TV Propaganda

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karl_creech
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Re: TV Propaganda

Post by karl_creech »

I think I agree with both of you...(artisticsolution, and psychonaut)
I learned somthing when I read your post just now, artist. That's what this is all about right? The purpose of life? So I have to thank you. I have never thought about it that way. Propaganda is a part of life I guess. It would be more useful to be able to recognize it and see it as a whole when it shows it face, then to just assume anything but ignorance. I guess it's kinda' like learning how to recognize hypnosis so that no one can sneak attack you. :D If you know what someone looks like when they are trying to hypnotize you, then you won't be fooled into letting it happen. That would make it a lot easier to draw the line between what psychonaut explained as the two extremes, instead of just being aware that one of the extremes exists and it is bad.
Pluto
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Re: TV Propaganda

Post by Pluto »

You can't say everything is propaganda - this is too easy. The cartoon getting kids to clean-up and be good kids is harmless - yet let's understand that under any economic system the products made reflect the values and aspirations - capitalism.

Propaganda used to be a word that had no bad conotations attached to it - after world wars this changed - propaganda was a dirty word so in the 50's Edward Bernays turned it into Public Relations that great slimy monster of deceit. Our western societies are pissed wet through to the bone in Public Relations exercises. So if we say everything is propaganda then say it and mean it not in a passive put up your hands kind of thing but fuckin hell society is held together with this shit! We are swimming in Propaganda and think it normal.
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Psychonaut
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Re: TV Propaganda

Post by Psychonaut »

My apologies:

Everything other than plain raw data is propoganda.

I identified different sorts of propoganda, or rather the different degrees to which something is propoganda..

I have checked out the definition, and apparently it has to be intended to influence people's opinion. I have to say, then, that I could care less about whether something is propoganda or not. Any story inherently carries across with it the biases and world-views of the author in some manner or another (generally their beliefs about how humans do or should interact). It doesn't make any difference to me whether the author is aware of this fact.

An example of propoganda

Image
Pluto
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Re: TV Propaganda

Post by Pluto »

Yes Psychonaut - that's a great example, I love these kind of posters. It's the government talking to its citizens and with our 'future eyes' we can see right through it, it wasn't meant for our 2009 eyes and minds and so is powerless as a form of propaganda. Nowadays propaganda is more sophisticated because we are.

There was an interesting moment when men stopped shaving and started allowing their face-hair to grow a little - maybe sometime in the 90's, alone worthy of philosophical discussion, and the advertisers, the propaganda-ists noticeably had a time delay with their male models - should we go with a bit of stubble or no - they soon went for it and now it is possible to see the 'everyman' with stubble.

Big American propaganda is in television shows like 24 and a new one by the same producers with the actor Tim Roth. These shows are new versions of our poster here. It must be important to know this. Watching these programs religiously will align your thinking and world outlook with the content. It's obvious.
Pluto
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Re: TV Propaganda

Post by Pluto »

I want to continue that having your thoughts aligned to emissions from the television might not necassarily be all bad - television as mind evolver - but it is still a good thing to know that it's happening.

On a related note - television programmes concerning holiday homes or permament homes abroad, i.e. not living in England, are suggesting you can and should move away. I first noticed it in London where there was a palpable feeling in the airwaves of 'get out.' So first you implant the idea of living in Spain for example and when you have a sizeable shift of populace in that direction then you deal with the remaining by suggesting a move to the country, i.e. outside London where it's green and beautiful - there is a program on tv right now suggesting this. I see these programs as government sponsored in some way - a form of population control through the televised box. Thinking about it - it would be stranger if those with power didn't use television to influence certain members of the populace.
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Rortabend
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Re: TV Propaganda

Post by Rortabend »

Pluto wrote:I want to continue that having your thoughts aligned to emissions from the television might not necassarily be all bad - television as mind evolver - but it is still a good thing to know that it's happening.

On a related note - television programmes concerning holiday homes or permament homes abroad, i.e. not living in England, are suggesting you can and should move away. I first noticed it in London where there was a palpable feeling in the airwaves of 'get out.' So first you implant the idea of living in Spain for example and when you have a sizeable shift of populace in that direction then you deal with the remaining by suggesting a move to the country, i.e. outside London where it's green and beautiful - there is a program on tv right now suggesting this. I see these programs as government sponsored in some way - a form of population control through the televised box. Thinking about it - it would be stranger if those with power didn't use television to influence certain members of the populace.
Surely a better explanation for the existence of such programmes is that, for most people, London is not a very pleasant place to live. Besides which, why would the government want people to move to Spain and/or to the British countryside?
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Re: TV Propaganda

Post by Pluto »

It doesn't matter where they go as long as they go - London is over-crowded. Television is in bed with government and is being used as distributer of policy. We think of tv as something of which it is not, it's more sinister, television is sinister to the martian who comes down. Programs, even seemingly harmless ones, are heavily loaded with poilitical and idelogical content. They go right into your living space and thus your minds. Once you've seen through it - it's impossible to watch anything passively again and this is sometimes a shame - thus ignorance is bliss.

Just to talk briefly about the power of propaganda advertising - I am just back from a trip to Prague, it's an interesting place but Mcdonalds burger houses are everywhere - I was there for 4 days and must have seen the red and yellow M about 55 times on the last day I had an urge to eat cheeseburgers and so went out and bought six.
Pluto
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Re: TV Propaganda

Post by Pluto »

The main thing is that the societies we live in - the ones following the western model of liberal democracy are running out of steam - been shown to be wanting and limited as genuinely enlightened systems and it's up to the next generations to see this and at least rebel in some way, and in a way it is coming. The death of any real meaningful vision of the future has been upturned, due to a lack of what that vision might be, into its reverse - no future or at least a future of conflict, hatred and doom, with a glimmer of hope - this is the message. So propaganda is holding the whole thing up. Our reality is not local but electronic global and that is what's talking to us right now - the power structures propaganda and we listen intently when we should tear ourselves away and begin to re-construct our own reality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYlyb1Bx9Ic" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
artisticsolution
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Re: TV Propaganda

Post by artisticsolution »

Hi Pluto,

Something Magnetman posted in the Islam thread reminded me of this video. LOL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvjgIxuV ... re=related" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Re: TV Propaganda

Post by Pluto »

http://www.met.police.uk/campaigns/coun ... /index.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Pluto
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Re: TV Propaganda

Post by Pluto »

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"Baz Luhrmann’s epic film Australia has been criticized by many, and most vociferously by Germaine Greer, for sanitizing the country’s colonial history. At the same time it has served the purpose of making Australia look like a great place to go on holiday – its release was accompanied by reams of coverage in the travel sections of newspapers and a lavish advertising campaign by the Australian tourist board. This kind of marketing is hardly new; throughout cinematic history, films have served political and social ends. But in order to understand the influences at play in Hollywood today it is still worth asking in more detail: what prompted 20th Century Fox to produce this kind of material? The answer becomes clearer when we learn that the studio’s parent company is Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which worked hand in hand throughout the film’s production with the Australian government. The arrangement works well for both parties: the government benefits from the increase in tourism and, in turn, Murdoch received tens of millions of dollars in tax rebates.


Baz Luhrmann’s Australia. This is just one example of how the content of Hollywood movies is determined not only by the demands of the box office and the vision of studio “creatives,” but also by those higher up the economic food chain. Indeed, in its cinema power list the Hollywood Reporter placed Rupert Murdoch at number one. Steven Spielberg, at number three, was the only director in the top ten.

The economic structure of the film industry is built around the dominant Hollywood studios (“the majors”), each of which is a subsidiary of a much larger corporation. Each studio is therefore not a separate or independent business, but rather just one of a great many sources of revenue in its parent company’s wider financial empire. So, just as 20th Century Fox is owned by News Corp, Paramount is a subsidiary of the media conglomerate Viacom. Universal is owned by General Electric/Vivendi, Disney by the Walt Disney Corporation and so on. These parent companies are huge corporations and their economic interests are sometimes closely tied to politicized areas, such as the armaments industry. They also depend on governments, which have the power to regulate in their favor and grant them tax breaks.


"Munich is more easily interpreted as a corporate-backed endorsement of Israeli policy."
Alford & Graham
This is not to say that the content of a studio’s films is determined entirely by the political and economic interests of its parent company; studio CEOs typically have considerable leeway to make the pictures they want to make, without any direct interference. But it is important to understand how and why Hollywood studios are tied into these wider corporate interests. At best, such interests contribute to a culture of deradicalized filmmaking. At worst, it is certainly not unknown for parent companies to take a conscious and deliberate interest in certain films.

To take one example: the Walt Disney Company tried to withhold Miramax’s Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), the Michael Moore blockbuster. Miramax insisted Disney had no right to block it from releasing the film since its budget was well below the level requiring Disney’s approval. Disney representatives responded that they could veto any Miramax film if it appeared that its distribution would be counterproductive to the interests of the company. Ari Emanuel, Moore’s agent, alleged that Disney’s boss Michael Eisner had told him he wanted to back out of the deal due to concerns about political fallout from conservative politicians, especially regarding tax breaks given to Disney properties, including Walt Disney World in Florida (Florida’s governor was the then-president’s brother, Jeb Bush). Disney denied any such high political ball game, explaining that they were worried about being “dragged into a highly charged partisan political battle” and alienating customers.

When Disney released Pearl Harbor – a simplistic mega-budget movie, which celebrated the American nationalist resurgence following that “day of infamy” – it received lamentable reviews. Nevertheless, Disney unexpectedly decided in August 2001 to extend the film’s nationwide release window from the standard two to four months to seven months, meaning that this “summer” blockbuster would be screening until December. In addition, Disney expanded the number of theaters in which the film was showing from 116 to 1,036.

While such fare finds an easy route into the world’s multiplexes, more politically challenging films are left to flounder for funding. Oliver Stone’s Salvador (1986) was a graphic exposé of the Salvadoran civil war; its narrative was broadly sympathetic toward the left wing peasant revolutionaries and explicitly critical of US foreign policy, condemning the United States’ support of Salvador’s right wing military and infamous death squads. Stone’s film was turned down by every major Hollywood studio, and was eventually financed by British and Mexican investors. More recently, controversial documentaries such as Loose Change, which argued that 9/11 was an “inside job,” and Zeitgeist, which presents a frightening picture of global economics, have been viewed by millions through the Internet when corporate media wouldn’t touch them.


GE/Universal’s United 93. GE/Universal’s United 93 was billed as the “true account” of how heroic passengers on the plane “foiled the terrorist plot” by forcing it to crash prematurely in rural Pennsylvania. At the time, Bush’s official 9/11 story was being seriously questioned by America’s independent news media; according to the results of a 2004 Zogby poll, half of New Yorkers believed “US leaders had foreknowledge of impending 9/11 attacks and ‘consciously failed’ to act”; and just one month prior to the release of United 93, 83 percent of CNN viewers confirmed their belief “that the US government covered up the real events of the 9/11 attacks.” With the official narrative under attack, the US government welcomed the release of United 93 with open arms: the film was a faithful audiovisual translation of the 9/11 Commission Report, with “special thanks” to the Pentagon’s Hollywood liaison Phil Strub tucked away discreetly in the end credits. Soon after the film’s nationwide release date, in what might be interpreted as a cynical PR move and as a gesture of official approval, President Bush sat down with some of the victims’ family members for a private screening at the White House.

Munich, Steven Spielberg’s exploration of Israeli vengeance following the Palestinian terrorist attack at the 1972 Olympics, could also be understood to reflect the interests of General Electric. Israel is one of GE’s most loyal customers, buying Hellfire II laser missiles as well as propulsion systems for the F-16 Falcon fighter, the F-4 Phantom fighter, the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter and the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. Spielberg ends his film with a lingering shot of the World Trade Center, its twin towers standing as monolithic reminders of “why we fight,” and casting a shadow over the 167 minutes of running time. Meanwhile, the voice of the Palestinian cause is restricted to just two and a half minutes of dialogue. Far from being an “even-handed cry for peace,” as one critic claimed, Munich is more easily interpreted as a corporate-backed endorsement of Israeli policy.

To understand what might happen if big business interests were less prevalent in the film industry, consider the independent distributor Lions Gate Films. Lions Gate was formed in Canada by an investment banker, but is not beholden to a multi-billion dollar parent corporation with multifarious interests. The result has been some of the most daring and original popular political cinema of the past ten years: American Psycho, which criticized corporate capitalism; Hotel Rwanda, which highlighted the failings of US foreign policy and Lord of War, which focused on the arms trade.

As we peer up from our popcorn, it is worth remembering that behind the magic of the movies lurks the darker power of corporate public relations"

Matthew Alford is the author of the forthcoming Projecting Power: American Foreign Policy and the Hollywood Propaganda System.
ambok
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Re: TV Propaganda

Post by ambok »

Television is in bed with government and is being used as distributer of policy. We think of tv as something of which it is not, it's more sinister, television is sinister to the martian who comes down. Programs, even seemingly harmless ones, are heavily loaded with poilitical and idelogical content.
Pluto
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Re: TV Propaganda

Post by Pluto »

The above still stands up. Entertainment as government policy, indoctrination in the comfort of your own living room, the culture is propaganda.

This is something else similar: http://www.medialens.org/alerts/10/1010 ... onised.php
bus2bondi
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Re: TV Propaganda

Post by bus2bondi »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCPEBM5o ... re=related

does anyone like what this family is doing? i like it. i don't think its a full solution for everyone and everything. but i like their style.
mickthinks
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Re: TV Propaganda

Post by mickthinks »

I've just signed this AVAAZ petition campaining against Murdoch's moves to tighten his grip on the British media:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/bkyb_decision_time/?copy

:) And I though you all might like to do the same.
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