The Intentional Image: Essays on Film Propaganda

Introduction

In this anthology, I have curated my recent articles on propaganda in film, published in a variety of journals from 2021 to 2024. The articles explore: the nature of propaganda in general, and film propaganda in particular; why and when propaganda is reasonable; how deceitful film propaganda can be countered; examples of both reasonable and of sophistical propaganda films; and examples of successful propaganda films. I have tried to present the main ideas in jargon-free prose.

In the first essay, “On the Rationality of Propaganda,” I elaborate a theory of propaganda explaining what propaganda is, how it relates to marketing, and the nature and types of ideology. I discuss the criteria by which we can judge the rationality or deceitfulness of propaganda. I defend the view that while propaganda can be perfectly rational, it rarely is, and I explain why that is the case. I finish by explaining why the question of the rationality or deceitfulness of propaganda is different from the question of the morality of propaganda. I give two quick examples of how an ethicist might argue that deceptive propaganda might be ethical to use, and perfectly rational propaganda might be immoral to use. I conclude with the notion that the question of the ethics of marketing and propaganda is complex, and should be handled in a separate paper.

In the next three essays, I discuss a paradigm case of film propaganda—arguably, the earliest major successful but profoundly deceptive propaganda film ever made—The Birth of a Nation.

In the second essay, “Selling Racism: A Classic Case of American Propaganda,” I first draw an analogy between The Birth of a Nation, D. W. Griffith’s racist propaganda movie of 1915,² and the five films the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda engineered to create or intensify anti-Semitic feeling among the German public. I show that the mechanisms used in all these movies are the same: arousing in the public the feelings that the targeted (or “out”) group is different in kind, disgusting in its essential nature, and dangerous—an existential threat to the rest of the public (the “in-group”). Second, I discuss the negative impact Birth of a Nation had on race relations in America—which was considerable. For, example, Griffith’s film inspired the creation of a new Ku Klux Klan, which became a multi-million-member organization by the early 1920s. Finally, I discuss some factors that limited the impact of Griffith’s film on the American public.

In the third essay, “The Birth of a Nation and the Birth of Cancel Culture,” I examine one way in which people who oppose a propaganda film can counter it. I use as my basis the PBS-produced documentary Birth of a Movement: The Battle against the First Blockbuster, “The Birth of a Nation.”³ The film tells the story of D. W. Griffith’s 1915 racist propaganda movie The Birth of a Nation—a film that was the first true epic hit in American film industry—caused a rise of Black political activism.

I begin by discussing the propaganda message of Birth of a Nation, which I call the Southern Historical Narrative. According to this message, the institution of slavery was good for both Blacks and Whites, but the North waged a brutal war against the South to suppress it, and then imposed a period of humiliating occupation (i.e., the Reconstruction) during which former slaves were made to rule over the Whites. I then summarize the plot of the movie, which advanced the Southern Historical Narrative. I review how the film gave rise to two forces: the rise of a new Ku Klux Klan—one that at its peak was vastly larger than the Reconstruction-era one—and the strengthening of existing civil rights organizations. I then summarize the documentary Birth of a Movement, which tells the story of civil rights activist William Monroe Trotter, and his attempts to block the distribution of Griffith’s film. I discuss how Trotter’s attempt failed, the decline of Trotter, and the futility of attempts to rebut a film by seeking to ban it. I finish by making a few critical comments on the documentary.

In the fourth essay, “Countering Birth of a Nation in Film,” I examine efforts to counter the racist propaganda so powerfully present in The Birth of a Nation not by organizing protests and attempting to ban the film, but by making films that advance a contrary message—that is, by making counter-propaganda movies. I focus on two filmmakers in this regard: John W. Noble (1886–1946) and Oscar Micheaux (1884–1951).

Noble, a White filmmaker, produced two films aimed at rebutting Griffith’s film: The Birth of a Race (1918)⁴ and The Hooded Mob (1923).⁵ I discuss both films in some detail, and explain why each was ineffective—the first because of production failures, the second because it was banned by censors.

Micheaux—the first great African-American filmmaker—produced two effective counters to Birth of a Nation. The first, Within Our Gates (1920),⁶ tells the story of a young Black woman who works hard to secure funding for a Southern school for poor Black children. In his film The Symbol of the Unconquered: A Story of the Ku Klux Klan (1920),⁷ a Black prospector faces down the, KKK, which had been hired (by his enemy) to scare him into selling his valuable land. I examine both films and show how they effectively countered the negative racist stereotypes in Birth of a Nation. I finish by discussing some factors that limited the impact of Micheaux’s films.

I then take up the question whether propaganda films can ever be reasonable. After all, the term “propaganda” is normally taken in the pejorative sense of deceitful messaging. Propaganda is considered especially dubious if it is produced by a government agency, even more so if by a ministry of war or propaganda.

In the fifth essay, “Some Examples of Reasonable Propaganda Films,” I rehearse my theory of propaganda, under which propaganda is simply messaging intended to persuade others to do something for a cause or adopt an ideology. Under this theory, propaganda is reasonable if but only if it is evidence-based, truthful, broadly logical, not coercive, targeted at mentally competent adults, and transparent—meaning that the audience should be aware that the message is intended to persuade them to do or support something. I then examine three WWII-era government propaganda films, one—A Defeated People (1946)⁸—produced by the British military, and two—The Negro Soldier (1944)⁹ and Teamwork (1947)¹⁰—produced by the American military. I explain first why I chose these particular films. I then analyze these films in some detail, and show that while they were not perfectly rational, they all effectively conveyed the persuasive message that the respective militaries wanted to convey. And they did this by meeting in the main all of the criteria for propaganda to be rational.

In the sixth essay, “The Past Is Prologue: Why They Fight So Fiercely,” I explore the Holodomor—the forced starvation that occurred in Stalinist Russia during the period 1932–1934. My main text is the 1985 documentary Harvest of Despair—Holodomor: The Ukrainian Genocide.¹¹ I examine that film closely, and then (using a panel discussion by journalists of the time), I explore the question whether The Harvest of Despair was deceptive propaganda. I mention six subsequent documentaries—all produced since 2015—as well as Anne Applebaum’s award-winning treatise on the subject (Red Famine).¹² All this material suggests that the original documentary was reasonably accurate. After distinguishing between the general “Stalinist famine” and the specific Holodomor, I argue that the Holodomor was indeed a case of genocide.

The seventh essay, “The Last Temptation of a Journalist: A Review of Mr. Jones,” also deals with the Holodomor. It is my review of the film Mr. Jones.¹³ The film tells the true story of a young journalist named Gareth Jones, an honest man who reported honestly on the Holodomor. I review the film’s plot, providing information about various people mentioned in the film. The story takes place in the early 1930s, and portrays Jones’s trip to the Soviet Union to see how Stalin was getting the money to pay for rapid industrialization and modernization of the Soviet Union. What he saw is vividly presented. The plot turns on his relations with the New York Times Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, Walter Duranty. The viewers, in seeing how the two journalists choose to report on the famine that Stalin deliberately inflicted upon Ukraine, learn a lesson about the difference between honest journalism and deceptive propaganda, and about the ethics of journalism in general.

In the eighth essay, “Is Sniper: The White Raven a Deceptive Propaganda Film?” I critically examine the recent Ukrainian film Sniper.¹⁴ The film is loosely based on the true story of Mykola Voronenko, a young teacher in Ukraine during the 2014 Russian invasion. The film portrays the Russian invaders as being vicious, beating him and killing his wife. The story is about his decision to become a sniper for the Ukrainian army, and his subsequent training and action. I suggest that while the film is clearly pro-Ukrainian propaganda, under the criteria I elaborated earlier, the film is on the whole basically reasonable, with only minor elements of deception.

The ninth essay is “Why They Join: A Review of Fire and Ice.” It is an examination of a 2005 documentary by director Ben Stroud.¹⁵ Stroud’s film is a vivid portrayal of the 1939 Russian invasion of Finland, known to this day as the “Winter War” (of Finland and Russia). After discussing some of the history of Finnish-Russian relations leading up to the war, I discuss the content of the film (which focuses on narrating the evolution of the war).

I then take up the issue of whether the documentary is deceptive propaganda. I note in the essay that of all forms of cinema, documentary films are especially prone to be propaganda, precisely because the filmmakers tend to present themselves as observers or journalists neutrally describing reality. This is true of some documentaries, but not of all or likely even most documentaries. However, I argue on the basis of the nature of the film and the context of the time in which it was produced, that this film was really not propaganda at all, but was indeed a straightforward historical narrative.

The tenth essay is “What Is Truth? A Review of Miss Virginia.”¹⁶ This movie tells the true story of one woman’s struggle to establish the Washington D.C. voucher school program.

Voucher programs are programs the distribute tax dollars to poor parents to enable those parents to choose which schools to send their children. In the United States, school choice is routine for the wealthy and upper-middle-class parents, but poor parents rarely have that choice—the choice to take their children out of failing local school systems. I review the movie in detail. I then explore the question whether the movie—which clearly has a pro-school-choice message—is (as some critics have claimed) deceitful propaganda. I suggest that it crucially depends upon the viewers’ background beliefs and knowledge.

In essays 11 through 13, I turn to the analysis of clearly deceptive propaganda films, and what makes them so, and how they can be countered.

In the eleventh essay, “Moderating Racism: The Attempt to Restrain Anti-Japanese Racism in WWII Propaganda Films,” I discuss an incredibly ironic case in the history of propaganda: the attempt by the American government during WWII to minimize the level of anti-Japanese racism in film. I discuss four films, two from 1943 and two from 1945. Of each pair, one was produced by the U.S. military, and one by a Hollywood studio. I show how the Office of War Information (the OWI)—the federal government agency of war propaganda—tried to moderate the amount of anti-Japanese messaging in the films. In particular, American movies typically pushed the Japanese Fifth-Column Narrative—the myth that Japanese-Americans and resident Japanese aliens actively assisted the Imperial Japanese Navy in its attack on Pearl Harbor, either covertly by spying or overtly assisting militarily the Japanese forces.