by Darwin BondGraham
No medium of propaganda is as powerful and effective as film.
Think of the classics, the most notorious efforts to sway the
public with the electrifying and collective passion of cinema:
racial apartheid was justified in the US with Birth of a Nation.
The Soviets glorified their revolution with The Battleship
Potemkin. Then there was Triumph of the Will.
A typical propaganda film tugs at emotions and invokes fears. It
invokes dark threats to “the people,” and it offers up solutions
extolling state and corporate power. Unlike a political
documentary it will not criticize the state or corporations.
Instead it will celebrate great men as our leaders and saviors.
Distinct from a run-of-the-mill political documentary, a
propaganda film butchers the complexity and contradictions that
permeate politics and real life, presenting things in simplistic
moral terms. Functionally, propaganda is mobilized to secure
popular support for a primary, often hidden agenda that is not
apparent in the film’s narrative. Propaganda is a tool used by
elites to secure the consent of the masses, channeling their
anxieties.
Now hitting theaters is one of the most dangerous propaganda films
produced in decades. Countdown to Zero “traces the history of
the atomic bomb from its origins to the present state of global
affairs.” A promotional blurb on the film’s web site claims that
it “makes a compelling case for worldwide nuclear disarmament, an
issue more topical than ever with the Obama administration working
to revive this goal today.”
full: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/bg220710.html