This is a past event.
Tue, Mar 15, 2022 4pm to 5:15pm
BTSU Film Theater , BTSU Film Theater
In this talk, Dr. Rankin will examine the relationship between American cinema and cultural memory of the Korean War. Specifically, he will explore how certain narrativizing strategies common among American Korean War films, including the relegation of the war to background roles, its overly generic and non-specific treatment and its conflation with World War II, have rendered the war on screen “forgettable” and thus contributed to Korea’s “forgotten” status. Drawing on a comprehensive survey of American Korean War cinema and building on the work of memory studies scholar Astrid Erll, he will propose new ways of understanding the memory work done by American Korean War films, including the potential formation of what he terms “partial,” “vague” and “parasitic” memories of war.
Cortland Rankin is an Assistant Professor of Film Studies in the Department of Theatre and Film at Bowling Green State University. His research focuses primarily on cinematic representations of post-industrial urbanism and the relationship between war cinema and American cultural memory. He is the author of two chapters on Korean and Iraq War films as war memorials in Hollywood Remembrance and American War (Routledge, 2020) edited by Andrew Rayment and Paul Nadasdy. His forthcoming book Decline and Reimagination in Cinematic New York (Routledge) explores cinematic representations of New York urbanism from the mid-1960s through the mid-1980s.
Presented by Culture Club
(Want to attend virtually? Email cultureclub@bgsu.edu for Zoom link.)