American wars of the 21st Century as depicted in film is the topic of the next Madison Area Arts Council Chautauqua Series event.
Jason McEntee looks at mainstream and alternative films and documentaries about the post-9/11 wars in his presentation “The Famous, the Infamous, and the Dead: ‘Filming’ Operation Iraqi Freedom” on Nov. 18 at 6 p.m. in the Karl Mundt Library at Dakota State University. The event is free and open to the public. This program is made possible by the South Dakota Humanities Council, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
McEntee, an associate professor of English at South Dakota State University, will briefly touch on the background of film and photography in American wars dating back to the Civil War and how those images have chronicled war. He said most of the talk focuses on the two wars fought since 9/11: Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.
McEntee said there is an inordinate amount of information about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars coming from TV, movies, blogs and other new media that is easily tapped into by citizens.
“Since we have gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, we’ve had a tremendous wellspring of movies and moving-type narratives available to public consumption,” McEntee said.
He’ll show clips from a handful of movies and documentaries and discuss what the films are trying to say about the current wars. Those include “Redacted,” 2010 Oscar winner for Best Picture “The Hurt Locker,” “The Messenger,” “In the Valley of Elah,” and the documentary “The War Tapes.”
McEntee said media used during World War II and the Vietnam War is radically different compared to what is obtainable by the public now. Whereas earlier generations went to news footage, documentaries and underground propaganda for their information, today thousands of videos, including ones shot by the soldiers themselves, come up with a simple Internet search, he said.
McEntee said he looks at how these narratives are used to construct mythology of our soldiers, whether it’s heroic, victorious or of loss. Like other non-war post-9/11 movies, McEntee said films about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars attempt to find a meaning to the 9/11 tragedy.
“It’s impossible to divorce those two wars from that event,” he said.
McEntee, the son of a Vietnam veteran, did his doctoral dissertation on soldiers returning home from the Vietnam War. He continued this line of research into the current wars and now teaches classes about war in literature and film, specifically the Vietnam War and the Gulf wars.
“I’m very much interested in bringing my research into my class and making it accessible to students,” McEntee said.
Three veterans are in his classes right now – two who fought in Iraq and one who served in Afghanistan. McEntee said these three vets are “insatiable” for more information about this subject “as they work through the coming home process.”
“A lot of the stuff I’ll talk about [at the presentation] will be of interest to military folks,” he said.
While the films may have a political undertone, McEntee said he’s very serious about approaching the material from a non-biased perspective and letting the documents speak for themselves.
McEntee hopes people interested in the topic of war films leave his program with the tools to look into it further, he said. He encourages anyone who would like to continue a conversation on this subject to stay in touch with him.
MAAC meetings are held the first Thursday of every month at 7 p.m. at The BrickHouse Community Arts Center at 106 S.E. 2nd St. in Madison.
