4 ms·

And yet these are not good examples of that. I've definitely read books that had propaganda though. Mostly by marshak. In US they had Captain America so it bal

by lqdc13 9y ago

And yet these are not good examples of that. I've definitely read books that had propaganda though. Mostly by marshak. In US they had Captain America so it balances out.

coldtea 9y ago
Not only Captain America. They had everybody from Horatio Alger to Joseph McCarthy, all the tele-evangelists and their ilk, all their popular movies, books, comics, tv shows etc with overly simplistic morality plays and nationalistic narrative etc. Even the 60s rock n' rollers just added some tamed dissent to an otherwise hook line and sinker adoption of the "american dream", all the way to Rambo, Rocky, Top Gun, and so on. It's people like HST, Kurt Vonnegut, black musicians and writers, directors like Cassavetes and Kazan and such that embedded a dose of realism to the popular narrative. But anything really mainstream was always 80% sugary propaganda.
- tptacek 9y ago
  Rambo? Rambo is luridly anti-government.
  - bitwize 9y ago
    First Blood was. The sequels? not so much...
    - tptacek 9y ago
      In Rambo II, the government is actively concealing the existence of Vietnam POWs, and the movie ends with Rambo threatening a government official.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    It doesn't have to be pro-government to be pro-US, pro-national interests and pro-national ideology, in other words to promote all the same that those in power promote and evangelize. On the contrary, "anti-government" is the official party line in an era when even the President (Reagan), in his inaugural address says: "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.""
    - tptacek 9y ago
      In the first movie, he kills a bunch of policemen and feels he and his friends have been abandoned by the military. In the second, the military is actively concealing the existence of live POWs in Vietnam. He ends the movie by threatening a military official. In neither case can you reasonably call the movie "propaganda", at least not without logic that you could use to connects the dots between any movie, from Bridget Jones Diary to Being John Malkovich, to propaganda. I'm not arguing that the movies are anti-propaganda. I'd call them neutral in that regard.
humanrebar 9y ago
> In US they had Captain America so it balances out. There is still a lot of propaganda in media for children. It's just not (obviously) pro government propaganda anymore. But I recall Bubble Guppies including descriptions of police as (my words) grown up hall monitors. No guns. No power of arrest. The monopoly on the use of force is basically the point of police forces. To elide that and teach about sirens and traffic tickets is a bit... overly sanitized.

by lqdc13 9y ago

And yet these are not good examples of that. I've definitely read books that had propaganda though. Mostly by marshak. In US they had Captain America so it balances out.

coldtea 9y ago

Not only Captain America. They had everybody from Horatio Alger to Joseph McCarthy, all the tele-evangelists and their ilk, all their popular movies, books, comics, tv shows etc with overly simplistic morality plays and nationalistic narrative etc. Even the 60s rock n' rollers just added some tamed dissent to an otherwise hook line and sinker adoption of the "american dream", all the way to Rambo, Rocky, Top Gun, and so on. It's people like HST, Kurt Vonnegut, black musicians and writers, directors like Cassavetes and Kazan and such that embedded a dose of realism to the popular narrative. But anything really mainstream was always 80% sugary propaganda.

tptacek 9y ago
Rambo? Rambo is luridly anti-government.
- bitwize 9y ago
  First Blood was. The sequels? not so much...
  - tptacek 9y ago
    In Rambo II, the government is actively concealing the existence of Vietnam POWs, and the movie ends with Rambo threatening a government official.
- coldtea 9y ago
  It doesn't have to be pro-government to be pro-US, pro-national interests and pro-national ideology, in other words to promote all the same that those in power promote and evangelize. On the contrary, "anti-government" is the official party line in an era when even the President (Reagan), in his inaugural address says: "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.""
  - tptacek 9y ago
    In the first movie, he kills a bunch of policemen and feels he and his friends have been abandoned by the military. In the second, the military is actively concealing the existence of live POWs in Vietnam. He ends the movie by threatening a military official. In neither case can you reasonably call the movie "propaganda", at least not without logic that you could use to connects the dots between any movie, from Bridget Jones Diary to Being John Malkovich, to propaganda. I'm not arguing that the movies are anti-propaganda. I'd call them neutral in that regard.

humanrebar 9y ago

> In US they had Captain America so it balances out. There is still a lot of propaganda in media for children. It's just not (obviously) pro government propaganda anymore. But I recall Bubble Guppies including descriptions of police as (my words) grown up hall monitors. No guns. No power of arrest. The monopoly on the use of force is basically the point of police forces. To elide that and teach about sirens and traffic tickets is a bit... overly sanitized.