The power of film as a tool for propaganda

Film has a power to influence people like no other form of media. Propaganda is when information, often biased and misleading information, is promoted for a political cause or point of view. Some of the most influential propaganda campaigns have used film as their primary tool for spreading their beliefs. Even in film's earliest stages, some productions can be considered to be forms of propaganda.  

(Before you continue reading, please note I'm not promoting any beliefs portrayed by the propaganda films, I'm simply using them as examples of film used in propaganda campaigns)  

For example, D.W Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915) is a propaganda film for the pro-Confederate States of America. In the movie, the Ku Klux Klan is portrayed as the "White Knights of America", who save the weakened southern states from the oppressing northern states and the "unintelligent and crazed" freed slaves. Although the film has a controversial plot, The Birth of a Nation is considered to be one of the greatest films of all time because of it's innovative film techniques. 

 

Another example is Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925). This film shows a dramatized reenactment of mutiny that occurred in 1905 aboard the Battleship Potemkin against the officers of the Tsarist regime. This film has been called the most influential propaganda film of all time and was called the greatest film of all time at the Brussels World Fair in 1958. See for yourself in the link below. 

In 1936 Louis Gasnier directed a film called Reefer Madness. This film, which was produced by a church group called Tell your Children, uses fictional melodramatic situations to influence audiences that the herb marijuana can cause all sorts of havoc. The film admits that the events in the movie are fictionalized however, it says that the movie is "based upon actual research into the results of Marihuanna addiction." Watch the whole film below. 

 

Still to this day, film is used for methods of propaganda. The ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) uses film to spread their point of view to the world to recruit soldiers to their cause. The Al Hayat Media Center, which has been called the ISIS propaganda headquarters, has produced a music video using footage of ISIS soldiers in action to influence people of the Islam nation to help defend their holy land from outside invaders. The title of the song is called "Soldiers of Truth go Forth"

Like I said before, film has a power to influence people like no other form of media. Getting people to watch and pay attention to films is all it needs to get it's point across to an audience. 

Films and their influence on society

Recently, I watched a film called Pretty Ugly People directed and written by Tate Taylor. Taylor has also directed The Help (film #97/ 123 films on my favorites list)

and Winters Bone.

Pretty Ugly People I thought was a pretty strange title. I'm not sure I would have chosen it for the title. Mostly because it just doesn't quite roll off the tongue. It's not terrible but it's not great.
  Getting more to my point of reviewing this film, I am not quite sure how it might make certain people in our society feel about losing weight. The character loses weight by a gastric bipass surgery. My knowledge of this surgery is that it is not a surgery for someone who just casually wants to lose weight. You have to be morbidly obese to have this surgery. The character's name is Lucy (weird right?!). In any case she loses the weight and has another surgery to remove access skin. She has the remains of her surgery cremated and she spreads the ashes throughout the film. The plot of the film is that she convinces her old college friends to come on a hike with her up a mountain she's always wanted to climb. Convinced that their friend is in trouble the come to visit her unknowingly having been signed up for this camping trip. The trip reveals everyone's real characters and she realizes that the people she idolized all through college turned out to be very shallow people. In the end they move on to the next chapters in their lives after realizing their serious flaws and changing them to better be happy with who they are.
  The criticism I have of this film is that I wonder if people will think that if they lose weight that all their friends will be unhappy with them. Truth be told, if your friends get mad at the fact that you've done something good for yourself, then they're not your real friends. I haven't had any thoughts of losing weight since I dont really need to. However, if I were more vulnerable and over weight I might think about that possibility.  My Mother lost almost 100 pounds and never lost one friend. Maybe this is because she had good friends to begin with. Maybe that doesn't really happen in real life. I guess I'm just questioning how this would effect someone's motivation to do something good for themselves like loosing weight.

  As film makers we should try to think a little bit about our viewers and how they might feel after watching our films. I'm not sure if Taylor really thought about that or not. It was a decent movie, wasn't one of my favorites but it was alright. I'm excited to see more of Taylor's work though. I enjoyes Winter's Bone and obviously The Help is one of my favorites.

Ta Ta for now!!

-Lucy Lynne' Hall