Race, Disability, and Rehabilitation in Home of the Brave

This paper examines a series of texts about World War II and racialized constructions of mental illness. It focuses on Jewish playwright and World War II veteran Arthur Laurent’s introspective reflections on his experiences with anti-Semitism in the U.S. military and the broader discourse about race, mental illness, and the military that developed from that in the post-WWII period. In 1946, Laurents wrote the play Home of the Brave about a Jewish protagonist named Peter Coen and his experiences with anti-Semitism and treatment for mental illness (as psychosomatic paralysis) in the U.S. military. In 1949, Stanley Kramer produced a film by the same name based on Laurents’s play, but replaced the Jewish protagonist for a black protagonist named Peter Moss. Laurents later wrote a memoir entitled Original Story By: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood, in which he reveals that the play was partially based on his experiences and expresses his thoughts on the film’s racial substitution. In light of this commentary, I read moments of difference between the play and the film to compare and contrast the ways that variously racialized subjects are imagined and constructed in relation to mental illness and treatment in the mid-twentieth century United States. I use this to illustrate the specific legal, cultural, and historical means (e.g., military policies, films, psychiatric diagnostic procedures,etc.) by which race and disability were produced as categories through one another. In doing so, I seek to contribute to studies of racial categories and mental illness by focusing on how mental illness has been treated and rehabilitated differently for members of different racial groups.