Tag Archives: propaganda

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Animated Soviet Propaganda

I would like to turn back a little and continue on the topic of cold war and mass propaganda, this time examining it from the point of view of Russia. It’s pretty obvious that if America had propaganda, where communists seemed evil and manipulative, Soviets must have also used mass media to control their population. I found a great documentary called “Soviet Animated Propaganda” , which depicts a history of all the mind controlling cartoons made by Soyuzmultfilm Studios from 1924 to 1984. Thirteen parts of it are available on youtube.  Here is part one to start with.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/KV5sIGm70SE" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

I thought it would be interesting to know how Soviets portrayed Americans in the cold war period. During WWII, media was created to align people against fascism, and during cold war American capitalism took its place. It seems that Soviets stayed on top of their game and criticized every single aspect of American life – the money, racial divisions, war strategies and so on. As Igor Kokarev says in the film, people were persuaded to believe, which they did, that they live in the best country of the world, and that the rest of the world with their money and ideologies is absolutely evil: outsiders are the enemy. As Kokarev notes such strong propaganda was so successful, because Soviet people were artificially isolated from the rest of the world, and lived almost like a “cult”. Children from early years were taught how to view the other countries and how to react to certain situations. All children and adults were given the same mindset, the same resources of knowledge, therefore leaving all on the same page. The government created thousands of propaganda posters, which were hanged on every wall in every institution – from schools, busses, cafeterias to private homes. Those posters “told citizens what to do and how to think and who to blame”. All media was strongly supervised and corrected “very stubbornly” up to the last days of the Soviet Union.

I urge you to watch this documentary even though its long, if you are at all interested in media as a brainwashing device. I found it very interesting, since it goes through most of the propaganda cartoons ever created by USSR. After watching this, I got a strong sense that the Hollywood blacklisting was minor, compared to this large degree control in Soviet Union, where nothing could leak out.

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The TUBE: Can you handle the truth?

After looking at the blog assignment, a YouTube video popped into my head. It was over a year ago that my friend sent me this clip from the 1976 satirical movie “Network.” I didn’t think too much about it then, besides finding it ironic that the clip showed a man ranting against the “Tube” while being a YouTube clip. To provide you a bit of background, the movie is about tv anchorman Howard Beale, played by Peter Finch and how he is shaken by his network for his poor ratings. He goes mad while live on camera and his ratings skyrocket. The network then gives Beale his own show where he rants and raves. In this particular segment, he speaks about his disillusionment with the media and how the television, man’s miracle invention, is filled with propaganda and lies that the public feed into without knowing any better.

Barely three minutes long, this clip touches heavily upon the topics of fear, anxiety, and paranoia that our class is based on in relation to the notion of “truth”. I have below the part of his impassioned speech that really hit home for me:

“We deal in illusions, man! None of it is true […] We’re all you know! You’re beginning to believe the illusions we’re spinning here! You’re beginning to think that the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you– You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even THINK like the tube! This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God’s name you people are the real thing, we are the illusion!”

The words were so powerful, especially in the frenzied way Finch plays his character. With each angry word, I was filled with anxiety. We take what we see on television and other digital media, as the unspoken truth. We learn our values from television, and we just hope that we’re being taught the right things. Isn’t it worrisome that what we see impacts how we think, and if we just watched or heard something else, maybe we wouldn’t think/act a certain way?

I know this kind of diatribe against the media is nothing new. No one can trust the media because it is biased, no matter which way you cut it. From Fox to CNN, all major news channels have their own motives for getting out certain stories while minimizing others. Then again, if we choose to never watch television or connect to the world through the media, does that mean that we’re too paranoid and choose to be ignorant of the world?

In relation to the movies we’ve watched, I thought the idea of truth, how we consciously (or subconsciously) try to hide from it, and how it can destroy the best and worst of us is evident in movies like in Touch of Evil and Memento. Quinlan in Touch of Evil hides the truth and frames people for committing crimes. Yet it catches up with him and he dies for what he’s done. Then in Memento, Leonard is forever on a quest to find the truth behind his wife’s murder, yet he’s actually sabotaging his own pursuits to fulfill his own needs. Just as striking was the fact that in this YouTube clip, Beale was a man denouncing the media while he himself is a player in the arena. It was insane that right as he was on the verge of finishing his speech telling people to turn the television off in the middle of his sentence, that he should faint in the middle of his sentence!

I don’t know whether he was staged to faint, but it’s still nevertheless an eerie omen–as though the truth is too much for one man to bear alone.

Also, you can find a longer version of the movie clip here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qfqZ1ZIx_U&feature=related

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Anti-Communist Propaganda and Anti-Anti-Communist Comedy

When I was young I loved cartoons of all kinds, ranging from Tom and Jerry to Popeye The Sailor Man to Dragonball Z. Through this simple, animated medium I saw continual rivalry, heroism and the power of spinach. A well-made series broke down larger, more complicated concepts in a way a child could understand and did so in an exciting and captivating manner. This being said, it would make sense for any group wishing to promote an agenda to use cartoons to communicate a message to a wide demographic. In the following cartoon, Dr. Utopia’s wonderful formula promises to cure all the ails of the America population.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/KkXTd9v56LQ" width="600" height="400" wmode="transparent" /]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkXTd9v56LQ

For the farmer it promised a great yield and favorable weather, for the manager massive profit and no strikes, for the politician government control and the ability to choose your salary, and for the worker higher wages and security. All each of these individuals had to do was sign on the dotted line and they would receive their bottle of ISM free of charge. The only person who chooses to question the contract is John Q Public. He discovers that the contract actually offers the signer’s freedom and that of future generations in exchange for ISM. When he tells the others to sample the product, they imagine a world of slave labor in which the government determines all and they have no power to retaliate. Ultimately, Dr. Utopia is run into the distance by the other characters as they hurl ISM bottles at him.

Through the oversimplification of both positions, the cartoon exalts American freedom and government while demonizing the ideals of communism. This is a feature of many of the films of the Cold War era we have read about and seen in class presentations. Furthermore, it continues to be a feature of the modern day media, especially in times of questionable governmental action. It is easy to unite against abstract forces that seem to be the root of all-evil, no matter which ISM they are. The media develops blanket terms that threaten our way of life and anyone who does not unite against the forces is deemed un-American. It is a divisive strategy that, on the surface, serves to give credibility to the actions of any group, especially the government. Recently a friend of mine directed me to an article I found most disturbing.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_ts1253

Simply put, it states that the Texas Board of Education is debating legislation that will alter textbooks in a radically conservative way. Among the proposed changes are decreased emphasis on the influence of the Latino population and the addition of country music as an important cultural influence (hip-hop is to be dropped from the list). More importantly, Texas sets standards for approximately eighty percent of the nation’s textbook market. Potentially this could alter the way children learn, inundating them with false and biased concepts about the nation’s history. In middle school we all learned about the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. We learned about his three ships and the first Thanksgiving. However, many of us did not learn about his massacre of the Native Americans rivaling that of any conquistador. Early education system tends to have a conservative slant, almost denying the atrocities the United States has committed in its history. It is yet another method to generate blind patriotism in the nation’s citizenry. It is only as I have developed a more cynical, yet pragmatic, view of the world that I have truly realized the half the media sounds like this underneath all the jargon and propaganda.