Movies, Accuracy, and PropagandaFILM ACCURACY AND PROPAGANDA
Is accuracy therefore important? Well, yes and no. No one expects a film to be really historically accurate. But no one really expects a film to be a gross distortion of the truth either, yet many well received movies have been, eg Braveheart.
If accuracy is not important in films is it okay to produce racist stereotypes from the past in the movies? Try and think of some of the racial stereotypes that you have picked up from the movies. Can't think of any?
What are your images of the North American Indians from the Westerns that you have watched? Do these images convey the impression that the Indians were being exterminated and dispossesed of their land by Europeans invaders. Most cinema goers in the twentieth century after watching Westerns depicting images of cruel and murderous North American Indians attacking defenceless white setters yelling 'woop woop' (never speaking anything ressembling a language) never realised that this was gross distortion of what actually occurred. The livelihoods and families of the Indians were being utterly devastated by the white settlers. This is an image that was never conveyed on film. The racist image of the Indian as a cruel and murderous savage was depicted over and over again until very few cinema goers realised that they had been indoctrination with a political message or propaganda.
Is historical accuracy important now?
Documentaries, Accuracy and Propaganda
With documentaries, there is even a greater emphasis that what is being
presented is the truth. However, documentaries are made for particular
audiences. Think about the many documentaries that have been made on Alien
autopsies. Why do you think these documentaries are made? Are they made
to tell the truth or just to pull as big an audience as possible.
Many documentaries are also made for a certain purpose to convey what the makers think is the truth. However if the documentary was made by another group of people who had a different version of the truth then the documentary would be different. Would a documentaries about the merger and separation of Malaysia and Singapore made in their repective countries be the same? Would documentaries made by Israelis and Palestinians about the creation of Israel be the same? Most probably not.
In this section of the course we take it for granted that making films is often about conveying messages by looking at film as propaganda. The most obvious case is the cinema of Nazi Germany.
(1) Overt or obvious political propaganda.
Form: Documentaries and newsreels
that told the viewer directly the message of the propaganda.
Advocate: Hitler favoured this form of propaganda.
(2) Subtle propaganda.
Form: Propaganda that was disguised as entertainment – entertaining
movies that had a subtle but not obvious message.
Example: (1) The Nazis made a movie version of the Titanic. This film showed a “wicked” and decadent British upper class aboard the ship, whose greed in wanting the Titanic to make huge profits by having the fastest time across the Atlantic was indirectly responsible for the great loss of life on the ship. This reinforced German prejudice that the British were dominated by an indulgent self-centred upper class. You can compare the Nazi version with that of James Cameron's 1997 Titanic. There is a summary of a good promotion documentary that explains Cameron's 1997 version, which appears more critical of the English upper class than the 1943 German propaganda version.
Example 2 Jud Suss (1940) This anti-Jewish film is a propaganda film disguised as entertainment in the form of a melodrama.
Advocate: Hitler’s Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels favoured this form of propaganda.
There is a very good documentary about Goebbels and Hitler's contrasting
views of propaganda from the 1992 BBC series 'We
Have Ways of Making You Think'. You can find a summary of it here, as well
as some references to follow up the topic of Nazi Film Propaganda