A face gazin down from the North Wall a The Tower, all red, black and orange, eyes like Charon's guts, grinding the bellies a dissidents tween the teeth, and the words; "Know Your Enemy" or similar. Look here, now. Here he is, the Enemy. This monstrous belly-grinder caught in the half-light a Hades, there he is.
Know Him! (Not in the Biblical sense, you understand, god forbid.)
Propaganda. What The Duke would reveal is that yeah, I love it. It fascinates me, no sense hiding 'hind the veil of "meh". Those angular modernist spreads from the first half of the twentieth century, those information films edited to the pulse of Solidarity, Disney's astonishing Education For Death, Leni Riefenstahl paintin that fuck out Downfall in shades of grandeur, all of it, regardless of the cause, captures a fella's awe-glands in all sortsa curious snares.
And the suffering a man might endure!
A lady-friend, she's coming over, she announces, maybe we could watch a DVD or something?
For sure, sayeth The Duke, why in hell's name not, fact, I just picked up a couple this very day, maybe we could watch them?
Two hours later, the second Why We Fight masterpiece making way for the menu screen, the eyebrow arched, all a sudden "We need to talk", and no, ain't gonna be no discussion of Capra's editing prowess.
A man would be all sortsa distressed if Battleship Potemkin wasn't so near to hand.
And following Eisenstien's masterwork concernin the sailors and the tsarists and the demented priests wi hair like blown-back cathedrals, a DVD catching the corner of the eye.
A documentary, no less, number by the name of War Is Sell, "The History, Tactics & Culture Of War Propaganda."
And with the loneliness claspin at a fella's eyeballs an those stone lions out Potemkin still etched in the black of the telly screen, what The Duke decides is yeah, time me and this War Is Sell had a time together, no sense pretending we ain't thought about it.
What War Is Sell concerns itself with, is the in's and out's of the wartime scrawls and the hunch-backed huns and the bold font with the six exclamation marks either side.
Via three main sections, director Brian Standing examines the history of the form, looks at attempts to keep young folks informed of the wily ways of the propagandist, and draws parallels between the predominant portrayal of The Cannibal in early colonialist literature and the portrayal of The Terrorist in the western world post-9/11.
Article comments
1 - Phillip Winn
This review contains what might be known as a brilliant observation, if a fella were so inclined to quantify observations. Phillip finds himself nodding his noggin with great enthusiasm at the realization that many films expressing a dissenting opinion rely most heavily on the idea of skepticism, and yet don't themselves necessarily hold up under the fine standard of skepticism they're asking a fella to employ.
It's ironic, is what!
2 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
Thank you Phillip! yeah, that right there is the central irony, maybe, in, if not all, then at least a large proportion of these typsea documentaries. Which is not to say i don't support the sentiments at least 97%, but still, you'd hope that folks take it upon themselves to examine the information afterwards. Most likely that's the point of the damn things. to get folks to think.