Soviet film and State penetration

Most writing on soviet film tend to deal with the technical and aesthetic rather than structure and rhetoric of the industry. It’s widely accepted that Soviet propaganda penetrated all forms of art and popular culture. It is felt that there was little convergence between popular ideas and the state system of values. Bertram Wolfe accused soviet power of attempting “atomize society and recreate as rapidly and completely… a new man, a new society, a new world”. A disjuncture existed between the cult of Stalin, or state power, and an ideology that propagated collectivism. The state nationalised cinema but also made use of the public as a propaganda creator.

Trotsky lamented the fact that the Soviet state had not fully taken possession of the cinema. in a July 1923 edition of Pravda he saw cinema as a “weapon, which cries out to be used… a propaganda which is accessible to everyone, cuts into memory and may be a source of revenue”. It would only be later, during the Cultural Revolution which accompanied the First Five Year Plan, that cinema became a “weapon of class enlightenment for the proletariat”. The attraction fro the Bolsheviks was threefold. As a technological medium it was symptomatic of a utopia built on modernity. Secondly its ease of distribution and reproduction. Lastly, film was considered an equal opportunities agitator. The latter factor may have been the most important. The soviet union spoke some 100 different languages. Three out of five adults were illiterate. Accessible literary propaganda would have been a logistical nightmare, never mind the point being missed by the great majority. Cinema was “the only book that even an illiterate could read.”

Film became an important part of Soviet intentions, and with good reasons. To suggest that film had a good platform to influence would be an understatement. Attempts to control the creation of films would be difficult. Film company owners could move the inherently mobile production to Crimea leaving authorities to seize empty rooms. between 1917 and 1921 non state controlled filmmakers produced over twice more than Government licensed productions.By 1928 nine-thousand film theatres existed, a figure that would double by 1931. Its not a great task to understand why Soviet power felt a need for tighter control over a narrative that could brew dissent.

Although older Bolsheviks with a conservative aesthetic dismissed filmmaking as an art form, montage, as used by Sergei Eisenstein, was without equal in traditional art forms. During the NEP era of Soviet Russia, cultural experimentation was allowed, and even encouraged. A filmmaker who flourished in these circumstances was Sergei Eisenstein. Eisenstein dedicated himself to filming a series of four films that showed the revolutionary movement in Russia which concluded with October . Ebbing through the series was a clear Proletariat consciousness, the revolution as socially progressive and fought for by the masses. These films structured an impeccable narrative of the myths of revolution. Through suppression of the workers rights, showing injustice and violence as the backbone of the capitalist system, a discovery of solidarity culminating in the mass tearing down of the system. Concluding with the struggle for a better life in post-1917 Soviet countryside.

Interestingly in these early days Eisenstein was not pushed by any state propaganda, but by more genuine ideological impetus. This revolutionary ambition was fostered through his involvement in Proletkult. Films created throughout the 1920s projected a revolutionary through genuine conviction, both artistically and politically. As the Party exerted an increasing effective control over machinery for production, distribution and exhibition, it meant that filmmakers were compelled due to State incursion to toe the party line. To gain effect and change required a structural transformation and reorganisation, but this was not all that needed to be done. The contents of film had to be controlled. Its visible how officials viewed and treated themes under the circumstances of Socialist realism. The Cultural Revolution’s focus on Socialist Realism not only affected themes and messages, and how they were conveyed, but also the methods of filmmakers themselves. In response to Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible, Zhdanov claimed that the filmmakers fascination with shadows distracted the viewer from the action, as did his fascination with Ivan’s beard, prompting Eisenstein to promise that Ivan’s beard would be shorter in the future.

Although the State intervened to ensure a historical accuracy that fell in line of party ambitions, this involvement was inconsistent and temperamental. When Chekasov asked Stalin if the manuscript for Ivan the Terrible would need submitting to the Politburo for approval, Stalin allowed them self censorship. From the extract of Eisenstein’s works, during the discussion between Stalin, his officials and himself, Stalin mentioned that it would be better not to rush the production. Stalin likened the creation of a film to that of a sculpture with the goal to improve quality even if it meant less pictures. Although the state had penetrated art and popular culture, with the teleological aim of directing towards a certain ideological goal it was not over regulated and harmful to Eisenstein’s craft.

Make no mistakes though Eisenstein was an outliner. An all-union body was created called Sovkino to control distribution. Sovkino had a habit of prescribing. Originally they felt that the avante-garde was not what the public wanted to see. Despite this they were willing to allow experimentation, which Glavpolitprosvet, the People’s Commissariat for Enlightenment disagreed with. Glavpolitprosvet’s Meshcheriakov felt that cultural pluralism would be unacceptable. This small exchange sums up the paradoxical nature of Soviet regulation. The desire was never quite matched by funding, only some fifty thousand roubles was invested into each production. Sovkino was replaced as the centralised controller of Soviet film by Soiuzkino. This solved issues of plurality by creating films that were ideologically acceptable by the party. The timing for the shift was right, moving away from anonymity to a star system that coincided with the cult of the hero that appeared with the First Five Year Plan. But the economic system that had helped it thrive also crippled it. Soiuzkino haemorrhaged money, and investing capital in it to buy foreign equipment would be seen a counter revolutionary. The solution was to give Soiuzkino complete control of stock and film, and create a Five Year Plan for the film industry. The intent was to create 300 films a year. This was an unmitigated failure. In 1935 only 43 productions were made and in 1937 it dropped to 24. Unsurprisingly Soiuzkino was replaced by the Ministry for Cinematography which was charged with making an income of 750 roubles. Although it took some time, through several cultural shifts and economies, they did finally manage to take control of Soviet cinema, proscribing a party line. It took considerable time due to administrative and logistical failures, as well as crappy quality productions.

Propaganda 2012: Critical close-up

Propaganda is a North Korean Propaganda film translated and posted to Youtube by an individual named Sabine Program. The description posted is that, while on a family trip to Seoul, Sabine was approached by two defectors, who gave him the film to translate and disseminate. They wished for Sabine to post the film in its entirety so it could reach a worldwide audience. The film makes use of archive footage and a North Korean expert to show exactly what is wrong with Western culture. During translation, Sabine began to have some doubts about the political affiliations of the defectors, coming to the conclusion that they were in fact agents for the DPRK (Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea). Although doubtful of their true intentions, Sabine continued posting and translating, believing that they posed an interesting question, one vital to discourse. The film is separated into different chapters;

0:00 Introduction

6:54 Creating Ideas & Illusions

16:48 Fear

19:35 Religion

25:00 Beware the 1%

28:10 Emulating Psychosis

31:21 Rewriting History

41:15 The Birth of Propaganda

45:49 Cover Ups and Omissions

54:10 Complicity

58:05 Censorship

1:01:50 International Diplomacy

1:06:14 Television

1:08:11 Advertising

1:14:36 The Cult of Celebrity

1:22:34 Distraction

1:28:01 Terrorism

1:35:00 The Revolution Starts Now

Except none of this is true. Sabine was never in Seoul, because Sabine doesn’t exist. Propaganda is a film by New Zealand born director Slavko Martinov. Sabine is a part of the film, although an external part. He’s part of the marketing of the film, an extended narrative vehicle to immerse the viewer. And Sabine is a vital cog in the message of this film. Propaganda is not North Korean, although in the title, the DPRK actually has very little to do with the film. It provides shock, but North Korea in this instance is an abstract isolated prism from which to see our own existence. It, and the rest of the film, is a meta-fiction to deconstruct the meta-narratives that structure our lives. And it has to be ‘meta’. The term meta has grown increasingly popular over the years through use on the internet, ironic or otherwise. It also needs to use propaganda to explain propaganda that surrounds our lives. But it doesn’t resort to what many other anti-propaganda films that abound the net do. It doesn’t show the cold imagery used by the Soviet Union, it creates a fiction to satirise reality, specifically our reality. It’s very much a post-modern work, a self-critique of the times that have created it. Containing a heavy dose of Noam Chomsky, and Pierre Bourdieu, the critique extends to the loss of idealism since the end of the Cold War and an increase in apathy. Pushing the lack of choice in the ‘democratic’ partisan system of the US. Since that era, and loss of bipolarism in the world there has been an uncertainty towards a physical ‘enemy’. This has all lead to the creation of the film. The satirical mockumentary (or propumentary) is a deconstruction, created by propaganda (Sabine) to believe that a message of propaganda (the film) created by a propaganda institution (North Korea) to denounce another form of propaganda (Western Media).  However this propaganda in reality is a denunciation of media suffocation, and what that hides. A notable explanation of this is one of Bush’s speeches from 2000. Bush states “either you’re with us… you love freedom, or your against us, and with the enemy”. The narrator of the film at this point states: “Propagandist can provide simple answers to complex questions and ask for approval without question”.

There is a message against hyper-capitalism, specifically the profits over the well being of consumers. The film looks at the use of globalization and democratization of social media, to make the individual a content creator of propaganda. Specifically it dissects celebrity culture to get this across. The image used is man being photographed, the narrator asking, “What has this man done, won a Nobel Prize? Found a cure for cancer? No, he bought the first Iphone”. Through the accessibility of the web, and globalization every individual can gain some form of stardom, increasing and idealization of celebrities. This is how the use of Sabine makes a point, these methods, and the creation of a lie made the film popular. It created a brand to push its message. Overall the film makes good points, without making jumps in logic. It displays how the viewer needs to understand the context of what they are seeing to be affected by the message.

The film, although well made and makes honorable attempts to base its entire claim on historical fact, it does descend slightly into conspiracy theory and conjecture at times. It sociological theories are largely true to their inspiration, the polls used are not so accurate, showing the west as more outraged by their leaders than may be the case. Propaganda, although highly judgmental, is key to free discourse attempting to graphically portray the complex world we live in. Most importantly to this discourse is to remember that we are able to view this reaction freely without censorship. The most interesting thing about it isn’t what it has to say, but the way it says it.