Humoresques

Humor and entertainement during the Great War

PUBLICATION PROJECT – CALL FOR ARTICLES

Thinking outside the war: Humor and entertainment in popular culture during the
Great War

Contributors to this volume will study the role of humor and more largely of
entertainment in popular culture during the 1914-1918 conflict. This collective
work seeks to evaluate some aspects of transnational war culture by examining
seemingly light-hearted discourses on the First World War.

Being one of the first turning points of twentieth century internationalism, the
Great War, as H.G. Wells once said, has to be envisioned as “the war of the
mind”. Cultural life in wartime was submitted both to strategies of promotion
and blockade to channel information and its global circulation. Propaganda and
the control of communication also participated in exacerbating patriotism,
lifting up soldiers’ spirits and encouraging the civilian support of the
conflict. Despite each country’s own agenda, morale boosting and motivating the
population were the most widely shared things in the world at that time.
Debunking the general sense of perdition and trauma, humor and other forms of
entertainment played a crucial role in maintaining people’s faith in their
ability to end the war and stay alive through that modern cataclysm.

Wartime escapism through culture is often associated with the Second World War.
However, during the Great War, recreational activities or artistic creation also
served as tools of diversion, triggering national pride and hope, among the
countries of the Entente or the Alliance powers. They also provided a way to
unite the general public behind the war effort as well as to strengthen the
bonds between the home front and the battlefront. As the world seemed to
collapse, dignity and optimism were preserved thanks to the emancipatory moments
offered by paintings and other pictorial productions (caricatures, sketches or
cartoons), literature and poetry, theater, music and musical performances,
motion pictures, leisure industry resources, aid and relief projects, government
initiatives to stimulate daily life transformation, etc.

We would like to enhance the variety of creative experiments designed to
illuminate the present and, thus, cast a positive light on the future, allowing
citizens to believe the Great War was not the end of everything. One of the
purposes of the book is to analyze which make-do subterfuges were proposed to
people to persuade them to trust their leaders and dream forward. Besides, humor
and entertainment – from the most waggish expression to the blackest tone – also
encompass some political and polemical dimensions, related to social critique,
that need to be discussed. The authors can focus on local practices or use
international comparisons to demonstrate how these elements contributed to a
liberating experience or a survival philosophy, but also to some ideological
schemes.

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to, the following. Some
scholars already submitted proposals:
* Motion pictures: patriotic films, pacifist films, short advertising films,
war-oriented slapstick comedies, humor and creativity in film distribution and
exhibition, role of women performers and directors in war effort (contr: F.
Lyczba, Paris Dauphine University, FR; K. Ritzenhoff, CCSU, US; C.
Tholas-Disset, Paris Est Créteil University, FR) 
* Pictorial representations of the war: satirical maps, caricatures, political
cartoons, propaganda posters, painting the conflict, visual artists enrolled in
the army
* Writing about the war: Popular fictions, warm poems, novels, autobiographies
and memoirs (contr: J. Kazecki, Bates College, US)
* Music: Concerts to the troops, patriotic airs and soldier songs, musical hall
performances, introducing jazz (contr: J. Mullen, Paris Est Créteil University,
FR)
* Entertaining the troops, service leave activities, diverting and
rehabilitating the veterans and the wounded (contr: K. Randell, Southampton
Solent University, UK)
* Appealing to younger generations: children’s books and magazines, war games
* Promoting action, restriction and service: making culture of thrift
attractive, liberty bonds and saving stamps, Food Administration projects, women
as workforce, the show of the Four-Minute Men (contr: A. Wells, Caen University,
FR)
* Emblematic characters: Old Bill, John Bull, Uncle Sam, Joan of Arc or the
Kaiser
* Representations of national stereotypes, clichéd portrayal of gender
interactions


Please send abstracts (no longer than 500 words) with a short
bio-bibliographical notice by September 15, 2013, to Clémentine Tholas-Disset
(Université Paris Est Créteil) Cette adresse e-mail est protégée contre les robots spammeurs. Vous devez activer le JavaScript pour la visualiser. and Karen A. Ritzenhoff
(Central Connecticut State University) Cette adresse e-mail est protégée contre les robots spammeurs. Vous devez activer le JavaScript pour la visualiser.

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