[SnorkleCat]

Oh...speaking of WWII and all that., we watched a dreadful old propaganda film from 1945 last night called "My Japan," produced by the US. Government. In it, a white actor (badly) pretends to be a Japanese man explaining why his country will win the war. It's a pretty graphic and shocking video in places, and it uses real war footage. An interesting piece of historical archiving I think. You can download or watch the video at http://www.archive.org/details/MyJapan1945

This is a good site for people interested in 20th century moving images, from silent films to brick films. My favorite collection is the Prelinger Archives (whence My Japan comes) which is all old ephemeral videos, propaganda, early adverts, social lessons, etc. Great stuff for fans of recent history and social studies.

[Once A Villain]

Originally Posted by SnorkleCat

Oh...speaking of WWII and all that., we watched a dreadful old propaganda film from 1945 last night called "My Japan," produced by the US. Government. In it, a white actor (badly) pretends to be a Japanese man explaining why his country will win the war. It's a pretty graphic and shocking video in places, and it uses real war footage. An interesting piece of historical archiving I think. You can download or watch the video at http://www.archive.org/details/MyJapan1945

I couldn't quite make it to much of the war footage. About 5 minutes in I couldn't take anymore. The narrator, while rather hilarious early on, got too annoying over the course of the video. In my opinion, that was a pretty poorly done propaganda film. I was reminded of The Birth of a Nation where white actors played black men, and ended up just looking like Caucasian idiots with black makeup all over their faces. But anyway, I'm sure Japan had plenty of their own horrible propaganda pieces. An example of true QUALITY propaganda filmmaking would be Triumph of the Will by Leni Riefenstahl. It has a HORRIBLE message and yet...it's hard to look away.

[Jatsie]

I love Triumph of the Will, I have it on DVD, it's a absolute masterpiece.

[SnorkleCat]

An example of true QUALITY propaganda filmmaking would be Triumph of the Will by Leni Riefenstahl. It has a HORRIBLE message and yet...it's hard to look away.

Well sure...but that's Leni Riefenstahl, who was a brilliant director, regardless of her activities with Herr Goebels.
'My Japan' on the other hand was slapped together from some footage and bad acting by the War Bonds people. I got a few messages from it. First and foremost, it seemed to be telling American viewers to stop sniveling about their sons being blown up, and to quit spending money on frivolities. There was much emphasis on the almost super (possibly sub) human (and entirely fictional) quality of the Japanese to withstand anything from bombings to starvation. And of course, they did their best to dehumanize the Japanese to make them more frightening and worth eradicating.

I was a little surprised to see actual executions and violent footage of people being shot and burned in this video. It just didn't occur to me that they would use scenes that upsetting in a film in 1945. There were also some interesting shots of Iwo Jima, and of course the big flag raising picture at the end urging us to buy bonds.

It pretty much shouts I'm A Big Fat Hairy Piece Of Propaganda Trying To Sell Something To You, but the people back then who probably didn't know a thing about Japan might possibly have been impressed...just as Birth of A Nation clearly impressed and inspired some white supremacists who suddenly saw the wisdom of resurrecting the Ku Klux Klan.

I'd love to see some Japanese films of the same type from that period, if anyone has any...Also, more obscure and low budget propaganda films. The masterpieces like Riefenstahl's are mandatory of course, but I think there were more of the former, therefore, the impact of smaller productions can't be discounted.

[Ninja Dodo]

"Duck and Cover" is hilarious.

[Kolzig]

Also the Donald Duck cartoons from the WW2 era are really weird propaganda.

Especially Der Fuehrer's Face.

[Jatsie]

When Der Führer says, we ist de master race,
We Heil! Heil! Right in Der Führer's face,
Not to love Der Führer is a great disgrace,
So we Heil! Heil! Right in Der Führer's face!

[samIamsad]

It's interesting that you can find most of the stuff mentioned here on youtube... or at least parts of it.

Originally Posted by Once A Villain

or other people interested in this kind of stuff (the way the everyday Germans of the time saw Hitler) there is a really good German miniseries to pick up called HEIMAT.

Is it this one? http://german.imdb.com/title/tt0087400/ I think I have never seen it, but then I was five years old when it was aired...

[Once A Villain]

Originally Posted by samIamsad

Is it this one? http://german.imdb.com/title/tt0087400/ I think I have never seen it, but then I was five years old when it was aired...

Yup. That's the one. It has its flaws, like some characters not aging convincingly, but overall it's rather great...and LONG (nearly 16 hours).

[samIamsad]

Originally Posted by Once A Villain

Yup. That's the one. It has its flaws, like some characters not aging convincingly, but overall it's rather great...and LONG (nearly 16 hours).

A friend of mine has seen it, but he's a little older than me. He also told me that the town from the series isn't that far away from where we're living, and that's true. Mh, I did some more research, and apparently the last time it was aired on TV was in 2004. I'm sure it will be on at some point or other. And this time, I don't want to miss it!

Originally Posted by SnorkleCat

It pretty much shouts I'm A Big Fat Hairy Piece Of Propaganda Trying To Sell Something To You, but the people back then who probably didn't know a thing about Japan might possibly have been impressed...just as Birth of A Nation clearly impressed and inspired some white supremacists who suddenly saw the wisdom of resurrecting the Ku Klux Klan.

Propaganda is an absolute interesting topic in and on itself... Certainly the then upcoming new media played a big part of the propaganda during the NS times as well. Somebody uploaded the German Wochenschau on youtube. The old German "news" format of that time, and there's propaganda everywhere. Even in 1945 they were still hammering their "We're going to win!" and "The evil Bolshevists" messages into peoples heads. I've never actually seen one of those in their entirety before until now. That music is obscene...

I still want to read Marshall McLuhans's "The medium is the message" one day. That book doesn't go deep into propaganda per se, but it's still interesting how much of our perceptions are influenced by what we see and hear on TV and radio, how we don't question anything, how we don't have a single problem to accept the media as our one and only God. <- Exaggeration intended. On a more light-hearted note: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_5UZfwX0ss

[SnorkleCat]

Originally Posted by Ninja Dodo

"Duck and Cover" is hilarious.

....you should check out Medical Aspects of Nuclear Radiation, brought to us by the good people of the US Defense Department. You will be pleased to know that if you go bald from radiation sickness, the solution is simple: wear a toupee....and that "radiation enhanced" children might actually be a good thing, so keep an open mind!

[Melanie68]

Another kind of history I find fascinating is medical history. I was TAing a lab about blood gases and their corresponding lung lesions and the professor was talking about the polio epidemic in Denmark in the early 1950's. The hospitals didn't have any iron lungs and there was really no way to thorougly test blood gases to see what was going on. They employed medical students to manually ventilate the children with polio around the clock (otherwise they would have died). It spurred research into analyzing blood gases and much of the technology that's used today originated in Denmark.

From Blood Gas Analysis and Critical Care Medicine

Clinical use of blood gas analysis of pH and PCO2 began with the polio epidemics as described previously, but commercial devices able to also measure PO2 came surprisingly slowly into common use. Not so intensive care medicine. Like the goddess Venus, it emerged fully grown and ready for action. The birth and instant maturation of intensive care medicine occurred in 1952 during the last worldwide epidemic of poliomyelitis, a scourge that in Copenhagen, Denmark, was unprecedented in its number of victims, in the high attack rate among adults, and in the severity of the accompanying paralysis. The lessons learned while ventilating hundreds of patients who were unable to breathe by themselves prompted the rapid design, manufacture, and extensive deployment of the prototypes of modern ventilators. The need for prompt and accurate pH and PCO2 measurements forced the relocation of blood gas analysis from the research laboratory to the ward, and accelerated the development of new techniques purely for clinical application. Finally, the fact that the newly developed team---anesthetist, internist, surgeon, and clinical physiologist, supplemented by nurses and medical students---was a better organization than the pre-existing hierarchical system for coping with the huge problem that presented itself was accepted and was here to stay. Thus, all the basic elements of modern intensive care were formulated in Copenhagen during the late summer and fall of 1952. Although its history has been nicely recounted by Wackers (41), the highlights are worth repeating here in view of their importance and relevance.

[RLacey]

Yay, medical history!

Of course, the 20th Century is a little late for the period I was studying this last term.

[rlpw]

Woohoo Bring on the bleeders and leeches!

[SnorkleCat]

Anyone interested in old medical history should certainly get themselves a copy of Culpeper's Complete Herbal, and other works by Nicholas Culpeper. He was kind of a philosophical anomaly of the 17th century, and drew the ire of the Royal College, because he kept writing how-to manuals, and putting medical terms into langauge uneducated people could understand. He was a big proponent of teaching the masses to treat themselves.
Culpeper's Complete is still cited by herbalists today.
Also, "The English Physitian" also by Culpeper is a good read. It's fascinating to see what a major role astrology played in medicine of the time. Alchemy and astrology. Brilliantly exciting stuff. It's easy to snear at what doctors back then considered to be effective treatments, but frankly I'm not sure that doctors today know much better. In areas like fine surgery (heart, brain, organ transplant etc) enormous leaps have been made, but for the standard, general practitioner? I don't think a lot of effort is made to fix the little, everyday problems that detract from quality of life....chronic problems like ear infections, allergies, food intolerances...etc...things that take a little time and effort to diagnose. Doctors are good at patching people up when they're near death, but they're not so good at the maintenance stuff.