Everybody’s Business: Film, Food and Victory in the First World War
One month after the outbreak of the Second World War, the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign was introduced in Britain in an attempt to grow more food to feed a nation in conflict, at which time the government persuaded people on the Home Front to convert their gardens into allotments in order to cultivate vegetables. Correspondingly, strategies were also created to encourage farmers to transform their land as part of the war effort. The campaign for the production of food not only concerned the need to educate in order to provide for the country, but also provided an impetus for community and patriotism. Outlining the need for home-grown products and productive cultivation of the landscape, Dig for Victory in the Second World War was a scheme that was professional from the outset involving the screening of numerous newsreels and documentaries in its implementation. That this plan was mobilised at such short notice owes a debt to the First World War, a period that witnessed the birth of film as official propaganda. However, the main disparity between the two film campaigns lies in their strategies for dealing with the populace. The Second World War was deemed ‘the People’s War,’ using the working class as central protagonists with the aim of disregarding class difference. Alternatively, the First World War deployed upper-and middle-class characters in fiction films in order to educate. These practices were put into operation despite the fact that the cinema audience during this period was predominantly comprised of those fighting starvation, and indeed those actually ‘digging for victory.’ This article analyses the strategies inaugurated in the cinematic food campaign in the First World War in both newsreels and fiction film, and traces a trajectory to the Dig for Victory campaign in the Second World War.
The history of the British film
1. The History of the British Film 1896 - 1906 with Roger Manvell [1948] 136pp 32pp plates 2. The History of the British Film 1906 - 1914 [1948] 309pp 20pp 3. The Hisory of the British Film 1914 - 1918 [1950] 332pp 24pp plates 4. The History of the British Film 1918 - 1929 [1971] 544pp 24pp plates 5. The History of the British Film 1929 - 1939: Documentary and Educational Films of the 1930's [1979] 400pp 32pp plates 6. The History of the British Film 1929 - 1939: Films of Comment and Persuasion of the 1930's [1979] 400pp 32pp plates 7. Film Making in 1930's Britain [1985] 468pp 38pp plates
The Origins of the Foundation Stories Genre in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Eastern Mediterranean
This article examines two types of foundation narrative prevalent in the biblical literature in light of as-yet-undiscussed parallels from ancient Greek and Mediterranean texts. The first type, embodied in the Genesis narratives and Greek genealogical traditions, portrays the founders as leaving a distant land to settle peacefully in a new land. The second is exemplified by the central hexateuchal theme of the Israelites’ migration to Canaan by dispossessing the native population as well as the Dorian migration traditions. Several factors indicate that the foundation story genre also became central and foundational in other small kingdoms around the Mediterranean—as indicated, for example, by the Phoenician–Luwian inscriptions referring to bt Mpš/Mopsus and related classical sources. The popularity of the genre in the ancient Mediterranean is striking in light of the fact that, while experiencing tribal migrations and wanderings, the great Mesopotamian and Egyptian kingdoms never represented themselves as “immigrants.” It is suggested that this genre may have emerged with the rise of the new, small-scale kingdoms in the Mediterranean basin toward the end of the second millennium b.c.e. The Phoenician and Greek colonization enterprises of the first third of the first millennium b.c.e. in particular increased awareness of the newly emerging states and focused attention on ethnic identity.