American Militarism on the Small Screen
The military has produced and distributed programs via private broadcasters since the early days of radio, and war and militarism have been popular subjects for commercial television programming from its inception. Despite the historical and social prevalence of military-themed programming on US television, there has been no thorough scholarly investigation of this phenomenon. This volume seeks to identify what television, as a cultural medium, has added to the depictions of war and militarism in the US. Chapters explore a variety of series and engage with the following questions: What are the conventions of the war series? How do fictional depictions of war on US TV operate in dialogue with existing war films? How do they relate to broadcast news coverage of war? Is there anything unique about the way television series, as opposed to films, documentaries, or news stories, depict issues of nationalism and militarism? How do issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality play out differently in the television combat series, for example? How have the conventions of television production, distribution, and reception affected the form, content, and influence of the war story?
Anna Froula is an Associate Professor of Film Studies in the Department of English at East Carolina University, USA. She has published on war and gender for several journals and edited collections and is the Associate Editor of Cinema Journal, the journal of the Society of Cinema and Media Studies.
Stacy Takacs is an Associate Professor of American Studies at Oklahoma State University, USA. She has published on the intersections of popular and political cultures for a number of journals and is the author of Terrorism TV and Interrogating Popular Culture.
Routledge Advances in Television Studies
1 Parody and Taste in Postwar American Television Culture
Ethan Thompson
2 Television and Postfeminist Housekeeping
No Time for Mother
Elizabeth Nathanson
3 The Antihero in American Television
Margrethe Bruun Vaage
4 American Militarism on the Small Screen
Edited by Anna Froula and Stacy Takacs
First published 2016
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Froula, Anna, editor. | Takacs, Stacy, editor.
Title: American militarism on the small screen / edited by Anna Froula and Stacy Takacs.
Description: New York; London: Routledge, 2016. | Series: Routledge advances in television studies; 4 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016000099
Subjects: LCSH: Militarism on television. | Soldiers on television. | War television programsUnited StatesHistory and criticism.
Classification: LCC PN1992.8.M53 A47 2016 | DDC 791.45/6581dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016000099
ISBN: 978-1-138-92769-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-68234-1 (ebk)
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This is dedicated to veterans,
whose service is memorialized, sometimes for better,
sometimes for worse, in these fictions.
Collectively, we would like to thank Felisa Salvago-Keyes, Kathleen Laurentiev, and Christina Kowalski at Routledge for their counsel and patience and Andrew Weckenmann and Sofia Buono for editorial assistance. Robert Shandleys chapter Hogans Heroes and American Militarism is a greatly condensed version of his argument in Hogans Heroes (Wayne State University Press, 2011). The author and editors wish to thank Wayne State University Press and the TV Milestones editors, Barry Keith Grant and Jeannette Sloniowski, for permission to reuse material from the book. Finally, thanks go to our wonderful contributors who have made this volume possible. We have been wanting to read this book for years, and now we finally get to, thanks to you!
Anna: I would first like to thank Stacy Takacs for agreeing to bring this book to life and for her exceptional work in making it happen. I am also grateful for the institutional support of the East Carolina University English Department and the writing support of my Femidemics: Marame Gueye, Su-Ching Huang, Andrea Kitta, Amanda Klein, and Marianne Montgomery. As ever, my gratitude goes to Sean Morris, who has sustained and nurtured me through this project and beyond.
Stacy: And I would like to thank Anna Froula for having this great idea, which I totally jumped on and ran with. She has been a model of patience and endurance throughout the process, and I apologize for however annoying I know my compulsiveness must have been. Finally, to my colleagues at Oklahoma State University, especially Lu Bailey, John Kinder, David Gray, Louise Siddons, Bin Liang, Laura Belmonte, and Bill Decker, for being a rock-solid foundation for me. As always, Betsy Myers served as a model of devotion throughout the process. My turn next!
Anna Froula and Stacy Takacs
The television industry in the United States was born of the early military-corporate alliance that resulted in the formation of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in 1917. A quasi-private entity created at the behest of the US Navy as a means of centralizing control over the emerging medium of radio, RCA was also a major player in the development of television technologies and forms. Until its demise in 1982, RCA was a regular defense contractor and seated a representative from the US Navy on its Board of Directors.1 RCAs broadcast wing, NBC, was an early and enthusiastic supporter of the American entry into World War II, and, along with the other commercial networks, it routinely made space in its broadcast schedule available for military messengers.2 To this day, the major networks and cable channels provide programming (at a fraction of the market rate) to the militarys own globe-girdling broadcast operation, The American Forces Radio and Television Service. Thus, the connections between the US military and the otherwise privatized television industry are both long and deep.
The flow of programming across these connections has not been one-way, either. The military has produced and distributed programs via private broadcasters since the early days of radio, and war and militarism would be popular subjects for commercial television programming from its inception. As early as 1949, war documentary series like Crusade in Europe (ABC, 1949), Crusade in the Pacific (ABC, 1951), and Victory at Sea (NBC, 1952)all based on official military accounts of WWIIoffered riveting television. In 1951, the US Army Signal Corps Pictorial Services division began syndicating its indoctrination materials for commercial viewing via the long-running series
