon, but where it is particularly relevant or where it is necessary, explain all jargon clearly.

We reserve the right not to publish articles which do not conform to the standards established by the peer review process.