World War II

I've been doing more research on the WWII era, and, like I noted in the last post, it's difficult to find a good record of movies and their significance in the era when they don't relate directly to the war in some way or another. But I think this could be significant in itself when compared to the Post-9/11 era. In WWII there were a lot of mainstream propaganda movies and movies dedicated to directly and explicitly vilifying the enemy and glorifying the war effort, but movies like that are few and far between in today's culture. I've got a few ideas as to why - movies like this aren't "politically correct" anymore, or audiences are generally more liberal or anti-war - but I think it's an interesting difference. Either Americans have lost their taste for fiercely pro-American cinema, or the propaganda is getting a lot subtler. More on this to come.

I've also been watching a few videos that further exemplify the differences between the WWII era and today, and these videos are Bugs Bunny cartoons. Here are two of the more interesting ones that I've watched - "Any Bonds Today" and "Herr Meets Hare":

The second video I found especially interesting because the war effort is never played for comedy (ridiculing the enemy, etc.) anymore as it seems to be here. Now, don't get me wrong, there are comedies about war in the Post-9/11 world, but the significant difference is that pretty much all of those comedies (Four Lions comes to mind, and so does the recent Sacha Baron Cohen movie The Dictator) aren't playing it straight but rather satirizing Western views towards the war. These Bugs Bunny cartoons are, from my point of view, surprisingly earnest with their pro-American values and completely serious about making fun of the enemy. This kind of stuff wouldn't fly today, I don't think, for the same reasons I listed above.

Interestingly, both of these videos loaded on ads for the Red Tails DVD - you might see them when you watch the embedded versions - that declare the movie as "feel-good" and boast the characters as "American heroes". Never heard of Red Tails? That wouldn't surprise me, because it was a total flop. Maybe this kind of earnestness about war has no place in the media landscape of present-day Western society.