From 1935 to 1951, Time Magazine bridged the gap between print & radio news reporting and the new visual medium of film, with
March of Time: award-winning newsreel reports that were a combination of objective documentary, dramatized fiction and pro-American, anti-totalitarian propaganda. They “often
tackled subjects and themes that audiences weren’t used to seeing —
foreign affairs,
social trends, public-health issues — and did so with a combination of panache and subterfuge that today seems either absurd or visionary.”
(Previous two links have autoplaying video.) By 1937, the short films were being seen by as many as 26 million people every month and
may have helped steer public opinion on numerous issues,
including (
eventually) America’s
entry to WWII. Video samples are available at
Time.com, the
March of Time Facebook page and the entire collection is available online,
(free registration required) at
HBO Archives. [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Aug 22, 2011 -
8 comments
In 2009,
Ctrl.Alt.Shift, the "youth
initiative of Christian Aid," held a national competition in the UK for aspiring filmmakers aged 18 to 25. Their mission: create a short film treatment based around three key issues: "War + Peace," "Gender + Power" and "HIV + Stigma." The results were then screened to an audience at the 2009 Raindance Film Festival. The films:
1000 Voices,
HIV: The Musical,
Man Made,
No Way Through and
War School.
(All YouTube links. Vimeo links and descriptions of each film are inside this post.) These films deal with adult subject matter and may be disturbing for some viewers. Some may also be nsfw. [more inside]
posted by zarq
on May 24, 2011 -
3 comments
Japan Air Raids "is an ongoing project to build a digital archive dedicated to the international dissemination of information about the World War II air raids against Japan." They have seeded it with quite a bit of material (e.g. Target Tokyo, narrated by Ronald Reagan in the
documentary and propaganda section) and promise there is much more to come. [Warning, some images may disturb]
[via]
posted by unliteral
on Dec 12, 2010 -
21 comments
The scene was the siege of Shanghai, the year 1932. It was more than half a year since the Mukden Incident had provided a pretext for Japan to
invade Manchuria and begin moving down through Northern China. Three Imperial Japanese soldiers from an engineering division died in a bomb blast that took out a section of the Chinese fortifications, allowing Japanese forces to surge through the breach and advance.
The fallen soldiers became known as the "
Three Human Bombs" (Bakudan Sanyushi / 爆弾三勇士).
Memorials were built and
murals were painted and the Three Human Bombs were remembered as gallant and selfless heroes who gave their lives for the greater good of Japan, lauded on stage, in film, and
in song. A
military medal was created to award heroism in honor of the three.
Problem is,
it was all a lie. The story of the Three Human Bombs was one of the most successful propaganda campaigns of the early twentieth century.
posted by XMLicious
on Sep 30, 2009 -
14 comments
"What if America wasn't America?" That was the question posed by a series of ads broadcast in the wake of the September 11th attacks, ads which depicted a dystopian America bereft of liberty:
Library -
Diner -
Church. Together with more positive ads like
Remember Freedom and
I Am an American, they encouraged frightened viewers to cherish their freedoms and defend against division and prejudice in the face of terrorism (
seven years previously). The campaign was the work of the
Ad Council, a non-profit agency that employs the creative muscle of volunteer advertisers to raise awareness for social issues of national importance. Founded during WWII as the War Advertising Council, the organization has been behind
some of the most memorable public service campaigns in American history, including
Rosie the Riveter,
Smokey the Bear,
McGruff the Crime Dog, and
the Crash Test Dummies. And the Council is still at it today, producing striking, funny, and above all
effective PSAs on everything from
student invention to
global warming to
arts education to
community service.
Additional resources:
A-to-Z index of Ad Council campaigns -
Campaigns organized by category -
Award-winning campaigns -
PSA Central: A free download directory of TV, radio, and print PSAs
(registration req'd) -
An exhaustive history of the Ad Council [46-page PDF] -
YouTube channel -
Vimeo channel -
Twitter feed
posted by Rhaomi
on Sep 11, 2009 -
69 comments
What was so shameful and embarrassing to me, an American journalist whose own Moscow-based newspaper, The eXile, had just been driven out of existence [previously] by these same Kremlin bastards, is that Sasha was rightly frustrated. A Kremlin minder right and the Western journalists wrong? What has this world come to when the Kremlin has a better grasp of the truth than the free Western media?
How to screw up a war story: The New York Times at work
posted by Anything
on Jan 5, 2009 -
32 comments
Peace and War in the 20th Century is an ambitious, in progress, massive assemblage of posters, photographs, propaganda, ephemera, letters, diaries, paintings, sketches, stories, letters, music and related items, from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. The collection is international in scope. Some of the nodes lack content, and the navigation is a little confusing, so the jump I list some of my favourite case studies from their site.
[more inside]
posted by Rumple
on Jan 2, 2009 -
4 comments
In 1939, King George VI commissioned the Ministry of Information to produce three posters designed to reassure and prepare the British nation for an inevitable war. The posters were designed not so much to deliver any specific instruction, but rather to suggest an attitude - from King to country - towards the unknown. Stiff upper lip, old boy.
KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON. [more inside]
posted by 6am
on Nov 19, 2008 -
38 comments
"Japanese Relocation" - A short propaganda film created by the US government & the "Office of War Information - Bureau of Motion Pictures."
The subject has been much discussed previously on MetaFilter.
Here and
here, among other threads.
posted by The Deej
on Jul 25, 2007 -
21 comments
War vs. Democracy: Untold Stories from the Lynch / Tillman Hearing --
...U.S. soldiers whose injuries or deaths remain mired in secrecy. Pat Tillman's brother and fellow Army Ranger Kevin Tillman advocated strongly for other families still waiting for answers. ... "The family was told, it was -- quote -- 'an ambush by insurgents.' Two years later, they found out that those -- quote -- 'insurgents' happened to be the same Iraqi troops that he was training. Before his death, he told his chain of command that these same troops that he was training were trying to kill him and his team. He was told to keep his mouth shut." ... Thorough and eye-opening examination of the many ways the military spun, lied, withheld information on soldier deaths and injuries for propaganda purposes (and even delayed action until cameras were present in the
Jessica Lynch rescue).
posted by amberglow
on May 12, 2007 -
29 comments
Why We Fight, the BBC documentary from
Eugene Jarecki about the American military-industrial complex and its origins (
trailer@apple). For some reason its up in full at Google Video, so if you didn't get a chance to see it in the theaters, well, here it is! 1hr,40m - save it for later, perhaps. It's named after a
series of war propaganda newsreels, directed by Frank Capra, demonstrating the need to enter WWII. These too are
available on GV, as well as archive.org - to your surprise and delight. And for your convenience: Reels
One,
Two,
Three,
Four, Five parts
1 and
2,
Six, and
Seven
posted by BlackLeotardFront
on May 6, 2006 -
54 comments
Their view is that psyops can be directed toward global transregional audiences. My view is that that’s not possible because it directs psyops against our own friends and allies and even at our own public. ... In Mind Games, Columbia Journalism Review thoroughly examines the disintegrating lines between Public Affairs, Psy-Ops, IO, the public, and the truth. Some old friends are mentioned too: the
Lincoln Group, the
Rendon Group, the Pentagon, our own media, and others.
If truth is our greatest weapon, as Rumsfeld has said, how can the administration hope to prevail in an information war when it is not honest with itself?
posted by amberglow
on May 1, 2006 -
21 comments
Education for Death. (YouTubefilter.) Disney-produced
anti-Nazi cartoon short from 1943. Look for Hitler's Satanic horns. More weirdness from WWII: Warner Bros
Snafuperman, starring Pvt. Snafu (originally created by Dr. Seuss!), who also deals with
spies, all while jabbering away in a voice that sounds disconcertingly like that of a certain cwazy wabbit. From Archive. org -- Pvt. Snafu learns about
booby traps, in one case literally. Bugs himself joined the Air Force, and was faced with
gremlins for his trouble. Superman himself got in on the act, battling
Japoteurs. After all, during the War we were plenty worried about those canny
Japanese.
posted by Astro Zombie
on Mar 23, 2006 -
26 comments
an example of Operation Homefront? --this news report about a Reservist back from Iraq is apparently part of a new
Pentagon propaganda operation aimed at us.
...Did Diaz return to the U.S. on emergency leave with an agenda -- to offer a positive spin that could help counter growing concerns among Americans about the U.S. exit strategy? How do we know that's not his strategy, especially after he discloses that superior officers encouraged him to talk about his experiences in Iraq? ...
posted by amberglow
on Jan 4, 2006 -
91 comments
The Rendon Group --
covert perception managers using our taxpayer money to start wars.
... the product of a clandestine operation -- part espionage, part PR campaign -- that had been set up and funded by the CIA and the Pentagon for the express purpose of selling the world a war. ... it was hired by the CIA to help "create the conditions for the removal of Hussein from power." Working under this extraordinary transfer of secret authority, Rendon assembled a group of anti-Saddam militants, personally gave them their name -- the Iraqi National Congress -- and served as their media guru and "senior adviser" as they set out to engineer an uprising against Saddam. ... Rolling Stone thoroughly documents the way we pay to be lied into war and one of the people who do it. From Noriega and Panama through to Chalabi, Miller, al-Haideri, Bush, and you.
posted by amberglow
on Nov 19, 2005 -
38 comments
The Information War: "Every few minutes, another burst of satellite imagery and Internet information impacts among an interactive global audience. Ambushed by info, U.S. military commanders confident in their overwhelming firepower are increasingly expressing concern that the 'velocity of information' is spinning out of their control." [more inside]
posted by poopy
on Mar 30, 2003 -
20 comments
The return of the Movietone? "We fell on this idea of recreating films that looked like and were the length of the old Movietone forms of the 1940s," said Marine Lt. Col. Jim Kuhn, military producer for the undertaking called the Movietone Newsreel Project. Kuhn says the objective is to put together a short film that combines the commentary of real-life soldiers with the kind of footage civilian journalists would be unable to get. (more inside)
posted by damn yankee
on Mar 13, 2003 -
6 comments
Media covers massive D.C. (and world) Anti-War protests, discounts numbers - Backflash: NPR and the NYT later issued apologies for their drastic undercounting of the Oct. 26 D.C. Anti-War protest - later admitted to be between 100,000 and 200,000 in size "...It was not as large as the organizers of the protest had predicted. They had said there would be 100,000 people here. I'd say there are fewer than 10,000"(NPR's Nancy Marshall) Last saturday's D.C. AntiWar protest received far more media coverage but a similar discounting of the numbers. IndyMedia (above link) provided numbers more in line with D.C. Police statements. Many media outlets ran the same AP news feed. [NYT, NPR , CNN, ABC, AP] and claimed..."Thousands" or "tens of thousands" of protesters. But in the words of those who witnessed it (as I did - 2.5 times size of Oct. 26 protest, from what I saw): 'D.C. police chief Charles Ramsey said, "It's one of the biggest ones we've had, certainly in recent times." U.S. Capitol Police chief Terrance Gainer said, "I know everyone is skittish about saying a number, but this was big. An impressive number." A C-SPAN cameraman I spoke to spent the entire protest on the roof of a cargo truck just to the side of the stage. He told me that he had covered dozens of protests in his time, and that the crowd on Saturday was the biggest he had ever seen.' (story) and organizers claimed 500,000 marched in DC meanwhile, a new poll shows support for a war on Iraq is slipping in the US and also dropping at the UN
posted by troutfishing
on Jan 20, 2003 -
105 comments
Iraq's Aziz Says U.S. Attack Would Fail This is a news story? What is the Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz supposed to say? "W. has been right all along, Saddam is a tyrant. We need to get him out. Even Saddam agrees he has gone to far." or "Now that you mention it, our military is a mess, the stuff we have bought is junk and your tanks will rip it to shreds."
posted by Coop
on Aug 20, 2002 -
14 comments
Wars and propaganda in gaming: you've all heard of
America's Army by now, but what about
Under Ash where you can fight the IDF (no civilians targets here) as a palestinian rambo? Perhaps you'd prefer a more spiritual route, and want to
convert heathens? Or the truly repulsive
Ethnic Cleansing game? Artists are getting into too with the likes of
Cultural Revolution Doom, and some politicians considered
doing it the direct way. Clearly, folks with an agenda have realized that games are a way to get their message out, and maybe noticed the success of
"realistic" but largely apolitical shooters.
Fortunately for gaming peaceniks (kill pixels not people!), the games mostly suck.
posted by malphigian
on Jul 26, 2002 -
6 comments
Cartoon Network has taken
some heat lately for being too P.C., even
here on MetaFilter. Well, here's their chance to redeem the network. Sunday evening, 9:00 - 10:00 PM Eastern/Pacific,
ToonHeads Goes To War, including four rarely-seen wartime cartoons in their entirety:
"Blitz Wolf" where the three little pigs face off against a treaty-breaking, German-speaking wolf;
"Scrap Happy Daffy" featuring Daffy promoting the recycling of scrap metal and butting heads with a goat that bears a striking resemblance to Adolf Hitler;
"Herr Meets Hare," where Bugs Bunny tangles with Nazi minister Hermann Goering; and in
"Russian Rhapsody", a plane full of "gremlins from the Kremlin" attack a bomber piloted by the Nazi leader himself.
posted by mr_crash_davis
on May 24, 2002 -
7 comments
Art Fights Back — an exhibit of poster art at Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines, Iowa — displays images dedicated to the memory of September 11 and support of the Unites States and its troops. Seems like a typical thing to do around war time, right?
Take a close look at the
actual poster design. Don't they seem rather
non-American in their artistic style? In fact, they recall an era of poster design for a
dramatically different context than what was typically thought of as U.S. patriotism.
posted by Down10
on Mar 11, 2002 -
39 comments
Pentagon Readies Efforts to Sway Sentiment Abroad The latest in our propaganda war. Why not simply hire such notables as Britney Spears and other worthies to entertain, free, in countries that do not seem to appreciate what democracy and capitalism are able to showcase as why our system is so good?
posted by Postroad
on Feb 19, 2002 -
14 comments
