propaganda toward men Part 2

In a previous blog post, I talked about propaganda toward women. Today is propaganda directed toward men. Propaganda is political, biased information put out to influence the public through any media source possible, sometimes subtle in nature and other times extremely obvious.

The Disney Cartoon Private Snafu  - WWII era propaganda from Warner Brothers

I'm starting from the Civil war and ending on today's propaganda, because believe me, propaganda is still out there. It just isn't as obvious as the 1950s carpooling posters and offensive appliance ads. I'd encourage all of you out there to analyze the messages in your daily dose of media to see what comes up over and over again. You might be surprised.

Civil War

proslavery propaganda

The civil war, as most know, was within one country over the issue of slavery. Most of the propaganda was in the form of songs, songs that sang that real men went off to fight. Some propaganda toward men was in the newspapers, like the cartoon of black men taking white men's' places in a ballroom while the white men watched. That example was clearly for slavery, given that it played on the fears of what could happen when slaves were free. Others showed slavery to be despicable and showed a slave mother sold separate from her children, among other things. They also showed slaves being whipped.

Union Recruiting poster

As you'd expect, men were called into the fighting, but what ended up happening to the women back home was near or actual starvation. They were begged to come home, but the propaganda continued to draw them into the war. It was unpatriotic not to be fighting. The vast majority of the propaganda, however, occurred before the fighting and was a tug-of-war between pro-abolitionist and anti-abolitionist views.

World War I

1917 recruiting poster

Here we have a beacon towards the fighting, yet again. This is the theme in every war, except the cold war, which we will get to later. This was the years of visual posters and Uncle Sam urging you toward war, a poster that was reused in WWII later on. People were into isolationism and didn't want to enter the war, so they were being encouraged into it by the emotional appeals of the posters showing what could happen if the enemy came to them. Fear tactics and pride in your country was used big time. 

Images of women and Uncle Sam drew countless men into the conflict. A woman in a loose Navy outfit declared how if she were a man she'd join the Navy. Vivid images of the enemy as a mad brute holding a victimized woman (much like King Kong) declared that women and children were in trouble and men had to step up and defeat that enemy. If you were a pacifist, you were harassed by your own neighborhood, in some cases. All roads pointed to the war effort, and fighting was the goal if you were a man. It was that simple. 

World War II

After the first world war poster went so well, it was used again. Uncle Sam was urging men to fight once again. It was basically a repeat of the first, in many ways, except that it was a different war. Add Hollywood into the mix and we have even more propaganda power behind the recruitment messages. No surprise here, those directors went on to be more famous than those who didn't get in on the war. 

The war propaganda films were all about patriotism, recruitment, and

Der Fuehrer's Face

portraying the enemy badly, much like the posters. Newsreels can even be considered propaganda, in my opinion, especially during the wars. It portrays the US as heroic and the enemy as barbaric. Walt Disney threw himself into war cartoons during this war, which is part of the reason that Disney is probably big now, given the war films saved him from bankruptcy. His war cartoons included Der Fuehrer's Face, starring Donald Duck, as well as Donald Gets Drafted, Commando Duck, and Adolf Hitler Goes to Hell. Plus, Disney put out war training films for the troops.

The Cold War

An ad for a tie

Living in this era was restricting for women, yes, but was it restricting for men? I doubt that. The 1950s was a time where men went to work, came home, and sat down to a good meal, then (if I may be so bold) knew their wife and could boast of a large family while leaving household childrearing to the wife. Does that sound hard? I didn't think so. Unless you were ADHD or unconventional (couldn't sit still and didn't fit in) or homosexual (manhood and dominance were a definite thing), men were holding the stick while women got the short end of the stick. Some men were even, figuratively, dragging the women behind the stick. 

 coffee ad

Watch the sitcoms Father Knows Best, I dream of Genie, or Bewitched and you will immediately notice who the head of the family is, even if there are no children. The women serve the men. There is even an ad in a magazine that says "show her it's a man's world". Men weren't active fathers, though, so if you were more domestically involved as a father you were the exception to the rule, because domestic tasks were womens' work at that time. It was also acceptable to criticize women for their looks and homemaking abilities, so if a husband was mad at his wife for doing anything wrong it was almost acceptable to punish the wife for it, as shown by this ad for coffee. Like I said, men were holding the stick and women got the short end of it. 

Today

Propaganda today is a little more subtle, especially now that social media, film, art, and false news can be spread like wildfire across the internet. With all the ideas floating around our political climate, politics is everywhere. You can no longer ignore it like you could before. When it comes to messages about manhood from society I'd say that war recruitment still goes, but it is not as urgently pressing as before. It also includes women, so it is no longer just men. On top of changing politics, men have more freedom to be in the domestic sphere, even to the point of being a stay-at-home dad. LGBTQ is also not taboo, according to most society, so homosexual men are not trapped in the 1950s role of playing happy family. Manhood has definitely changed, but the 1950s ideal still stuck some places and in some families, so it sometimes depends on how men were raised when it comes to manhood standards. 

I'll end this with a warning, and some advice to avoid being herded into a society standard like sheep. Check out all your facts and find the truth. Think about who gets the short end of the stick, no matter what perks you get. Gender continues to work toward equality, but men still, to some degree and in some places, have more power. Yes, women are no longer trapped into the 1950 standard, but some spheres have some old traditions that tend to keep women out. Some old traditions keep men who don't fit the mold out, too, so my basic advice is this; be intelligent and consider who could be potentially dragged behind the stick. We may not live in the 1950s, but there are minority groups who lose out. Find out facts for yourself and you can't go wrong. 

On a slightly strange note, I found the perfect way to either show off a sarcastic sense of humor or be single for eternity. See the picture below. Show this off in your bathroom and never be bothered by women again!

This is a shower curtain. I don't know why it was made, but here it is. 

Pictures:
New York Historical Society
Vintagraph
Disney Film Project
The Society Pages
Tribupedia
Fine Art America

sources:
https://ideologicalart.com/war/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/posters-sold-world-war-i-american-public-180952179/
https://allthatsinteresting.com/world-war-1-propaganda-posters
https://www.history.com/news/world-war-1-propaganda-woodrow-wilson-fake-news
https://www.sagu.edu/thoughthub/the-power-of-propaganda-in-world-war-ii
https://hazlitt.net/feature/hollywood-and-wwii-kings-propaganda
https://insidethemagic.net/2017/01/influencing-america-through-animation-wwii-propaganda-cartoons-part-three-walt-disney/
https://alphahistory.com/coldwar/cold-war-propaganda/