www.newstatesman.com: What is modern propaganda? For many, it is the lies of a totalitarian state. In the 1970s, I met Leni Riefenstahl and asked her about her epic films that glorified the Nazis. Using revolutionary camera and lighting techniques, she produced a documentary form that mesmerised Germans; her Triumph of the Will cast Hitler’s spell.
She told me that the “messages” of her films were dependent not on “orders from above”, but on the “submissive void” of the German public. Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie? “Everyone,” she said.
6 comments:
This seems to be an interesting article by not say be implying that Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will and Argo were both on the same magnitude. Then to refute that human choice is currently an illusion seems to go above and beyond what seems to be a more radical opinion of current media. The whole point of the article seems to point out that many films that seem to have no clear motive other than tell a story are actually funded by government. However their approach seems to be that of a conspiracy theorist. I do not feel like I am being enslaved by technology. I think there are many opinionated and biased sources out on the internet however there are a large variations of views that make it a largely different effect than what the author thinks is going on.
I think this article makes a good point. At the time, no one in Germany thought that the Triumph of Will was propaganda. Thirty years from now there will be an entirely different opinion about today's media than there is at this time. Also, anyone who thinks the government doesn't have a hand in movies like Argo and Zero Dark Thirty is kidding themselves. If the government didn't like what the movies were saying, there's no way that they would allow those movies to be released. There would be all kinds of red tape that would stop production. It's something to keep in mind while viewing these types of things.
One thing I found really interesting while reading this is the idea that you can get a group of people to think and act a certain way as long as they think that they have a choice in controlling what they do and how they do it. As long as the general public feels that they have control over the decisions they're making about which social, political, religious, or recreational interest-based groups they affiliate themselves with, they'll be pretty willing to follow whatever those groups stand for. And with that, the puppeteering game begins. I agree with Nathan that this article sounds a bit conspiracy theorist-esque, but there are some pretty unpleasant truths in how easy it is to control massive amounts of people.
Well this is a right wing conservative article if I ever read one. That aside, I don't agree with many of the points that it was making. One of the major problems is the way in which it arranges it's argument. Rather then sounding well researched and viewing the situation from all sides, it comes across as a conspiratorial rant without a strong standing in reality. Yes, our society uses technology a lots, but that does not make us enslaved by it. As for films, of course the government has a hand in them (they have a hand in everything) not to mention that there are bound to be bits of the truth that the government doesn't want to tell the public. Whether the government had a say in them or not, they are still good movies and worth the watch.
I am not even sure where to start with this article. First of all, the definition of propaganda (thank you, merriam-webster.com), is "ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause." So, in effect, EVERYTHING in the media that we read, watch, or hear is propaganda to some extent. There are liberal media outlets, like the Huffington Post, and conservative ones, like Fox News or apparently Newstatesman.com, and each one chooses to title their articles a different way, to include or omit different facts of a story, or to put a certain spin on it, depending on the reaction they want to engender from the public. So to claim that the liberal media is the source for all of this "manipulated propaganda" that the article cites is naive and just wrong. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of different media outlets and ways people discover and absorb events and actions, all of which have some kind of lean or bias.
Because of this, I absolutely do not agree at all that the situation we are currently in is analogous to that of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. In fact, it is the exact opposite. Before people owned televisions, had computers, or could access the internet, the ways in which the public could gain or learn information was severely limited. They could read one of a few (state-sponsored) newspapers, or listen to (state-sponsored) radio. Especially in Nazi Germany, these media outlets became more than just state-sponsored; they became state-run. This is propaganda to the extreme, where access to information is held in a chokehold by the state, and I do not think that we are anywhere near the realm of this extreme, as this article suggests. In fact, we are the exact opposite: because of the internet and digital capabilities, anyone can write anything they want and have it read by hundreds, thousands, or millions of people. The government cannot control what a blogger writes, and what the public reads. Yes, many media outlets have some kind of connection to the government. Right now, maybe more of those media outlets are liberal than conservative, but 6 short years ago, that was flipped. The government is more liberal now, so it has more liberal connections. Bush was more conservative, and so his media connections veered in the opposite direction.
I think that the writer meant that the "submissive void" of the Germans in the 1930s was caused by, and then used by, the Nazis to create propaganda, in the same way that the "digital slavery" of the current generation is being used by the liberal government to further their aims. To claim that the government somehow has control over the liberal media and liberal Hollywood to the extent that this article implies is paranoia to the extreme. Furthermore, the article's paragraphs about Iran and Israel's nuclear capabilities and the threats that they pose is vastly uninformed. Sure the US-supported Iranian shah was by no means an angel, and Iran pre-1979 had its own problems. But to claim not only that Iran does not have nuclear weapons and is no threat to the Middle East, but also that Israel is the true enemy state ignores and blatantly disregards over 30 years of diplomacy and verified fact while providing absolutely no proof or evidence for any of his claims.
In summary, propaganda in the media and in the entertainment industry is inevitable, but to claim that there is a liberal conspiracy to such an extent that this article does is ludicrous.
It is interesting to see how we see movies differently years after they are released. Take Reefer Madness for instance, it really was meant to be an anti-cannabis flick intended to scare the youth away from its dangers. Instead the movie gained a massive cult following and now,77 years after it was released, the movie attracts more people to the Cannabis lifestyle than it deters. In truth, it is almost impossible to predict how future audiences will interpret the movies we make today. They may find things significant that we never meant on purpose in the first place.
Post a Comment