All The Wrong Questions: An Exploration of Propaganda in Today’s America

Ty Gorton (2009)

Hollywood is selling us a reality in which humans lose. This is no accident.

Prologue: I have been waging an internal war (often externalized via activism and artistic endeavors) against my culture since childhood. For me, there has always been a disconnect between the way humanity could or should be and the way it is, which is nothing new. Most people feel something similar for at least short periods in their lives, and this disconnect has been a dominant topic of philosophy since its birth. As for myself, the discrepancy between what is/what could be presents a daily struggle, one that is sometimes little more than an annoying whisper, and at other times, it can become a paralyzing depression. Over recent years, my mind has locked onto certain ideas that may or may not be truth, and this essay is an attempt to communicate those ideas as succinctly as possible, leveraging current events and the tide of pop culture.

When an American looks out their window upon the political/social landscape, there can be no doubt that the dream, even if it was always something of a farce sold via propaganda, has become a nightmare inflicting global damage. Our government “of the people” wages an endless war on terror with new regions being added to the conflict list at an alarming rate. Health care reform promised as a savior for all, regardless of economic status, has netted nothing more than a massive pay day for pharmaceutical companies. Despite being the self proclaimed police of the world, the U.S. proves itself unwilling to pass meaningful environmental laws that would sincerely serve and protect humanity. Despite being the self proclaimed champions of morality, the U.S. continues to break international human rights laws and take archaic stances regarding methods and weapons of war (i.e. Obama’s recent refusal to sign the international antipersonnel landmine ban). Throw in unchecked lobbying by corporations to sway all odds in their favor, rising unemployment, a house of cards economic reality, and what Americans are left with is an undeniable sense that whoever was guarding the light at the end of the tunnel has abandoned post, probably in favor of a yacht and a mansion located anywhere but on U.S. soil.

Every day I wake to a world clamoring for answers. The impassioned arguments for change make sense on both a logical and emotional front. Every day I go to bed seeing those hopes for change not only unfulfilled, but beaten into bloody submission…and the march toward eminent disaster steamrolls ahead.

So it occurs to me that things are going exactly as planned. It occurs to me that, like cows to the slaughter, we’re never asking the right questions. We’ve been educated to cry out against the slaughterhouse itself rather than the people fueling it, operating it, and profiting from its violence. We have been so thoroughly programmed to believe in the power of democracy (in its intentional state of impotence) that we rail against its bloated fusion with Capitalism rather than those holding the reigns that guide us, after all, our leaders are mere servants to a system we’ve all agreed upon.

This has not been a sudden awakening, but more a painful process of denial and acceptance. When presented with a problem, it is predominately the simple solution that proves correct. Why is it, despite an overwhelming disapproval from both Americans and the larger world, that the United States has plotted a course into the heart of war, environmental destruction, and economic collapse? The simple answer: Because that is the agenda of those in the power seats.

In order to illustrate this point, I am going to turn to an unlikely microcosm: Hollywood. The American film industry during the World War II era is one that bares almost no resemblance to the entertainment goliath today. In the 1940’s, several government offices were created to oversee Hollywood, among them were the Office of the Coordinator of Government Film and the Office of War Information charged with the oversight of all government press and information services, including motion pictures. Hollywood worked hand in hand with the U.S. government to keep Americans motivated toward victory during war time. The level of propaganda produced was unprecedented.

A good question is, where is that relationship today? Times change. Agendas change. The sophistication of the masses has shifted dramatically, to the point where direct and simplistic propaganda not only doesn’t work, it offends. I gained first hand awareness of this at a recent screening for

Avatar, James Cameron’s new Sci-Fi epic (which we’ll be delving into at length). During the previews for upcoming films, there was a commercial for The United States National Guard. It was a good five minutes of imagery, driving music, and narration meant to win our enthusiasm for soldiering…and one can only guess at the cost of this bloated bit of hokey iconography. Sitting next to me was an older gentleman, maybe mid fifties. Despite the twenty year age gap, we looked at each other and joked that the only thing this militant fantasy did was convince us it would be best to leave the country. Not the desired effect, I’m guessing, and it lends incredible insight into the altered nature of propaganda in the age of information.

When we look at the American film landscape now, the overall picture being painted is so far removed from sixty years ago there can be almost no common ground. However, this does not mean the masses are not being manipulated by propaganda. The fact is, propaganda has shape shifted from an obvious, clumsy giant into subversive stealth bombs that go off non-stop, night and day. Throughout human history, the tribulation of every empire has been keeping its masses under control to maximize profit and minimize confrontation. Thanks to psychological pioneers like Edward Bernays, the American population was transformed from production obsessed workers into “Happy Consumer Machines” (a term coined by Bernays himself) in less than fifty years. It was his belief, along with his cousin Sigmund Freud, that the masses were a dangerous beast prone to irrational actions motivated by base desires. A means of controlling this threat, of making the beast docile, was to distract it with consumerism… convincing it that all desires (rational or not) could be appeased by simply buying more product. This approach has been frighteningly successful, but has also created a new, arguably more menacing, threat.

Now that we truly are machines devoted to consumption, what are we being sold, exactly?

In very recent years, there have been an unending string of apocalyptic films birthed by Hollywood. To name a few: I Am Legend, The Road, The Book of Eli, WALL-E, Pandorum, 2012, 28 Days Later, Zombieland, The Day After Tomorrow, Children of Men, War of the Worlds, Terminator, Reign of Fire, 12 Monkeys…the list could go on and on, and this does not include films using the “end of the world” as mere backdrops for other plots, humorous or otherwise. When you compare the tone of these films with the victory obsessed tone of films fifty years ago, what can we learn about modern propaganda? What are we being sold? How are we being made to feel about our world and ourselves?

Propaganda is all about creating expectation based behavior. If we do this, we can expect that result. The difference I experience at a core level with today’s Hollywood offerings is the total lack of suggestive behavior shifts. Instead of “do this, expect that” I tend to only experience the latter portion, “expect that”. These films feel preparatory, whether they approach it seriously or tongue in cheek, there is little mention of altering current social behavior, only a depiction of the end result, the coming human calamity and how we might exist in the new reality of a ravaged planet.

What tends to concern me most is the clear contradiction of ideologies being displayed by corporate entities. To flesh this out, I am going to use the blockbuster Avatar now in theatres, which is on track to be the most successful film of its kind…maybe of any kind, ever. As of this essay, it has already accumulated $650 million in worldwide box office, after a mere two weeks in theaters, and I have no doubt it will quickly pass $1 billion and eventually challenge Cameron’s reigning goliath, Titanic.

What does Avatar have to do with propaganda? Isn’t it entertainment for entertainment’s sake? To answer this, we have to analyze the complexity of today’s propaganda mechanisms, which are different than anything in recorded human history. Is it possible that today’s artists are often unwitting participants in a very precise propaganda machine? I believe this is exactly what is happening. The best way to win any war is to convince your enemy to fight for you under the guise of free will. As the famous quote goes, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist,” originally penned by Charles Baudelaire but more recently popularized by the film The Usual Suspects. The most impactful propaganda is of a variety that poses as something else; this disarms us, lowers our emotional defenses, and allows the ideas to imprint on a deeper level. Whenever an individual believes they are being manipulated, the walls go up, alarms sound, and a defensive stance is adopted. Remove the threat of manipulation, and those defenses all but vanish. Enter modern day Hollywood, the most evocative form of propaganda machine, one that can successfully plead innocence.

Back to Avatar. There is evidence to support it is the most expensive film ever made with a final budget somewhere over $300 million. Who is responsible? Fox Studios. Why should this be of interest? Whether you are on the extreme right or left politically, or somewhere in the middle, nobody can deny the corporate bias of Fox News. They have made it their mission to discredit environmental concerns, support the war effort, and lift Capitalism by its bootstraps whenever possible. It is irrelevant to this essay whether this approach to news is right or wrong. What is relevant is that the entity of Fox goes out of its way to support corporatism on all levels. So how is it that such a company has a desire to foot the bill for what I consider to be one of the most effective anti-corporate films of all time?

(It is not my desire to ruin the film for those who have not experience it though there will be spoilers beyond this point.)

In a nutshell, the film focuses on the greed fueled corporate threat of an ecologically stunning and culturally rich alien planet (sound familiar?).

The unique thing about Avatar is that it refuses to pander to the idea of the greater human nobility. Are there human heroes? Yes and no. Avatar blurs a bit on this issue due to the nature of the film’s construct in which human beings “link” to avatars, which are not human but alien bodies their consciousness inhabits via technology. Ultimately, the reality offered by Avatar is that humanity is a failed enterprise lost to profit margins and unable to connect with the more relevant aspects of awareness. In the film, the humans lose in a very real sense while the alien race triumphs, and as viewers, we’re damn pleased with this result. This is something that must be marveled at. The humans lose, and audiences are happy for it. Cameron waited twelve years for film technology to make his epic possible, but I propose that it was not merely technology that had to catch up to his vision, but the very mental state of humanity. In essence, over the last decade, we’ve been psychologically prepared to cheer Avatar’s end result in which the humans go home with their tails between their legs and the aliens claim victory.

I propose that modern propaganda is directly preparatory rather than directly behaviorally manipulative. The end result is the same, our behavior is impacted, but the approach is crucially different and much more difficult to spot as propaganda. It is the difference between “Do this for that result” and “This is what is going to happen”. Both cause reactions, but one is clearly attempting to direct us while the other is merely showing us a reality and allowing us to determine an emotional response. The question is, then, is there a clear preparatory objective being carried out via Hollywood with an intended emotional response of the masses? Given what we know of human history and the manipulative nature of all governments, how can we believe anything less? Do we truly sit in our homes and believe all of this is coincidental, that the power players have suddenly decided, in a time of unprecedented information production, to simply “let the currents flow where they wish” without any attempts at manipulation? The absurdity of that notion can only be equaled by the evidence against it.

Fox Studios, a clear champion of corporate rights, has funded one of the most anti-corporate films of all time to the tune of $300 million. Why? From my perspective, there can be only two reasons for this, one decidedly less sinister than the other, but both alarming. One, corporations are so convinced that Americans are incapable of action against their government that they are willing to fund anti-government entertainment simply to turn a profit. Second, there is a clear manipulative objective desired by the recent string of extreme Hollywood despotism . In truth, these are not mutually exclusive. More than likely, both are true. On one hand, if those who can afford to produce a $300 million movie actually believed it could inspire an uprising against uncontrolled profiteering, they wouldn’t fund it. On the other hand, since when do people with $300 million to invest in something want anything less than to manipulate the masses to extend their dominance? The two go hand in hand. The existence of a film like Avatar proves that those holding all the cards believe we are both impotent and pliable.

It is my theory that in order to maintain a blind obedience to consumerism in the face of irrefutable evidence that it is in fact destroying us, a sense that our fate is inevitable must be propagated. In other words, if the world is going to “end” anyway, why shouldn’t we enjoy ourselves and indulge in the material pleasures offered by consumerism? The whole thing is destined for a plume of fiery smoke, disease, starvation, or some other calamity...therefore, buy as much pleasure as possible while it’s still on the market.

Capitalism was always a limited time offer. Perpetual growth in any structure defined by finite resources is a scientific impossibility. There can be no argument on this point. Limited resources can mean nothing but a necessity to limit their use…something a corporate fueled reality is doing all it can to either obscure or translate into an acceptable demise. In the last decade, it is my perception that it has become increasingly more difficult (due to increased access to information) for Capitalism to hide the contradiction of perpetual growth versus limited resources, so it has shifted aggressively to the task of convincing the masses that our doom is unavoidable. A resigned population is just as easy to control as a population motivated toward a specific cause, perhaps more so. If we accept that the end of the world is bound to happen, this has a profound impact on how we approach our daily activity. We become callus, indifferent, defeated, prone to depression and most definitely hungry for any kind of distraction we can get our hands on. Buying distraction is the corporate motto of our day.

The very fact that Avatar pulls at me emotionally at all the right places, that I love the film not only as an experience but also for its message, is utterly perplexing. That it was made possible by the same corporate structure I have grown to despair is almost more than I can absorb.

We are constantly asking the wrong questions. While we shout from the mountaintops, “Why don’t you fix these terrible things?” we should be asking, “Why do you want things this way?” Those we look to with hope that they fix the deeply disturbing problems of our time are the very same who have carved this reality with intention via manipulation and sheer force. We must, at this stage, recognize that the trajectory humanity is currently on is not accidental but the result of a game as old as human beings, the game of control with the direct goal of preserving wealth and power for a select few. This fight has always been global; the concept of borders, of countries, is another method of control…as those in power trade loyalties whenever beneficial. This is not an American dilemma but a human one.

Why do I deal with daily depression and apathy? Because I’ve bought what is being sold. As Avatar so brilliantly portrays, I believe human beings should lose and lose big. Our demise is inevitable. The irony is, due to my near social paralyzation brought about by my desire to escape feeding the Capitalistic mechanism that has brought us to this point, I am virtually incapable of economic success. Words from me and people like me, those who exist in virtual poverty, will not be heard with any amount of credibility as the masses have been well conditioned to accept insights only when offered with the veneer of success (loosely translated as wealth).

So, please distract me from my defeat, please sell me something, anything, that will ease this hurt of knowing we are doomed. In the end, I am nothing less than what my corporate tooled government wants me to be, a depressed collection of desires temporarily appeased by product that I must buy, and buy, and buy again. I am that “Happy Little Consumer Machine” Bernays set out to help create…the only problem is, there is decidedly less happiness than promised.

We are the byproduct of the most complex propaganda ever conceived. We are the manipulated masses beneath a very deliberate thumb, waffled into the comedy of willing submission. We are the brunt of a joke. So who is laughing? Who laughs? Are you laughing? Are we laughing together? Or has laughter become a collective death sob for our hope in democracy?