In this project we examine, from a historical perspective, the aesthetic strategies of emotionalizingthrough the example of the Hollywood war film and its mutual relationship to the rhetorics of war reporting and propaganda in other audio-visual media or other media formats through a historical perspective. The poetics of affect of the war film is described by complexes of pathos images and their dramaturgical structure. We argue that changes of this structure can be understood as part of the media’s changing manipulation of feelings of community, depending on the historical context —and not least the course of the war in question.

Funded by the German Research Foundation since 2011.