
Contents
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Nationalism on Celluloid: Silent Film, Education, and Patriotism Nationalism on Celluloid: Silent Film, Education, and Patriotism
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Industrial and Educational Film: Americanization at Ford Motor and Beyond Industrial and Educational Film: Americanization at Ford Motor and Beyond
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Americanism in Action: Motion Pictures and Americanization Efforts Americanism in Action: Motion Pictures and Americanization Efforts
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Case Studies Case Studies
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Alice Guy Blaché’s Making an American Citizen (1912) Alice Guy Blaché’s Making an American Citizen (1912)
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Charles Chaplin’s The Immigrant (1917) Charles Chaplin’s The Immigrant (1917)
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7 Spectacular Nationalism: Immigrants on the Silver Screen, Americanization, and the Picture Show
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Published:January 2023
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Abstract
This chapter asks: what cultural work did silent film do for Americanization, the active and sometimes coercive campaign to make new immigrants into good Americans? It argues that, just as Americanization did not produce compliant citizens overnight, silent film as a powerful new medium of persuasion influenced American viewers' transformation only in part. The chapter particularly focuses on the use of film in industrial and educational contexts, which sometimes overlapped, purporting to both “educate” and Americanize the new immigrants to the United States, particularly immigrant workers. Delving into the author's chosen films as case studies, the chapter illustrates the potential of silent film as both mimesis (or representation of ideology) and as ideology. It seeks to answer the following questions: How did silent film contribute to the mission of Americanization? Were new immigrants the innocent viewers that the American government, industrialists (like Henry Ford), and Progressive Era educators and Americanizers were imagining for immigrant children and their families? Were they complicit? Were they doubly exploited through the popular images that aimed to “represent” them and in their own uncritical reception of such films, duped by the illusion of the medium? To answer these questions, the chapter draws on scholarship in Immigration Studies and Film Studies, as well as archival materials in the National Archives, the Library of Congress (MBRS), Northeast Historic Film, and the New York Public Library.
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