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Does Propaganda Need A Commentator
On 8 September 2003, German filmmaker Leni Reifenstahl died. ... Leni Reifenstahl made films that were commissioned by the Third Reich’s Propaganda Mininstry, the most famous, or notorious (depending on who you ask), of which is Triumph Des Willens (1934). In the biographical documentary, The Wonderful and Terrible Life of Leni Reifsesntahl, she claimed her films were art, not propaganda. She made this claim on the basis that the films had no commentator to explain the image that the viewers witnessed. She may have made this claim so as to live with herself having known what the Third Reich was really about, but I intend to discuss the question of whether visual propaganda needs a commentator or not. To answer this question, we should first understand what is meant by visual propaganda, its purpose, and what a commentator is. Having understood this, we can then discuss what roles commentry can play in visual propaganda. I will then illustrate the theory with a piece of propaganda that needs a commentator. ... com defines propaganda as:
2. ... com/propaganda http://dictionary. ... q=propaganda Accessed 19SEP03)
The propaganda that I will discuss is visual propaganda, therefore above definition would be ammended to this:
“Material, composed of moving or still images, disseminated by the advocates or opponents of a doctrine or cause.”
The types of visual propaganda we see include political propaganda, psychological warfare, public information campaigns, and commercial advertising. The aim of a propagandist is to persuade people to do what the owner of the propaganda (the person, group, or institution for whom the propaganda is produced) wishes the receiver to do. The aim of political propaganda in a democracy is to persuade the voters to vote for or against a particular candidate or party. It is not always political parties, or independent candidates who use political propaganda, groups who feel threatened by certain policies use it. ... The way the producer of the peopaganda does this is to ensure that communication between the propagandist and the receiver of the propaganda is as close to the transmission model, where the producer transmits meaning to the receiver, who passively takes it in. ... There are two types of visual propaganda. ...
In visual propaganda, commentary is the inclusion of a verbal element to supplement the visual element of the propaganda piece. ...
There are two types of visual propaganda. ... In visual propaganda that seeks to create desire in the receiver, the question of whether commentary is necessary or not is centered around the propagandist’s need to control the production of meaning. ... In this type of propaganda, commentary can be used to change the context of the visual to make it more meaningful to the receiver, an example of this can be seen in some anti-smoking advertisements, in which a doctor cuts up part of a dead person, out of which comes a substance that looks disgusting, the commentary indicates that this body part came from a smoker, with the clear message that someone who smokes could end up with organs looking like the one depicted if he or she doesn’t stop.
Approximate Word count = 2248
Approximate Pages = 9
(250 words per page double spaced)
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