The Hollywood Propaganda of World War II by Robert Fyne, Book Review Example

Robert Fyne (Ph.D., New York University), the author of “The Hollywood Propaganda of World War II”, raises an extremely curious subject, providing intriguing and rather important information about Hollywood’s part in determining the American Home Front customs, social behavior, and moral values. This book is a source of important knowledge for historians, social commentators and common film watchers. The book has a detailed filmography which is of a great value for those being intrigued by Fyne’s discoveries and statements.

Fyne discusses the issue of Hollywood’s movies promoting specific level of confidence and positive feelings to the Home Front. The author states that every single movie produced during the Second World War, the sum total of which is more than tree hundreds, bore a certain amount of propaganda value, being full of praises to accomplishments and successes of American fighting men. They have become constant reminders of Old Glory, mom, apple pie, and the St. Louis Browns, maintaining the clear idea of how all this eternal attributes of American society would come out of the war unscathed and triumphant. All those movies have they own particular methods of delivering a supreme message, yet they all actually did in a way.

Professor Fyne does not only reveal the existence of propaganda, but also makes a close insight into the nature of one. How successful was Hollywood production in its strive for influencing the impact the war had on American society? Due to the author’s profound study and examination of the matter, we happen to observe the true motifs of many of those WWII movies, facing numerous stereotypes, misrepresentations, falsifications and prevarications. Such topics as World War I impact, the diverse strategies toward the Italian, German, and Japanese military forces, the glorification of the Soviet armed forces, the representation of the Chinese nationals, the optimistic B-comedies, musicals, and Westerns, plus the American GI’s inside dissatisfaction with his fictional photoplay image are under discussion in the present book.

The book is extremely enjoyable. If you are not ignorant about American classic movies, you would surely care about the book. It goes into observation of such legends of US cinematography such as “Sergeant York”, “A Yank in the RAF”, “Sahara”, “Flying Tigers”, “Wake Island”, “Gung Ho”, “Air Force”, “Mrs. Miniver”, “Dragon Seed”, “Days of Glory”. Some of those films are really great, some are rather foolish and boring, yet they all have become an inalienable part of American history of World War II by now. What is truly great about the book is how it clarifies the true reasons that stand behind these films’ production. Professor Fyne tells about the Office of War Information (OWI) that was established with the purpose of keeping an eye on movies’ contents, probably affecting each film’s plot by setting specific frameworks and instructions Hollywood had to follow. The Office was founded by government, and did actually provided standards for war films industry to monitor Hollywood’s activities and to carefully watch and check a situation in order to see how films created to feed American society with particular information and ideas did reached their goal.

The book discusses such intriguing question as ‘why was Italy referred to as a nonbelligerent?’, ‘why were Austria, Finland, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Rumania never touched on?’, and ‘why was there no division of Russian ethnic groups?’, ‘why were Japanese described as someone hardly more than monkeys, while the Germans were simply depicted as dull buffoons, but not as violent racists? The book is very informative and rather unusual, which makes it a truly wonderful reading that I would recommend everyone to go through.

The Analysis of a Book

The book has actually become some kind of revelation for me. I have never regarded movies about World War II from the perspective proposed by the author, as well as I have never thought about the greatness of impact and influence that propaganda had on American society and its perception of what was truly going on. Professor Fyne exposes facts that made me look at the story of American involvement into war in a drastically different way.

When reading the book various question appeared in my mind. Obviously, propaganda was not only the tool of Hollywood production; it was a weapon of influence used widely in other countries as well. “Many leaders across the globe considered the cinema a powerful tool for propaganda, and every major power in the war owned a respectable film industry. Film both reflected and influenced- it mirrored the society and era it was made in, and affected its viewer either rationally or emotionally” (Koo). Many facts about the war cannot be easily understood. The moods of masses of people of different nationalities can only be explained by specific manipulations performed by individuals in power and authority. What could Hitler possibly do in order to direct millions of people into taking on trust the fact of them being the “master-race”? What allowed Stalin to rule over the largest country in the world and to be accepted uncomplainingly without consideration of his violence and aggression? How could have such a great amount of people, of both the allied and axis powers, been persuaded to be involved into such unreasonable and mad mass assassination? All those facts about war and propaganda’s effect on the way people felt about war are truly amazing.

Some people state that the amount of propaganda that Hollywood movies contained was barely less than that German ones did. And the only reason for lesser number of propaganda movies produced in US was that while Germans were all fully concerned about the promotion of Nazism, Hollywood executives were mostly focused on gaining the largest profits possible. No doubt, the idea they stated to be central for their activities was productively maintained – they did got support, awareness and attention for the war. Yet Hollywood movies’ becoming classics of film-making is all due to the exceptional talent of particular actors, script-writers and directors. But for them the millions of dollars spent at Hollywood during the wartime could have turned out to be wasted now.

Pro-American propaganda is still the part of our everyday life. US government keep on maintaining that there is no comparison between American propaganda and that of other nations being US current enemies. The slogans referring to tragic events of present time that we hear every single day can be regarded as both socially meaningful appeals, and as political propaganda aimed at reaching specific targets of specific time. “Some would like to believe the use of these terms is strictly positive and that they have real emotional meaning that sums up an event, evokes a pure patriotism, and serves as a linguistic monument that can unite a population towards a goal, whether that goal be peace, war, or peace through war” (Grenzsund 2007). But how do they truly affect our consciousness, and do they have a beneficial impact on our rationality?

There is an obvious racial aspect in political propaganda of nowadays, that even though thought to be removed, simply keep on being disavowed. During the World War II Disney’s propaganda movies illustrated stereotypes of Germans, Italians, and Japanese, not only refusing to refrain from deforming facial appearance, but, for example, even depicting Japanese characters with yellow or green skin (1943 production “Der Fuehrer’s Face). Ironically, what we readily notice in the propaganda of those times, we refuse to take into consideration at the present time. “The roots of modern war propaganda reach back to British World War II stories about German troops bayoneting babies, and can be traced through the Vietnam era and even to US campaigns in Somalia and Kosovo.” (Peterson 2002). Eventually, the ways of influencing the masses have changed, yet the essence of that influence still remains the same.

Propaganda movies are only a part of the great movement that political forces organize when trying to reach their goals and to perform set tasks with the help of social persuasion. The phenomenon of propaganda in our lives always exists. “Propagandistic manipulation and distortion of political discourse is subversive of democratic government whether or not it is successful” (Partridge 2004). Probably, years after the current events someone will observe presence of propaganda in currently produced movies, referring to political moods and racial undertone. However, “The Hollywood Propaganda of World War II” By Robert Fyne turned out to be not only a griping and informative reading. It inevitably raises issues that never stop being up-to-date. It actually made me think about subjects I have never happened to be interested about before. Facing the curious facts about World War II propaganda, I have found myself pondering on the essence of nowadays political campaigns and the hidden meaning of the big words we are used to hearing. I have enjoyed the book enormously, as well as the process of analyzing it.

Reference List

Grenzsund, Josh.  2007. “Never forget ‘date of infamy’ or language of war”. Emerald Magazine. November 28,  http://media.www.dailyemerald.com/media/storage/paper859/news/2007/11/28/Opinion/Never.Forget.date.Of.Infamy.Or.Language.Of.War-3119449.shtml (accessed April 10, 2009).

Koo, Hyemin. “Evolution of Film Propaganda Throughout World War II: How Was the Cinema Regulated and/or Freely Used to Affect the People’s Attitudes toward the War?” http://209.85.129.132/search?q=cache:tqG1nk3yg_YJ:www.zum.de/whkmla/sp/0607/hyemin/hyemin.mht+Evolution+of+Film+Propaganda+Throughout+World+War+II:+How+Was+the+Cinema+Regulated+and/or+Freely+Used+to+Affect+the+People%E2%80%99s+Attitudes+toward+the+War&cd=1&hl=ru&ct=clnk (accessed April10, 2009).

Partridge, Ernest. 2004. “Political Propaganda: Selling Lies like Cigarettes.” The Crisis Papers. July 13, http://www.crisispapers.org/essays/propaganda.htm (accessed April 10, 2009).

Peterson, Scott. 2002. “In war, some facts less factual.” The Christian Science Monitor. September 06, http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p01s02-wosc.html (accessed April10, 2009).