Projecting a Story: Remembering the Maine in Early American Cinema and Other Media During the Spanish-American War

Projecting a Story: Remembering the Maine in Early American Cinema and Other Media During the Spanish-American War

Early Film and the Spanish American War

1898

Luis Carroll

I will explore how the Spanish-American War was not only represented in the public consciousness of 1898 but also its legacy in our own times. However, to understand the story of the war is also to understand key characters historically associated with it so I will briefly outline our main cast here. William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper magnate who cried so loud for the war that the sheepish ears of Washington had no choice but to listen, even if they were both fervently crying of a Spanish wolf. In Washington, William McKinley, the sitting President had inherited a tense foreign climate: the Spanish Wolf had been prowling around Cuba since 1895. Intensified Spanish intervention in its Cuban colony not only undermined the newly incumbent President but also a historic doctrine maintained since the Presidency of fifth U.S. President, a Founding Father, James Monroe. The 1823 Monroe Doctrine inscribed a new American promise to protect independent surrounding Southern American countries from European colonisation. So, how did President McKinley square this foundational doctrine of diplomacy with the domestic pressures calling for not only American interventionism but then also for expansionism?

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