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Student Research Conference
Sherlock Holmes in Washington: Political Propaganda and "Englishness" in World Wars I and II
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Student Research Conference
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Title
Sherlock Holmes in Washington: Political Propaganda and "Englishness" in World Wars I and II
Usage & Reproduction Rights
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Type
Video recording
URI / Handle
http://hdl.handle.net/1961/muislandora:2985
Created
2015-01-01T00:00:00Z
Abstract
This research focused on the overt political propaganda in the 1943 film "Sherlock Holmes in Washington". Although it is tempting to dismiss this film as a B-list riff on a popular cultural icon, I wanted to discover whether this propaganda had ties to substantial themes in Arthur Conan Doyle’s original work. If so, how did the text and film differ in discussing patriotism, and what was the impact of using a British cultural icon in an America propaganda film? My continuing research on Sherlock Holmes as a pop culture icon seeks to understand how this Victorian character remains relevant to generations of readers and viewers. Specifically, my research on "Sherlock Holmes in Washington" is important because it studies how filmmakers can manipulate and update a cultural icon to use for political propaganda -an issue that is relevant to any study that seeks to understand how the media we consume impacts us.This project was completed in Fall 2014 in the form of a major thesis paper. I used comparative analysis and my previous experience in film and adaptation studies to compare "His Last Bow" and "Sherlock Holmes in Washington". This paper explores the presence of political propaganda in Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story “His Last Bow” and it’s later film adaptation, Sherlock Holmes in Washington. I argue that Doyle’s World War I-era story extends his legacy as a patriotic supporter of colonialism, and that both the text and film attempt to lay wartime fears to rest through the creation of German “others” and vanquish these threats through Sherlock Holmes' embodiment of “Englishness”. “Englishness”, as a Victorian ideal, is best defined through “sportsmanship”, and moments within “His Last Bow” that specifically discuss sportsmanship demonstrate how Germans are stripped of “English” qualities to create “others” out of those previously seen as social equals in an Imperialist setting. Through the continued use of “Englishness” and patriotism, the 1943 film adaptation uses Holmes to promote American and British cooperation in World War II. The paper concludes that by extending the political legacy of Arthur Conan Doyle’s last chronological Holmes story, Sherlock Holmes in Washington demonstrates Holmes' status as a British literary icon and suggests his modern relevance as a cultural embodiment of English sportsmanship, especially in the face of international threats. This project is significant because although several of the earlier Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone have been studied, this particular film has not been widely published on. It was a challenge to find secondary sources that explicitly discussed "Sherlock Holmes in Washington", and few of them discussed the film as a product of Arthur Conan Doyle's original work. Yet, Doyle was a political advocate of the Imperial British Empire, and studying the film's propaganda as a byproduct of Doyle's already-existent patriotism sheds new light on a relatively unnoticed adaptation.
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