The dystopian world of The Hunger Games franchise is at war, and it seems as though no war can be fought in the past, present or future without some form of propaganda. The first two films in the series showed the fascistic Capitol of Panem using the gladiatorial combat of The Hunger Games themselves as a way to quell rebellion by distracting the masses. The new film, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, now shows the heroes of the revolution using the exact same techniques to spur the oppressed to action, by transforming Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) into an iconic figurehead, complete with her own theme song.
The power of cinema to attract an audience has long been used for the purposes of propaganda, i.e. to instill and/or perpetuate social, political or religious ideas through a series of manipulative techniques. Propaganda films use straw man arguments, unassailable heroes, demonized villains, eye-catching iconography and simplistic “us vs. them” narratives to sell the message of a government, group or even a single individual with a specific agenda. Propaganda is propaganda whether or not you personally agree with the message; it’s defined by the way that it conveys an idea, not by the idea itself.
Because the techniques of propaganda films are, by their very definition, extremely effective, it’s important to call attention to them so audiences can recognize when they are being pandered to. Some of the most significant films ever made have been propaganda films, specifically because they have had an enormous impact on people who did not recognize the red flags of the medium being used to manipulate the message. Then again, sometimes the propaganda techniques are so cartoonishly overt that they are unmistakable, and hard for anyone to take seriously.
Let’s take a look at some of the more interesting examples of propaganda throughout the history of filmmaking, to highlight the different breeds of propaganda, to raise awareness of how it’s used, and to highlight the long history of calculated cinematic manipulations that have influenced the storytelling of The Hunger Games.
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13 Fascinating Propaganda Films
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The Atlas Shrugged Trilogy
Spanning three films from 2012-2014, the Atlas Shrugged motion picture trilogy was widely panned for its low production values and frequently amateurish performances. But its message was also polarizing, casting industrialists as infallible heroes and government officials as driveling, power-mad villains with indefensible socialist agendas and dorky names like "Wesley Mouch."
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Battleship Potemkin
Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 propaganda epic was revolutionary in more ways than one. It tells the story of a mutiny against Russia's tsarist regime by the men aboard the title vessel, who are sentenced to death when they refuse to eat rotten meat, leading to a massacre of men, women and children on the Odessa Steps. It also featured groundbreaking new editing techniques to elicit an emotional response, which influenced nearly every motion picture since.
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A Carol for Another Christmas
This made-for-TV movie written by Rod Serling ("The Twilight Zone") and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (All About Eve) reworked Charles Dicken's Christmas Carol as propaganda supporting the United Nations. Sterling Hayden stars as an influential tycoon who stands in the way of American involvement in international affairs. Over the course of an evening, an incredible supporting cast (Peter Sellers, Eva Marie Saint, Ben Gazzara, Pat Hingle, Robert Shaw) show him the error of his ways. A Carol for Another Christmas is not on home video but frequently airs on Turner Classic Movies during the holidays.
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The Day After Tomorrow
Roland Emmerich is no stranger to propaganda filmmaking techniques, but his magnum opus must be The Day After Tomorrow, in which every doomsday global warming scenario strikes the planet centuries early, over just a couple of days. The premise is laughable but incredibly photographed, and the Bush Administration takes it on the chin when an obvious Dick Cheney analogue is forced to admit they were wrong about pretty much everything ever.
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The Great Dictator
Charlie Chaplin plays the Adolf Hitler analogue Adenoid Hynkel as a power mad buffoon in The Great Dictator, a hilarious comedy that the comedian said he would never have made if he'd known about Nazi Germany's concentration camps at the time (which were, of course, nothing to take lightly). Chaplin's first completely talking picture came out during the period when the United States was ostensibly at peace with Nazi Germany, leading to controversy on both sides of the political spectrum. (Adolf Hitler reportedly saw The Great Dictator - twice - but nobody knows what he actually thought of it.)
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Left Behind
The Left Behind movies - recently rebooted as a starring vehicle for Nicolas Cage - portray the Biblical Rapture, in which faithful Christians suddenly disappear all over the world, forcing non-believers to all admit that they were wrong about God their whole lives. The series bears the unmistakable tone of schadenfreude, as everyone who wasn't a devout Christian suffers through riots, disasters and the threat of the oncoming apocalypse.
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Mrs. Miniver
This 1942 blockbuster Best Picture winner stars Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon as the heads of a typical British household during The Blitz, struggling to keep morale high during the day while Germany bombs the country at night. Mrs. Miniver was such an influential piece of propaganda, illustrating the impact of World War II on families as well as soldiers, that Winston Churchill himself said it was "propaganda worth a hundred battleships."
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Red Dawn
John Milius's cult classic "Red Scare" film stars a cast of attractive teen stars (including Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson and Jennifer Grey) as guerrilla warriors after Communist Russia successfully invades the United States. The "it could happen to you" messaging, images of Communist soldiers ravaging suburbia, and melodramatic sacrifices made by the heroes are ludicrous, but portrayed with absolute sincerity.
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Reefer Madness
The notorious "Scare Film" Reefer Madness tells the story of two cartoonishly wholesome teens who smoke a little pot and go completely insane. Because, as Reefer Madness tells us, that will always happen, every time. The absurd dehumanization of potheads and juvenile screenplay has led Reefer Madness to become an ironic cult classic (particularly amongst stoners). It was eventually adapted into a bitingly satirical stage musical that was also filmed, with a cast that included Alan Cumming, Kristen Bell and Neve Campbell.
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Rocky IV
Rocky, the iconic American underdog franchise, temporarily abandoned realism for the fourth installment, in which Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone, who also wrote and directed) faces off against an inhuman boxing machine (Dolph Lundgren) who murders Rocky's best friend in the ring. Rocky's can-do American bravery eventually inspires Russia to root against its own champion, on their home turf no less. Also there's a robot in it.
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Starship Troopers
Paul Verhoeven's adaptation of Robert Heinlein's sci-fi classic subverted the original pro-military message, intentionally transforming Starship Troopers into a propaganda film so utterly absurd that no one could possibly take it seriously. The dehumanized villains are actual insects, the heroes are impossibly good-looking ciphers, and satirical news reels demonstrate the nightmare dystopia in which they happily live. It's only through details like Neil Patrick Harris's pseudo-Nazi attire and the swiftly disregarded implication that humanity might have started the alien war through their careless Manifest Destiny that the film truly tips its hand, encouraging audiences to look behind the blockbuster façade and into the much darker motives that unironically produce films not unlike Starship Troopers.
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Top Gun
Tom Cruise stars as a sexy hotshot fighter pilot who learns to set aside his individuality in order to become part of an elite military unit in Top Gun, a film that makes the U.S. Navy seem so unbelievably cool that recruiting booths were actually set up at some theaters during the initial release. In its wake, enlistment skyrocketed.
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Triumph of the Will
Leni Riefenstahl's infamous documentary, about the 1934 Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg, glorified the Third Reich with incredible imagery that to this very day comes across as shockingly striking. Riefenstahl was given free reign by Adolf Hitler himself to document the rally, resulting in a film that the dictator called, "a totally unique and incomparable glorification of the power and beauty of our movement." It remains one of the most notorious examples of incredible filmmaking prowess used for terrible ends.
