Humor, Entertainment, and Popular Culture during World War I

Humor and entertainment were vital to the war effort during World War I. While entertainment provided relief to soldiers in the trenches, it also built up support for the war effort on the home front. Recreational activities or artistic creation served as tools of diversion, triggering national pride and hope, among the countries of the Entente or the Allied powers. This book looks at transnational war culture by examining seemingly light-hearted discourses on the Great War.

Karen A. Ritzenhoff is Professor of Communications at Central Connecticut State University, USA.
 
Clémentine Tholas-Disset is an instructor in English and Applied Foreign Languages at Université Paris-Est Créteil, France.

Preface; Karen Randell
Introduction: Humor, Entertainment, and Popular Culture During World War One (WWI); Clémentine Tholas-Disset and Karen A. Ritzenhoff
PART I: MOVIES TO PLEASE? LAUGHTER, DIVERSION, AND NATIONHOOD IN GREAT WAR FILMS
1. Alf's Button (1920): Comedy in the Trenches; Lawrence Napper
2. Body Politics: National Identity, Performance and Modernity in Maciste Alpino (1916); Francesco Pitassio and Giaime Alonge
3. Hoaxes, ballyhoo stunts, war, and other jokes: humor in the American marketing of Hollywood war films During the Great War; Fabrice Lyzcba
4. Johanna Enlists (1918) and the elliptic portrayal of the Great War in motion
pictures; Clémentine Tholas-Disset
PART II: A WAR OF WITTY WORDS AND IMAGES: NOVELS, NEWSPAPERS, AND ILLUSTRATIONS
5. War Memoir as Entertainment: Walter Bloem's Vormarsch (1916); Jakub Kazecki
6. Nature and functions of humor in trench newspapers (1914-1918); Koenraad Du Pont
7. The Nuanced Comic Perspectives of the Cartoons in Mr. Punch's History of the Great War; Renée Dickason
8. When bande dessinée Goes to War: La Semaine de Suzette and The Birth of A. Breton's Heroïne en négatif; Anne Cirella-Urrutia
9. Marianne in the Trenches; Laurent Bihl
PART III: ENTERTAINING ONM STAGE: PLEASURABLE AND POLITICAL LIVE PERFORMANCES
10. The Range of Laughter: First-Person Reports from Entertainers with the Over There Theatre League; Felicia Hardison Londré
11. Humor in British popular song during the Great War: music-hall laughter and trench humor; John Mullen
12. J.M. Barrie and the First World War; Jenna L. Kubly
PART IV: PROMOTING WAR VALUES AND ROUTINE, COPING WITH A DIFFERENT SOCIAL ORDER
13. Sugary Celebrations and Culinary Activism: Sugar, Cooking, and Entertaining During World War One; Amy Wells
14. Chunder Goes North: Humor, Advertising, and the Australian Nation in the Bulletin During World War One; Robert Crawford
15. Mobilizing Morale: American Ambulance Drivers and the Road to U.S. Intervention; Adrian T. Lewis
16. Silencing Laughter: Pioneering Director Lois Weber and The Uncanny Gaze in Silent Film; Karen A. Ritzenhoff