Brokeback Mountain - Understanding Propaganda

[Eileen_T]

I just received an email from a friend that had this article by Dr. R. Winfield. It starts by saying:

"The most effective propaganda comes in under the radar, it’s innocuous and appeals to our humanity and emotions. Having studied propaganda and its effects on societies for over 50 years, I can state unequivocally that the film Brokeback Mountain is one of the most blatant propaganda pieces of recent times. "

Dr Winfield goes on to say:

First and foremost, I,ve yet to hear anyone mention how boring this film is. It’s tediously long and in most parts just plain dull. But let’s look at some of the propaganda aspects, shall we?

Indeed nature is beautiful, and its grandeur is depicted with majesty and uplifting music, great sweeping vistas instill a sense of awe and splendor. It is of course in this setting that the "homosexual romance blossoms. But even more significant, this is where the men discuss the deeper things of life, theology, meaning, etc.

Contrast this with the scenes of marriage. Every time marriage is depicted in the film, it is shot in a tiny dark squalid hovel, with screaming children and absolute pandemonium. The house is a mess, the wife never communicates on any kind of meaningful level. Wives in fact, are portrayed as a constant annoyance, and more irritating than understanding. But children receive the worst treatment in this slanted rant against family. They are usually crying, often two at a time, or smashing things, the general feeling the film presents, is that these joyless hellions are an intrusion into life, an encumbrance and a terrible burden.

Making sure it drums in its message in no uncertain terms, the film keeps switching back and forth between the two contrasts. The great outdoors, wild and free, close to nature, close to God, close to hot gay sex without any negative consequences. Back inside the dark little messy box of marriage, with horrible in-laws, demon spawn children, berating nagging wives, endless pressures and even the loveless, passionless sex has hanging over it the dread of producing more parasitic offspring.

You can read the article in full at thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=4115

 

[ezra1892]

uhh, there was one gay sex scene in the entire movie.

Brokeback Mountain was a refreshing movie experience. I highly reccomend it to those of you that arent afraid to see two men kis…

 

[Bella3502]

I liked it too. It is just a love story. The women were not annoyances. They were wives trying to understand a difficult situation. The children were children, and children cry sometimes.

 

[StubbleSpark]

From what I know about propaganda films, I have to agree. I am reminded of Hitler’s (and Madonna’s) favorite film, Metropolis by Fritz Lang. It presents a very visually stimulating and emotionally challenging story line that successfully pulls you in and finally at the end gives its big pay off moral:

“The mediator between the head and hands must be the heart!”

This is a simplistic statement of pure emotional logic. It feels good enough to be right, but even in my deluded college days when I thought just like ezra 1892 and worked in the gay rights movement, I recognized how sinister the message was.

Not that I am accusing Fritz Lang of pushing ideas for Hitler. That would be impossible because he preceded Hitler and left Germany before he could be hired into Nazi service.

But he is no scholar in ethics and film is a medium that caters to the eyes first and the heart second (and he masterfully played that medium to its limits). The reason why the message was so sinister was more due to its packaging (and patrons) than with the message itself – which is substandard fare even for a coffee table philosophy.

Using images and misleading (ill)-logical arguments is the very essence of propaganda.

And note that in calling Bb propaganda, we are not necessarily accusing director Ang Lee of being party to a larger plot to push the soft totalitarianism proffered by the culture of death drones.

Lee grew up in Taiwan. Even now in mainland China her own citizens cannot go anywhere unless they have permission from the government (that’s atheism for you: hate all and trust none. There is safety in numbers but only if I can keep my eyes on you.) Up until fairly recently, Taiwan was also run like a totalitarian dictatorship. Anyone living in Taiwan, like anyone living in the mainland, would have grown up on an almost steady media diet of propaganda – probably from both sides.

continued…

 

[StubbleSpark]

cont…

I think one of the reasons why, with the exception perhaps of Ice Storm and Crouching Tiger, that so many of Lee’s films fade so quickly from public memory is because they are built more on the shadow of the emotional rather than the substance of the real.

Homer Simpson used to say “It’s funny 'cause it’s true.” and that is indeed very true. In fact, in art everything is (insert adjective here) because it is true. The more true something is, the more sadness, horror, glee, hope, depravity, and thought it evokes.

In Lee’s childhood world, substance was verboten in art. Substance points to real things. Real things are real issues and the government cannot deal with citizens candidly discussing anything it does not exercise total control over.

But none of this would have mattered to Lee, because his art does not touch the substantive – it works on a purely emotional level. That is why the Communists would let him, a Taiwanese enemy filmmaker, make movies on the mainland. Normally, such a request would have ended up lost in maze of government scrutiny and endless red tape. But Lee’s films represent no threat at all to any power holder.

Compare this with the work of Zhang Yi Mou who, though a Communist mainlander, has been able to come up with beautiful and hauntingly touching stories that have complex layer upon layer of meaning, some hidden (out of necessity), and some seemingly contradictory.

Lee’s work could never hold under the same degree of informed artistic scrutiny (and his pedestrian style is probably why he is the more popular of the two.) He simply is not a deep thinker. He is more artisan than artist, erecting grand spectacles with the flawless workmanship of the skilled set carpenter. But try to touch it with your hand and it falls flat on its back plop! like the cardboard cut-out it really is.

All the reviews for Bb, whether positive or negative fawn over the film’s visual content and its powerful emotional appeal. I think you can draw a line between those who fell for the film’s pull as demonstrably weak-willed and those who did not fall for it as independent thinkers.

So Lee is unarguably the ideal tool for anyone wanting to advance an idea through propaganda, that at least is certain.

Whether or not he deliberately threw his filmmaking prowess with the explicit intention of creating propaganda is irrelevant in trying to determine if the film itself can safely be called “propaganda.”

What is important is that someone somewhere was motivated to promote a message through a visually appealing medium with the intent of influencing people based on the emotional content.

I think it is safe to say that that is exactly what Bb is and does.

 

[MikeinSD]

Ang Lee said he wanted to film a love story. IMO, he did. I believe the OP believes two men, by definition, cannot fall in love. From what I’ve read, the romance is the issue – not the single sex scene. And the 20 year romance between the characters is why gay men love this movie and many other men hate it. See, gay men are supposed to be incapable of love. Any other view point is just sophisticated propaganda.

 

[Eileen_T]

MikeinSD:

Ang Lee said he wanted to film a love story. IMO, he did. I believe the OP believes two men, by definition, cannot fall in love. From what I’ve read, the romance is the issue – not the single sex scene. And the 20 year romance between the characters is why gay men love this movie and many other men hate it. See, gay men are supposed to be incapable of love. Any other view point is just sophisticated propaganda.

I don’t say that two men can’t fall in love, or two women for that matter. My concern is the propaganda involved to manipulate people to forget or deny the deeper moral issues.

Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, marshalled the resources of the state-controlled media to persuade Germans that euthanasia was a humane social policy, the foundation for building the Master Race. Graphic pictures portrayed mentally ill and disabled “subhumans” in a series of powerful and popular films, to reinforce the message.

In the popular film “I Accuse”, an attractive woman suffering from multiple sclerosis was gently killed by her loving husband.

They used similar movies to portray Jews as nasty, grasping people who inflicted misery and ruin on the noble Aryans who were unlucky enough to be caught in their snares.

Successful propaganda plays on the emotions. This film is manipulative in the use of imagery to make the audience feel sympathy for the characters and want to distance themselves from the stereotypical homophobic murderers. As if those opposed to homosexuality condone murder.

I am not homophobic, but I believe that homosexuality is a grave moral disorder and that acting on that same-sex attraction is a mortal sin. I guess you could say that I am sinophobic.

 

[MikeinSD]

Eileen T:

I don’t say that two men can’t fall in love, or two women for that matter. My concern is the propaganda involved to manipulate people to forget or deny the deeper moral issues.

Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, marshalled the resources of the state-controlled media to persuade Germans that euthanasia was a humane social policy, the foundation for building the Master Race. Graphic pictures portrayed mentally ill and disabled “subhumans” in a series of powerful and popular films, to reinforce the message.

In the popular film “I Accuse”, an attractive woman suffering from multiple sclerosis was gently killed by her loving husband.

They used similar movies to portray Jews as nasty, grasping people who inflicted misery and ruin on the noble Aryans who were unlucky enough to be caught in their snares.

Successful propaganda plays on the emotions. This film is manipulative in the use of imagery to make the audience feel sympathy for the characters and want to distance themselves from the stereotypical homophobic murderers. As if those opposed to homosexuality condone murder.

I am not homophobic, but I believe that homosexuality is a grave moral disorder and that acting on that same-sex attraction is a mortal sin. I guess you could say that I am sinophobic.

I suggest you be a little more open to history of propaganda. In medieval and early modern times, the Passion Plays featured actors representing Jews yelling “let his blood be on us and our children.”

The actors showed he Son of God was betrayed by a Jew. The actors played Jewish leaders that condemned Jesus to death and handed him over to Pilate. And the actors enacted Jews insisting that Jesus be whipped and tortured. Finally, the actors showed Jews demanding a murderer be freed instead of the Messiah. Good propaganda. The Passion Plays resulted in zealous Christians invading the Jewish ghettos. And Easter dawned over the bodies of murdered Jews.
ecumene.org/SHOAH/oberammer.htm

Not that all Christians were murderers of course. But rejection of Jesus as the Messiah is a moral sin. I guess one can call the Easter murders as sinophobic as well.

I made this point. But I feel sick that people believe other people have to die in the name of God.

 

[Libero]

Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, marshalled the resources of the state-controlled media to persuade Germans that euthanasia was a humane social policy, the foundation for building the Master Race. Graphic pictures portrayed mentally ill and disabled “subhumans” in a series of powerful and popular films, to reinforce the message.

You want to compare Ang Lee to Dr. Goebbels, the man who killed his own children?

They cannot be, Nazism was very strange, it cannot be compared to a person challenging the very outdated social view that love is confined only to a man and a woman.

This film is propoganda only if you want to consider it so, if you believe it is another attack on society, then you will consider it propoganda.

But if you believe that it is a film by a very powerful director that is designed to help people educate themselves, and attempt to ditch the conventional stereotypes of what love is, then clearly it is not propoganda.

 

[Mijoy2]

ezra1892:

uhh, there was one gay sex scene in the entire movie.

Brokeback Mountain was a refreshing movie experience. I highly reccomend it to those of you that arent afraid to see two men kis…

It’s not a matter of fear. This reminds me of the popular TV show Fear Factor. I don’t chose to not watch the *eating *scenes because I am fearful. I chose to not watch becuase I don’t get a kick out deliberatly watching something so unnatural as to make me nauseous. Just a matter of choice.

I predict this movie backfires. It’s relatively easy to support the gay lifestyle for many until…one sees two men kiss. Then it becomes a wake up call.

 

[Mijoy2]

ezra1892:

uhh, there was one gay sex scene in the entire movie.

Brokeback Mountain was a refreshing movie experience. I highly reccomend it to those of you that arent afraid to see two men kis…

It’s not a matter of fear. What is there to fearfull over?

 

[ezra1892]

Mijoy2:

It’s not a matter of fear. What is there to fearfull over?

well this forums seems to be all “brokeback is anti-christian, lets boycott the Oscar’s!!”

when if you think about it, everything in Hollywood is anti-christian in some way.

 

[Aquarius]

Mijoy2:

It’s not a matter of fear. What is there to fearfull over?

Sometimes the truth is so powerful it is called propoganda by opponents.

 

[goofyjim]

Why do I become less and less interested in seeing this movie the more I hear about it?

 

[Aquarius]

goofyjim:

Why do I become less and less interested in seeing this movie the more I hear about it?

Overkill? I have the opposite reaction. The only reason I will be seeing the movie is because of all the flames it has caused in the culture war. If one side gets weepy over it, and the other gets all puffed up over it, then I figure it’s time to take a look myself.

 

[goofyjim]

Aquarius:

Overkill? I have the opposite reaction. The only reason I will be seeing the movie is because of all the flames it has caused in the culture war. If one side gets weepy over it, and the other gets all puffed up over it, then I figure it’s time to take a look myself.

I don’t think it’s overkill. There are just movies I have no interest inseeing from the getgo and others I definitely want to see. I don’t go by the polls either way.

 

[StubbleSpark]

No one here says two men should not love each other. That is misrepresenting the views of your opposition and a ploy of desperately out-gunned in debate.

Our position is the same as that of all the religions of the world: it is objectively wrong for two people of the same gender to have sex.

For some reason, you think sex and love as being interchangeable but the two are frequently placed in direct opposition to each other as in cases of forced prostitution, pedophilia, rape, extra-marital affairs, and homosexual acts.

In that list, I suspect (hope!) you agree with me on first three, but the fourth would be a “grey” area and the last, naturally would be morally licit.

But for us, all of these are equally evil. In fact, the last two could be quantified as greater evils than the first three. Why? Because the dynamic of the first three involve just one sinner forcing himself on an innocent victim. The last two involve (at least) two people cooperating in their ensured mutual destruction.

By definition, that is not love. It is obsession. If the characters in the movie were really in love with each other, they would not so positively reinforce each other’s spiral of self destruction. If they really loved each other, they would be willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the other – the way a mother and father must make sacrifices to raise children and to provide for each other’s needs. All of them. Including the eternal ones.

Love is not merely meeting someone’s sexual needs. If simple satiation of physical desires was the foundation of lasting and meaningful love relationships, God would have show us how to love by sending a porn star and not a chaste man who would die on the cross. No relationship built on co-masturbatory coitus (whether between two hets or homosexuals) lasts because all such relationships are meaningless.

That is what we call a “fling”. And the two characters in the movie do indeed fling each other right into the abyss of sin.

The difference between your views concerning love and ours is that your views are natural, base, and animalistic while ours are supernatural, life-creating, and angelic.

You probably would like to call your views towards love “angelic” as well (because to do so would be cool and, frankly, being able to do so is), but in the back of your mind you know enough about the supernatural to understand all that eternal light and love comes with an equally big threat of eternal darkness and sin. All blessings come with curses.

Your answer is to play the middle and strip man of his higher faculties of conscience, rationality, and love and turn him into a lower creature of hunger, trivia, and urge. You wanted to avoid the pit, but in doing so you razed the pinnacle to the ground.

I suppose that is your real idea of equality: a general pointlessness to all human activity. All Monet paintings are equal now to all paintings done by elephants. And the march of progress goes on.

 

[StubbleSpark]

MikeinSD:

I suggest you be a little more open to history of propaganda. In medieval and early modern times, the Passion Plays featured actors representing Jews yelling “let his blood be on us and our children.”

The actors showed he Son of God was betrayed by a Jew. The actors played Jewish leaders that condemned Jesus to death and handed him over to Pilate. And the actors enacted Jews insisting that Jesus be whipped and tortured. Finally, the actors showed Jews demanding a murderer be freed instead of the Messiah. Good propaganda.

Not so much propaganda as Sacred Scripture. All of the events you described actually took place and are in the Bible – even the quote “let his blood …” If you have trouble with it, I suggest taking it up with the One who wrote it.

MikeinSD:

The Passion Plays resulted in zealous Christians invading the Jewish ghettos. And Easter dawned over the bodies of murdered Jews.
ecumene.org/SHOAH/oberammer.htm

Too bad no such incidence is referenced in the (very good) link you gave us. Is it too much to ask you to try not to portray Catholics as ignorant blood thirsty peasants who spent the last 2000 years offing Jews on a whim? I know the image sells well, because it is reminiscent of some of the anti-Semitic quotes on that link.

I don’t suppose it would mean anything if I pointed out that most fundamentalists think of Catholics as the modern antecedent of the Scribes and Pharisees…

MikeinSD:

Not that all Christians were murderers of course.

Of course.

MikeinSD:

I made this point. But I feel sick that people believe other people have to die in the name of God.

Since when did expressing views contradictory to your own mean that people are dying in the name of God? Oh, that’s right, Catholics are murderers. I almost forgot the smarmy self-righteous and hypocritical subtext of your wonderfully enlightening post.

 

[Aquarius]

StubbleSpark:

No one here says two men should not love each other. That is misrepresenting the views of your opposition and a ploy of desperately out-gunned in debate.

Our position is the same as that of all the religions of the world: it is objectively wrong for two people of the same gender to have sex.

For some reason, you think sex and love as being interchangeable but the two are frequently placed in direct opposition to each other as in cases of forced prostitution, pedophilia, rape, extra-marital affairs, and homosexual acts.

In that list, I suspect (hope!) you agree with me on first three, but the fourth would be a “grey” area and the last, naturally would be morally licit.

But for us, all of these are equally evil. In fact, the last two could be quantified as greater evils than the first three. Why? Because the dynamic of the first three involve just one sinner forcing himself on an innocent victim. The last two involve (at least) two people cooperating in their ensured mutual destruction.

By definition, that is not love. It is obsession. If the characters in the movie were really in love with each other, they would not so positively reinforce each other’s spiral of self destruction. If they really loved each other, they would be willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the other – the way a mother and father must make sacrifices to raise children and to provide for each other’s needs. All of them. Including the eternal ones.

Love is not merely meeting someone’s sexual needs. If simple satiation of physical desires was the foundation of lasting and meaningful love relationships, God would have show us how to love by sending a porn star and not a chaste man who would die on the cross. No relationship built on co-masturbatory coitus (whether between two hets or homosexuals) lasts because all such relationships are meaningless.

That is what we call a “fling”. And the two characters in the movie do indeed fling each other right into the abyss of sin.

The difference between your views concerning love and ours is that your views are natural, base, and animalistic while ours are supernatural, life-creating, and angelic.

You probably would like to call your views towards love “angelic” as well (because to do so would be cool and, frankly, being able to do so is), but in the back of your mind you know enough about the supernatural to understand all that eternal light and love comes with an equally big threat of eternal darkness and sin. All blessings come with curses.

Your answer is to play the middle and strip man of his higher faculties of conscience, rationality, and love and turn him into a lower creature of hunger, trivia, and urge. You wanted to avoid the pit, but in doing so you razed the pinnacle to the ground.

I suppose that is your real idea of equality: a general pointlessness to all human activity. All Monet paintings are equal now to all paintings done by elephants. And the march of progress goes on.

Did you see the movie?

 

[StubbleSpark]

Libero:

You want to compare Ang Lee to Dr. Goebbels, the man who killed his own children?

It is true, we have no idea whether or not Lee has aided anyone he was romantically involved with to get an abortion. But the issue is not “is Ang Lee an evil murderous tyrant like Goebbels?” The issue is “Is Bb a piece of propaganda?” There is no child-killing quota for making propaganda. The two ideas are completely unrelated.

Libero:

They cannot be, Nazism was very strange, it cannot be compared to a person challenging the very outdated social view that love is confined only to a man and a woman.

If you think the objective right and wrong are mere “social views” which can fall out of fashion, then you are more of a Nazi than you know. Because if morality is subject to the whims of the times, then it is possible for the fads to dictate “Thou shalt covet thy neighbor’s manservant.” and “Thou shalt murder.”

Libero:

This film is propoganda only if you want to consider it so, if you believe it is another attack on society, then you will consider it propoganda.

No. The discussion about whether or not the film is propaganda can be done in complete isolation to your views concerning homosexuality. No one feels strongly one way or the other about Dove Soap, but no one here would deny that a commercial for Dove Soap is in fact a commercial.

Libero:

But if you believe that it is a film by a very powerful director that is designed to help people educate themselves, and attempt to ditch the conventional stereotypes of what love is, then clearly it is not propoganda.

Now you are agreeing with us. The fact that Lee is very powerful director trying to “help people educate themselves to ditch conventional stereotypes” is actually a very strong case for the propaganda argument. You even go so far as to say the film is expressly designed for that purpose. Thank you!

A message to the trolls highjacking this thread: calling a given work of media “propaganda” does not in any way affect the validity of the message conveyed by the propaganda nor does it ruin your enjoyment of said work (unless you are extremely weak-willed and thin-skinned which seems to be case, frankly).

If the subtext of the argument, that homosexuality is objectively evil, bothers you then I suggest you go to one of the billion other threads that deal with that issue directly and have at it. The original poster has a right to discuss the “propagandaness” of Bb and you are allowed to participate only in as much as you don’t bog the argument down with your dogmatic views and preciously delicate sensibilities.

In my first two posts, I put forward several points that (I believe) accurately synthesize history, politics, Chinese and American cultural morays, society, art, film, and meaning. I am still awaiting some sort of logical response either for or against. Not: “Well, I think gay sex is the bee’s knees!”