Bibliographie
Filmography
ANCIANO Dominic and BURDIS Ray. dir. Love, Honour and Obey. 2000.
BAIRD Jon S. dir. Cass. 2008.
CHLOUS Philippe. dir. Malouines : les laissés-pour-guerre. 2007.
EYRE Richard. dir. The Ploughman’s Lunch. 1983.
EYRE Richard. dir. Tumbledown. 1988.
GREENGRASS Paul. dir. Resurrected. 1989.
KOSMINSKY Peter. dir. The Falklands War: the Untold Story. 1987.
LLOYD Phyllida. dir. The Iron Lady. 2011.
LOVE Nick. dir. Goodbye Charlie Bright. 2001.
LOVE Nick. dir. The Football Factory. 2004.
McDOUGALL Charles. dir. Arrivederci Millwall. 1990.
MEADOWS Shane. dir. This is England. 2006.
SAMUELS Michael. dir. The Falklands Play. 2002.
STELLMAN Martin. dir. For Queen and Country. 1989.
URBAN Stuart. dir. An Ungentlemanly Act. 1992.
Works cited
AULICH James (ed.), Framing the Falklands War: Nationhood, Culture and Identity, Buckingham: Open University Press, 1992.
BARTLES Jason A., “Deserted islands for the nation: Empty land- and seascapes in three Argentine films of the Malvinas/Falklands Islands”, in Antonio Gomez and Francisco-J. Hernandez Adrian (eds.), The Film Archipelago: Islands in Latin American Cinema, London: Bloomsbury, 2022, 31-54.
BBC, “In quotes: Margaret Thatcher,” 8 April 2013, <https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-10377842>, accessed on April 10, 2022.
BOYER Frédéric, “L’expérience limite de l’honneur”, Marianne, n°825, 9-15 janvier 2013, 60.
BURKE Damien, “HMS Coventry D118 – The Falklands War – 25th May 1982”, <https://www.hmscoventry.co.uk/d118/falklands/>, <https://www.hmscoventry.co.uk/d118/25th-may-1982/>, accessed on April 10, 2022.
DAVIES Caroline, “Falkland Islands war photos to go on show for 40th anniversary”, The Guardian, 6 January 2022, <https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jan/06/falkland-islands-war-photos-40th-anniversary-imperial-war-museum-exhibition>, accessed on April 10, 2022.
FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO Felipe, “Thirty years on, the British still can’t admit the truth about the Falklands”, The Independent, 30 March 2012, <https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/felipe-fernandezarmesto-thirty-years-on-the-british-still-can-t-admit-the-truth-about-the-falklands-7604005.html>, accessed on April 10, 2022.
FLANAGAN Kevin M., War Representation in British Cinema and Television: From Suez to Thatcher and Beyond, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
FORDY Tom, “The war Hollywood won’t touch: where are the big-budget films about the Falklands?”, The Telegraph, 14 June 2019, <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/war-hollywood-wont-touch-big-budget-films-falklands/>, accessed on April 10, 2022.
FOSTER Kevin, Fighting Fictions: War, Narrative and National Identity, London: Pluto Press, 1999.
FOURNIER Georges, “Images of the Falklands War between Fact, Fiction and Affliction”, in Carine Berbéri and Monia O’Brien (eds.), 30 Years After: Issues and Representations of the Falklands War, Farnham: Ashgate, 2015, 23-37.
FOURNIER Georges, “The British Docudramas of the Falklands War”, Frames Cinema Journal, University of St Andrews, 2015, <http://framescinemajournal.com/article/the-british-docudramas-of-the-falklands-war/>, accessed on April 10, 2022.
FREEDMAN Lawrence, The Official History of the Falklands Campaign, Volume 1: The Origins of the Falklands War, London: Routledge, 2007 [2005].
FREEDMAN Lawrence, The Official History of the Falklands Campaign, Volume 2: War and Diplomacy, London: Routledge, 2007 [2005].
FRIEDMAN Lester (ed.), Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1993.
GIBBONS Duncan, “Photos: Drama at sea to film sinking of HMS Coventry”, The Coventry Telegraph, 18 July 2013, <https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/filming-sinking-hms-coventry-new-5137989>, accessed on April 10, 2022.
HILL John, British Cinema in the 1980s: Issues and Themes, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999.
HIPPERSON Sarah, “Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp 1981-2000”, <http://www.greenhamwpc.org.uk/>, accessed on April 10, 2022.
JONES Alan, “Events planned to mark 40th anniversary of Falklands War”, The Evening Standard, 10 January 2022, <https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/falklands-margaret-thatcher-government-uk-government-london-b975758.html>, accessed on April 10, 2022.
McGUIRK Bernard, Falklands-Malvinas: An Unfinished Business, London: SPLASH Editions, 2018 [2007].
MONAGHAN David, The Falklands War: Myth and Countermyth, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998.
MURPHY Robert (ed.), The British Cinema Book 2nd edition, London: BFI Publishing, 2003 [2001].
ORWELL George, Inside the Whale and Other Essays, London: Penguin, 1968 [1957].
ORWELL George, Nineteen Eighty-Four, London: Penguin, 1989 [1949].
PAGE Joanna, “Malvinas, Civil Society and Populism: a Cinematic Perspective”, in Guillermo Mira and Fernando Pedrosa (eds.), Revisiting the Falklands/Malvinas Question: Transnational and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, London: University of London, 2021, 141-160.
PARSONS Michael, “Representing the Falklands Conflict in Word and Pictures”, Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique [Online], XV-4 (1 June 2010), <http://0-journals-openedition-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/rfcb/6147>, accessed on April 10, 2022.
STORA Benjamin, “Une mémoire occultée : l’Algérie, la guerre sans images ?”, in Claudie Le Bissonnais (ed.), Mémoire(s) plurielle(s) : cinéma et images, lieux de mémoire ?, Saint-Étienne: Creaphis, 2007, 59-67.
STREET Sarah, British National Cinema, London: Routledge, 2001 [1997].
THATCHER Margaret, “Remarks on the recapture of South Georgia (“Rejoice”)”, 25 April 1982, <https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104923>, accessed on April 10, 2022.
THATCHER Margaret, “Message on the 25th anniversary of the liberation of the Falklands (“Fortune does, in the end, favour the brave”)”, 13 June 2007, <https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/110962>, accessed on April 10, 2022.
THE HERALD, “HMS Coventry’s loss in Falklands to be dramatised in £10m film”, The Herald, 2 August 2014, <https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13172918.hms-coventrys-loss-falklands-dramatised-10m-film/>, accessed on April 10, 2022.
WAKE Oliver, “Disputed Territory: Drama and the Falklands”, 2 April 2012, <http://www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk/?p=2519>, accessed on April 10, 2022.
WILLIAMS Raymond, The Long Revolution, Orchard Park, NY: Broadview, 2001 [1961].
WILLIAMS Tony, “The Ploughman’s Lunch: Remembering or Forgetting History”, Jump Cut, No. 36, May 1991, 11-18, <https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC36folder/PlmansLunch.html>, accessed on 10 April 2022.
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Notes
Tom Fordy, “The war Hollywood won’t touch: where are the big-budget films about the Falklands?”, The Telegraph, June 14, 2019, <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/war-hollywood-wont-touch-big-budget-films-falklands/>, accessed March 20, 2022.
The phrase is from Paul Greengrass, who directed Resurrected, in his foreword to James Aulich’s book, Framing the Falklands War: Nationhood, Culture and Identity, Buckingham: Open University Press, 1992, ix.
For a thorough survey, see Lawrence Freedman, The Official History of the Falklands Campaign, Volume 1: The Origins of the Falklands War and Volume 2: War and Diplomacy, London: Routledge, 2007 [2005].
Without even including all the books, articles and dissertations written in Spanish, some English-written studies show a great variety of angles (war, trauma, space studies). See, for example, Joanna Page, “Malvinas, Civil Society and Populism: a Cinematic Perspective”, in Guillermo Mira and Fernando Pedrosa (eds.), Revisiting the Falklands/Malvinas Question: Transnational and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, London: University of London, 2021, 141-160; Jason A. Bartles, “Deserted islands for the nation: Empty land- and seascapes in three Argentine films of the Malvinas/Falklands Islands”, in Antonio Gomez and Francisco-J. Hernandez Adrian (eds.), The Film Archipelago: Islands in Latin American Cinema, London: Bloomsbury, 2022, 31-54.
For example, Kevin M. Flanagan, War Representation in British Cinema and Television: From Suez to Thatcher and Beyond, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, 2, 116, 200-201.
James Aulich (ed.); Kevin Foster, Fighting Fictions: War, Narrative and National Identity, London: Pluto Press, 1999; Bernard McGuirk, Falklands-Malvinas: An Unfinished Business, London: SPLASH Editions, 2018 [2007]. The book that provides the most substantial analyses of a few films is David Monaghan, The Falklands War: Myth and Countermyth, London: Macmillan, 1998.
Robert Murphy (ed.), The British Cinema Book 2nd edition, London: BFI Publishing, 2003 [2001], 206, 285; John Hill, British Cinema in the 1980s: Issues and Themes, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999, 19, 141-147; Lester Friedman (ed.), Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1993, 27-28, 84-85; Sarah Street, British National Cinema, London: Routledge, 2001 [1997], 106.
The first drama focuses on the Argentinian invasion from the islanders’ point of view, insisting on the resistance of the few marines in office and Governor Rex Hunt, filmed in the manner of the siege of the Alamo. The second, originally planned for 1987 but finally produced in 2002, focuses on the British government’s point of view and carefully dissects the steps that preceded it. These TV films therefore centre on the waiting, preparation and negotiations but, each time, the British response is the subject of an ellipse embellished with some archive footage before a brief heroic epilogue that relies on intertitles delivering facts and statistics.
For more details about the controversial contexts of production and reception of films or docudramas such as Tumbledown, The Falklands Play or The Ploughman’s Lunch, see Oliver Wake, “Disputed Territory: Drama and the Falklands”, 2 April 2012, <http://www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk/?p=2519>, accessed March 18, 2022. Tony Williams, “The Ploughman’s Lunch: Remembering or Forgetting History”, Jump Cut, no. 36, May 1991, 11-18, <https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC36folder/PlmansLunch.html>, accessed March 21, 2022.
Georges Fournier, “The British Docudramas of the Falklands War”, Frames Cinema Journal, University of St Andrews, 2015, <http://framescinemajournal.com/article/the-british-docudramas-of-the-falklands-war/>, accessed March 15, 2022. Georges Fournier, “Images of the Falklands War between Fact, Fiction and Affliction”, in Carine Berbéri and Monia O’Brien (eds.), 30 Years After: Issues and Representations of the Falklands War, Farnham: Ashgate, 2015, 23-37.
Damien Burke, “HMS Coventry D118 – The Falklands War – 25th May 1982”, <https://www.hmscoventry.co.uk/d118/falklands/>, accessed March 18, 2022, and <https://www.hmscoventry.co.uk/d118/25th-may-1982/>, accessed March 18, 2022.
Duncan Gibbons, “Photos: Drama at sea to film sinking of HMS Coventry”, The Coventry Telegraph, 18 July 2013, <https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/filming-sinking-hms-coventry-new-5137989>, accessed March 18, 2022; “HMS Coventry’s loss in Falklands to be dramatised in £10m film”, The Herald, 2 August 2014, <https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13172918.hms-coventrys-loss-falklands-dramatised-10m-film/>, accessed March 18, 2022.
John Hill, op. cit., 19.
Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution, Orchard Park, NY: Broadview, 2001 [1961], 63.
Lawrence Freedman, Volume 2, op. cit., 642.
Lawrence Freedman comments: “He remembers it [the Falklands] as a ‘radio war’, because video footage took weeks to get back to British television. ‘It was pre-internet, pre-easy communications,’ says Freedman. ‘By 1991 with the Gulf War this had changed, but the communications at the time were quite difficult, even amongst commanders. The TV images came back late, way after the event.’” Tom Fordy, op. cit. Georges Fournier, “The British Docudramas” and “Images of the Falklands War”, op. cit., 24-26; Michael Parsons, “Representing the Falklands Conflict in Word and Pictures”, Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique, XV-4 | 2010, <http://0-journals-openedition-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/rfcb/6147>, accessed March 20, 2022.
David Monaghan, xi-xiv, refers to this official narrative elaborated by “Margaret Thatcher, her parliamentary supporters and the tabloid press” as the “Falklands myth”. Although dissenting voices have provided “subversive retellings of the Falklands story” since the end of the war, he notices the “continuing appeal of the official Falklands myth” (xvi) fifteen years later.
Even the governor of the Falklands somewhat attacks the Prime Minister in An Ungentlemanly Act because London initially remains impassive during the invasion of the archipelago. The only TV film that favourably presents Margaret Thatcher, The Falklands Play, was censored by the BBC because, according to its screenwriter, it then feared a second “Falklands factor” if the film was broadcast in an election year (Oliver Wake, op. cit.). In cinema, only The Iron Lady, although not specifically dedicated to the Falklands, presents a hagiographic vision of the Prime Minister, tormented but determined to defend a just cause.
The conclusion of archivist Susan Barrington in the film leaves no doubt about the denunciation of imperialism at work, whether the enemy is Nasser or the Argentinians: “why don’t they make propaganda films like that anymore?” Similarly, the comments of her mother, historian Ann Barrington, on the Suez campaign are obviously to be transposed to the Falklands conflict, including her criticism of the Establishment eager to maintain the Empire at all costs.
Tumbledown (Richard Eyre, 1988) is sometimes considered to be a docudrama because it was produced by the BBC as many films were at the time (with Channel 4), owing to the drastic budget cuts implemented by the government in the film industry. Because all of them were made by the same artistic and technical teams and some of them eventually benefited from a theatrical release, the film was included in the main corpus.
The two films have a similar plot, namely the fate of a young soldier who is the victim of the inhumanity of institutions, which colours the epigraph, a quote by a soldier in Cromwell’s New Model Army, with a tinge of irony as it echoes the opening lines of Losey’s film: “Here dead lie we, because we did not choose to live and shame the land from which we sprung. Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose; but young men think it is, and we were young.”
Reuben explains about his medals that all army personnel received the same distinctions except cooks, which greatly minimises the honour that was given to him.
The inhumanity with which the army treats its soldiers is symbolised by the body bags in which it repatriates the dead. Eddie (Goodbye Charlie Bright) remembers that there was not a big enough one for his friend.
Reuben (For Queen and Country) was deprived of promotion in favour of Lieutenant “la-di-da” (a nickname related to his accent) who was of a higher social class. He probably also remained a second-class soldier, despite his feats of arms, because of his skin colour. Lieutenant La-Di-Da is also emasculated by his description: a rookie who has never been a soldier but has directly integrated the staff thanks to his pedigree. This reverse snobbery is reminiscent of his class contempt for the Home Office officer that he had violently rebuked following the rejection of his request: “Where were you when the bullets flew? Hiding behind your desk, like all your kind.”
In the documentary directed by Philippe Chlous, Malouines : les laissés-pour-guerre (2007), veterans explain that the conflict was a turning point in the way the army has considered this syndrome. It previously put it down to soldiers’ supposed weakness of character rendering them unfit for service.
When Robert (Tumbledown) tries to get information about his professional future, no one is able or willing to answer him. Fish (For Queen and Country) does not even have enough to pay his phone bills anymore.
Colin, the manager of a sports club, wants Reuben to join as a partner. During a game of squash, he begins by beating around the bush as the camera amplifies his gyrations with its circular movements because he first hesitates to tell him that he finances his business through drug trafficking but he insists: he is not a thug and shows his clean, white hands. However, Reuben is not ready to cross the red line that separates the two types of activity, as symbolically shown by their rally during the match when the negotiation takes place.
Kevin Deakin’s character is inspired by the story of Scots Guardsman Philip Williams, found alive after seven weeks as he had disappeared during the march on Port Stanley. His claimed amnesia has always been suspected of covering his desertion.
This could be a reference to Thatcher’s famous quote about the miners’ strike in 1984-1985: “We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty.” (BBC, “In quotes: Margaret Thatcher”, 8 April 2013, <https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-10377842>, accessed March 22, 2022).
See Tom Fordy: “‘Thatcher complained when Peter Snow on Newsnight didn’t say ‘we’ when talking about British forces,’ recalls Freedman”. See also James Aulich (ed.), op. cit., 111.
The title of the film denounces another type of falsification, through advertising, since the traditional dish it refers to is actually an invention of the 1960s.
“On the 5th September 1981, the Welsh group ‘Women for Life on Earth’ arrived on Greenham Common, Berkshire, England. They marched from Cardiff with the intention of challenging, by debate, the decision to site 96 Cruise nuclear missiles there. […] When their request for a debate was ignored, they set up a Peace Camp just outside the fence surrounding RAF Greenham Common Airbase. They took the authorities by surprise and set the tone for a most audacious and lengthy protest that lasted 19 years. Within 6 months the camp became known as the Women’s Peace Camp and gained recognition both nationally and internationally by drawing attention to the base with well-publicised imaginative gatherings.” Sarah Hipperson, “Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp 1981-2000”, <http://www.greenhamwpc.org.uk/>, accessed March 22, 2022.
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, London: Penguin, 1989 [1949], 37. This reference was perhaps in the mind of the screenwriter since, at the beginning of the film, a radio report is heard informing that the governments of Eastern Europe are rewriting their history textbooks according to their latest wishes, in a Stalinist way.
For a detailed study of this film, see John Hill, op. cit., 141-147.
Some people seem aware of this attempt at manipulation and count on time to do its work. When a veteran’s parents debate the hero status of their son and his friend, the father concludes: “Two heroes? I don’t know yet. I haven’t read the myth”.
Richard Eyre who directed both The Ploughman’s Lunch and Tumbledown explains: “I think the soldiers were at odds with the media […]. I remember speaking to paras who in contempt of the tabloid press burnt copies of The Sun.” Tom Fordy, op. cit.
Benjamin Stora, “Une mémoire occultée : l’Algérie, la guerre sans images ?”, in Claudie Le Bissonnais (ed.), Mémoire(s) plurielle(s) : cinéma et images, lieux de mémoire ?, Saint-Étienne: Creaphis, 2007, 59-60, defines a historical “memory lapse” as the result of a “necessary oblivion” of civil society, so that the community can survive the war, and a “perverse oblivion”, orchestrated by the authorities to deny their responsibilities and/or abuses.
When he shoots the rifle, the music and screams of the crowd suddenly stop to give way to a silence that reflects the concentration of the shooter who does not want to miss his target. The game turns into war and Reuben who applies himself to his task asks for another rifle because the barrel of his is warped. The succession of shots all lodged in the centre of the target, the close-up on his eye riveted on the weapon, the clicking of the hammer suddenly frighten his new partner Stacey who had asked him about his past shortly before to know if he had already killed. He had dodged the question, she now has her answer.
George Orwell, “England Your England”, Inside the Whale and Other Essays, London: Penguin, 1968 [1957], 68-70, evokes the antimilitarism of the British working class: “the English hatred of war and militarism is rooted deep in history, and it is strong in the lower-middle as well as the working class […] In peace-time, even when there are two million unemployed, it is difficult to fill the ranks of the tiny standing Army […]. In England all the boasting and flag-waving, the ‘Rule Britannia’ stuff is done by small minorities […]. So deep does this feeling go that for a hundred years past the officers of the British Army, in peace-time, have always worn civilian clothes when off duty.” Films featuring a working-class hero often resonate with Orwell’s words as they show characters voicing their hatred or distrust of the Army, which is sometimes linked to the transgenerational memories of crushing defeats of the labour movement. See Anne-Lise Marin-Lamellet, “Le Working Class Hero ou la figure ouvrière à travers le cinéma britannique de 1956 à nos jours”, PhD Dissertation, Grenoble University, 2011, 717-719.
In his opinion, “he was what put the Great into Britain. He was an old war hero”.
Reuben (For Queen and Country) is successively called Rambo, soldier boy and is told that he must have a toad brain for joining the army while he is poor and black. A skinhead adds that, if it was the taste of fighting that decided him, he could have just as well stayed in the neighbourhood and indulged in his passion but perhaps he preferred to be paid to smash skulls with boots. Young blacks, who are ska or reggae fans and therefore more peace-loving, ironically ask him how many poor Argentinians he killed during the Falklands War.
This attitude is confirmed by Peter Kosminsky’s documentary made for the fifth anniversary of the conflict, The Falklands War: the Untold Story, which reveals the disappointment of the soldiers interviewed at the deployment of so much force in the face of such a young enemy to liberate a deserted capital.
The films do not hide anything of the suffering endured (see, for example, the very graphic details of the rehabilitation of the disabled in Tumbledown).
This complaint is also featured in the TV film An Ungentlemanly Act.
Robert (Tumbledown) moans several times: “Nobody knows how to treat us. Nobody [...]. No one seems to know how to cope with us”. The fade to black that closes the scene symbolises his mood. In all the films of the corpus, only Kevin’s little brother (Resurrected) and Shaun, the son of a soldier who died for the fatherland (This is England), defend their reputation or memory tooth and nail against the hostility of civilians.
This may explain why he does not want people to speak about the conflict, whether positively or negatively.
In this film, a veteran’s father collects decorations but admits to being put off by the other side of the coin, namely violence and death. He was also exempted during the Second World War.
Jonny obsesses and fantasises over the Falklands War and regularly watches archive footage while drawing analogies between the gangland warfare he wants to create in the London underworld and the conflict.
They reproduce strategies and battle plans that seem to be an eternal repetition of their participation in the conflict and that result in a brief and then a debrief meeting, usually in the pub. They lead their units like platoons organised according to a hierarchy that is also imported from the army, from the young scout to the highest ranking officer often called “general” or “governor”. Interestingly, Paul Greengrass (in James Aulich, x) establishes a link between the two because of the jingoism and xenophobia they associate Englishness with: “There is a line of sorts, however loose, between the Paras yomping their way across the Falklands to the lager louts of today, laying waste to European cities in the name of football”. That might explain the number of hooligan films somehow related to the Falklands War.
His obsession with the conflict reaches a climax once he learns that his brother who served on HMS Hermes died in combat. He then wants to kill a Spaniard in revenge, thus showing his confusion when his friend Cass tries to talk him out of it (“They killed Bobby […]. Don’t matter. Just one of them. They’re all the same”).
Although the hooligans think of themselves as warriors, they meet their nemesis twice. Both the British official who gets them out of the police station and the English football supporter they meet in a café and who turns out to be an ex-paratrooper express their utmost contempt for those they consider to be a national shame. Each time, a high-angle shot and a close-up crush Billy to the ground and his irony or vandalism cannot hide his symbolic defeat and narcissistic wounds.
Michael Parsons, op.cit., §64.
“[Ils] ne racontent pas, ou presque jamais, la victoire, la belle victoire, qui est pourtant le but officiel de la guerre” (my translation). Frédéric Boyer, “L’expérience limite de l’honneur”, Marianne, n°825, 9-15 janvier 2013, 60.
See James Aulich (ed.), op. cit., 45-46; Bernard McGuirk, op. cit., 234-235, 259, 261-268, 288, 307.
Besides the references mentioned in the introduction, see Bernard McGuirk, op. cit., 269-281.
“Numerous plays about the conflict reached the stage and radio in its aftermath, but none caught the attention of the public at large. However, when television tackled the subject for the mass audience, the results were frequently politically charged and contentious.” Oliver Wake, op. cit.
“Pour le dépasser, vivre avec, vivre au-delà” (my translation). Frédéric Boyer, 60. James Aulich (ed.), op. cit., 76-78 and Michael Parsons, op. cit., §55-56, also mention the collages made by war veterans as part of their PTSD therapy.
For more on these other artistic representations, see Bernard McGuirk, David Monaghan, James Aulich (ed.), Kevin Foster.
The phrase is borrowed from Bernard McGuirk, op. cit., 217.
Lawrence Freedman explains: “I think there’s a problem that a lot of contemporary film and TV focuses on trauma. Not to deny PTSD, but most soldiers recover from it.” (in Tom Fordy, op. cit.).
Paul Greengrass (in James Aulich (ed.), op. cit., ix-x) asserts: “There has been, I think, a conspiracy of sorts to bury the Falklands experience. Not a smoke filled room conspiracy, but a national conspiracy born of shame which prevents us from confronting the realities of that war, and the fact that, like a junkie, Britain took a lethal fix of jingoism and xenophobia in 1982”.
The director of This is England confirms that in the DVD commentary (Optimum Home Entertainment OPTD1011, 2007). His research took him back to his childhood memories and enabled him to become aware of the difference between media discourse and the actual facts.
For comparison, see Benjamin Stora, op. cit., 59-67, on the non-representation of the Algerian war and, more particularly, the importance of fiction films to perpetuate war memories.
“It seems that this brief but fierce war remains dramatically useful as a symbol of Britain’s changing status as an ex-imperial power and, in this age of coalitions, its last days as a nation able to act independently as a military force far from home.” Oliver Wake, op. cit.
Margaret Thatcher, “Message on the 25th anniversary of the liberation of the Falklands (“Fortune does, in the end, favour the brave”)”, 13 June 2007, <https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/110962>, accessed on March 20, 2022. She even echoed her famous and controversial injunction to “rejoice” when the British taskforce had announced the recapture of South Georgia (“Remarks on the recapture of South Georgia (“Rejoice”)”, 25 April 1982, <https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104923>, accessed March 20, 2022.
For a list of all the related events, see Alan Jones, “Events planned to mark 40th anniversary of Falklands War”, The Evening Standard, 10 January 2022, <https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/falklands-margaret-thatcher-government-uk-government-london-b975758.html>, accessed March 22, 2022. Caroline Davies, “Falkland Islands war photos to go on show for 40th anniversary”, The Guardian, 6 January 2022, <https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jan/06/falkland-islands-war-photos-40th-anniversary-imperial-war-museum-exhibition>, accessed March 20, 2022.
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, “Thirty years on, the British still can’t admit the truth about the Falklands”, The Independent, 30 March 2012, <https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/felipe-fernandezarmesto-thirty-years-on-the-british-still-can-t-admit-the-truth-about-the-falklands-7604005.html>, accessed March 20, 2022.
Kevin M. Flanagan, op. cit., 3.
Ibidem, 22, 58, 105-106 (although he does not refer to the Falklands War in particular).
David Monaghan, op. cit., xvii.
All films, even the most critical ones, put forward the thesis of honour and national pride to explain this bout of imperialism. Other possible theses, such as the presence of oil off the coast mentioned by the Americans in The Falklands Play, are rejected.
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