Let’s have none of that rubbish about telling our own stories. With the announcement that the Federal Government was going to invest $4.1 million to make a telemovie designed to deter asylum seekers from coming to Australia by boat, the Abbott Government put out of joint the noses of many Australian directors and producers who’ve never got within coo-ee of that much money. What's more, the move acts as a very big 'tell' about the government's willingness to use cultural tools to advance its border protection policies.
But in the interim, the question is: Will Sydney-based Put It Out There Pictures, who landed the gig, be able to create good enough propaganda that will be Australia’s answer to Leni Riefenstahl or Kim Jong Il? Or is the propaganda telemovie going to resemble a well-funded corporate film about OH&S in the workplace? In order to help the crew at Put It Out There Pictures get it right, let’s take an irreverent (or improper) gander at some key elements of successful ‘films of influence’ of the past that might just prove helpful to make their work a success.
Flags, flags and lots of them
The Nazis certainly knew how to stage a parade – and Leni Riefenstahl sure knew how to shoot it for the screen. It is a great shame that the most famous female director was a fascist (but then again how many directors aren’t?), but the fact is, Riefenstahl’s superbly edited German propaganda film Triumph of the Will remains provocative, 70 years on. It’s that potent and still that dangerous (hence why Triumph of the Will is still banned in Germany). But all of those uniformed hordes goose-stepping in strict formation can resemble robots unless at least some of them are carrying flags. The flag should get at least one close up. This is something Hollywood understands and has been doing forever, turning even the most innocuous films (like women’s baseball picture A League of Their Own) into a metaphor for the American way of life. And if you want to scare the locals, make sure you have an image of their own flag burning.
Source: Triumph of the Will
Rousing songs
As any karaoke fan knows, there’s nothing like a good sing-a-long, and music is as good a way as any to bond people together. Michael Curtiz used it to good effect in an Errol Flynn Western, Dodge City, where rival cowboy factions try to out-sing each other with their fave songs. Amply demonstrating that it’s not just technique, but knowing when and how to use it, Curtiz used this trick again in one of the most fondly remembered propaganda pictures ever: Casablanca. The scene takes place in Rick’s Café American when the Nazis have just commandeered the band to play ‘Die Wacht am Rhein’. The anti-Vichy French start to sing ‘La Marsieillaise’ (‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ wasn’t an option because the US was not yet involved in WWII during the film’s production), but are being drowned out when Bogart gives the nod to the house band to throw their weight behind the French song.
It’s an early foreshadowing that Rick will get behind the Czech resistance fighter Victor Laszlo and give up his love for Ingrid Bergman for the greater good of the Allied forces. Of course, since it worked in the apolitical Dodge City, it can work anywhere.
While one song is good, the practical applications of Communism demonstrate that more songs are better. Whether it be Joseph Stalin’s favourite ‘Volga Volga,’ which had joyful peasants singing out as they cultivated the harvest, or East Germany’s hit ‘My Wife Wants to Sing,’ these musicals indicated that propaganda can be fun. Naturally, this seems absurd, but it’s not all that different to Snow White endorsing the Protestant Work Ethic by warbling ‘Whistle While You Work,’ or Doris Day in The Pajama Game belting out the pro-union chorus of ‘7 and a Half Cents’.
Use of songs in propaganda is particularly effective if combined with the flags. The Hindi film Pardes uses flags and national colours as back up to all that rousing music in the rousing hymn to the subcontinent: ‘I Love My India’. While Pardes is not a propaganda film as such, this dance sequence will suffice if it ever wants to incite the nation.
No moral ambiguity
In the heart of the renewed cold war of the 1980s, Sylvester Stallone took his 'man against the odds' formula to the political level with Rocky IV. While the Italian Stallion was in the corner of truth, justice and the American way, Dolph Lundgren (Swedish, not Russian) was in the Red corner playing a murderous fighting Russian machine. (If you are to going to represent the enemy, generally you have to fake it – and rely on the uniformed prejudices of your audience.) Stars and Stripes Vs. Hammer and Sicle is just white hats and black hats, as the battle between Good and Evil is boiled down to its most basic form. It's a battle of binaries: Us and Them, Win or Lose, with a tangible finish.
If you can’t quite wrap your head around the idea of what it is like to be on the other side of this type of tosh (as writers/directors are skilled at working around your natural human empathy), then try watching Ip Man 2 with a Mainland Chinese audience. Featuring Donnie Yen in a story about Bruce Lee’s martial arts mentor, this employs the Rocky IV formula by climaxing with the Ip man beating the hell out of a monstrous caricature of a musclebound Englishman, and with the Union Jack in tatters. (Ip Man 2 is available to watch now at SBS On Demand.)
Source: Ip Man 2
Deification
Hitler’s face might emerge from the clouds in Triumph of the Will, but more often it is the refusal to portray the revered leader’s face that is the most effective form of deifying one’s leader. It’s a hand-me-down of that English feudal idea that the King is God’s representative and in a sense that any attempt to represent that revered visage would be blasphemy (hence lampooning propaganda degrades that which the 'enemies' hold sacred). In some contexts it’s actually illegal for US films to use a President’s image for ‘commercial’ purposes, while in American films prior to the 1960s the President had to be dead to be represented on screen. (Think Lincoln in Birth of a Nation etc.) So in films like Yankee Doodle Dandy (Michael Curtiz again), when James Cagney playing patriotic WWI composer George M. Cohan gets an audience with Franklin D. Roosevelt, the President is played by an alleged lookalike, but even then, Warner Brothers filmed him from the back!
The North Koreans have got this no-show deification down to a ‘T’. It is quite rare for North Korean movies to show the face of the leader and more often the DPRK’s founder was presented in the same off-screen reverence shown to FDR in Yankee Doodle Dandy. With years of propaganda linking Kim Il Sung to the sun, in Shin Sang-ok’s Hong Kil Dong, the hero and his lover only had to sail a raft under the warm benevolence of a glowing sunset for the locals to get the picture. There was one North Korean actor who did play Kim Il Sung on screen, and rumour has it that the actor was given plastic surgery to enhance his performance and was not allowed to play anyone else.
Don't believe that deification works? Just look at what happened to Prime Minister Gough Whitlam when he was manipulated by right-wing satirist Barry Humphries to appear as himself and say the magical words “arise Dame Edna” in Barry McKenzie Holds His Own. The ALP spiraled out of control within a matter of months. (Pfft. And you thought it was Sir John Kerr and/or the CIA.)
Trudi-Ann Tierney of Put It Out There Pictures was paraphrased by ABC’s Lateline as saying she believed the messages embedded in her previous work, like the Afghan-shot, Kabul US Embassy-funded Eagle Four, were “positive and designed to improve Afghan lives through promoting greater gender equality and anti-drug and anti-extremist behaviour”. Even more reassuring is her quoted claim that the Australian Government-funded asylum seeker movie will be about "people, not politics".
'People Not Politics' is a handy Orwellian three-word slogan right up there with other Nineteen Eighty-Four classics like “Freedom is Slavery”, “War is Peace” and “Ignorance Is Strength”. Looks like Put It Out There Pictures may have the situation under control without our help after all.
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