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Chapter 2 - Mobilising the Nation

The Comic Revue in Wartime

from Part I - Mobilising for War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2023

Helen E. M. Brooks
Affiliation:
University of Kent, Canterbury
Michael Hammond
Affiliation:
University of Southampton
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Summary

This chapter emphasises the key role that comic revues and music hall acts played in ensuring the British army had a continuous stream of recruits throughout the First World War. Through examining the songs, sketches and characters through which this was achieved, the chapter demonstrates the varied strategies used and the ways they drew on earlier modes of performance such as nineteenth-century melodrama. Particular emphasis is placed on the gendered ideology that was implicit in the performances examined, for example in looking at the dramatization of atrocity stories which were circulating in the press and the treatment of women in these plays and wider narratives. The chapter also focusses on music hall songs and performances by male impersonators such as Marie Lloyd. It encourages us to question the simple alignment of propaganda and popular entertainment and offers a more nuanced understanding of these performances through the lens of satire. By doing so, it demonstrates how satirising and parodying wartime experiences provided a release from anxiety. Stage satire and comedy, it concludes, offer a unique perspective on how modern total war saturated public life.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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