Armed Farces

This wide-ranging collection of essays considers works on the comedy of war and conflict from the very beginning of film in the 19th century to some of the most recent works. Topics include how films and television are made, from the creative choices in their scripts to their, cinematography, the impact they have on audiences, and the controversial receptions these works have received.

Major works examined include Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, Wilder's A Foreign Affair, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Other essays shed light on much less familiar works including the controversial and cancelled sitcom Heil Honey I'm Home! and some of the earliest sitcoms made in the first Golden Age of Television after the Second World War. Collectively the essays suggest that since the earliest days of the moving image, film and subsequently television creators have been able to make important and even serious messages about war, peace, combatants and the impact of conflict through comedy that can be satiric, romantic or affirming of a nation's ideals.