{"id":2143,"date":"2018-11-07T12:30:30","date_gmt":"2018-11-07T17:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/?p=2143"},"modified":"2018-11-07T12:30:30","modified_gmt":"2018-11-07T17:30:30","slug":"2143","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2018\/11\/07\/2143\/","title":{"rendered":"New Medium, Old Tricks: Animated Propaganda"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\tToday\u2019s entry in <em>WWI on Film<\/em> isn\u2019t one film. It\u2019s a collection of much shorter films. If you\u2019re an AU student, you can access 20<sup>th<\/sup> century film and newsreel clips from the WPA Library and British Pathe. Some of these clips are from WWI, and are basic black-and-white motion pictures. Of course, they don\u2019t have sound, but it\u2019s fascinating to catch a glimpse of the WWI era.<\/p>\n<p>There are dozens of clips that you can explore, but I wanted to focus on one in particular: an animated short from British Pathe. In the short, the German Kaiser steps onto a balcony (not-so-subtly labeled \u201cGermany\u201d), and gazes up at a smiling moon. The moon\u2019s smile immediately begins to transform into a smirk, and as the Kaiser gazes up, new stars appear in the sky. As the Kaiser watches with growing horror, the stars multiply, and the streaks of moonlit clouds form themselves into stripes, until the night sky looks like an American flag. Just after the stripes morph into bayoneted guns, the Kaiser cowers in fear. A gun shell comes soaring through the air, hitting his balcony and causing a massive explosion. When the smoke clears, the balcony and the Kaiser are gone, and the moon is laughing.<\/p>\n<p>This animated short interests me for a couple of reasons. For one, it\u2019s an early example of an animated film, but it doesn\u2019t feel much like a modern animated film. Instead, it looks like a political cartoon set to motion. The unsubtle symbolism is there, as are the exaggerated reactions.<\/p>\n<p>Its target audience is also different from modern day animation. Animated feature films in the US tend to be marketed towards young children, while this short is clearly marketed to all ages. It\u2019s meant to prove a point, to provide hope, and to make an enemy laughable.<\/p>\n<p>What also strikes me is how the United States is portrayed. While no American is ever shown on frame, the national flag, a potent symbol, saturates the sky like an omen. A bad omen for Germany, yes, but a good omen for Britain and its allies. The entrance of the US into the war meant an injection of fresh troops and other resources (like guns and shells) for Britain and France, which sorely needed them. This short is meant to send a message to British viewers\u2014victory is in sight, now that the Americans are here.<\/p>\n<p>While I can\u2019t link directly to the video due to copyright restrictions, you can find this film by searching \u201cAnimated Film Depicts the U.S. Entry into World War I ca. 1917\u201d in the AU Library catalog.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today\u2019s entry in WWI on Film isn\u2019t one film. It\u2019s a collection of much shorter films. If you\u2019re an AU student, you can access 20th century film and newsreel clips from the WPA Library and British Pathe. Some of these clips are from WWI, and are basic black-and-white motion pictures. Of course, they don\u2019t have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wwi-on-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}