Abstract

This thesis examines a period of Hollywood filmmaking between the December 1989 release of Oliver Stone's Vietnam veteran film Born on the Fourth of July, and the July 1998 release of Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan in which very few films were made about combat in the Second World War. This thesis deploys genre theory and analysis, as well as a political economic exploration of the decade to examine the status of spectacle in combat films in the 1990s and explore some of the factors involved in making this period a relative low point in the U.S. combat film genre. Only a handful of specifically World War II combat films were made and released about American soldiers fighting overseas in those eight years before Spielberg's lauded film, despite that the Second World War offers narratives of American heroics and moral certainty (with notable exceptions such as the Japanese internment and the dropping of the atomic bomb). This work uncovers aspects of the relationship of the U.S. film industry to popular ideas about war in light of an arguably triumphalist stage of American history following successes in the first Gulf War and the forty-five year Cold War. Notably, this period also marks the 50 th anniversary of the entirety of World War II.