Changing Perceptions

[Steel Tiger]

A statement in the Warrior Society thread had me thinking just recently. Let me give you some background on my thinking, then I will pose a question.

In the 1962 film, The Longest Day, LTCOL Vandervoot (John Wayne's character) gives a speech about how the US were relative newcomers to the war and then listed the tribulations of other allied countries.

In the 1970 film, Kelly's Heroes, Big Joe (Telly Savalas' character) has a rather empassioned rant about the problems his unit has and includes the British advance as one (also Patton but that's something else).

In Saving Private Ryan (1998) one would get the impression that only US troops landed during the invasion. I know the Rangers were the focus of the film but there is simply no mention of other allied troops.

In Band of Brothers (2001) Easy company participates in the Operation Market Garden and once again the British are portrayed in a sympatheic light.

There are other films, Battle of the Bulge (1965), the Dirty Dozen (1967), Anzio (1968), The Devil's Brigade (1968) for example, in which US troops appear to be the only ones involved. The Devil's Brigade also includes Canadians.

What I have noticed is this shifting presentation of the contributions of the various allied forces over the last sixty or so years. The Hollywood movie machine appears to have moved to a position in which only US troops fought after the D-Day invasions and, thus the United States won the war in Europe single-handedly. Recently it seems that this position has begun to change again, reverting to the earlier perception.

The question I would like to ask is this.

Are Hollywood's presentations in this regard influenced by the actual perceptions of the general US perception of this history or is it some form of weird propoganda?

I'm not looking to be confrontational or contentious in this. I am just curious as to what the actual position is.


The War in the Pacific is a whole different situation in which I think the US did the vast majority of the fighting.

 

[dart68]

I feel that most of those movies had a propaganda note to them, but I'm not convinced that they were all propaganda. The thing is that most (if not all) of those movies mentioned were about american soldiers and not about allied forces. So why would the movie content be anything else?

I don't know anyone who doesn't know of the sacrifices made by other forces. It's just not been portrayed in Hollywood very well.

 

[Steel Tiger]

That's good. Its just the sort of thing I was trying to get at.

As to the propoganda. What message, if any, do you think was being presented in these films? I know, for instance, that Kelly's Heroes is actually a protest against the Vietnam War and, possibly, just war in general.

We are seeing a lot of films now, regardless of subject matter, which seem to be trying to justify the stances taken by the governments of whichever countrys the films come form.

 

[Tez3]

I will say that from across this way in Europe the films that portray only the Americans causes huge resentment. It's actually makes a barrier between us it's that is damaging. Much of what America perceives as criticism over Iraq etc stems from the perception that America believes it won the war on it's own as portrayed in these films. Remember Hollywood films are seen all over the world and carry extreme influence. Look at the size 0 thing with girls trying to be as thin as the film stars.

On this forum a while back I had the 'we won the war for you, you should be grateful' thing thrown at me by a poster.

I think the way the Second World War is portrayed in American media could be the biggest barrier between us even now.

 

[Cruentus]

I think the way the Second World War is portrayed in American media could be the biggest barrier between us even now.

Although that doesn't surprise me, that seems like a really trivial thing to be upset about. But hey, it's nice to know that people in the U.S. aren't the only ones that can be trivial...

I will say that ethno-centrism is a problem that we (U.S.) do have in our culture, however. I think that hollywood is merely a reflection of that rather then propiganda that is being intentionally put out to foster ethno-centrism.

Remember, that very few things are done with integrity in hollywood anymore. There are very few projects that try to tell a story the way it was, or the way an author intends it, without a group of executives sitting around and talking about 'demographics' and 'target markets' as a means to 'sell' the film to the public.

So, these films often lack historical integrity because some jerks behind the scenes decided that this is what the people really want.

That isn't propiganda; that's corporate capitalism.

 

[docmartin252]

I think that it's typical American propeganda, for instance: when we are tought WWII in school, we basically learn that the Japanese bombed us at Pearl Harbor. Then we entered the war at a time when the Nazi's were taking over Europe, and that is when the allied forces began pushing back the Germans.
During our fight for independence from England, you don't hear too much about how the French who came to America and helped us become a new nation (sorry Tez

), such as in the movie The Patriot when a Frenchman appears at the end, but doesn't really show how the war ended with help from other countries.
However, I do agree with Tez that our movies may be seen as pretty arrogant in other countries. That's just my .02

 

[Mr. E]

I don't see much propaganda so much as I see a drive to appeal to the home team for monetary gain.

Try going to a news site from outside the US sometime. If 3000 English children die in a gas leak at a school and three Romanians walking by die as well, can you guess what the bulk of the Romanian sites are going to talk about?

Americans want to see Americans defeat the bad guys. French want to see French do the same. The movie companies just realize that they can make more money in their domestic markets by appealing to them.

Hollywood movies are seen all over the world, but I believe they still rely on most of the ticket sales from inside America. This probably is even more so when you deal with things like war movies rather than things set with more universal appeal like Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. Great movies about the Zulu uprisings or Operation Market Garden just do not go over as well in the US market. But they do well in the countries that contributed the soldiers that fought in them.

 

[Catalyst]

I don't see much propaganda so much as I see a drive to appeal to the home team for monetary gain.

I absolutely agree.

The American audiences want to see the Americans being brave, fighting for freedom, etc. Hollywood caters to this, since they want the box office revenue, and doesn't bother with saying or showing anything about the other nations that stood up to Hitler. It becomes a slippery slope. Pretty soon, people are only used to seeing Americans fighting and winning WW2 and it's just assumed that this is the way it actually was.

I saw something on the History Channel that said the Soviet Union lost several million people fighting Hitler and this is almost never mentioned.

 

[CuongNhuka]

I wouldn't call it propoganda. Such a word implies that some overall entity (government, as an example) is dilbrity trying to manuplate the hearts and minds of a group of people. Which I don't think is what happened.
However, I would say they were entho-centric. Which, I think is more of a product of America itself. There has been a bout 200 years worth of us telling ourselves that we are superior. Do to this, we don't like to admit when we are wrong. Why do you Korea is the "Forgotten War", because we semi-lost. Same with Vietnam, the differnce was, that war put us in crisis. Which is a diffenrit matter entirely.
Have you also noticed that the few times allies are mentioned, they are basicly a side note, or are looked at as inferior. The only American made movie, that I can think of, about our enemy is "Sands of Iwo Jima", or letters, I cann't remember. But, that battle was America's biggest moral gain. So, it almost doesn't count.

 

[Andy Moynihan]

But this isn't quite as rampant as before.

Enemy at the Gates, for example, was quite good and not a single American soldier in it.

I'm also seriously considering writing a screenplay about the Vietnam era Tunnel Rat units that actually INCLUDE Aussie and NZ members with the Americans as well.(No ****, they were there....)

 

[Steel Tiger]

But this isn't quite as rampant as before.

Enemy at the Gates, for example, was quite good and not a single American soldier in it.

I'm also seriously considering writing a screenplay about the Vietnam era Tunnel Rat units that actually INCLUDE Aussie and NZ members with the Americans as well.(No ****, they were there....)

This is what I have noticed too. There seems to be a change in how WWII history is being portrayed by Hollywood and I have been wondering what might have brought that on.

Is it a realisation that the product is seen by a larger audience than just the US nowadays?
Or could it be in response to the very negative opinion that much of the world seems to hold of the US at the moment?

 

[Andy Moynihan]

This is what I have noticed too. There seems to be a change in how WWII history is being portrayed by Hollywood and I have been wondering what might have brought that on.

Is it a realisation that the product is seen by a larger audience than just the US nowadays?
Or could it be in response to the very negative opinion that much of the world seems to hold of the US at the moment?

Yes.

 

[Cruentus]

I don't see much propaganda so much as I see a drive to appeal to the home team for monetary gain.

Try going to a news site from outside the US sometime. If 3000 English children die in a gas leak at a school and three Romanians walking by die as well, can you guess what the bulk of the Romanian sites are going to talk about?

Americans want to see Americans defeat the bad guys. French want to see French do the same. The movie companies just realize that they can make more money in their domestic markets by appealing to them.

Hollywood movies are seen all over the world, but I believe they still rely on most of the ticket sales from inside America. This probably is even more so when you deal with things like war movies rather than things set with more universal appeal like Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. Great movies about the Zulu uprisings or Operation Market Garden just do not go over as well in the US market. But they do well in the countries that contributed the soldiers that fought in them.

I think that is correct; it is simple marketing and business sense at work, for better or worse...