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Article Excerpt
"We can now see, through the looking glass of several decades, that both war and Hollywood thrive on illusion." Robert S. Sennett
Advertising and publicity are forms of commercial speech that function powerfully to motivate moviegoing and shape our understanding of films. In fact, at times, advertisements are more memorable, more evocative, and more widely seen than the films they promote. While historians have studied the production and exhibition of war-related films, they have paid much less attention to how these films were sold to the American public. The promotion of war-related films, specifically the advertisements that announced them to consumers, conveyed cultural meanings of patriotism, the national identity of Americans and her enemies, and the reasons why the country was at war and why the public should contribute to it. Advertising for American films from World War I did more than simply tout movies. This case study of seven advertisements reveals the ideological power of what Christian Metz once described as cinema's "third machine: after the one that manufactures the films, and the one that consumes them, the one that vaunts them, that valorizes the product." (1) Most of these advertisements promoted films exhibited in the latter years of World War I, when the United States and its film industry were fully engaged in the war; other ads emphasized certain issues that were of special concern to exhibitors, such as war taxes on theater admissions. (2)
WWI era advertisements for war films created rich rhetorical forms with words and images that could evoke primal fears or modern optimism. Technologies were deployed in ads to encourage exhibitors to book movies and the public to see them. World War I marked the introduction or modernization of the submarine, machine gun, tank, airplane, artillery, radio, and chemical weapon. These technologies transcended conventional limitations of space and time to deliver destruction to distant military or civilian populations. They created lasting physical and emotional damage on an unprecedented scale. Film promotion both familiarized audiences with these technologies and used them rhetorically to signify the relative power of combatants and the righteousness of the Allied cause. When, for instance, ads showed Americans with one of the new weapons technologies they were portrayed as effective and morally justified; however, when a German wielded a machine gun, he was inept or evil. In addition to new technologies, film promotion depicted more conventional and even primitive weapons, such as knives and clubs, sometimes staging allegorical scenes with figures like Uncle Sam and Kaiser Wilhelm II. These condensed the war into a dramatic conflict between two familiar combatants, and alluded to the great historical significance, or the putative ancient animosities, in this struggle between democracy and the tyranny of the evil "Hun." Film promotion even depicted non-military technologies being used as weapons, such as mechanical presses that squeezed the Kaiser to death. Thus, images of technology in ads often went beyond the literal content of the films they promoted, as is typical with advertising--a practice prone to hyperbole and playing upon the emotions and imaginations of consumers. (3)
Like the films they promoted, advertisements functioned to rally support for the war effort and to exploit the conventional movie attraction of technology as spectacle. War film promotion also valorized the medium of cinema, itself a modern form of communication and a powerful technological weapon that served "our" interests. Ads touted the capacity of cinema to provide news or spectacular images from the war with greater verisimilitude than any other medium. They vaunted cinema's ability to advocate the war effort, how cinema could portray the leaders, heroes, villains, and victims of the war in ways that served government interests. Cinema was likened to weapons such as the machine gun, with the information and persuasive content of film images being as powerful as bullets in combating the enemy. Ads also touted cinema as a respite from the war, providing escapist entertainment that rejuvenated war-weary spirits. As providers of this powerful new medium, local exhibitors were encouraged to see themselves not simply as merchants, but as actively serving both their local communities and the country.
American film advertising from World War I depicted technologies in ways that benefited the United States government's war effort while also serving the film industry's own business interests. Advertising promoted movies and also the technological, economic, and moral superiority of the U.S. as part of what Leslie Midkiff DeBauche has termed the film industry's wartime "reel patriotism." The film industry's direct cooperation with the government promoted the war to omen-reluctant Americans, improved cinema's public image and profitability, and helped the industry to achieve what would become its longstanding dominance of the global film market. Indeed, this period was pivotal for the U.S. film industry, which was beginning to integrate vertically and expand rapidly its presence in domestic and international markets, largely because of the prolonged disruption of the European film industries and U.S. official neutrality.
Although the June 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand precipitated the war in Europe, the U.S. remained officially neutral until April 1917 for reasons including widespread public sentiments of isolationism and pacifism. When the U.S. entered the war, among the immediate mobilization efforts undertaken by the government was the formation of the Committee on Public Information (CPI), which conducted a massive advertising and public relations campaign to promote the war. (4) The CPI was unprecedented in its scale, sophistication, and interplay between government and the private sector, providing a model for conducting warfare through the modern mass media in conjunction with the more traditional battlefield. As part of this interplay, the CPI's Division of Films enlisted the emerging Hollywood industry on many levels of production, distribution, and exhibition. Seeking cultural legitimacy and the economic benefits of working with the government, the film industry responded by producing movies that derided Germany, praised the Allies, and urged public participation in the war effort. Film companies encouraged local exhibitors to show these movies and promote the war to the public in various other ways, such as providing forums for the thousands of volunteer "Four-Minute Men" who frequently gave patriotic speeches about the war in movie theaters during reel changes. (5) Studios and exhibitors also produced advertising that stimulated demand for films and wartime fervor...
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