I love it! Few movie-related things irritate me more than the assertion that "it's just a movie." Oh, because it's "just culture", too, and something like that has no impact on our daily lives? People need to get the cotton out of their minds and begin to wake up to their responsibilities in all quarters, not just some dim perception of what the "real world" is.

That being said, one (rather sorry, I might add) example of "propoganda" of late is X-Men: The Last Stand, which aims for understanding and acceptance of those who are different (in this case, the mutants) from the status quo by means of mourning their persecution and emphasizing just how horrible it all is. As filmfreakcentral's Walter Chaw put it: "It's Michael Bay's Schindler's List."

Then there's Land of the Dead, which uses the wonderfully potent blank slate metaphor that is Romero's zombie creation to look at the power structures inherent between the upper and lower classes, especailly in the face of national crisis. And, in more overtly serious news: Munich's struggle for a voice of reason to be heard amongst the endless violence has continued to sustain its importance in recent months, Brokeback Mountain's critical views of an oppressive society will always be a universal theme, and Downfall (Der Untergang) exists largely to remind all that see it that evil often comes more from apathy or a passive acceptance of the powers that be by the populace than it does from deliberately henious deeds committed by the masses.

Poseidon. Six white people survive: Josh Lucas, who leaves rouguehood to assume the role of husband and father to a single mother and her child, thus mending the nuclear family; a young man and woman (Adam and Eve?); and Richard Dreyfuss, gay man considering suicide who transforms into survivor of the fittest, kicking one of the two supporting latino characters in the face to fall to his death so that he, Dreyfuss, will live, having rediscovered the sanctity of life. Kurt Russell, the father of the young woman, *must* sacrifice himself by horrible drowning so that Adam and Eve can go on. Repopulate the wasp-depleted world. Latinos are (literally) stepping stones for whites. The other, a young latino woman, drowns after loaning her crucifix for use as emergency screwdriver; they place it back on her neck after she's dead: Cynical exploitation of minority beliefs for survival of the elite? All black people drown. Human tragedy is transformed from the horror of a 9/11 into a specious Darwinian exercise.

In art, I would define propaganda as telling me what to think--giving me the answers rather than asking the questions. However, there is validity to your argument that everything is propaganda, so it is just a matter of how subtle or overt it is. Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan feel more like propaganda to me than, say, Munich. But to your point, maybe Munich is just as much an example of propaganda, but its message is more morally complex. However, because it feels to me like it is raising questions rather than force-feeding me the answers, I am at least given the illusion of choice--the opportunity to answer the questions for myself. I suppose moral ambiguity is as much a vision of the world as moral absolutism, but it's less off-putting and less obvious when presented in art. By definition, it allows for subtlety.
Okay, enough equivocation! I wanted to discuss clear examples of propaganda by Spielberg, the master manipulator. Manipulation in America usually calls upon nostalgia, patriotism, or family. In E.T. Spielberg gave us his nostalgic view of the wonder of childhood and the importance of family. In Saving Private Ryan he manipulated us with patriotism and a nostalgia for The Greatest Generation (as long as we forget about segregation, women's rights, etc.) In War of the Worlds he gives us his view of what a father (and by extension, what a family) should be, while tapping into our patriotic fears with aliens standing in for terrorists.

While we're talking about propaganda and Spielberg, the latter two films each contain a scene that I found extremely disturbing but which no one else I talked to seemed to have even noticed. Near the end of Saving Private Ryan, when Jeremy Davies' character shoots the German, who is now an unarmed prisoner, it felt as if Spielberg wanted us to cheer, as if we were to feel that this coward had finally grown some balls. And in War of the Worlds, when Tom Cruise's character kills Tim Robbins' character, for no good reason that I could see, it again felt like we were supposed to condone this murder, to believe this was what a "good" father would do. Maybe Spielberg intended these scenes to be more morally complex than I am giving him credit for, but it didn't feel that way. In both cases, I felt as if I were being sold a particular moral vision, and I wasn't buying.

Sorry, this is already too long, but I wanted to make one more point. If Spielberg is in many ways representative of the disease of American propaganda--nostalgia, patriotism, and family--then Philip Roth might be the remedy. In his American Trilogy: American Pastoral, I Married a Communist, and The Human Stain and even more so in The Plot Against America, he looks back with clear vision, never confusing a nostalgia for his childhood with the common fallacy that America was better back then. He also doesn't look to the sixties or later as bringing in some kind of utopia.

Maybe that's the difference. The propagandist is an idealist who either wants to go back to a mythical Golden Age or looks forward to a future utopia, while the realists question both the past, present, and future.

I have to disagree with Mr. Van Court's view that "Spielberg is in many ways representative of the disease of American propaganda": I think Spielberg is one of the few popular American filmmakers who prods his audience into uncomfortable corners. War of the Worlds seems to me a very dark film exploring, in fantastic terms, our feelings of impotence after 9/11. Most people I talked to when it came out hated it, and I think it ties in to the whole "Is it too soon?" argument that occurred when United 93 was coming out. I don't think Cruise is meant to be the ideal father, just someone who briefly rises to the challenge of protecting his kids. I've always thought that the final shots are framed intentionally like the end of The Searchers where John Wayne is outside the family unit. I think there's a suggestion that Cruise's character will remain in a similar position. I think the scene where he kills Tim Robbins is played for horror, not cheers, especially the way it zeros in on Dakota Fanning's terror at what is about to happen. In fact, the way the murder plays out, in shadows, off screen, attests that it is more about the horrifying rape/murder of innocence than anything triumphant. And a movie that has the hero's son writing a paper on the Algerian resistance to France has very complicated things to say about the United States.

Saving Private Ryan: I think this movie, more than anything, was Spielberg's sophisticated answer to Seven Samurai. Both are, I think, existentialist (I don't remember much praying in either movie)examinations of heroism, except in this version Takashi Shimura dies saying, "Earn this.". The real propaganda was the packaging of this film, leading, ultimately, to whatever first-person shooter game is out there now (Call to Duty?) that looks like it's lifted straight from SPR: I seriously doubt that was Spielberg's goal. And, no, I didn't feel like cheering when Upham shot the German. Even gung ho types didn't cheer, because they saw it almost as a final act of cowardice. I think Spielberg said at the time that Upham was the character he most identified with and, accordingly, superficial glosses of Upham's character have never really worked for me.

Schindler's List: a movie that was purely American propaganda would not have allowed this Amon Goeth, charismatic, self-loathing, other-loathing, *complicated*. It definitely would not have allowed our 'hero' Schindler's subtle attraction to him.

Don't get me wrong, I have many Spielberg niggles: Schindler's endless, undignified, and out-of-character "I could have done more" speech; the big-breasted, corn-fed ideal of grave-visiting James Ryan's attendant family; the need for Tom Cruise to blow at least one martian up before they all die of disease. But, overall, I don't think Munich is a fluke. I think many of Spielberg's films ask more of their viewers than they bother to acknowledge.

What a wonderful but a bit undeveloped post. You say that everything in our daily lives is "to some extent propaganda", even your post, defining propaganda as something that tries to sell. And you're right, I think, but there's that thin border between propaganda and art that is easily neglected. When I say that I think you're right, I mean the lifestyle/media/etc. everyday life - the one that is carefully planned by marketing - be it in its literal meaning or as an imposition of ideas. The life we practically live every day - with its mundane repetitions, advertisements, restricted choice in the local supermarket, etc, etc. But there's that other life that is NOT everyday - the life of art, education, perception and creativity. Spielberg may be propaganda as much as he doesn't provide the option of choice. But what about Tanovic (he's stuck in my mind right now), Bergman, W. Allen even? Are they "selling" something to us? Their visions? Then if they're selling, what do they get in return? They don't make millions out of their movies, like Spielberg, for example (mind you, I don't have anything against him in particular, just his name was mentioned). They don't impose. As David said, they try to raise questions.

If propaganda is imposition, art is celebration and humbleness. It is universal and yet strictly personal. It is open and honest, quiet in its preaching (if there is any) and ready to accept other interpretations, other answers. Propaganda is like a massive wall with a locked gate. It modelates you, but still you want to go through that door. When you're changed, you do. Art is like membrane - by questioning it narrows, or better - it points your thoughts towards a certain problem. The openings in the membrane are the possible answers [perceptions/visions] and you don't have to change - you simply need an attitude, a stand - or in 'propaganda language', something 'to sell'.

I'm sorry for the digression, but it just didn't feel right to claim everything propaganda [even to some extent]. Propaganda doesn't change, you change. Art can change, you can modulate it according to your nature/points of view and perceive it differently - to a whole new level that might not have been forseeen by the creator. Thus you become a creator too. For propaganda, you're just a puppet.

manaotupapau,

I take your point, and I suppose I was a little harder on Spielberg than I meant to be. I enjoy most of his films, I just often find them manipulative. In this way, he is a master. If he were living during WWII, he would first on the government's list to make one of those overtly propagandist films.

I would like to believe you about the murder scenes in SPR and War of the Worlds, and maybe you are right to assume that Spielberg meant them to be morally complicated. However, since they are both in otherwise morally uncomplicated films (one being little more than a popcorn picture), I don't think the audience was set up to respond in a complicated way. I actually remember a smattering of applause at the screening I saw when the German was murdered. It may be unfair to blame Spielberg for an audience's reaction, but I don't think I'm wrong about the general reaction of audiences to those scenes. And yes, the murder of Tim Robbins' character was played as horror in essentially a horror movie, but don't you think it was displayed as justified, necessary. To me it played out this way: Tim Robbins wants to kill aliens and Tom Cruise wants to hide, so Tim Robbins must die. Daddy's gotta do what daddy's gotta do to protect his little girl.

Also, I won't deny you the right to find existential meaning in SPR, but you can't deny its propagandist overtones, especially in the bookend sequence at the cemetary. If I remember correctly, the opening shot is of an American flag, for crying out loud.

As for Amon Goeth, he may be more complicated than would be typical in a purely propagandist endeavor, but as to him being fascinating--evil always is. Richard III is fascinating, but you can hardly deny that the play is propaganda against him.

As much as I think his films raise a lot of questions and do some good I also think that, like the worst radio personality, he can go a little trapped in his opinion and slant things to match his personal point of view, this award goes to Michael Moore and Farenhiet 9/11. As much as I agree with where he'd like to end up, the way he gets there can be jarringly uneven and just as emotionally forceful and tricky as the worst kind of propoganda.

Propoganda to me is just that, the manipulation of facts to present a one sided view, usually using heavy handed emotions to sway the listener (the woman who goes to the White House to cry). "Munich" does not fit in that category to me at all - it takes both sides and neither side. Though I wonder if there's some propoganda running throughout and especially towards the end of Kushner's other great script "Angels in America".

And to me "North Country" was ripe with propoganda. Emotionally heavy handed to represent one side. Even in the final moments of the film they tell you that this story didn't actually take place, that it was a representation. So you're supposed to have stood beside this woman and the cause of these women in the final moments because she was raped as a teenager only to find out that this woman didn't exist at all, so there was no raping. It was a process that took over a decade but in the film was resolved over the course of a year. The worst kind of manipulation. The worst kind of propoganda. It doesn't matter how much you might agree with the end result, if they cheated to make the point, it's no good in my book.

Though none of these can hold a candle to "Triumph of the Will". I'm having a hard time thinking of a film that's so deceptive to the the reality of the situation and the facts. Perhaps there's some religious propoganda in "Passion of the Christ". Again whether you agree with Christ's message or not the true purpose and point of the sacrifice gets lost in the frayed skin, and forces you to think in a certain way because of the unnecessarily ultra violent way in which he was treated.

Recently I saw Charge of the Light Brigade, Tony Richardson's 1968 account of the disastrous battle immortalized in poetry by Tennyson. Richardson made the movie at the height of the Vietnam War, so it clearly reflects the negative attitudes toward that conflict and the machinations that brought it about. (One early image is a cartoon lion, representing Britain, putting on a bobby’s helmet, clearly establishing a parallel between 20th century America - the "world's policeman" - and 19th century England) The Brigade is seen not as brave martyrs (as the Tennyson poem and the 1936 Errol Flynn movie did) but as the hapless victims of incompetent leadership. Much is made of the petty bickering between Lord Cardigan and Lord Lucan (Trevor Howard and Harry Andrews) and of the helplessness of Lord Raglan (Sir John Gielgud). British army life is seen as brutal for the soldiers, on and off the battlefield; the officers, on the other hand, gather to watch the carnage from afar as if it were the Wimbledon Open. Richardson even raises doubts about the film's most sympathetic character, the noble Captain Nolan (David Hemmings); of his dream of a more effective, humane army, Lord Raglan observes that the notion "smacks of murder."
What impressed me most about the movie, however, are the animated segments by Richard Williams (Who Framed Roger Rabbit). Based on political cartoons of the period, these segments are not only technically impressive (Williams reproduces the look of 19th century engravings, complete with elaborate cross-hatching) but they often make their point more clearly and more entertainingly than the live-action does. They parody the jingoism of the British press of the time (an interesting concept: propaganda that mocks other propaganda) and contrast with the grimness of the main action. A good example is the sequence of victory fantasies following an erroneously reported win at Sebastopol (Queen Victoria and Prince Albert cutting up Moscow like a wedding cake; Tsar Nicolas sticking his head in the British Lion's mouth; etc.), which are abruptly interrupted by a blast of enemy fire in the real battlefield. Throughout these sequences, Williams also contrasts optimistic images of Britain's glory with grimmer, more satirical imagery: allegories of England's industrial dominance are interwoven with pictures of children toiling in coal mines and tenement slums in the shadow of clouds of soot from the factories; proper British citizens voicing their approval of England's involvement in the Crimean War degenerate into grotesque brutes spewing the word "WAR" like black bile out of their mouths. Williams even gets the last word, as it were; the last image is his drawing of a dead horse, another casualty of the insanity of war.