Prototype (God Bless America)

2006 • Directed by

Martha Rosler

A mechanical toy figure dressed as an American soldier bends and sways, playing God Bless America — the sentimental, unofficial, and highly favored national anthem during World War II — on a bugle. The camera pans down, revealing that the toy’s camouflage-clad trouser leg has been rolled up to uncover a mechanism that looks uncannily like a prosthetic limb!