This document discusses how popular culture and propaganda were used during World War 2 to mobilize support for the war effort on the American home front. It describes how the US government agencies like the Office of War Information used movies, comics, posters and other media to spread pro-war messages to the public often by incorporating wartime themes into existing forms of popular entertainment. The goal of this propaganda was to convince Americans to adjust their priorities and support the needs of the total war effort. Famous studios like Disney and popular comic books were recruited to disseminate the government's official pro-war messaging to the masses.
2. WWII Overview
• Global war
• 1939-1945 (US from Dec. 1941)
• Most widespread & deadliest conflict in
human history
• 60 million killed
• 420,000 Americans killed
• The “Good War”
3. Total War
• All of a nation’s resources mobilized for war effort
• Importance of the Homefront
• Mobilizing labor, production, and populations
• Propaganda
• Propaganda & mass culture
“Wartime propaganda attempts to make people adjust to
abnormal conditions, and adapt their priorities and moral
standards to accommodate the needs of war. To achieve this,
propagandists have often represented warfare using
conventional visual codes already established in mass
culture. Thus, recruitment posters have often been designed
to look like advertisements or movie posters. Propaganda
films have used the formulae of westerns and crime dramas,
Film starts, singers, sports personalities, and cartoon
characters have been enlisted to propagate the official
message of the war effort.”
- Toby Clark, Art and Propaganda (1997)
4. Propaganda & Democracy?
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits
and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic
society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society
constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of
our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes
formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.
This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is
organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this
manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.”
- Edward Bernays, "Propaganda" (1928)
6. U.S. WWII Propaganda
& Popular Culture
• WWII as visual and cinematic war
• FDR, popular culture, & the war effort
• Office of War Information (OWI)
• Bureau of Motion Pictures
"The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea
into most people’s minds is to let it go
through the medium of an entertainment
picture when they do not realize that they
are being propagandized.“
- OWI director Elmer Davis
10. “Three Americans” Life Magazine, Sept. 20 1943
• Three American GIs lie dead on
Buna Beach (New Guinea)
• Photographer George Strock
• Image taken Dec. 31, 1941
• First photograph to depict dead
American soldiers on the
battlefield published during
WWII
