Oh bullshit. The Japanese in WW2 had no right to claim moral anything. Read up on Unit 731, or the Rape of Nanking, or the Bataan Death March, or the POW camps, or the Railway of Death, or the executions of captured Allied soldiers.
surprised nobody mentioned Frank Capra’s WHY WE FIGHT or the two ABC propaganda films at odds in the 1980s- THE DAY AFTER and AMERIKA.
I think our porn is the purest form of propaganda out there…
How about Victory at Sea?
Pointless musing, perhaps, but can a film be considered effective propaganda if it inspires people in other countries to join their militaries?
I ask because one of my first jobs in Japan was teaching English to the trainee fighter pilots at the local air base. Whenever I’d ask them why they chose to join the Air Force (sorry, Air Self Defense Force), Top Gun was the answer a good 40% of the time, even in the mid-90’s.
The great British documentary film maker Humphry Jennings made several films during WW2 wich could be regarded as propaganda , but in a very subtle way. Such films as " London Can Take It " , Listen to Britain and "Fires Were Started " reflect the mood and the sense of London during the Blitz. Among other of his films was “Silent Village” which tells of the destruction and massacre in Lidice Czechoslovakia but as if it was set in a Welsh mining village. My favourite “propaganda” film is “Went the Day Well?” which tells of a group of German soldiers who take over a typical English village and are defeated by the combined efforts of the local population.
This thread puts me in mind of the old British WWII Pathé newsreels.
Look everyone, here’s the plucky tommies on their way to bash the bosch! Watch out, Fritz, John Bull is on his way to stick it to you. Bayonets on, chaps! Full steam ahead for victory!
For some reason I’m now thinking about Fox News… 
That is why I said that Jennings was very subtle in his film ,unlike most wartime propaganda coming out of the UK.
I did.
Capra had others besides Why We fight:
Two: Know Your Enemy and The Negro Solider come to mind
Alot of the Hollywood films of the War had “propagandistic elements” – jokes at Hitler’s expense, showing importance of collecting metal, good humor at using ration cards, heroic characters with victory gardens … Things that in retrospect can look like propaganda now, but they also reflected the time & place the film was made - it becomes a fine line at points. Were the Stooges with Moe as Hitler “propganda” per se? Blondie’s victory garden or pushing bonds, FTM How about Casablanca? – I say 'No" it is a reflection & not really propaganda – but I don’t think saying differently is completely insane
Now time for a paranoid, overly cerebral answer.
The key to understanding American propaganda is to realize that what is important is not the government, but capitalism. The government is incidental to the American way of life, but capitalism is essential. The propaganda makers are not so much the government, but the major corporations.
Thus, the true propaganda films are the rags to riches stories, the movies where material pocessions solve problems and movies which discourage political activities (like Forrest Gump). Televisions- with it’s product-centered games shows, suburban sitcoms and endless commercial breaKs is the greatest conveyer of these messeges. Almost everything on TV subtly or blatantly promotes capitalism.
Good point, even sven. Product placement might also count, if you’re looking at it that way. I remember hearing a report on how at some point sitcoms started having plots that involved TiVo, and others at least mentioned the device somehow. At that point, only a tiny fraction of viewers had those things, but the TV version of reality said that this was simply a standard piece of equipment for modern living, everyone had one. Lo and behold, a lot of people have TiVo now.
I don’t know if I’d use the word propaganda, but there’s something inherently disgusting about that. It’s disturbing to think that when people watch TV, the programming (an eerily accurate title) they’re watching is designed to cause them to make specific, unconscious decisions about how to live their lives and spend their money. Ideally for the corporations, the viewers would never notice this, simply continue to consume what they’re told to.
LC
An old Disney film, Spirit of '41 comes to mind. It was on a collection of Disney shorts I got when I was a kid. My first impression of seeing this short, with American planes shooting down Nazi planes, American ships sinking Nazi submarines and Japanese warships, it made me think, “Geez if we were so good, why the hell did it take 6 years to beat the Nazis in WWII?!”
It was also funny that the Japanese warships had a HUGE RISING SUN painted on the hull, which I thought was some lame attempt at camoflage or something, but it looked to me more like some gigantic target the ship had, screaming to the Americans, “shoot here!”.
It was only until I was older that I picked up on the subtleties in the cartoon, like the Spendthrift guy dressed up as a Zoot suiter, and the Nazi shaped door breaking and forming the V for victory logo.
I think the thing that bothered me the worst about the short was how america-centric it was. They talk about how it is “our war” which bugged me because it was a friggin world war…It wasn’t some sort of American Pride versus the Nazis throw-down for supremacy of the planet but because it was a propigandic film thats how they spun it
An old Disney film, Spirit of '41 comes to mind. It was on a collection of Disney shorts I got when I was a kid. My first impression of seeing this short, with American planes shooting down Nazi planes, American ships sinking Nazi submarines and Japanese warships, it made me think, “Geez if we were so good, why the hell did it take 6 years to beat the Nazis in WWII?!”
It was also funny that the Japanese warships had a HUGE RISING SUN painted on the hull, which I thought was some lame attempt at camoflage or something, but it looked to me more like some gigantic target the ship had, screaming to the Americans, “shoot here!”.
It was only until I was older that I picked up on the subtleties in the cartoon, like the Spendthrift guy dressed up as a Zoot suiter, and the Nazi shaped door breaking and forming the V for victory logo.
I think the thing that bothered me the worst about the short was how america-centric it was. They talk about how it is “our war” which bugged me because it was a friggin world war…It wasn’t some sort of American Pride versus the Nazis throw-down for supremacy of the planet but because it was a propigandic film thats how they spun it