RESOURCES: Making WWI Pop
Way back in April MC Popper Judy Pollack posted the following question:
"Looking for clips to enhance WWI unit for LD High School students. suggestions???"
Usually, I have a lot of ideas for these things off the top of my dome. At that time I only thought of the Metallica video for "One." The song and video was inspired by the incredible Dalton Trumbo novel Johnny Got His Gun. It was Metallica's first music video and is uses some great audio and video clips from the Johnny film. It includes lines like, "For democracy, any man would give his only begotten son."
Metallica does not allow the video to be shared on YouTube but it appears that Spike TV has a clean version of it here.
Again, the song's lyrics are inspired by the book. If you're not familiar with Johnny I'd say it is the kind of book that many reluctant readers will embrace. The plot from Wikipedia:
Joe Bonham, a young soldier serving in World War I, awakes in a hospital bed after being caught in the blast of an exploding artillery shell. He gradually realizes that he has lost his arms, legs, and face, but that his mind functions perfectly, leaving him a prisoner in his own body. He tries to die by suffocating himself but he has been given a tracheotomy, which he cannot remove or control. He attempts to communicate with his doctors by banging his head on his pillow in Morse code. His wish is that he may be put in a glass tube and tour the country, to show people the true horrors of war. His wish is never granted, however, and it is implied that he will live the rest of his natural life in this condition.
As he drifts between reality and fantasy, he remembers his old life with his family and girlfriend, and reflects upon the myths and realities of war. He also forms a bond, of sorts, with a young nurse who senses his plight.
Trumbo himself was also a heroic screenwriting figure as he was part of "the Hollywood Ten, a group of film professionals who testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947 during the committee's investigation of Communist influences in the motion picture industry."
Beyond that book and clip I really liked the 1981 Mel Gibson WWI film (saw it in high school for the first time) Gallipoli. A summary from imdb:
A promising track star's running career is interrupted by Australia's entrance into World War I. Archy is an excellent candidate for the Olympics, and coached by his Uncle Jack - "How fast can you run?" "As fast as a leopard!" - he nonetheless abandons his athletic pursuits in order to do the patriotic thing - join up.
All that aside, an e-mail I received today inspired me to make a full response to Judy's post. I had recently heard about the death of Harry Patch this July. Patch was the last known British survivor of WWI who fought in the trenches of the Western Front. (See the New York Times article here for more info).
In my inbox today, there was an e-mail from Radiohead. Thom York (Radiohead's lead singer) mentioned that he had written a song about Patch.
Harry Patch (In Memory Of)
'i am the only one that got through the others died where ever they fell
it was an ambush
they came up from all sides
give your leaders each a gun and then let them fight it out themselves
i've seen devils coming up from the ground
i've seen hell upon this earth
the next will be chemical but they will never learn'
Recently the last remaining UK veteran of the 1st world war Harry Patch died at the age of 111.
I had heard a very emotional interview with him a few years ago on the Today program on Radio4.
The way he talked about war had a profound effect on me.
It became the inspiration for a song that we happened to record a few weeks before his death.
It was done live in an abbey. The strings were arranged by Jonny.
I very much hope the song does justice to his memory as the last survivor.
It would be very easy for our generation to forget the true horror of war, without the likes of Harry to remind us.
I hope we do not forget.
As Harry himself said
"Irrespective of the uniforms we wore, we were all victims".
Recently the Today program played the song for the first time and now it is available to download from our website.
Please go to http://download.waste.uk.com to download the song
The proceeds of this song will go to the British Legion.
To peace and understanding.
Thom
In the context of the e-mail and our current political situation I thought the "to peace and understanding" signoff was a nice touch.
I found the BBC interview Yorke was referring to here. It is a great listen. From there I paid a pound to download the new track. It is a moving little composition that would be extremely teachable in conjunction with the BBC radio interview.
From there I hunted a little more -
In terms of WWI films I found these two lists on Amazon.
World War One Films
The Best World War One Movies
Plus, you can search imdb.com by keywords so the search of the WWI keyword turned up this quite exhaustive filmography.
One of my favorite books about history and film is Past Imperfect. That text includes a write up about Gallipoli and five other WWI films.
Lastly, I went hunting for information about comics from WWI or those about WWI. If found Charley's War a 5 part series on WWI written in the late 70s and early 80s reprinted as a graphic novel collection available through Amazon:
Charley's War: 2 June - 1 August 1916
Charley's War: 1 August - 17 October 1916
Charley's War: 17 October 1916 - 21 February 1917
Charley's War: Blue's Story
Charley's War: Return to the Front
There is a fan site about the original work that might also be useful for some additional information.
I also came across a cool essay "Comics and the First World War."
I found a couple valuable websites that collected political cartoons from the era:
WORLD WAR I POLITICAL CARTOONS
WORLD WAR ONE GALLERY
THE AUTHENTIC HISTORY CENTER'S WWI COLLECTION (Posters, Comics, Music)
and lots of other great looking websites from a simple Google search archived here
It is also worth checking out Catherine Gourley's books that deal with women and media in the twentieth century to get a sense of WWI on the home front.
Hopefully some of these resources will speak to y'all and allow your curriculum to pop.
I would love to hear about other cool pop artifacts or representations of WWI that people use to teach "The Great War" if you've got any good ideas!
In peace and understanding,
RRG:)
"Looking for clips to enhance WWI unit for LD High School students. suggestions???"
Usually, I have a lot of ideas for these things off the top of my dome. At that time I only thought of the Metallica video for "One." The song and video was inspired by the incredible Dalton Trumbo novel Johnny Got His Gun. It was Metallica's first music video and is uses some great audio and video clips from the Johnny film. It includes lines like, "For democracy, any man would give his only begotten son."
Metallica does not allow the video to be shared on YouTube but it appears that Spike TV has a clean version of it here.
Again, the song's lyrics are inspired by the book. If you're not familiar with Johnny I'd say it is the kind of book that many reluctant readers will embrace. The plot from Wikipedia:
Joe Bonham, a young soldier serving in World War I, awakes in a hospital bed after being caught in the blast of an exploding artillery shell. He gradually realizes that he has lost his arms, legs, and face, but that his mind functions perfectly, leaving him a prisoner in his own body. He tries to die by suffocating himself but he has been given a tracheotomy, which he cannot remove or control. He attempts to communicate with his doctors by banging his head on his pillow in Morse code. His wish is that he may be put in a glass tube and tour the country, to show people the true horrors of war. His wish is never granted, however, and it is implied that he will live the rest of his natural life in this condition.
As he drifts between reality and fantasy, he remembers his old life with his family and girlfriend, and reflects upon the myths and realities of war. He also forms a bond, of sorts, with a young nurse who senses his plight.
Trumbo himself was also a heroic screenwriting figure as he was part of "the Hollywood Ten, a group of film professionals who testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947 during the committee's investigation of Communist influences in the motion picture industry."
Beyond that book and clip I really liked the 1981 Mel Gibson WWI film (saw it in high school for the first time) Gallipoli. A summary from imdb:
A promising track star's running career is interrupted by Australia's entrance into World War I. Archy is an excellent candidate for the Olympics, and coached by his Uncle Jack - "How fast can you run?" "As fast as a leopard!" - he nonetheless abandons his athletic pursuits in order to do the patriotic thing - join up.
All that aside, an e-mail I received today inspired me to make a full response to Judy's post. I had recently heard about the death of Harry Patch this July. Patch was the last known British survivor of WWI who fought in the trenches of the Western Front. (See the New York Times article here for more info).
In my inbox today, there was an e-mail from Radiohead. Thom York (Radiohead's lead singer) mentioned that he had written a song about Patch.
'i am the only one that got through the others died where ever they fell
it was an ambush
they came up from all sides
give your leaders each a gun and then let them fight it out themselves
i've seen devils coming up from the ground
i've seen hell upon this earth
the next will be chemical but they will never learn'
Recently the last remaining UK veteran of the 1st world war Harry Patch died at the age of 111.
I had heard a very emotional interview with him a few years ago on the Today program on Radio4.
The way he talked about war had a profound effect on me.
It became the inspiration for a song that we happened to record a few weeks before his death.
It was done live in an abbey. The strings were arranged by Jonny.
I very much hope the song does justice to his memory as the last survivor.
It would be very easy for our generation to forget the true horror of war, without the likes of Harry to remind us.
I hope we do not forget.
As Harry himself said
"Irrespective of the uniforms we wore, we were all victims".
Recently the Today program played the song for the first time and now it is available to download from our website.
Please go to http://download.waste.uk.com to download the song
The proceeds of this song will go to the British Legion.
To peace and understanding.
Thom
I found the BBC interview Yorke was referring to here. It is a great listen. From there I paid a pound to download the new track. It is a moving little composition that would be extremely teachable in conjunction with the BBC radio interview.
From there I hunted a little more -
In terms of WWI films I found these two lists on Amazon.
World War One Films
The Best World War One Movies
Plus, you can search imdb.com by keywords so the search of the WWI keyword turned up this quite exhaustive filmography.
One of my favorite books about history and film is Past Imperfect. That text includes a write up about Gallipoli and five other WWI films.
Lastly, I went hunting for information about comics from WWI or those about WWI. If found Charley's War a 5 part series on WWI written in the late 70s and early 80s reprinted as a graphic novel collection available through Amazon:
Charley's War: 2 June - 1 August 1916
Charley's War: 1 August - 17 October 1916
Charley's War: 17 October 1916 - 21 February 1917
Charley's War: Blue's Story
Charley's War: Return to the Front
There is a fan site about the original work that might also be useful for some additional information.
I also came across a cool essay "Comics and the First World War."
I found a couple valuable websites that collected political cartoons from the era:
WORLD WAR I POLITICAL CARTOONS
WORLD WAR ONE GALLERY
THE AUTHENTIC HISTORY CENTER'S WWI COLLECTION (Posters, Comics, Music)
and lots of other great looking websites from a simple Google search archived here
It is also worth checking out Catherine Gourley's books that deal with women and media in the twentieth century to get a sense of WWI on the home front.
Hopefully some of these resources will speak to y'all and allow your curriculum to pop.
I would love to hear about other cool pop artifacts or representations of WWI that people use to teach "The Great War" if you've got any good ideas!
In peace and understanding,
RRG:)
Views: 147
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Bill Chapman on
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An absolutely wonderful resource for teaching about WWI is the original cast soundtrack to the 1963 stage play "Oh, What a Lovely War". Its 45 minutes of music and song lead the listener from the heady days of 1914 through the despair of 1918. The 1969 film does not compare to the power of this recording. Copies are hard to come by, but the script is available from Amazon, and song lyrics are available via the Internet. EBay sometimes offers discs for sale. I've set up a page on my web site devoted to this album. You may view it at http://www.classroomtools.com/Vinyl.htm
Another newspaper report from which students and teachers might benefit appeared in the SF Chronicle last December. It recounts the story of how a high school history class undertook a study of The Great War, and sent two of its students and its teacher on the field trip of a lifetime from St. Helena, CA to Charlestown, South Carolina to interview Frank Buckles, the 107 year old last US survivor of the Great War. You may read it at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/30/MN8G14M... -
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A correction. The field trip to interview Frank Buckles was from St. Helena to West Virginia, not South Carolina.
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Permalink Reply by dvorreyer on
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If you want to use some comparisons, the Filter song "Soldiers of Misfortune" (about Iraq) has a chorus that borrows from "Over There." They use the line "they won't come back when it's over over there" instead of "til it's over" like the original.
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Permalink Reply by Ryan Goble on
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Bill & Dvorreyer thanks for the additional resources and ideas! Bill, I esp. love your website!
Amazon does have a lot of used vinyl copies of the cast recording and of course the Attenborough film is available on DVD as well.
This had me searching for a digital version of the original cast soundtrack (as it is only a matter of time before all music is available digitally).
Instead, at iTunes I found some cool period collections of popular music:
Oh! What A Lovely War
and
Oh! It's a A Lovely War, Vol. 1
Oh, It's Oh! It's a A Lovely War, Vol. 2
Oh, It's A Lovely War, Vol. 3
Frank Baker sent me an e-mail with two awesome sites:
Ken Burns did a whole chapter of Jazz on WWI - teaching resources here.
Frank also knew about a cool site A Teacher's Guide to the Great War and Popular Culture: A Virtual Museum.
Lastly another friend e-mailed me about the French film A Very Long Engagement (2004) starring the beautiful Audrey Tautou. I didn't love that film but the director is quite gifted and has a very MTV sensibility. Kids might enjoy the plot, I never had occasion to think about teaching it. It would certainly be worth a re-view. -
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Thanks for all of the follow-up Ryan. I've added a link to Amazon's "vinyl" disc page, and will explore some of the original songs on iTunes. I have a CD of many of them, but their age results in somewhat poor sound quality, and the style of the singers at the time makes them sound strange to contemporary teen audiences. That can be handled, but the power of the original cast of Oh, What a Lovely War (song selection and the dialog that ties them into a coherent story) makes it a much better choice for conveying the entire scope of the war in one memorable class period. Frank's resources are always great, so thanks too for passing them along. I'm looking forward to exploring them. And also thanks for visiting my site. I hope that you'll find more there to pass along here.
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Bill - please man, share your website anywhere you can! Some people get shy thinking "Oh I don't want to sound like a spammer" - but I really think people have to toot their horns if they have cool resources like yours to share.
Hopefully they'll release that LP digitally in the near future - I can't wait to check it out! -
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One other WWI film that should not be missed is King Vidor's silent classic, THE BIG PARADE (1925). I believe that it was the highest grossing silent film of all time, and is considered one of the best made about WWI. It has not been released on DVD, but Turner Silent Classics released a nicely done VHS tape in 1988. It is probably still available for rent, and is broadcast from time to time on the Turner network. You may read a bit about the film at IMDB (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0015624/) and at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Parade)
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For many years, before I had actually seen this film, I assumed that the title (THE BIG PARADE) referred to the welcome home parades thrown on behalf of returning soldiers in 1918 and 1919. Once I saw it, I realized that the title referred to THE BIG PARADE of men and material traveling to the trenches on the battlefields of France where they would be destroyed in the brutality that was trench warfare, to be replaced by the continuing PARADE behind them, much like a conveyor belt filled with trash that was dumped at the end; the belt returning perpetually to the beginning to pick up more.
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Ah, the 'ol double entendre trick :)
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Permalink Reply by Lisa Fink on
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ReadWriteThink.org has a lesson plan using _All Quiet on the Western Front_: http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=994.
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Bill and Lisa thank you for adding such wonderful resources! This stuff is a lot of fun when everyone gets in the mix!
RRG:) -
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Here is the link to a very unique resource that just appeared in my Twitter stream. It is a set of 16 photos taken during WWI of thousands of US soldiers forming various patriotic icons. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/5940073/...
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