Post 9/11 Film Propaganda Analysis

Post 9/11 Film Propaganda aka Emotionally Potent Oversimplifications aka Public Amused To Death

Introduction

Film. By connecting the sensations of sound and vision it undoubtedly has proved to be an extraordinarily powerful medium. Used for information sharing. Like every other medium can come into the influence of a greater power with an agenda.

It is worth noting that the word ‘propaganda’ and its meaning is understood by the modern society mostly in the historical setting. It is after all the technique of persuasion most often associated by the western world with the 20th century World Wars and especially dictatorial countries of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. It is of course a misconception, however not because of the historical inaccuracy

Since its inception PR had one aim; “controlling the public mind” (N. Chomsky, 1997). Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud and an immigrant of Austrian decent, was considered a father figure of public relations. His first major PR job was to engineer concent for the First World War as a part of the government run Commitee of Public Information. With the demise of war, he continued to work in the field, revolutionizing the approach towards the manipulation of the public mind by introducing the importance of understanding and implementing aspects of the mass psychology and persuasion in propagandist practice. This “New Propaganda” grew on “understanding the mechanism and motives” of the public and the idea that mastering human behaviours and motivation could ultimately lead to the possibility of controlling the masses without their knowledge (E. Bernays, 1923). Propaganda therefore became more observant and scientific. Edward Bernays understood that the sophistication of propaganda should grow proportionally to the public’s media literacy. Logic that can be easily compared with a magic trick. There comes the time when everyone knows how the trick works or at least they are aware it is just an illusion and the element of suspense is not effective anymore, therefore the unamused public merely observes the trick but doesn’t get tricked. The magician must keep coming up with new believable illusions or otherwise he looses his audience and influence. If propaganda is systematically advanced, the public may over time loose its points of reference of what is real and what is not, what has been manufactued and what is a product of critical thinking. This desinsetization of the public, caused by constant propagandist influence, progresses and with time eventually leads to loss of what