by Hugh Manatee Wins » Thu Sep 28, 2006 8:29 pm
This is also for Professor Pan and other RI readers who haven't researched the decades-long relationship with media the US government has had. Or, at very least, minimize its significance.<br><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/images/2554.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br>The scripts of Hollywood's movies were reviewed and approved by censors after 1934 and were micro-managed during WWII in ways you would consider downright Orwellian by the OWI or Office of War Information.<br><br>http://mcel.pacificu.edu/jwasia/papers/finalPT.html<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Walter Wanger, president of the Motion Picture Society for America at the time of his writing an article for Public Opinion Quarterly in 1943 entitled "OWI and Motion Pictures," stated that "Hollywood is concerned about more than censorship. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>The OWI shows a growing desire to write things into scripts.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> Indeed, there is a mounting urge to dominate production."[6] This is in accordance with the research of Stephen Vaughn, as he states in his essay, "Political Censorship During the Cold War" in Francis G. Couvares’ book Movie Censorship and American Culture, "After Pearl Harbor […] the national emergency legitimated both prowar propaganda and censorship on grounds of national security."[7] <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>The government’s propaganda agency, the Office of War Information,"issued a constantly updated manual [Government Information Manual for the Motion Picture Industry] instructing the studios in how to assist the war effort, sat in on story conferences with top Hollywood executives, reviewed the screenplays of every major studio […], and sometimes wrote dialogue for key speeches."</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->[8]<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>And that was over 60 years ago. Before all the post-WWII research by the Ivy League-researched CIA and TV and then cable TV and cross-marketing and everything we see and hear being generated by five mega-corporations. <br><br>So, orz, I'll give you some more history so you can catch up. Although I understand the need for skepticism I don't understand why you haven't searched up some info yourself. It's quite easy to find both online and hard copy dead tree book.<br><br>You do realize that post-WWII the CIA and the Psychological Strategy Board waged total psychological warfare by infiltrating press, publishing, entertainment, academia, etc. to mold American culture to their designs, right? <br><br>http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=13808&st=Psychological&st1=Strategy<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>128 - Directive Establishing the Psychological Strategy Board.<br>June 20th, 1951<br><br>Directive to: The Secretary of State, The Secretary of Defense, The Director of Central Intelligence:<br><br>It is the purpose of this directive to authorize and provide for the more effective planning, coordination and conduct, within the framework of approved national policies, of psychological operations.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>There is hereby established a Psychological Strategy Board responsible, within the purposes and terms of this directive, for the formulation and promulgation, as guidance to the departments and agencies responsible for psychological operations, of over-all national psychological objectives, policies and programs, and for the coordination and evaluation of the national psychological effort.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>The Board will report to the National Security Council on the Board's activities and on its evaluation of the national psychological operations, including implementation of approved objectives, policies, and programs by the departments and agencies concerned.<br><br>The Board shall be composed of:<br>a. The Undersecretary of State, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and the Director of Central Intelligence, or, in their absence, their appropriate designees;<br><br>b. An appropriate representative of the head of each such other department or agency of the Government as may, from time to time, be determined by the Board.<br><br>The Board shall designate one of its members as Chairman.<br><br>A representative of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shall sit with the Board as its principal military adviser in order that the Board may ensure that its objectives, policies and programs shall be related to approved plans for military operations.<br><br>There is established under the Board a Director who shall be designated by the President and who shall receive compensation of $16,000 per year.<br><br>The Director, within the limits of funds and personnel made available by the Board for this purpose, shall organize and direct a staff to assist in carrying out his responsibilities. The Director shall determine the organization and qualifications of the staff, which may include individuals employed for this purpose, including part-time experts, and/or individuals detailed from the participating departments and agencies for assignment to full-time duty or on an ad hoc task force basis. Personnel detailed for assignment to duty under the terms of this directive shall be under the control of the Director, subject only to necessary personnel procedures within their respective departments and agencies.<br><br>The participating departments and agencies shall afford to the Director and the staff such assistance and access to information as may be specifically requested by the Director in carrying out his assigned duties.<br><br>The heads of the departments and agencies concerned shall examine into present arrangements within their departments and agencies for the conduct, direction and coordination of psychological operations with a view toward readjusting or strengthening them if necessary to carry out the purposes of this directive.<br><br>In performing its functions, the board shall utilize to the maximum extent the facilities and resources of the participating departments and agencies.<br><br>HARRY S. TRUMAN<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>The Psychological Strategy Board was renamed a few times and then shuffled back into the beaurocratic woodwork to maintain secrecy. What we now call 'mainstream media' is in fact the result of over 50 years of behavioral science research implemented into almost everything we see, hear, and do.<br><br>Television and movies are perfect delivery systems for social engineering, propaganda, and psychological warfare because light imagery has been our species' most imporant tool of survival ("tiger!"- "mate!") and thus goes to our limbic systems and subconscious to influence our perceptions and behaviors.<br>And programming state-sanctioned values and beliefs into children is how every social group perpetuates itself. (In the US it is Disney that helps install the Social Darwinist might-makes-right values of nationalism, militarism, racism, sexism, and consumerism into young minds for later harvest of eager worker drones for captains of industry plus cannon fodder for the Pentagon. Yes, I've researched this, too. Some American colleges actually teach courses about the Disney viruses so it isn't just me seeing this.)<br><br>Another book I recommend-<br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Babes in Tomorrowland: Walt Disney and the Making of the American Child, 1930-1960</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br>http://www.amazon.com/Babes-Tomorrowland-Making-American-1930-1960/dp/0822334631/ref=pd_ecc_rvi_4/102-2891579-6934505?ie=UTF8<!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/0822334631.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_V1122386342_.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>In vivid detail, Sammond describes how the latest thinking about human development was translated into the practice of child-rearing and how magazines and parenting manuals characterized <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>the child as the crucible of an ideal American culture. He chronicles how Walt Disney Productions’ greatest creation—the image of Walt Disney himself—was made to embody evolving ideas of what was best for the child and for society. </strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->Bringing popular child-rearing manuals, periodicals, advertisements, and mainstream sociological texts together with the films, tv programs, ancillary products, and public relations materials of Walt Disney Productions, Babes in Tomorrowland reveals a child that was as much the necessary precursor of popular media as the victim of its excesses.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Military camouflage is also worn by children on TV who sanction styles to be imitated. Here is Disney normalizing military culture for kids to get recruits for the Pentagon-<br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Miley (MILEY CYRUS) and her best friend Lilly (EMILY OSMENT) meddle in their friend's dating life in the new <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Disney Channel</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> series "Hannah Montana"<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://z.about.com/d/kidstvmovies/1/0/6/2/hannahlilly113.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br><br>Here's some information on how children develop their beliefs and allegiances around the symbols and themes offered them from an article about WWII movie westerns which proliferated because censors allowed them. These 'B-westerns' dialed in anti-Nazi and anti-Japanese plot themes.<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Studios were unsure how to portray the enemy. Was it acceptable to promote hatred? Nelson Poynter, Office of War Information liaison with the Hollywood moguls, replied, <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>"Properly directed hatred is of vital importance to the war effort."</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>source-<br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Soldiers in Stetsons: B-Westerns go to war</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br>Journal of Popular Film and Television, Wntr, 2003 by R. Philip Loy<br><br>http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0412/is_4_30/ai_97629462/pg_4<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr> Political Socialization of Children<br><br>Political socialization is "the process by which people learn to adopt the norms, values, attitudes, and behaviors accepted and practiced by the ongoing system" (Sigel xii). As persons develop from childhood through adolescence to become adults, they acquire political attitudes, cultivate political loyalties, and articulate political ideals. Most adults reflect their attitudes and loyalties in some form of political behavior, such as expressing an opinion on a current public policy issue or voting, and in some rudimentary fashion adults are able to use their political attitudes to evaluate political institutions. Children have less-developed attitudes, loyalties, and ideals than do adults. Certainly one of the key educational functions of elementary and middle schools is to assist young people in the political socialization process (Greenstein; Easton and Dennis; Adler and Harrington; Hess and Torney).<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>One study of children's political socialization observed that prior to adolescence a child's political world is erratic and incomplete, a mixture of sentiments, dogmas, personalized ideas, platitudes, and partial information (Adler and Harrington 50). For example, studies in the early 1940s found that younger elementary school students attached no particular meaning to the United States flag, but as they progressed through school, children were more likely to prefer it to all other flags (Adler and Harrington 97). Piaget and Weil found that after 11 or 12 years of age children could articulate ideas such as "homeland" and "foreigner" (Sigel 26).</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br> During World War II, schools encouraged patriotic sentiments by engaging schoolchildren in war-related activities. Individual grades or classes were exhorted to buy war stamps, and often a contest was held to see which grade or class could purchase the most. Frequently the goal was to raise enough money to buy a piece of military equipment such as a jeep. Other activities included school-organized scrap drives. A school in a small south Texas town stopped class every morning at 10:00 during the war, and the students bowed in a moment of prayer or silence. During that time the town fire siren would sound for one minute. (2)<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Two studies done during World War II discovered that gender played a key role in the political socialization process. Young males possessed more information about and were more interested in the war than were young females (Greenstein 114). It is important to note that those young males who were just beginning to form political opinions and develop a national identity were the gender and age group most likely to view B-Westerns.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>Unlike recent years when videocassette recorders, computers, and other forms of technology transformed education, formal schooling during World War II depended on the written and spoken word. Students learned by reading books and listening to teachers' explanations and instructions about daily lessons. That pedagogy shapes learning about the world indirectly (Johnson and Bone 34).<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>18,000 American kids were interviewed across America in the 1950s and 1960s and then analyzed by a Stanford child development expert for a 1965 book called 'The Development of Political Attitudes in Children.' Some things have changed since then like gender role expectations, the Cold War focus on anti-Communism, and the forms of media. But some lessons learned about children apply today still.<br><br>Children take odds and ends in their own short-lived experience and slap them together in highly inaccurate attempts at forming their views, perhaps much the way TV-indoctrinated adults do.<br><br>http://books.google.com/books?id=r6ajMnvX6fAC&pg=PA2&lpg=PA290&dq=%22Hess%22+%22The+Development+of+Political+Attitudes+in+Children%22+&sig=uD2LEzSzU_ifiyFsAgDYigHdCi4<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>In their responses to questions about the role of a citizen and his relationship with government, <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>children often project their ideas of proper behavior onto the political scene, defining an unfamiliar role or an unfamiliar person in terms they have learned in their own lives.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Children try to connect life's many dots into a picture between grades 4 and 8 by first deciding if something is 'good' or bad.'<br><br>http://books.google.com/books?id=r6ajMnvX6fAC&pg=PA25&lpg=PA290&dq=%22Hess%22+%22The+Development+of+Political+Attitudes+in+Children%22+&sig=PMlLyStRDEQ_JJML9hsuadmOQSo<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>The study showed that children first think of political objects as good or bad; later more complex information and variations may be acquired.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>So if children see that 'Blue Hollywood is a Big Fat Liar,' they might grow up and away from Democrats and towards Republicans since most of the media is pushing that way, too.<br><br>Recall the 'I-got-mine-Republican' creators of South Park and their hostile portrayal of peace and justice promoting Hollywood liberals in 'Team America.' People like Michael Moore and Tim Robbins were portrayed as agents of North Korea's dictator and were summarily blown up into bloody pulp by the uber-patriotic and super violent Team America.<br><br>Just a fair and balanced joke, right? Couldn't possibly influence anyone, right? Wrong. Allegiance to the concept of 'America' is much stronger in youth than allegiance to 'Hollywood liberals' and 'blue Democrats.'<br><br>Read Christopher Simpson's book -<br>http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/94BRgl2.html<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>'The Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare 1945-1960.'</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br>Oxford University Press, 1994. 204 pp.<br>Reviewed by Brian Martin<br>....<br>Before I read this book, I would have thought that psychological warfare was basically strong propaganda. No longer. This was the idea promoted by early US academic researchers into mass communication. Much of their work was funded by and carried out for the US military. The military had its own definition of psychological warfare.<br><br>A 1948 US Army document stated that: "Psychological warfare employs any weapon to influence the mind of the enemy. The weapons are psychological only in the effect they produce and not because of the nature of the weapons themselves. In this light, overt (white), covert (black) and gray propaganda; subversion; sabotage; special operations; guerrilla warfare; espionage; <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>political, cultural, economic, and racial pressures are all effective weapons</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->" (emphasis in original). So-called "special operations" include activities behind enemy lines including sabotage and assassination.<br><br>Christopher Simpson's book is about the way US government and military priorities influenced the development of US academic research into mass communication. He provides a wealth of detail into the connections. The military funded the majority of early academic research in the field. For example, the US Air Force provided at least half of the budget of the Bureau of Social Science Research in the 1950s.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>The new behavioral science of propaganda was already operating just before WWI and was used to sell that war with the help of spin meisters like Sigmund Freud's nephew Edward Bernays.<br><br>The much-decorated Marine Corps General Smedley Butler wrote his famous book called 'War is a Racket' in 1935 after thwarting a fascist coup attempt by bankers and industrialists against FDR. Butler recognized that propaganda was used to fool people into killing or being killed for elite profits.<br><br>http://warisaracket.com/<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>In the World War, we used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn't join the army.<br><br>So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it. With few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side...it is His will that the Germans be killed.<br><br>And in Germany, the good pastors called upon the Germans to kill the allies...to please the same God. That was a part of the general propaganda, built up to make people war conscious and murder conscious.<br><br>Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure."<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>By WWII the US government fully realized the value of mass psychology due to the combination of the rise of radio and the fall of capitalism called the Great Depression.<br><br>Polling of public opinions began to be used to see just what human materials there were to work with to accomplish elite goals. The 'herd' started to be analyzed the better to be wrangled towards markets and to wars.<br><br>On Halloween Night of 1938 the Princeton Radio Project did a study in mass panic using as a stimulus the Orson Welles 'War of the Worlds' radio broadcast. A psychologist named Hadley Cantril did the follow-up study on who panicked and why for the benefit of those about to join the US in war against Germany and Japan.<br><br>Cantril's 1940 book on the experiment is good reading. Yes, I have a copy and will let you in on the punchline. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>He found that 'critical thinking' was the best antidote to panic and misjudgement.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br>Hence the sabotage of US public schooling and rise of mind virus media as it gets harder and harder to sell war to civilians.<br><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/images/2554.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br>As background and precedent for using movies for social engineering and propaganda by the American governement go back to WWII to the beginning of what is now a sophisticated 'beliefs and values delivery system' much the way cigarettes deliver nicotine to perpetuate profitable behaviors.<br><br>http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/2554.html<br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Hollywood Goes to War:<br>How Politics, Profits and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>384 pages<br>Published August 1990<br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>Not available in British Commonwealth except Canada and Australia</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--><br><br> "Hollywood Goes to War is a thoroughly researched and informative study of the motion picture industry in wartime, how the hundreds of movies it turned out were slanted, manipulated and altered in furtherance of the war effort by their makers acting in concert with government officials, with emphasis on the disagreements, clashes and occasional open rebellions engendered by so uneasy a collaboration."--Philip Dunne, Chicago Sun-Times Book Week<br><br> "Koppes and Black, professor of history and communications respectively, have no evident ideological axes to grind in this thorough . . . study. Their primary concern is to examine 'the enduring question of the appropriateness of governmental coercion and censorship of private media' as it was raised by the relationship between the movie industry and the U.S. government."--Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World<br><br> "Beware of censors bearing high ideals. That's the message of Hollywood Goes to War, a careful account of America's flirtation with cultural commissarship during World War II. . . . The descriptions of behind-the-scenes fiddling by bureaucrats (particularly with King Vidor's ambitious flop, 'An American Romance,' which was 'transformed from a paean to rugged individualism into a celebration of management-labor cooperation') are instructive. They expose the political mentality of the time and the mentality of propagandists of all times."--Walter Goodman, New York Times Book Review<br><br>DESCRIPTION (back to top)<br><br>Conflicting interests and conflicting attitudes toward the war characterized the uneasy relationship between Washington and Hollywood during World War II. There was deep disagreement within the film-making community as to the stance towards the war that should be taken by one of America's most lucrative industries. Hollywood Goes to War reveals the powerful role played by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Office of War Information--staffed by some of America's most famous intellectuals including Elmer Davis, Robert Sherwood, and Archibald MacLeish--in shaping the films that were released during the war years. Ironically, it was the film industry's own self-censorship system, the Hays Office and the Production Code Administration, that paved the way for government censors to cut and shape movies to portray an idealized image of a harmonious American society united in the fight against a common enemy. Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black reconstruct the power struggles between the legendary producers, writers, directors, stars and politicians all seeking to project their own visions onto the silver screen and thus to affect public perceptions and opinion.<br><br>ABOUT THE AUTHORS (back to top)<br>Clayton R. Koppes is Houck Professor of Humanities and Chairman of the History Department at Oberlin College. Gregory D. Black is Chairman of the Communications Department at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and Director of the American Culture program there.<br><br>RELATED BOOKS(back to top)<br><br>Radio Goes to War: The Cultural Politics of Propaganda during World War II, by Gerd Horten<br>Raised on Radio, by Gerald Nachman <hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=hughmanateewins>Hugh Manatee Wins</A> at: 9/30/06 2:10 am<br></i>