Aditya Thesis: Chapter 3: Review of Literature

Chapter 3

REVIEW OF LITERATURE                            

   Film Histories, an Introduction and Reader – Paul Grainge, Mark Jankovich and Sharon Monteith (Edinburg University Press, 2008)

     This book has given film in different countries in relation to film as propaganda. The authors of this book tell us in Chapter 9, how Lenin had famously declared that film was the most important of arts in Russia and certainly in its success as a socialist, educational and propaganda tool.

In Chapter 10 they mention that in the totalitarian states of the 1930’s the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and the Japanese Empire – cinema was no more than a crude form of state propaganda. Here they say the major genre in the Japanese cinema during this period was the Jidai-geki featuring samurai warriors was nothing more than a form of military propaganda.

In Chapter 10 the writers say that Riefenstahl has often been taken as defining the aesthetics of Nazi cinema with her highly stylized image of Aryan perfection. In Olympia (1938), she recorded that the 1936 Olympic games but concentrated on the perfection of Aryan athletes rather than non-Aryan medal winners such as the outstanding black runner Jesse Owens.

In Chapter 11 the writers say that it was argued by many intellectuals that Hollywood films shared the same totalitarian impulses as the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. They given instances in the British films during the time like The Lady Vanishes (1938) where a trainload of mostly British passengers join forces to foil a Nazi plot to stop a British spy from delivering vital information to the British government.

Chapter 12 mentions, after the USA joined the world war they recruited the film industry and its personnel for the war effort. It explains how the Office of War Information (OWI) worked with the film industry to mobilise support for war and to maintain morale of troops. It also says how OWI won unprecedented control over content of American motion-pictures. It also says the then US President Roosevelt too believed movies were among the most effective means of reaching the American people. This chapter also notes how important the role of OWI’s international role was. As it hit the beaches  right behind the American troops.

Propaganda – Edward Bernays (Ig Publishing of Brooklyn, New York, 2004 Reprint)

Bernays considers propaganda as absolutely necessary for the society. He considers it as a science and a psychology. He says that propagandists are “invisible governors” i.e. they pull the strings when it comes to politicians and business people. He is absolutely sure of the effectiveness of propaganda in wining over public imagination and public relations. He adjudicates that ‘propaganda is here to stay’. He also tried to give how important propagandists were and attempts to give propagandists a better name. He also suggests many propaganda techniques.

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988) - Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky

Chomsky and Herman assert that in America there is a system of propaganda imposed by the media. He suggests the propaganda model where the corporates who head the media houses distort the news reports so as to create better profit irrespective of the accuracy of news with their own news filters (ownership, advertising, news makers and news shapers). The government complements this position by not giving access to information to news sources incurring governmental disfavour. He believes that it is the ordinary people who will bring about the change and will go beyond the imposed information and think independently rather than just being cogs in a machine as they have been made of now.

Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda - Noam Chomsky

(Seven Stories Press, 1991)

Chomsky in writes that the first modern government propaganda started with Woodrow Wilson’s administration which established the Creel Commission which turned a pacifist nation into hysteria over war and making them war-mongering. Such sate propaganda was supported by the ‘intelligent class’ which pushed the people into war. According to him, propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state. He states that USA’s Gulf war is an example for a well-functioning propaganda system.