Week 9: Ideology & Genre

War as Genre – The Combat Film
Ideology is the system of ideas that make sense of society. Controlled by the ‘ruling power’

War Genre: Semantic• The Platoon Leader
• The recruit, “cherry,” “grunt”
• Arena of Death
• “Dehumanization”
• The War Machine
• “Us” versus “Them” (this can also fall under syntactic)
• The faceless, shadowy enemy

War Genre: Syntactic• Celebrating glory and heroism
• The ultimate sacrifice for country
• The futility and horror of war
• Destruction of innocence
• Understanding and healing

The Combat Film• Control of war news, information
• Promote Patriotism through media (posters, music, radio)
• Waged war of propaganda overseas
• Bureau of Motion Pictures (BMP) to coordinate with Hollywood

“They Were Expendable” (1945)-John Ford
-Posed team vs. the individual
-Dehumanized the enemy; not showing his face
-Served as a means to unite soldiers and American pride

"Over There" (2005)- Pilot episode
-Showed the horror and futility of going to war
-Showed the faces of the "enemy" they killed which seems to haunt and change the American soldier who killed him
-The heroic, noble, optimistic and well liked leader of the group gets his leg blown off, shattering his dream and goals of going back to school to play football. (the whole reason he went into the army)
Although I felt the editing and acting was extremely poor, I felt that the overall message and thought behind the story was really interesting, just bad timing in relation to our position in the war. I feel that if the show was to go back on air now, it would be much more effective.