Rise Of Isolationism: A Discussion Of Propaganda Into Film

Propaganda was utilized throughout American history to shape citizens' views and encourage them to retaliate against a country with differing beliefs. Propaganda would be shown through posters, newspapers, comics, cartoons, etc. The United States would use scare tactics toward Americans. They would broadcast or illustrate what the world would look like if communist rulings were to engulf America and other vulnerable countries. Posters would show American flags going up in flames.

There was a variety of ways that American society realized that war was not a fight that the soldiers should not have been there in the first place. Because of the new modern-age televisions, many people and families could see soldiers interviewed in the middle of battle and even killed. The Tet Offensive was one of the main turning points in the war because of the media coverage, because there were traumatic images being shown all across the country, which made the people realize that they should not have been part of this war by showing that more U.S. soldiers were being killed than we could replace. There were many news reporters that were in the jungles of enemy territory (“Media”). These men were not supposed to record the battles themselves, just the “body counts” of how many enemies the troops had killed that day.

The influence of Hollywood can be seen increasing or decreasing the public’s perception of a person, group, or cause in the matter of moments. John Wayne is one that can be argued to have had am extremely large impact on the creation/influence of war films through personal views. In Allan Dwan’s film Sands of Iwo Jima, the most expensive film to date, he we give John Wayne the nod for the lead role of Sergeant Srkyer, whose job was to lead a group of inexperienced Marines into Iwo Jima. This would be Wayne’s first Academy Award nomination, thus solidifying his emerging influence in Hollywood. Though John Wayne had no military experience whatsoever, his political beliefs, and his portrayal of an American within his films helped him gain support from high national figures.

Eric Hoffer, an American author and philosopher, once said, “Propaganda does not deceive people; it merly helps them to deceive themselves.” In Canada, along with many other countries, propaganda was important to World War II and still is today. It helped convince people to fight in combat and to help create resources for the war. During the war, the call for people to fight was high. In 1944, Sydney Newman released a propaganda video called Train Busters.

These instilled fear and trauma in many young American and South Vietnamese soldiers - many of whom were since discouraged from the war effort. This was successful in slowing the American offensive and also strengthening the war resistance movement in the American public because the Vietnam War was the first televised war - where the horrors on

When World War I broke out, the United States declared its policy of neutrality, but between the years 1914 and 1917 they only followed this policy to a limited extent. Through certain acts from the Germans, like the sinking of American ships and the Zimmerman telegraph, the United States were pushed to side with the allies. Consequently this lead in the U.S. favoring the allies and almost breaking the policy of neutrality. Many times the United States had taken ammunition and supplies to the allies against Germany and had also filtered the public 's knowledge in cases suches the sinking of the Lusitania. One of the first conflicts that arose between Germany and the United States was the excessive use of submarine warfare.

Propaganda – A True Reflection? In the book All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, propaganda wounded everyone, including the young teenage boys and the adults distanced from the war, physically, emotionally, and mentally; by filtering out the horrific aspects of war which weren’t recognized until it was too late to back out. Those involved in the actual feud were sitting the farthest away from the harshness of war and through means of propaganda, they got others to fight for them.

This propaganda influenced people. It influenced people in mainly two different ways. The first way was to hate the enemy. By thinking of the enemy as a threat people get motivated to go and fight them by joining the war. If you tell people to go to the war in a friendly manner or basically have a mother figure telling them to go to war, it kind of tells them to listen to their mother, go fight in WW1.

The mindset that no deed was to small was prevailing in American propaganda. I designed a war bonds poster I used colloquial speech (‘Em) which I saw on several examples. I also drew a solider which was also a popular theme of many posters. In my poster a U.S. solider was standing with one foot on the Nazi flag and holding the Japanese flag triumphantly in the other hand. Some of the propaganda posters were very racist

“Propaganda is a monologue that is not looking for an answer, but an echo,” (W. H. Auden). World War II, like many other wars, was influenced by myriad of different variables. One variable that echoed throughout America was propaganda. Propaganda was a major influence in the rally for overall support in America during World War II. The propaganda’s intentions in World War II can be broken down into three major categories: war efforts, Anti-German and Anti-Japanese backing, and homefront endeavors.

Film has the ability to capture events in time that visual narrate suffering, pain, honor, and death. These elements of the human experience separates photography and cinema from other art forms, as the viewer witnesses what they believe is untampered truth. So what better way to visually document and tell the story of the greatest war ever fought in modern time, World War II. This war was of biblical proportions with over 72 million casualties and scares that were felt in almost every part of the world form Europe, China, Middle East, North Africa, South-East Asia and the Pacific. World War II set a script of tremendous magnitude that any director would love to depict with names like Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, Gen. Patton, and Gen. Eisenhower leading the allied forces against the evilness set by the axis forces of Hirohito’s Japan, Benito Mussolini’s Italy, and the most villainous of all Germany’s Adolph Hitler.

Thus making the principle to attempt and persuade the individuals to "make the war their own. " The government started to air radio programs called "We Hold These Truths" and "This is War!" A large portion of these programs concentrated fundamentally on the enemies portraying the terrible thing of the Germans and giving explicit and detailed information of the concentration camps and stories got from them. Helping Americans to remember the how bad the enemies are was one of the key strategies to effectively convince the people another tactic was get the US people members to remember wars from the past, for example, the Civil and Revolutionary Wars. Another effective radio publicity strategy utilized by the government was the "you" method by doing this they would add a feeling of dramatization to their shows by specifically including the audience.

(Censorship, n.d.) Personal letters from the front were not excluded from censorship. Propaganda was also utilised to a great extent by various wartime governments as a push to reinforce the war. Propaganda is a collection of information

As stated by US Senator Hiram Johnson in 1918 “The first casualty when war comes is truth”, this statement is very accurate in the case of wartime propaganda. Propaganda aimed to promote the political views of the Australian Government, by intentionally communicating misleading and biased messages, through means of advertisements, newsreels and newspaper articles. Depictions of fresh-faced, happy airmen alongside shiny airforce planes, were used to encourage voluntary enlistment, when the reality for airforce men was far from the perfect veneer portrayed by Australian Government Propaganda. Airforce propaganda did not include statistics of the particularly high death tolls and other facts deemed undesirable by the Australian Department of Information (who published propaganda). Many of the propaganda posters would now be considered discriminatory due to their prejudicial and stereotypical representations of enemy soldiers.

Since the media is extremely influential, propaganda was seen mainly in art, cartoons, songs, and movies.