Motherhood Propaganda in Fascism
Sax and Kuntz in the "Inside Hitler 's Germany: A Documentary History of Life in the Third Reich" indicate that fascism "emphasized the role of the mother within the family" and "women were assigned traditional domestic functions"(265), which shows women play the roles of classic family keepers with their initial motherhood. Both of the Italian historical film 1860 directed by Alessandro and the German melodramatic feature film La Habanera directed by Detlev Sierck are united by their portraits of the females’ roles as traditional women. By depicting these female figures, fascism praises the virtues of woman’s traditional roles as family keepers with motherhood and promote the beliefs of conscience and traditional virtues, disguising its
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Indeed, the concentration on female subjectivity reflects the status of the female in Germany and Italy in the two films. The two films depict the female characters with direct portraits through plots about Carmeniddu’s wife, Gesuzza in 1860 and Astrée, in La Habanera, who are the maternal guardians of her families and indirect portraits through the set designs of the deserted plain in 1860 and Astrée’s room with dim light in La Habanera, which reflect the inner feelings of the female characters as mothers. These exclusive characterizations of motherhood serve mainly to exercise a symbolic function within the narrative, rather than to configure the women as primary agents, indicating the gender bias which "implies disdain for women" (Eco 7). In keeping with these female images, the fascist dictatorships laud the traditional, static position of women as keepers of their families with motherhood. This became part of the contradictory nature of fascist societies, and as they sought to emphasize expansion while extolling an archaic ethos of family. The role of women as mothers became a marker of the fascist nation’s tenuous relationship with the conflicting values of expansion and nationalist