Theaters of War: How the Pentagon and the CIA took Hollywood
https://go.mediaed.org/theaters-of-war
Tag: Movie
Not showing credit to Pentagon and CIA
Creative Freedom in Hollywood
In 1934, the creative freedom of unconstrained Hollywood came to a halt, setting the stage for decades of self-serving attempts at internal censorship and creative control.
Until then, filmmakers went about their business more or less unchecked, pushing the era’s moral limits with bawdy humor, violent crime, and sexual provocation. There was James Cagney swaggering and shooting his way through The Public Enemy (1931), a portrait of a bootlegging gangster who built an empire out of “beer and blood” (and famously assaulted his nagging girlfriend at the breakfast table with a grapefruit to the face). There was Barbara Stanwyck sleeping her way to success in Baby Face (1933), leaving a trail of heartbroken (and sometimes dead) lovers in her lusty wake. There was adultery! Abortion! Profanity! Visible undergarments! At the end, righteousness would usually prevail—the antihero would repent and reform or die trying—but this was strictly perfunctory. Then, as now, audiences loved a story that made being bad look good. And then, as now, the popularity of sensational and sexy movies began to raise questions about their effect on impressionable viewers.
Amid a climate of concern that edgy films might spark immoral behavior, and with the threat of government censorship close behind, Hollywood set out to get ahead of the game. In 1927, a committee of studio execs, at the behest of a freshly anointed industry honcho named Will H. Hays, had already collaborated to publish a now-infamous list of “don’ts and be carefuls,” a 37-item litany of topics that filmmakers agreed would be either approached with caution or avoided entirely.
— source reason.com | Kat Rosenfield | Feb 2021
How Cinema Under the Nazis Distracted Germans From the War
Film played an important role in the propaganda of the National Socialist Party between 1933 and 1945. Of all the arts, film and cinema received the most support from the Nazi elite, including Adolf Hitler and Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels until the end of the regime. “Even at the movies there was a total war effort,” Rainer Rother, director of the Deutsche Kinemathek Museum for Film and TV, told DW.
Distraction and propaganda
As late as April 1945, when large parts of Germany, including Berlin, were already in ruins, entertainment and propaganda films were still being screened in theaters. Rother, author of the book Zeitbilder – Filme des Nationalsozialismus (Images of Time – Films of National Socialism), points out that from the Nazis’ point of view, the medium of film was of the utmost importance.
A few months before the end of the war, the population was still encouraged to believe in the possibility of victory. The films shown while the Nazis were in control, explains Rother, had a lot to do with this. The German film production, “continued in 1944, and even then, there were complaints from the Ministry of Propaganda that the number of films was insufficient. There were very clear efforts to continue film production and also to keep it at a high level so that a so-called “basic supply” was secured, says Rother.
The idea was that if the bombing of German cities was to become more and more intense, Germans should go to the movies to be distracted. “This was seen as a factor that could maintain the satisfaction or acceptance of the population,” explains Rother. Two types of films were used for this purpose:
— source dw.com | Jochen Kürten | 15/Oct/2020
Nazi past of Berlin film festival’s founder
The annual Berlin International Film Festival (generally known as the Berlinale) was founded in 1951 amidst the ruins of Germany’s capital city following the Second World War. In the ensuing decades the event became—and now remains—one of the world’s leading showcases for global cinema.
A newly published study reveals that the individual who proposed setting up the festival and headed it for a quarter century in the postwar period played a leading role in the Nazi film industry.
Alfred Bauer (1911-1986) was the first director of the Berlin film festival, remaining in the position from 1951 to 1976. One of the principal prizes awarded at the festival, from 1987 to 2020, bore his name. The Alfred Bauer Prize was bestowed each year to a film that “opens new perspectives on cinematic art.” The directors whose works won the award include Zhang Yimou, Tsai Ming-Liang, Andrzej Wajda, Alain Resnais and Agnieszka Holland.
An article in the weekly Die Zeit in early 2020 revealed that, contrary to his own account and authorised histories of the Berlinale, Bauer was neither a low-level employee nor a semi-opponent of the Hitler regime, but rather the deputy head of the Reich Film Directorate (Reichsfilmintendanz) and
— source wsws.org | Stefan Steinberg | 8 Oct 2020
In Hollywood
In Hollywood miserable rich people who are bad at living teach the public how to live.
In Hollywood people who have lost touch with their humanity teach the public how to be human.
In Hollywood the most fake people in the world teach the public about reality.
In Hollywood they make ninety-minute commercials about how America is perfectly sane and how neoliberalism is totally working.
In Hollywood people pretend to be other people saying words that other people wrote telling stories about things which never happened and we base our entire culture on this.
In Hollywood they make horror movies about a murderous psychopath running around slashing people, instead of making horror movies about the fact that murderous psychopaths rule our entire world right this very moment.
— source caitlinjohnstone.com | Caitlin Johnstone | Aug 5, 2020
this is valid for our country too.
Short Attention Spans Make Movies Popular
“Why is it that motion pictures are so popular? Why are they able to compete side by side with our best plays? It is difficult indeed to hold the interest of a metropolitan audience through three acts of a drama when the plot can be anticipated in the first act. Modernism calls for abbreviated action; and photoplays are stories told more or less in synopsis form. The plot is unfolded in the least possible time. Thus, if a stage play requires three hours, in the photoplay it is pictorially told in one hour, and just as effectively. The only exception is to be found in those plays that depend for their success on clever volleys of dialogue.”
—Scientific American, January 1917
— source scientificamerican.com | May 21, 2020
CIA helped shape ‘Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan’ series
Actor John Krasinski is one of the CIA’s biggest fans.
“The CIA is something that we should all not only cherish, but be saying thank you every single day,” he declared.
“The coolest thing ever for me, I mean I totally nerded out when we got to the CIA,” Krasinski effused. “They were the most unbelievably generous, kind, smart people.”
Krasinski’s comments flowed directly from his experience as the star of the second season of the Amazon series “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan.”
— source thegrayzone.com | Max Blumenthal | Nov 22, 2019
Media and Crime against women
A 23-year-old paramedical student was beaten and raped on a moving bus in the Indian capital Delhi on Dec. 16. She was left bleeding on a highway and died two weeks later from internal injuries.
There was a huge outcry about this incident. Why this incident was so important. In 20 minutes one woman is getting raped in India. May be media gave more time and headlines.
But all these protests missed one important party. Lets find out that.
Let’s see some other statistics from 2006:
“Because of the influence of sex and violence 11 films are banned from screening in last year. 395 films got certificate to show after subjected to sever censoring. In 2006, 59 films are banned because of same reason. In 2005 the number was 18. Information and Broadcasting Minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi gave this numbers in Rajya Sabha for a question. In 2006, 453 films and in 2005, 473 films were subjected to sever censoring, he added.”
“As per 2006 statistics Andhra Pradesh tops in crime against women. There 21,484 cases are registered. N.C.R.B says that from 1971 to 2006 rape cases increased 678%. Every 30 minutes one rape cases are registered.”
Surely films have strong influence in crime against women. Telugu films are worst in presenting women. Andhra Pradesh tops in crime against women is not a coincidence. Other states are behind them.
This in not only our issue, 200,000 women are subjected to sexual abuse in USA. All the places this is a big issue.
History of films
So we need to analyze how movies are representing women and what is the implication of it on the society. In old ages no women were allowed to act in movies, instead men dress like women characters. Most of the movies are about religious stories. Later women started acting. Sound came to films. Shooting moved out of studios. Stories become more about family and society. Most of films are same formula based stories about virtue getting victory over evil. Women characters are also same. Good woman winning and bad woman loosing or admitting her mistakes and changing to good. Another important thing is about number of films releasing. Very less numbers of movies are produced. They release the films as per special occasions or holidays etc. Rest of the time people lived their own life.
Later films become an industry. More theater and more films are produced. To make it economically successful it has to sell more. That is, more people should have to come to theater and purchase tickets. High quality story, acting, direction etc needs hard work.
Sacred Love, social issues and masala dance
From epic stories from puranas, stories become family-social issues. People got bored with that. Then at the time college going youngster’s story was about sacred love. Then multiple heroines are fighting for single hero.
But industry care only profit not the quality. They found that instead of making a quality movie, it’s far easy and profitable to take advantage of emotions and animal instinct of human.
Parallel to this, half naked dancing women started to appear in movies. They just appear for the cabaret dance conducted at villain’s place to show how bad the villain is in the story, even though it is intended for the viewers. There are also bad women as counter part of male villain. To show villain’s brutality there are lot of violent scenes and rapes.
These bad people are finally got defeated at the end of the film by good hero and heroine. Sometimes bad women understand her mistakes and apologies to the good heroine. There are other movies which are not belongs to any formulas also. But all of them end with praising human values, family values, and social values. The half naked dancing woman appears only for a small duration in the middle of the movie. It was not a key element in the story. But in press and poster they show one picture of that lady to attract people.
Even though the old films kept some values does not mean that it was progressive. But they are male dominant upper caste values. Only good thing was it was not making new problems. And people are not used film as their main source of ideas because the number of films getting released and number of theater were also less. There was no television channel based propaganda.
New generation heroines/prostitutes
After some time the extra dancer’s performance became not enough. There was competition between new actors. Heroine herself started removing cloths and started exotic dancing. There became a competition in heroines about removing cloths. To get more money it becomes a necessity. Instead of homely mature heroine, there are more than one heroine appeared in films. Sexually aroused heroine who is craving and pursuing for hero became the story. Formula was the same. During these times violence in films are also increased so much.
When these also become less exiting after 2000 there a major shift happened. Stories become extramarital affairs. People are stunned. Women talking, wanting and acting about extramarital affairs on the screen is so exiting for Indian conservative society. [Actually all societies are conservative at one time. They taught to break to chaos.] It is the current trend.
Filmmakers profit reached to heaven. Girls are ready to do anything on screen. These ugly rich people became kings and queens as the society where money rules. They dictate nation’s information flow. Everything is around them. Branded prostitutes from other countries are also become heroines.
Films that are not come in the above said formula also not different. Good-looking healthy heroine and hero meets, some family or social issue happens, by fixing it the hero and heroine fall in love and at the end they marry. In future they give birth to children. This is the content of most of the films.
Film posters
Our cities and villages are filled with still images of film scenes. Most of them are the sex dance scenes, where the half naked lady with sexually aroused look. There are other pictures where women in western dress, mostly revealing their curves. For hero the images they show his anger.
The trend in the pictures is also like the films. It’s getting more and more vulgar.
Television channels and Advertisements
Most of the channel programs are based on films. Using film clips, idolizing, and self admiring interview on hero-heroine, sex-dance film songs programs, imitation of sex-dance film songs channel people fill their time. Like the films, same kind of trend in happening in television serials. Initial time, the stories are not disturbing. But now it’s unbearable to sensible people. This happens in national channels as well as regional local language channels.
24 hrs they are flooding with ugly stories on to the family audience. There is no censorship. Everyone is getting affected by this. Film-channel mafia is idolizing liquor, drugs and violence. The sex dance that heroine doing for getting hero is mimicked by girls and women on small screen as reality shows. To get fame these ordinary people are also ready do anything and channels become profitable.
Advertisements have another motive. They help to sell products. There also for getting attention they utilize animal instincts. They glamorized women body. Both men and women admire beautiful women, because of biological evolution and social evolution. Cloths, gold, soap, perfumes, mobile, laptop, household equipments, and vehicles everything is sold showing women body, naked or semi naked. These animals even dare to tell indirectly that their products help you to get a sexual intercourse.
Newspapers
They are also not behind in showing women as commodity. Only difference is that here the picture does not moves. Glamorized women photos as ads are printed in high quality getting circulated all over. People notices these pictures first than the news. The notorious yellow newspaper like Times of India shows half naked beautiful white women picture for any news.
They tell stories about the movie stars and idolize them making them more important. Social, political, economic, environmental issues come only after their gossip columns.
Fictional Literature
It also has influence in making human as animal. Novel, story etc idolize imaginary or real people. After writing 4-5 novels, or stories the writers get some awards and they also become idols. Media makes them talking heads and authority for any subjects. They are portrayed as progressive, feminist, social, cultural heroes and heroines. Public will absorb what these apolitical branded intellectuals vomiting? Even school, college curriculum also includes their propaganda literary works. Writing stories around gonads and pretending representatives of poor people they sell their works in the name of manifestation right. Public should be cautious about those.
Psychology
Glamour is the main quality for women. Same thing happened in channels and ad.
There is no intellectual content in all of the films. The stories don’t have any intellectual standard and all are around human gonads.
Women characters are silly, talkative, levity who likes only food, luxury and sex. Like the visuals on the screen the content also become sex. Visual media as a whole become propagators of sex. (It is the most successful way to gather a crowd). From one year child to 100 year old people consumes this without any question. Surely they must get affected by this over sexual talks and images.
When one sees a scene in movie, or television, he is actually looking through the camera. His mind sees the heroine is interacting with him. When she dances and shakes her belly towards camera, the viewer’s mind reads that as to him. All her identity is just to please the hero, here the viewer. Her lack of seriousness, sexual nature and all he expects in real women on the street.
These images have very strong influence on us. May be it is not studied well. As per Neurologist V.S. Ramachandran, when we see somebody doing something same kind of signals will flow in our brain as the person who do that task. If somebody fells down then we also should feel the same pain. Right? But we won’t. For the viewer there is no signal from the skin. So brain will ask to discard the other signals. This is a learned process. Small children don’t have this ability. When elders get hurts the small kids also starts crying. This is may be because of the learning did not happened to young brains. As getting older their brain also learns the difference between their own feeling and the induced feeling and to discard these signals. [This is my analysis. let neurologists comments on this]
The rich, beautiful, strong, healthy stars have more social status than others. They are the role models of millions. So the ideas that they perpetuate directly or indirectly have more power. Those brutal ideas are getting implanted in your brain without any question, because of the bias towards them. Their intellectual shallowness makes the society to divert attention from the real issues to selfish, consumerism based, animal thought process. We ignore our duties are responsible citizen of the India and world and struggling to become an idols like in the media. But democracy needs constant attention from its citizen. That is missing and all democracies become oligarchy after election.
So the society expects and behaves what they are taught especially the powerful visual media.
Economics
In the early stage of films our country was not in the disaster capitalism. The difference between the richest and poorest was not wide as now. People can survive doing some small business and jobs.
Then our country was opened to 18th century free market, unregulated capitalism named globalization. Television, cars, phones, and a lot of product came to our homes. In 90s 24 hour private news channels became live. Day by day everything is getting privatized. Everything looked from money’s perspective. People are losing jobs and homes. Economic gap widened. Private mining company’s heads become ministers. Capitalists started choosing state and center ministers. Citizen’s job was only to cast vote and keep quiet. Government left social welfare programs as per bosses in Washington. People’s life becomes a misery. 80% of the people are now living under Rs 20/- per day.
Immigrant community
Even though 80% of the population is struggling to survive, a few middle class and rich also enjoyed fruits of globalization. This is true for all the countries implemented that scheme, including USA. That class of people has voice and media. They went development so that they can enjoy the luxury. All those short sighted developments are throwing people to street.
What is the effect of these on society? Majority of the people lost everything and they become immigrant. They moved to cities. Globalization cause immigration and make immigrant criminals. City’s anonymous nature gave people to do any crime. Nobody knows you.
Education
Government withdraws from education which was supposed to raise human, social values of citizen. Schools become a place where you can get a certificate to do some job in an institution. Capitalist is looking for a place holder for doctor, engineer etc jobs. Gradually philosophy, literature, history kind of non-profitable subjects is vanishing from curriculum. People got less opportunity to gain knowledge. Society gave importance to money rather than knowledge. This is the story of small percentage that is able to get into school. The rest has nothing.
What about the rest. As per capitalist, they are born to serve the system as unskilled labor with lowest salary. In one side there is this luxuries life based on sex which is broadcasted in films, channels and ads, and in the other side ultimate poverty. All the knowledge they gather is coming from films, channels and ads. Their starving body cannot give enough power to brain to think.
When this poor people see any other physically weak individual, then their training from the films tells them to take revenge. Most of the time mothers, sisters, wives, and girls have to bear this violence. You can see this all over India. But don’t care because its low class issue.
We learn things from watching what elders doing. Even primates like chimpanzee are also does like that way. They learn how to hunt, how to use tools, how to use sound etc all from the elder’s group. Visual images are very powerful. Moving images are even more powerful. Even though lots of people are talking about crime against women, it has no effect comparing the ugly ideas broadcasted by the visual media.
Old ages Natya Shasthra defined what has to be show to the society. They clearly mentioned what should not be shown. Those people may be aware of what is good and bad for the society. May be we also need to define new code for our visual media.
Society’s response
Whenever we see crime against women, we condemn that act and ask for severe punishment for the criminal. We complain that police is not functioning and government is not taking corrective steps. We will find out the lower most links and blame him for all the problems.
We are angry. We want the blood of the criminal. How we got this idea of eye for eye, teeth for teeth. Does this sounds familiar.
In films, you can see the same thing. There our great hero, the representative of good, is always fighting against evil and kills the bad guy. Because of the influence of films we are also shouting for blood. After the fuss for few days, the incident will vanish in new news and society moves forward without changing anything fundamental. Crime will repeat again. So the visual media is fueling both sides.
Media’s effect on women
Same for men, media is doing adverse effect on women too. They get the ideas of womanhood through media only. Same story applies here. More talk is happening about these beautiful, rich stars so they make them role models.
It should be noted that, even though there are lot of great women in this country and world, the movie industry took a movie on sex dancer of 70-s80s who did suicide. They portray their act to justify her life. One thing is true, new generation heroines are doing more dirty things on screen than what that lady was doing in the 80s. The prostitute (heroine) who played that role got lot of admiration and award. In reality, they are just selling her body for money. She also wants money and fame.
Even if industry want to take a movie on real people, then also the heroine will be always white, beautiful, healthy female who has sexually pleasing for the male audience. This is true for television News readers, anchors and other talking heads.
White healthy beautiful woman/girl has higher status in sexual selection. So when media selects a woman/girl for anchor or news reader or talking head position they simply selecting that individual based on sexual selection status.
What we can do?
Crimes against women are not a women issue. It’s a law and order issue. But because of our shortsighted media and feminist organization are making this something special. What if same kind of crime happens to a man, or a kid, how it differ in human judgment. There is nothing special about women. What media is doing are the old tactic, divide and rule. They want women fighting with men. If everything are divided then corporate can easily rule the country, nobody will come together for a cause. That is a separate issue.
Crime against crime is wrong. Punishments never solve this issue. Now convicts are asking for death sentence. Can you kill a person 2 times? Police raj cannot control it. Completely covering dark dress also does not help.
Instead of blaming someone or system other than us we need to ask something else. The correct question is am I doing anything wrong? Instead of blaming others what can I make correction in my life so that this kind of incidents never happens?
Copyright knife and film maker’s wealth
Media, film, television, ad, press, who are perpetuating ignorance and idolizing crimes are responsible both directly and indirectly for the crime in the society. They are not doing this purposefully. All want money. For that they using easy route. Copyright laws of the time of printing press is still they are using in the digital era to extract money from people. Before Thomas Alva Edison entertainment was for the people. Classical entertainments are supported by kings and folk entertainments are supported by the people. But after Edison entertainment become a commodity. Copyright is the knife to extract money from people. Instead of supporting people, Government becomes protector of the film mafia. All the luxury the film industry enjoying the money looted from the poor people of India for filling their mind with ignorance and false beliefs.
Entertainment should have to become what it was before Edison. For the Copyleft idea proposed by Free Software Foundation is a good thing. If using art will not generate huge profit, then the business men will leave from art. Capitalists and managers will leave. Art become completely controlled by artists and society. If you are doubtful about success, the answer is 20 years old Free Software itself.
Real Criminal
Semi naked woman on the screen is more dangerous than same on the road. The more she remove cloths, crime rate increases in the society. She is more dangerous than woman on public space. Since the lady is wearing expensive dresses and having other expensive gadgets people get an impression that she is not ordinary woman. But rich so powerful. so nobody attacks her. Those weak people who got charged with her image finds some weaker women or kids and unleashes madness. There are some move towards making women on the road modest, sadly there is nothing controlling the women on the screen. If we can make a society where there is economic equality, you are free to do what ever you want. but now its dangerous.
The ideas broadcasted to the society are the root cause. How is broad casting? It is the film, television, ad. As long as they glamorize women, tell dirty stories, idolize crime, and divert social attention from real politics then all these crime will continue. If we really want to stop it we need to break their propaganda and awake people from the imaginary world of product to the reality. Ignorance is the enemy. Knowledge is the power. Stop the perpetuators of ignorance and beastliness.
For reducing crime against women, do some small things in our own life.
- Boycott films, television, ads. The 3 evils. At least stop paying for them.
- Do not talk about films and film stars. Understand that they are just entertainers. The evil copyright law makes them rich. If you like to watch them, do it. But please don’t talk about it
- Do not buy product or watch channels, who advertise using glamorized women. Try to buy products with less ads.
- Ask govt to tax on entertainers profit at 50% rate. They are not like agriculture and manufacturing.
- Do not participate in SMS voting done by channels
- Throw away copyright laws. Free entertainment. (If somebody wants to entertain you let them do that. But no money.
- If film makers see that their profit is going down, then they will stop.
- Do not give awards to films and actors using tax payer money. (People are dying because hunger outside.)
- Psychologists and social Psychologists must review every broadcasted material and give them approval only if it’s not harmful for the society.
- Don’t let kids below 3 years watch television. If you have kids, disconnect and remove the television.
- Do not buy newspapers like Times of India.
- Do not throw away people from their habitat just for the development for the few.
- Reduce your consumption, Buy local products that gives small people a life.
- Do not buy goods from big shopping malls. They are already rich; you don’t need to pay them to be richer. Instead buy from small shops. If you do that, that person get some money and he may can send his kids to school.
- Stop the rule of economy.
- Join the public protests against developments which destroy sustainability of society and environment.
- Women should break their slavery towards the admiration of their own bodies. Let it be as it is, do not try to glamorize.
- Women learn and involve with politics, economics, environment, science, history as much subjects are possible.
- Remember that the rich, beautiful heroines are not your friend. Do not worship them.
Women must do the following if you want to make some changes,
- End slavery to your own body. Let it be as it is. Dont try to glamorize it, because it actually changing your own attention.
- Lets all women learn politics, history, science, environment kind of all subjects and get good awareness. Start telling your opinion openly about these subjects and issues.
- Know that the rich, beautiful heroines and celebrities does not represents you and they are not your friends. Stop worshipping them.
- Beyond marker feminism, know what real freedom is.
Instead of roaring for the blood of the lower most links, let’s do some small change in our life. At least women of India can do that, and then there will be a big positive change in these issues.
