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The officer fetish

The Officer Fetish examines the fetishized American military officer and the
marginalized American enlisted man as they appear in post-World War II
American film, television, and literature. The fetishized officer, whose cathexis is
most prominent in the World War II-era propaganda film, has persisted as a
convention since the war—a phenomenon that has contributed to the rise of
militarism in America. Chapter II lays the foundation of Marxist and Freudian
definitions of fetishism and fetishization, and then gauges those definitions with
two films, In Which We Serve (1942), a standard World War II propaganda film,
and Saving Private Ryan (1997), a film that postures itself as anti-war. Chapter
III examines war narratives as a medium that polices class in American culture.
The military, with its anti-democratic two-tiered rank system, is attractive to
many novels and films because of its strict class boundaries. Chapter IV
examines the degree to which so-called anti-war narratives contribute to
America’s rising economy of militarism.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/1366
Date17 February 2005
CreatorsVan Meter, Larry Allan
ContributorsRobinson, Sally
PublisherTexas A&M University
Source SetsTexas A and M University
Languageen_US
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeBook, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text
Format802224 bytes, electronic, application/pdf, born digital

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