Melodrama, Realism, and Race
World War II Newsreels and Propaganda Film
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8905100 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sumiko Higashi (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1998 |
| Volume | 37 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 38-38 |
| Publication date | 1998-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Cinema Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0009-7101 • E-ISSN: 1527-2087 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/1225826 |
| OpenAlex | W2315160927 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 7 |
In 1904 Billy Bitzer photographed students at St. John's Military Academy in wintry upstate New York as they reenacted an encounter in the Russo-Japanese War, then in the headlines, for the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company.' Sensational reenactments like The Battle of the Yalu are reminders that news footage included re-creations of historical events such as the sinking of the Maine, the international incident that sparked the Spanish-American War, and the execution of President William McKinley's assassin. Although Biograph sent cameramen around the world to film imperialistic maneuvers in the Philippines, the Boxer Rebellion, and the Boer War, rival companies had no qualms about staging reennactments.2 Since the earliest days of cinematography, then, filmmakers did not maintain a distinction between fact and fiction but introduced sensational, even lurid, aspects of melodrama into news films. Indeed, the classification of films into categories such as newsreels and features has obscured their common origin in nineteenth-century cultural forms, namely melodrama, intersecting with realism and sentimentalism
Art · Art history · Humanities · Race (biology · Realism · Sociology · Visual arts · Cinema and Media Studies · Gender Studies · Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism · Theater, Performance, and Music History
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,19 |
| Citation span | 2010 - 2025 (16) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |