Captain America is a weird one to include. Not denying it’s probaganda, everything is, but throwing Cap in with copaganda is such a serface level take. He’s probaganda for American exceptionalism sure, but also embodies it in an old school New Deal way. The character has been consistently anti-facist over the years.
Imo Iron Man is the much more harmful propaganda. You can pretty much draw a direct line between the characters rise in popularity thanks to the MCU and the rise of Elon Musk.
I think part of it’s that not all propaganda is bad.
There’s probably a term for it, but I’d draw a distinction between “opinion” propaganda and “aspirational” propaganda.
One tries to change your opinion of something, like “cops are good noble and always do the right thing”.
The other encourages the viewer to live up to some ideal. It’s entirely possible for that ideal to also not be great, but even then “I should be” is better than “they are”.A lot of PSAs and things from the ad council fall in the later category. Like the billboards that basically say “real men are present and emotionally available fathers to their children” or "good parents teach their kids healthy diet and exercise by example”.
They’re openly cases of the government trying to change public opinions or attitudes (which arguably makes them better examples of propaganda than a lot of commercial television), but they don’t feel as objectionable.“This honest and kind man who always tries to do good and help those around him to the point that it overshadows him being a physically perfect human is the embodiment of the emblematic American man” is more in that aspirational category.
“Propaganda” comes from “propagate”, so the word inherently isn’t bad. The suffix “anda” basically means “thing of”, so in a literal sense, “propaganda” is any “object of propagation”, although this reading of etymology isn’t widely circulated.
Propaganda is thus inherently a very all-encompassing term. Any poster, flyer or brochure is propaganda, whether it advertizes a product, service, lost cat, or wants you to join the army. Anything “mass media” is propaganda. Anything spreading “a message” that is meant for wider propagation, regardless of the message content is propaganda.
At least that’s according to my rudimentary knowledge of high school latin. There’s the more “mainstream”, “official” etymology on Wiktionary: the word was first used in the name of an old Catholic Church department from Latin times for “spreading the faith”, so that’s where the more loaded use and connotation comes from. However, I doubt that this department name is the first ever use of the ablative feminine gerund form of the verb propagate. That’s like saying the first use of the term “World health” is in the name Wirld Health Orgsnization. If anything, someone had to discuss the name beforehand.
So, there’s this Overton window-esque aspect to the word.
Wikipedia has a good overview of propaganda, although it is itself loaded onto the “must be loaded (i.e. what you called ‘bad’ propaganda)” definition of propaganda. And they like usibn the word “loaded” a lot.
Elon was literally in 2 at the Grand Prix
The character has been consistently anti-facist over the years.
What was he doing during the Cold War?
People kept calling Musk – Stark because they thought he was a scientist/genius. Like the MCU fake tech was gonna be birthed out of this immature edge lord that steals people’s idea with stolen money.
Yeah I kinda disagree with Cap as well. He also explicitly refutes the government to stand up what he believes is right in Civil War too.
He’s propaganda for American exceptionalism sure, but also embodies it in an old school New Deal way. The character has been consistently anti-facist over the years.
Pretending that America isn’t only already fascist, but inspired the fascists they are supposedly against is American exceptionalism, and you’re eating it right up.
Any superhero movie is problematic. They all say that only a few special people can save the country and the world. The rest of the population just has to hold tight and let the important people do their thing. It’s just a small step by replacing powers with wealth to give the rich carte blanche to do as they please.
I wonder if that’s a limit of storytelling. Grand social change is hard to film. Even team effort cohesion requires a lot of actors and writing to pull off.
No matter how sound the morals and story, if it’s not entertaining, it might fail as mass media.
A little bit of that, a little bit of plain ol power fantasy.
It’s deeper than that. It’s about defense of the Status Quo. No superhero looks around at the parts of society that we just accept without thinking about and says this needs to change.
And much of the crime fighting is blue collar crime. On general the superheroes don’t touch white collar criminals.
Not to mention that a lot of those special people are born better
Thanks for putting this into words. I’ve had a vague discontent and disgruntlement with superhero crap for a long time. While this isn’t the only reason I dislike superhero movies, this is a big part of it.
I do still like The Punisher movie with Jain, Dredd, The Crow, and a few others. Antiheros in general. They’re also more human and not as one dimensional.
Not those scenes in Spider-Man where New York throws random objects at the villain until they relent. Hell yeah solidarity.
Ghostbusters II the Ghostbusters would have failed if it wasn’t for New Yorkers spreading positive vibes.
Oh I agree completely. There is a fascist aspect inherent to Superheroes. Cap is just one lf the less egregious ones.
He’s still p/aying world police.
I mean, I’ve definitely seen Cap used to represent the Ugly American in comics, especially during that period post-9/11.
He’s definitely not fully anti-fascist coded, because he represents the US, and the US while ostensibly being democratic, is in many ways deeply fascist and always has been. Hitler was inspired by our Jim Crow laws.
There’s some smart people who understand that America never actually stood for any of that stuff and they write Cap to be the same.
Is that Ultimate Cap or 616 Cap? Ultimate Cap was an asshole – even that universe’s Aunt May called him out on his BS after Peter died.
I’m not a big Marvel fan, I just know I’ve seen lots of examples. Makes sense that they would be alternate universe Caps, tho. That’s a great way to be able to write the character and show the dark side of US politics without necessarily marring the original character himself. However, to outsiders, there’s not really a difference between the two, because they’re not deep in nerd lore.
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Bro went thermonuclear with this take
Found Red Skulls account
Works so well 💀
Kind of what the whole thing in civil war was. Tony was looking to absolve his guilt over the people they failed to save while looking for more and more authoritarian methods of keeping the world “safe”.
Cap was much more for freedom and while the idea that the avengers should have absolutely no oversight is absurd, the question of who should be the oversight was important and much of what the avengers did could not wait on a committee to decide to act (also, the last time a committee did act they decided to nuke New York)
Yep. If cops had the ethics / morals of cap we’d have zero issues with the police.
Where does stuff like Brooklyn 99 come in?
I tend to lump it in with The West Wing as idealistic wish fulfilment of how we’d like things to be, or a picture of our human potential.
thats how all these should be seen as, boggles my mind people cant enjoy something fictional because it isnt 100% accurate to real life. like batman, “oh no billionaire would ever be the good guy” yeah okay thats why batman isnt a real guy 😂
Sometimes the “realism” critique is certainly pedantic and unproductive, but other times what’s really meant is contradiction. Situations should make sense within the fictional world. And in the fictional world of DC, norms around politics and economics are portrayed to be analogous to western neoliberalism with capitalism assumed and unquestioned. So with the Wayne family being a relatively well-regarded billionaire family like the Gates or the Buffets, there is still the issue that it is clear under the current system and that portrayed in DC universe that such wealth cannot be accumulated and sustained without massive exploitation of working class people somewhere along the line. So billionaire + “good guy” starts to become more of a glaring contradiction even in DC. But sure, we can explain it away as fiction with magically ethical capitalists. The interesting thing about the billionaire Wayne discussion though, is when people apply this fictional view of capitalism to how they interpret the real world. And now we’re back to propaganda.
What I would say that sets West Wing and B99 apart is sometimes there’s a tonal difference or way in which certain themes are handled/portrayed that signals to the viewer that the writers acknowledge this isn’t what real life is like but we hope one day we can get there. And it’s a spectrum right. Some do this to varying degrees, other more propagandistic media do not.
We’re all about “let people enjoy what they want” until someone says they enjoy something besides your favorite media
Fetish content
ACAB sorry man
25 years ago I noticed the trend in the movies in the theater, and realized the USA was becoming fascist. I was sad, but surprised later at how long it took. I rather thought it would be faster and more dramatic, and not this creeping sorry mediocrity seen later in politics
Copaganda
Crazy how much of this stuff is subsidized by or directly financed by the national security state. The most infamous, in my memory anyway, was the Transformers Franchise which got enormous access to US military staff and equipment during the shooting. The end result was a movie that felt more like one of those hookey 80s “Join the Marines” ads than a piece of action cinema.
At least the newer Transformers films are better in that regard, with the latest film not having anything to do with it. Then again I heard they are doing a Transformers x GI Joe film.
Double Woof.
But yes, a lot of this just comes down to who will pay to finance the film. If Raytheon or the US Marines is willing to pick up a big chunk of the production costs, you’re going to keep seeing them in the producer credits and “Special Thanks To” sections.
I kinda get it though…it’s not like these armed forces are producing the movie themselves.
The studio wants to make a movie about/involving these entities. They want it to be as realistic as possible and the entity itself has the authority to give them access that it could also deny.
If you’re in charge of, say, the Marines PR department, you’re constantly trying to make the Corps look good and boost recruitment. If you can do this for next to nothing against your budget by granting access to a studio making a film that will give you essentially free PR, that’s a great move. The bigger the movies potential, the more the entity in question is motivated to support it.
On the other hand, if the film is going to make your organization look bad, no PR person with a functioning brain is going to help that project in any way.
Idunno, I feel like these organizations do enough actually bad things, that I don’t feel the urge to crucify them for cultivating image and working to generate positive PR.
The studio wants to make a movie about/involving these entities.
Studios want cheap special effects budgets and the MIC wants cheap labor. So you get what amounts to a promotional video for branches of the service, paid for out of the operating budgets of these agencies.
Idunno, I feel like these organizations do enough actually bad things, that I don’t feel the urge to crucify them for cultivating image and working to generate positive PR.
I think a big part of the “doing bad things” process is facilitated by whitewashing our activities in Kandahar or Fallujah with “We’re just cool dudes fighting big monsters” action movie propaganda. Is Transformers as egregious as Rambo II or American Sniper? Not strictly. But its geared towards a younger audience, so it can’t do the same kind of blood-drenched jingoism in that way.
I would consider gulling 12-year-olds into aspiring to become conscript killers for the oil & gas industry overseas pretty fucking bad, though.
Legally, access to government resources shouldn’t depend on how you portray the government
Legally it’s totally okay, actually.
I know this is all very unpopular opinion here on Lemmy, but it’s fact.
Needs NCIS
Is it any wonder I tend to gravitate to video games where the main character is stranded alone somewhere. Subnautica, Satisfactory, Factorio, Antichamber…
I would say we peaked copaganda when Sonic 3 had the GUN general guy be a good guy. GUN was never Sonic’s friend. They didnt even play City Escape in that movie. 5/10.
True, but GUN in general is just shown as a really incompetent group. The weird general could have been the only one preventing them from going full antagonist against sonic.
You can enjoy TV shows and movies while knowing ACAB is the truth.
Really depends. Cops shows are really off putting to me. Marvel is kinda OK; not a fan, but it’s so over the top that I can abstract from the propaganda.
thats where it gets ya if you are not keen eyed for their tricks
ACAB is false though? At least it’s a one-dimensional analysis of reality.
At least it’s a one-dimensional analysis of reality.
This is a non thought. Meaningless drivel.
Even if you know it, they still worm their way into your head as surely as Barry Manilow’s TV commercial jingles.
For me now I think of it like a marvel movie.
This cop not shooting anyone is just like a man with superpowers swinging through the city on sci fi ropes.
It’s nice to imagine.
“Which propaganda?”
“Exactly what I’m talking about!”I like the myth of the police, not actual cops, I like Simon Pegg in Hot Fuzz, actual cops can suck a nard
For the greater good!
The greater good.
Stop saying that!
When’s your birthday?
I “love” when a show like Law and Order has a scene where the cops go to arrest somebody who is later proven to be innocent, and it’s always at their workplace, or a busy family function, or a restaurant. The cops proceed to loudly accuse the person of the heinous crime right in front of their friends/family/neighbors/coworkers.
Then later on, the actual perp is arrested and no mention is made again of the innocent person they practically eviscerated in public or front of their loved ones.
It’s like these shows exist to subliminally train people to passively accept cops treating them like shit.
They shouldn’t have just been living their lives like that.
The nerve of these people
Everything is propaganda if it changes your view of something
Pretty much spot on, though that is the exact point of these kinds of shows.
It was part of a wave of shows launched to counter the media perception of incompetence in law enforcement/prosecution. They pushed a bunch of dangerously misleading (or even outright fake) claims such as the reliability and accuracy of forensic evidence which has been later used in actual court cases to imprison innocent people.
As always, Citations needed has done a brilliant job on this kind of stuff that’s worth a listen.
I knew it, glasses are propaganda
That’s too much of a generalization. Propaganda is far more specific.
Doesn’t even need to change your mind.
stopped watching western television a long time ago, mostly watched asian television nowadays
Could you recommend some good shows and movies?
The Battle at Lake Changjin (2021) Wolf Warrior 2 (2017) Hi, Mom (2021) Fallen angels by Wong kar wai
Thank you
Literal propaganda movies?
Ahahaha fucking hell and youse say the westerns are brainwashed.
SVU gets a pass for being AWESOME
