Killing Kruger with your mouth: sounding images in the South African War

The South African War (1899–1902) was an intensively mediatized confrontation in which the familiar instruments of news and propaganda were joined by a new form of mass media: film. Aided by the rapid technological advancement and a leisure industry of variety and magic lantern shows, contemporary audiences in Britain, South Africa, and elsewhere viewed the war in new and dramatic ways. However, while this explosion in representation is thought of as primarily visual, these experiences were synthesized within larger soundscapes comprising not only ‘soundtracks’ of both music and sound effects, but (re)mediations of war into popular musico-dramatic performances and concerts designed to have spectacular trans-media effects. This essay traces the sonic representation of the South African War through accounts of film, film sound, and music hall song in Britain and its empire during the period from 1899 to 1902, looking at how the combined use of media created particular effects on audiences half-way across the world. I argue that these practices of hearing war-as-entertainment position the South African War as a key transitional moment in nineteenth- and twentieth-century media. This does not only contribute to the histories of media and of staged performance, but also asks how audiovisual representations of the South African War have shaped the imaging and imagining of war today?