One of the most pervasive trends that has come to dominate and characterize Western culture is the tailoring of national events to suit the prevailing political narratives. The most prominent medium of this manipulation is film as it enables the perfect portrayal of pain and sorrow, joy and beauty. People often deem film as a trivial spectacle produced to earn revenue: solely a form of escapist entertainment. And yet, the world of savage politics has always bled into the world of the darkened cinema. The remarkable capability of films to create or alter reality is akin to the stratagems of politicians. Facts are selectively presented and information is skewed to publicize and promote a particular position (Christensen and Haas, “Projecting
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Hitler and Goebbels took particular interest in film as a valued instrument of propaganda for the Third Reich. The support for a costly war was maintained by the demonization of the enemy as subhuman. The Eternal Jew depicted Jews living in their “usual” squalor, calling them rats who spread disease and attempting to create a feeling of revulsion. Newsreels like this played a part in enabling Hitler to negotiate the dangerous and difficult transition from peace to war (Reeves, The Power of Film Propaganda: Myth or Reality 125). If one were to ask policymakers during that time if the cinema was political, the response would have been bewilderment; the film camera was as essential to the war as any machine gun or trench mortar: how could one think …show more content…
Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Karl Rove, President Bush’s Deputy Chief of Staff, summoned the elite of Hollywood and requested support for the waging of war in Iraq and Afghanistan (Westwell, “Politics by Visual Means”). The theaters of America were suddenly flooded with jingoistic war films such as Behind Enemy Lines, Black Hawk Down, and We Were Soldiers. Citizens watched movies with a deeply rooted pro-war message as neocon politicians sought consent for war; the governance of release schedules faultlessly paralleled the directives of Rove. After the death of Osama bin Laden, the film Zero Dark Thirty was released and celebrated for its chronicle of a tenacious CIA agent and her unyielding resolve to unearth the elusive genius of 9/11. The film seemed to glorify the CIA’s troublesome practice of torture by means of extracting intelligence regarding the whereabouts of Islamic terrorists lurking in the shadows of the third world. The message played too strongly to an audience accustomed to more subtle propaganda and it elicited a great deal of criticism for its sensationalized distortion of facts. The existence of movies such as these proves that propaganda continues to aim to rally people behind a common cause, but often at the cost of misrepresenting, exaggerating, or even
Hitler and Goebbels took particular interest in film as a valued instrument of propaganda for the Third Reich. The support for a costly war was maintained by the demonization of the enemy as subhuman. The Eternal Jew depicted Jews living in their “usual” squalor, calling them rats who spread disease and attempting to create a feeling of revulsion. Newsreels like this played a part in enabling Hitler to negotiate the dangerous and difficult transition from peace to war (Reeves, The Power of Film Propaganda: Myth or Reality 125). If one were to ask policymakers during that time if the cinema was political, the response would have been bewilderment; the film camera was as essential to the war as any machine gun or trench mortar: how could one think …show more content…
Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Karl Rove, President Bush’s Deputy Chief of Staff, summoned the elite of Hollywood and requested support for the waging of war in Iraq and Afghanistan (Westwell, “Politics by Visual Means”). The theaters of America were suddenly flooded with jingoistic war films such as Behind Enemy Lines, Black Hawk Down, and We Were Soldiers. Citizens watched movies with a deeply rooted pro-war message as neocon politicians sought consent for war; the governance of release schedules faultlessly paralleled the directives of Rove. After the death of Osama bin Laden, the film Zero Dark Thirty was released and celebrated for its chronicle of a tenacious CIA agent and her unyielding resolve to unearth the elusive genius of 9/11. The film seemed to glorify the CIA’s troublesome practice of torture by means of extracting intelligence regarding the whereabouts of Islamic terrorists lurking in the shadows of the third world. The message played too strongly to an audience accustomed to more subtle propaganda and it elicited a great deal of criticism for its sensationalized distortion of facts. The existence of movies such as these proves that propaganda continues to aim to rally people behind a common cause, but often at the cost of misrepresenting, exaggerating, or even