Abstract
In Hollywood film and media culture of World War II, the Philippines acted as a 'homefront' or a space of identification through the presence of an 'American way of life'. World War II Hollywood films set in the Philippines - Texas to Bataan (1942), Corregidor (1943), Bataan (1943), They Were Expendable (1945) and Back to Bataan (1945) - establish a dynamic of foreign domesticity by grafting domestic signifiers onto the foreign space of the Philippines and across Filipino bodies; particularly through the trope of US heroism as signified by General MacArthur, references to the Alamo and the genre of the Western, and domestic cultural objects and practices. These films served related purposes: they recruited a public into a foreign war, created a recognizable war zone 'homefront', and consolidated the image and ideology of control over the formerly 'insurgent' colony.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 3-21 |
Number of pages | 19 |
Journal | Comparative American Studies |
Volume | 8 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Mar 1 2010 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Filipinos
- Hollywood
- Imperialism
- Office of War Information
- Philippines
- World War II
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Cultural Studies
- Sociology and Political Science
- General Arts and Humanities