TAKING UP THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN II111

digging" or by being daring or adventurous. "Unfortunately, too," writes film
scholar Marjorie Rosen, "she ranked right along as a leading purveyor of
nonsensical whimsy which generally reinforced traditional stereotypes"
(391). It seems also that her own "predilection for relationships with
dominant, controlling men appears to have taken precedence over her fine
mind in dealing with female characterizations" (Rosen 391). Invariably,
material chosen for her scripts reflected not only her preference for female
subservience to men but also to her country, for all too often (as evidenced
in films like The Americano or in characters like the female-spy in Saved by
the Soup), the two were creatively intertwined. Moreover, her prolific
contributions to the film industry often reflected the headlines of the day, in
many ways propagating the idea of progress and empire. As her work in The
Americano testifies, Loos often turned to the myriad newspaper reports
spurted out in her time for the tales she, in turn, spurted out in her movies.
During the convulsive period before World War I, newspapers brought the
U.S. public reports that told tales of intrigue and espionage, of American
interests in foreign lands, or on the cause and cost of a rising expansionism,
and local debates were prompted by the virulent resurgence of Nativism
(Higashi 124). These would all find their way into her scenarios. In addition
to The Americano, these themes fed films such as her His Picture in the Paper
(1916), The Perfect Woman (1920), or Dangerous Business (1920).
 Anita Loos was not alone in the spurning of tales that linked romance,
revolution, adventure, and public debates. Indeed, these early days of cinema
were also days overshadowed by wars and other cataclysmic political and
social events shaping the lives of North Americans, South Americans, and
Europeans alike. The Spanish American War (which ended Spain's official
claim to power in the Caribbean) and the economic and political expansion
of the U.S. into the Atlantic and Pacific basins, became specific backdrops of
news articles, newsreels, and feature films which were produced for local
and foreign markets.4 The ostensible objectivity of the medium to record current
events would create an unbroken representational tradition that spawned the
"reel" as the "real." U.S. audiences-as well as the foreigners in exotic lands that
the camera supposedly gazed upon-were 'informed' and 'entertained' with
film products that promoted nothing less than nineteenth-century Manifest
Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine. San Diego, California or St. Augustine,

4 Newspapers and cinema were both weapons that intellectuals used in the era. Along
with men such as John Fiske, Josiah Strong, Frederick Jackson Turner, and Alfred
Thayer Mahan, arose William Randolph Hearst, John Pulitzer, and R. Beers Loos,
who propagated ideas of progress and empire. While some were against war and
annexation of Cuba and Puerto Rico, fierce debates on the issue in Congress led
President McKinley to gather the opinion of national enterprises and industry. They
all agreed that war on Spain would get the job of political and commercial
expansionism done. See Strong (1900), Brown (1967), and Luque de SAnchez (1980).