Lately I have been thinking about propaganda, the state of cinema and what exactly the objective of cinema is. Social unrest and recent protests reacting to the death of George Floyd initially sparked these thoughts, then the decision by HBO Max streaming site to remove "Gone with the Wind" (1939) and a new diversity requirement set forth by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences provoked me further.
If you read my blog often, you will notice that I have discussed trends in cinema usually when compiling my year end top ten lists or best of the decade lists. I have increasingly written about the politicization of film within the last 15 years plus. Ever since 2004 and the box-office success of Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11", movies have been political tools used to critique George W. Bush, the War on Terror, the Iraq Invasion, failings of the Capitalist system and now Donald Trump. It has gotten to the point that in order to analyze movies, one must keep up with current events. Sometimes I fear my movie reviews come off as political essays. Everything is politics.
When you add it all up - Removing "Gone with the Wind" from streaming sites, diversity requirements, political documentaries and social / political "message" movies, aren't these a form of weaponizing movies, using them as propaganda? Before we answer that question, first lets answer what is propaganda? Propaganda is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as "information, ideas, opinions, or images, often only giving one part of an argument, that are broadcast, published, or in some way spread with the intention of influencing people's opinions". But because of the villainous nature of the word "propaganda" we have replaced it with other terms or descriptors. No one wants to be accused of using propaganda, but what do the terms "left-wing media" or "right-wing media" mean? We may not use the word "propaganda" but what does the political right and Donald Trump mean by "fake news"? What does the political left mean by "corporate owned media"? Corporate owned media means that a corporation owns a media outlet. By itself that isn't nefarious. The implication for all of these terms is media manipulation - purposely presenting information in a flattering way to one particular viewpoint. Donald Trump may cry "fake news" when something negative is written about him, but notice how quickly he will bring to his follower's attention to media praise. Media isn't "fake" or bad when it is positive towards Trump.
And media manipulation isn't bad when movies champion political and social causes we care about, right? But isn't that propaganda?
My fear is that we are entering a time when movies are becoming merely propaganda tools. What should the objective of cinema be? There have always been "message movies" and their intent was largely to hold a mirror to society and allow the viewers to walk in the footsteps of other people. That cinema showed us the world we live in. It's objective was to make us change our behavior by confronting our flaws. I am afraid now movies are showing us the world we want to live in and present it as our reality. That is a significant difference. I'm not just talking about art-house "message movies" either. It is also your Hollywood "popcorn entertainment". Most recently, I wrote a review of the latest Star Wars movie, "The Rise of Skywalker" (2019). I wrote that it was a movie for today's woke millennial generation. For the first time it featured a lead female Jedi, a matriarchal society, racial equality, zero race tension, and even sexual orientation diversity. A token liberal's dream! If you are reading this and your reaction is, "So what? That is what society should strive for!" Fine. But is it the responsibility of movies to guide us in that direction? Isn't it an example of social conditioning and propaganda? We hold our movies to a higher standard than we do our politicians.
I am not arguing the societal objectives, only the means to reach them. I believe cinema is important. It is the greatest of all art-forms, but I am slightly bothered by this political trend in our movies and our inability to acknowledge what is happening.
So I ask again, what should the objective of cinema be? Should it be to promote socially liberal causes? If you believe so, why? HBO Max removes "Gone with the Wind" because it doesn't reflect today's values. It promotes racial stereotypes, its critics shout. Film schools won't even screen "Birth of a Nation" (1915). I know because I was a film major in college. The instructors say they won't screen it because it is racist. Some students are fine with that and couldn't care less about seeing it. People who have never seen these movies will cite them as examples of Hollywood's racist past. So we banish the movies to the dustbin of history by allowing them to go out of print. Erasing our film culture.
The original intention of my blog, twelve years ago, was to introduce college film students, and other younger people, to the history of cinema. I believed younger people would love the Hollywood classics, if only there was someone to bring the movies to their attention. After all, you can't watch a movie if you don't know it exists. But I always had to deal with murmurs of my generation's claims of sexism and racism in those movies. "Why should anyone watch them? Why waste my time writing and talking about them? They are out of date. They don't reflect our values of today." True. They don't reflect the values of today, but film majors should still watch those movies because the cinematic techniques used in them are still used today. Many movies of today repeat plots from movies of the 1920s - 40s. To know those movies, gives you a deeper, richer understanding of cinema. As for the values, how can a movie from 1928 reflect the values of 2020, 2021, 2022...etc? We can, however, look at the movies and arts from those eras as time capsules, telling us the way we were. Their existence should not be banished.
That is not the approach of today's generation. Because they don't know much about life before the time of their birth, they are amazed, horrified even, to discover unpleasant truths about America's past culture. Last year, the woke millennials went after deceased singer Kate Smith, wanting her rendition of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" banned from sporting events. Why? They discovered she sang a song from 1931 called "That's Why Darkies Were Born". The song most definitely does not reflect today's values and should not be recorded by any singer in our modern era, but it was a popular song back in the day and many artists recorded it. I won't tell you who because I don't want anymore dead artists to be the targets of token liberalism. The song was forgotten and faded from pop culture, but oddly, because of the controversy, young people looked it up. And that puts me in an awkward position. I kind of feel like a gatekeeper. I grew up with my grandparents and watched movies from the 1920s - 40s. I listened to the music of that era too. I know things about that culture many of you don't and never will. I am now afraid to tell you about them and have considered ending this blog. Everything you find unpleasant can't be eliminated. You weren't aware of the existence of these things and the world kept on turning and you lived your life completely unaffected by it.
Going after movies from the 1930s, to me, is like going after low hanging fruit. The current approval rating for Congress stands at 31 percent, up from 17 percent in August 2019. Do you know what the re-election rate is for members of congress? It has been as high as 98 percent and usually hasn't dropped below 90. Instead of demanding change from our representative leaders, lets go after the movies of the 1930s! Instead of demanding gender pay equality, lets make movies with strong female leads! Instead of more female CEO's, lets put a woman's face on a twenty dollar bill! (Which, did you hear, is not going to happen during the Trump administration?). Instead of confronting institutionalized racism in our system, lets pull "Gone with the Wind" from HBO Max. Lets make movies pushing the left-wing agenda the politicians won't enact. In short, lets perpetuate propaganda that appeases the masses enough to stop them from making serious change.
If we want to have a national conversation about past culture not reflecting today's values (which is rather obvious), that's fine, but that's not the deeper conversation to have. Values are ever shifting - movies and TV shows from five or ten years ago don't even live up to today's standards. (Hell, Herr Chancellor Trump is in the White House.) I don't see the value in lambasting Hollywood movies from the 1930s, and then not demanding social and political change today. People are protesting in the streets, but contrast that with Joe Biden as the Democratic Party's nominee (nothing will fundamentally change). I understand the need for minorities to be represented in the media, but that doesn't solve the deeper problems. Cinema today is propaganda, and is used as a tool to promote societal changes that our current political system is not enacting. We're eliminating the culture past that contradicts our current beliefs to solve problems, letting a trip to the movies replace political action. Is this what cinema is? Do we care? At least today, Super-Man can be played by a woman since we haven't elected a female president.
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