Hollywood, The Propaganda Machine

Hollywood Propaganda by Dan McCall

About a week ago, FaceApp came out of nowhere and became popular globally overnight, everyone wanted to see how they would look in 50 years (that is if we are not extinct before then). It was both exciting and funny. Days later, a few people started drawing the public’s attention to some suspicious aspects of the app, particularly some lines in the terms of service of the application that gave the manufacturers ‘perpetual, irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, fully-paid, transferable, sub-licensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, publicly perform and display your User Content and any name, username or likeness provided in connection with your User Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed, without compensation to you….’ and the fact that the app was from Russia.

That bit ‘The app is from Russia’ was enough for headlines. I posted ‘Russia has all your data’ to which a friend replied ‘But so does the US’, which is totally true as most social media apps collect our data. He said the reason most people are upset about FaceApp being from Russia is because of how America has portrayed the country, which is also largely true. Although, I was mostly worried because unlike Facebook and co that are accountable in a way, – Mark Zuckerberg had to face the US Congress when it was discovered that millions of data collected from Facebook were used to influence the election that saw Donald Trump become the POTUS – I didn’t think FaceApp was.

I’ve often observed how America successfully created and still peddles a negative image of several countries, courtesy of Hollywood and several media channels, and it was interesting to see someone else notice it.

When J Cole came to perform in Nigeria last year, Black Americans were surprised that we had mobile phones, or even the facilities to host a J Cole concert, how come we were not living in huts, chasing antelopes or clothed in rags. Except you’re an avid traveller, your knowledge of other parts of the world mostly comes from what you see and hear about them, which might or might not be true. When I interned in an advertising agency years ago, it was usually a struggle looking for good stock images of Africans, a large portion of the images available online are of poor hungry African children. To most foreigners, the typical mental image they have of Africans is of poor big-bellied malnourished kids holding empty plates, because that is all they see in adverts, movies, and pictures. Just watch the music video for ’Back To Love’ by Chris Brown.

As the largest among the various film industries, Hollywood movies and music videos are seen by so many people all over the world, think of how much reach that is, think of how many people’s opinions can be molded by that.

Right from obvious elements such as the plot of the movies to subtle elements such as the colouring of the movie and casting, Hollywood movies often portray America as the good guys, and other countries especially Russia and Germany as the bad guys.

I was at the cinema a few days ago with a friend. While seeing Anna, (a really cool spy movie brilliantly scored by Eric Serra) and asking ourselves why recent spy movies with female lead characters often feature a bunch of very nude scenes, I noticed something peculiar about the casting. The actors that played CIA agents had friendly, neighbourly faces, on the other hand, the actors in the KGB side were quite mean-faced.

The Equalizer, The November Man, Wonder Woman, John Wick, Salt, Winter Soldier (Captain America), guess what these movies have in common, America = Good, Russia/Germany = Bad.

I still believe the third season of the series ‘Stranger Things’ is very unnecessary, my theory is the US government saw how popular the first two seasons were and thought “hmm, how can we use this as a propaganda tool to push the narrative of USA = Good, Russia = Bad”, and the third season was born. The US government probably couldn’t live with the negative image the first two seasons gave them.

The propaganda machine even stretches its tentacles across the Atlantic Ocean with various depictions of Nigerians as fraudsters in movies such as District 9, and that episode of Rick and Morty where an alien race (whose name sound so similar to the word ‘Nigerians’) tried to scam Rick.

Although there are often reasons for these stereotypes: The Cold War, The Holocaust, The infamous Nigerian Internet Fraudsters aka Yahoo Boys, I still believe Hollywood as a propaganda machine is very dangerous, especially if you consider the role the media played in turning the public against Michael Jackson.

A great Uncle once said ‘With great power comes great responsibility’.

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About OC George
Visual Artist, Writer and Creative Director. In my spare time, I’m either obsessively collecting peculiar music and sounds or studying why and how humans behave.

E:  ocgeorge.go@gmail.com | W:

E:  ocgeorge.go@gmail.com | W: www.snappycard.io/ocgeorge