1984 – “One has to wonder why the Old Testament and the New are bound in the same volume. The depiction of God could not be any different.” -Professor Tungate, Loyola University 1974, “Process and Effects of Mass Communications.”
By TLB Contributor: Ken LaRive
For the last sixty or so years, coinciding with the invention of Television, the maturity of Hollywood, and the mass media, the ideologies and values of Christians have been subverted, marginalized, and perverted.
In the 1950’s the new medium of television had kids glued to the box on Saturday morning, and one would spend the last quarter of their allowance for a ticket to a Saturday afternoon matinee. It did more than light up what we thought was our dull and mundane world, it showed us unimagined and colorful vistas, bigger than life characters, and adventure without bounds.
Saturday morning in New Orleans kept a large segment of our children inside. Roy Rogers, Zorro, Captain Midnight, The Lone Ranger, The Cisco Kid, Circus Boy, Soldier’s of Fortune, and many others, had us virtually mesmerized as our mothers fixed French Toast and hot chocolate. Shoot-em’ up story-lines were justified by the fine-line definition between revenge and justice, and our open minds stretched to take it all in. A righteous avenger and his sidekick tackled most problems with hot lead and one-liners, and we mimicked that all the way to adulthood.
Suddenly adults saw that a school-yard brawl was no longer acceptable in our civilized society. Those who chose to express themselves that way were arrested and charged, and lawyers lined up for the ensuing law-suits. Most found their niche, some could not, and spent a good portion of their lives behind bars.
With money, seemingly as the primary motivation, it was soon recognized that ideas could be instilled by advertisements and commercials as well, and the subconscious was manipulated to accomplish that task, this time without the viewer’s knowledge. Subliminal advertising came of age in the middle fifties, and that same Saturday night, during a TV supper on a TV tray, the child again watched the black box with parents for several hours more. In those precious and valued times, reality was further instilled and cemented by the laughter and tears it created in our parents, the primary connection we had with truth. We looked at their reaction, and made it our own.
But it did not start in the little black box.
An early realization that we were being manipulated by the media came with The MacArthur’s Day parade in 1951 New York, and became both a turning point and a case in point for subliminal indoctrination. Firsthand observers on the scene saw that camera angles, the lack of pan, and discriminate and tightly filmed action, all indicated the streets were packed with cheering flag-waving crowds for General McArthur’s triumphant return. The fact of the matter is that the streets were relatively empty.
Litigation ensued to put an end to a wide variety of subliminal advertising, from a nude in the ice cubes of a Playboy magazine ad, to the one framed picture, too fast but for the subconscious to realize, of a candidate in the middle of a movie, or a box of popcorn to stimulate your hunger. It is one thing to indoctrinate, but to do it on a subconscious level seemed to some unethical.
The media had the power to manipulate, and they used it then, and to this day. They learned well from propagandist photographers such as Leni Riefenstahl, who was commissioned by Hitler to chronicle the 1934 Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg Nazi Germany. She is said to have created the first true propaganda film of all time: Triumph of the Will.
But this is not entirely true, there were others decades before. Others who started Leni along that path of cant, and the manipulation of thought and identity.
With our Spanish American war of 1898, Vitaganda Studios were making a series of short silent films, and Birth of a Nation was created. It was denied by the producers to be an indoctrination film, but it emphatically showed to all just what power of persuasion the silver screen had.
Charlie Chaplin created by his own hand and expense, a movie called The Bond. It is now considered one of our finest examples of American propaganda.
Soon, as early as 1917, the New Soviet government sponsored the Russian film industry with party-line propaganda in mind, and ideas were exchanged by works produced, and a multitude of timely literature published world-wide. Freudian thoughts infused as a new scientific standard of just what made men tick.
Russian cinema came of age in the 1920s by the filmmakers Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein, and motion pictures became the primary propaganda tool of Totalitarianism, and its penumbra, Communism. The The Battleship Potemkin, is now thought Eisenstein’s grand masterpiece, a true glorification of Communist ideals, and the parties socialistic principles was force-fed to go down smoothly by a collective mindset.
So Nazi Germany had a lot of prior propaganda successes to learn from, and they fine tuned the medium into an art-form with true revolutions in music and cinematography angles never seen before. Leni Riefenstahl‘s work is still studied in film-making classes around the world for her skilled control of timing and camera angles.
Frank Capra studied Riefenstahl and the other well known film makers of the time, and before our involvement in WW2 these filmmakers knew each other on a social level from California to Leningrad. Frank produced the Why We Fight series in support of the war effort, and movies like Thirty Seconds over Tokyo and Casablanca have become American icons, and well loved by future generations.
Considered artfully produced dramatic films, they were also, without a doubt, very calculated and well orchestrated propaganda films as well.
Today, many films are in question, as thoughts are promoted so cleverly that the viewer will think his beliefs original. One film this author has dissected is found here, and yet some will argue just the opposite to be true, so powerful are the characters, and so cleverly designed for emotion and sensation. In the process, ideologies are promoted, and Christian ideas are perverted as the collective audience screams in unison for more blood. We can watch murders like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid kill fifty Mexicans, and feel nothing for their lives, or a woman slaughter fifty men in black in Kill Bill, with a samurai sword, and get an unreasoned rise of adrenaline.
Our national ideological identity, once thought to be predominately Christian, have been slowly dismantled by minute increments over time, creating the biggest class rift our country has ever witnessed. In the process, our strong middle class have been milked dry, our schools subverted and auto-suggesting our children to deny their heritage, their morality, and we were are experiencing an unprecedented mind controlling directives from so many directions that truth can no longer be ascertained.
Most who control our media do not understand, or respect the teachings of Jesus Christ, and yet promote their thoughts as Christian in nature. So brainwashed, so out of touch, so uneducated, some will quote the Old Testaments as the teachings of Christianity, and the sheep of the fold will believe it. As irresponsibility is promoted, Big Government is becoming a surrogate for God. The gentile nature of Love that Jesus taught is replaced with justifications to destroy whole nations, and set religion one upon another. Those who are manipulating this system of propaganda and misinformation are secularists and atheists, and use religion as a primary propaganda tool.
It is amazing and disheartening to see how Christianity has faded in Europe, as socialism took a foot-hold. Surely, there must be a correlation. Now, once-beautiful Cathedrals are being sold on the auction block to build high-end apartment building in their interiors. One residence with a wall of stained-glass, will be in more demand to the new-aged secularist/realist/entrepreneur who will pay more for the concession. The colors will shine into his anterior from the glory of an afternoon sun, but probably, while drinking an nighttime toddy, never grasp the symbolism, or what has been mislaid.
“The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.”
-Martin Luther King, Jr. quoting Dante Alighieri
“Here must all distrust be left behind; all cowardice must be ended.” – Dante Alighieri
Author’s note: A Special Place In Hell…
Dante said there is a special place reserved in hell for those who do nothing in a time of moral crisis. No doubt we are in the midst of that time. Much if what our society sees as morally acceptable today would make the citizens of Sodom blush with embarrassment, and what is passed as Christianity is manipulated by the greasy fingerprints of secularism.
I watched Lady Gaga today while on the tread mill at the health club. A mixed company of older men and women watched her sexual antics while dressed like a nun and sucking on a crucifix. No one said a thing. No one looked at each other, not a glance, and no one complained but me.
Not only are people doing nothing themselves, but they infer a social taboo that advocates others do nothing as well. –Ken LaRive
****************
Leave a Reply