“All art is propaganda, but not all propaganda is art.” The saying from 1984 and Animal Farm writer George Orwell features in The Story of British Propaganda Film, a brand new book within the British Film Institute (BFI)’s British Screen Stories series at Bloomsbury Publishing written by Scott Anthony, the deputy head of research on the U.K. Science Museum Group, which consists of 5 British museums.
An archival project based on the BFI National Archive, the book shows how central propaganda is to the event of British film and the way it has filtered people’s understanding of recent British history. While the term “propaganda film” was traditionally related to war-time narratives, Anthony emphasized that it didn’t end after World War I and II.
As an alternative, it became “a tool for packaging our cultural heritage, promoting tourism and remodeling British culture,” a synopsis highlights. His argument: propaganda doesn’t at all times should be insincere or unfaithful. It will probably also highlight certain features of a culture and performance as a tool of sentimental power.
Showing how the emergence of film as a world media phenomenon reshaped practices of propaganda, and recent practices of propaganda in turn reshaped the usage of film and other types of moving images, the book dissects classic examples of cinematic propaganda, corresponding to The Battle of the Somme (1916), Take heed to Britain (1942) and Animal Farm (1954), before discussing such beloved movie franchises as James Bond, Harry Potter, and Paddington movies and TV shows, together with such TV series as The Crown, digital media, and more.
Within the age of faux news, misinformation, and disinformation, Anthony argues that “the response to the ubiquity of the propaganda film has often turned out to be the production of ever more propaganda,” taking us into what he calls “the era of total propaganda.”
The writer, who has previously also published the mystery novel Changi, defines three periods or stages of British propaganda film. “The book describes how the propaganda film went from being a standalone object – think Triumph of the Will or Battleship Potemkin – to forming a part of an expansive media environment,” Anthony tells THR.
That has also meant a change in scope and audience focus. Within the history of British propaganda movies, the WWII was the period that saw the best production of classic and iconic standalone propaganda movies. “For instance, there are a lot of movies made in regards to the WWII or about The Blitz that say what the war or The Blitz means to the British people,” explains the expert. “But whenever you study it, a lot of probably the most iconic movies — like Fires Were Began — were made a 12 months and a half after The Blitz had finished. These movies represented a really traumatic event that had happened, and played a task in shaping viewers’ responses to it, not necessarily in a nefarious way, but in a psychological processing type of way. You may give it some thought as an try to channel people’s energy.” Such standalone movies were screened in civic spaces, canteens, army venues, trade union halls in addition to cinemas.
After the beginning of the Cold War, in a second phase, “propaganda becomes seen as something that that the opposite guys do, that only the Soviet Union and totalitarian societies do,” Anthony tells THR. “And yet there’s a realization that they still have to reply to that. So that they began the production of movies that try really hard to not appear to be propaganda.”
Those that the expert focused on most are “ones essentially made for television, which operates in a far more private, closed space, or individualized space. A variety of these movies are about individuals who resist conformity or are very skeptical or shake up a longtime career. So that they are at quite a subtle level,” Anthony explains. “I don’t mean they’re insincere, nevertheless it’s a type of propaganda of individualism in a way. A part of it’s the anti-Communist thing of ‘don’t be afraid to say no, don’t be afraid to be skeptical, the person is the actual driving force of history,’ all this sort of stuff.”
Finally, the third period of propaganda film discussed in the ultimate section of the book focuses on the post-War-on-Terror world. Within the digital media age, Anthony notes that traditional definitions of “movies” don’t capture the entire breadth and mass of propaganda content anymore. “You continue to get one-off propaganda movies made, but a number of things get made to be clipped or memed or shared,” the expert highlights. “Actually, as individual objects, a number of the movies aren’t that interesting, but they are sometimes very, very ubiquitous and can turn up in news media or elsewhere.”
While in the primary period of the British propaganda film, the movies were rooted in shared experiences, for instance of the war, now “digital expands our geographical range,” Anthony argues. “You’ve got a lot of individuals who may be very individualized watching things on their phone slightly than communally, but in addition watching things that they haven’t experienced or don’t know themselves. So there’s this sort of loop thing happening whereby a lot of digital media refers to itself or refers to other digital media. So it’s more of a circular thing.”
Scott Anthony
So what does Anthony mean when he speaks of “the era of total propaganda”? “What I speak about by way of total propaganda doesn’t necessarily mean that every little thing is a lie,” he explains. “But I mean it within the sense that really now it’s about efforts going into shaping information architecture or the knowledge environment slightly than ‘I see this film in regards to the British National Health Service NHS, and I’m inspired to consider in it and use it.’ As an alternative, it’s more about ‘let’s create this sort of culture which anchors everyone’ and that’s all-encompassing in a way.”
At the identical time, on this era of total propaganda, driven by the broader availability and affordability of media technology and tools that has opened content creation to more people, “there’s now an try to sort and shape who’s what and a type of credentialism and fact-checking: ‘that is the authentic one, not that one’,” Anthony notes.
That also suits in with a key finding of his research. “One thing I discovered was that propaganda isn’t at all times lying but might be quite sincere,” he tells THR. “I feel of it as far more ubiquitous than I used to be expecting. But in some ways, the present trend is alarming since it’s moving away from the person film and more towards shaping an environment.”
In earlier days, government agencies often played greater roles in propaganda movies across the board. For instance, the animated film Animal Farm from 1954, directed by John Halas and Joy Batchelor based on the Orwell novella, was funded partly by the CIA, Anthony highlights.
But he also points out that British propaganda movies were also often positioning the U.K. as a player different from the U.S. and the remaining of Europe. “A part of the story of the rise of America is that WWI destroys old Europe and film becomes the emergent global technology. And lots of countries around Europe begin to intervene within the cinema market, partly because they’re anxious. The phrase that you just at all times get is that cinemas are mainly U.S. embassies and all our residents are going to develop into like Americans essentially,” Anthony explains. “Governments become involved in Europe because they’re terrified that America’s going to dominate this recent medium and shape their public. At the identical time, a number of those countries have gotten democratic for the primary time.”
In Britain, the main target was on positioning “ourselves within the Anglosphere as barely up-market,” the expert tells THR. “France is usually a bit protectionist since it has the French language, but Britain doesn’t have the choice of linguistic protectionism. So, due to this fact, you’ve to do something else. You may have to attempt to find a special option to distinguish yourself.”
How do Harry Potter, Paddington and other franchises fit into the subject of Britain using its soft power in film form? After the Cold War, policymakers began questioning the necessity to fund filmmaking after the tip of the world-defining conflict. What happened in Britain with the Recent Labour government of Tony Blair is the creation of the U.K. Film Council, which is tied to the assumption that “we want to sell a world vision of Britain” and attract people to our culture and convey in tourists and smart foreigners and the like, Anthony explains. So promoting Britain, its culture, and its creative output became more essential.
This can also be where 007 suits in for Anthony. “We’re funding movies, and the movies should support our global brand within the era of globalization,” he says. “As regards James Bond, I had this bit within the book since it strikes me that Britain shouldn’t be a tough power country anymore. They’re probably not a military power, nevertheless it still has an enormous fame for spying. So people like [famous British computer scientist] Alan Turing and spies and deception are a fascination.”
Anthony’s book also mentions the appeal of the British royal family and such content related to that as The Crown. “The monarchy has had an enormous role,” he tells THR. With the post-war give attention to democracy and modernization, British film also reflects that. “You furthermore mght get in Britain a re-modernizing of the monarchy and you truly see this dramatized in film, corresponding to in The King’s Speech. So, the monarchy is an enormous a part of how Britain sells itself overseas. And The Crown has a relationship to the film The Queen with the identical author (Peter Morgan) who type of ran with that material. It’s essentially an up-market soap opera. It’s very entertaining, and I feel it does serve a purpose in selling a vision of Britain abroad.”
Where will that go along with King Charles III? “I feel what will likely be interesting is how far it is definitely the monarchy and the way far it’s Queen Elizabeth II, because she had an incredible imprint,” offers Anthony.
