7 ms·
I was watching one of America’s greatest war propaganda films recently. Casablanca. It is remarkable how far we’ve come from making the hard decision to do what
by sevensor 1y ago
I was watching one of America’s greatest war propaganda films recently. Casablanca. It is remarkable how far we’ve come from making the hard decision to do what’s best for Victor Laszlo. Our modern US propaganda is all 24: the righteous man is on his own fighting a shady terrorist conspiracy, where nobody is above suspicion. We’ve successfully convinced ourselves and probably the world that the US federal government and its employees could not possibly have benevolent motivations for anything they do.
Propaganda is always coercive, always designed to make people act against their inclinations. It serves the interests of the powerful. But what I don’t get is why we’re making this propaganda instead of that propaganda.
- heresie-dabord 1y ago> what I don’t get is why we’re making this propaganda instead of that propaganda. The allegiances of the oligarchs have changed. Imagine a modern remake of Casablanca. Amoral Rick is a friend of the Nazis. He gladly hands Laszlo to Strasser. Ilsa despises Rick and Louis has him shot.
- pbronez 1y agoWe’re just pushing into meta-modernism, and we need to get there faster. Basically, the cultural journey is: naive idealism -> ironic skepticism -> balanced synthesis. More concretely: first we told stories about how good guys were good and trustworthy. Then we told stories about how good guys could be corrupted. Now we’re trying to tell stories where good guys exist despite the possibility of corruption. It’s useless to believe that everything is so complex maybe good and bad aren’t meaningful. We need the courage to take a moral stand amidst complexity. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamodernism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamodernism https://youtu.be/5xEi8qg266g https://youtu.be/5xEi8qg266g