6 Sneaky Ways Countries Try to Win Hearts and Minds
BY Chris Stokel-Walker
January 30, 2014
Getty Images
The spread of propaganda is as old as society itself—but not all propaganda techniques are garish posters or august news reports on television or in print. Some are more subtle attempts to besmirch an enemy or to promote one’s own cause.
1. Renaming things
One propaganda technique of some notoriety was the U.S. government’s decision to rename french fries "freedom fries" in Congress kitchens, a pointed attack on the French army’s reticence to enter the invasion of Iraq. During World War I, some in the U.S. started calling German measles "liberty measles" and dachshunds "liberty hounds."
Who is more impressionable than the very young? That may be the reason that Nazi Germany attempted to smuggle pro-German movies into early cinematic toys sent to the UK that were meant to show simple cartoonish shorts. When the scam was uncovered in August 1939, contemporary news reports said that “the films were found to include such Jew baiting scenes in Germany as aged women being forced to sweep streets while a large crowd laughed. Other scenes showed outdoor Nazi meetings, close ups of Hitler giving the Nazi salute and shots of Hitler and Mussolini.”
3. Cartoons
Some propaganda efforts aimed at children were more overt—and perhaps more sinister for it. During World War II, while Nazi Germany was trying to smuggle in anti-western propaganda, governments were contracting big studios such as Walt Disney to produce propaganda aimed at the other side. Nine out of 10 Disney employees during the war were tasked with producing the films, 68 hours of which were produced. Some of Disney’s most famous characters, including Donald Duck, were tasked with reminding kids and adults alike of the evils of the Nazi empire.
4. Social media
DPRKdaily may well be one of the strangest Instagram feeds out there on the internet. A state-operated propaganda arm, it posts a torrent of photographs of notable North Koreans and gleaming buildings, often with long photo captions that stretch Instagram’s systems to breaking points. Sometimes photo captions spill over into multiple comments on photos, with the whole feed designed to assure social media-savvy watchers that all is well in the secretive state.
5. Video games
The U.S. Army allowed its immersive video game training programs to be modified and released generally for gamers to play worldwide in 2002, while China’s People's Liberation Army (PLA) co-developed a first person shooter, "Glorious Mission," in which players shot at U.S. and Japanese soldiers. North Korean game developers have opted for a soft power expression of propaganda, developing "Pyongyang Racer," a browser game, for Koryo Tours (who operate trips to the country). Rather than shooting people, you pootle along empty roads, taking in the pixellated sights of Pyongyang.
6. Presents from the sky
The dropping of leaflets broadcasting information one country may not want its people to see is a standard propaganda technique, but airborne presents are another thing altogether. The U.S. Air Force has dropped all sorts of items, from miniature radios turned to the Voice of America into Vietnam in the 1970s, to cigarettes, matches, calendars, and chess boards in North Korea in the 1950s. The aim, of course, is to demonstrate that the opposition—portrayed as evil by domestic propaganda—is not as bad as the home government says they are.
Every New Movie, TV Series, and Special Coming to Netflix in May
BY Alvin Ward
April 24, 2018
Netflix
Netflix is making way for loads of laughs in its library in May, with a handful of original comedy specials (Steve Martin, Martin Short, Carol Burnett, Tig Notaro, and John Mulvaney will all be there), plus the long-awaited return of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Here’s every new movie, TV series, and special making its way to Netflix in May.
MAY 1
27: Gone Too Soon
A Life of Its Own: The Truth About Medical Marijuana
Amelie
Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures: Season 1
Beautiful Girls
Darc
God's Own Country
Hachi: A Dog's Tale
Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
High School Musical 3: Senior Year
John Mulaney: Kid Gorgeous Live at Radio City
Mr. Woodcock
My Perfect Romance
Pocoyo & Cars
Pocoyo & The Space Circus
Queens of Comedy: Season 1
Reasonable Doubt
Red Dragon
Scream 2
Shrek
Simon: Season 1
Sliding Doors
Sometimes
The Bourne Ultimatum
The Carter Effect
The Clapper
The Reaping
The Strange Name Movie
Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V: Season 2
MAY 2
Jailbreak
MAY 4
A Little Help with Carol Burnett
Anon
Busted!: Season 1
Dear White People: Volume 2
End Game
Forgive Us Our Debts
Kong: King of the Apes: Season 2
Manhunt
My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman: Tina Fey
No Estoy Loca
The Rain: Season 1
MAY 5
Faces Places
MAY 6
The Joel McHale Show with Joel McHale
MAY 8
Desolation
Hari Kondabolu: Warn Your Relatives
MAY 9
Dirty Girl
MAY 11
Bill Nye Saves the World: Season 3
Evil Genius: the True Story of America's Most Diabolical Bank Heist
Spirit Riding Free: Season 5
The Kissing Booth
The Who Was? Show: Season 1
MAY 13
Ali Wong: Hard Knock Wife
MAY 14
The Phantom of the Opera
MAY 15
Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce: Season 4
Grand Designs: Seasons 13 - 14
Only God Forgives
The Game 365: Seasons 15 - 16
MAY 16
89
Mamma Mia!
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
The Kingdom
Wanted
MAY 18
Cargo
Catching Feelings
Inspector Gadget: Season 4
MAY 19
Bridge to Terabithia
Disney’s Scandal: Season 7
Small Town Crime
MAY 20
Some Kind of Beautiful
MAY 21
Señora Acero: Season 4
MAY 22
Mob Psycho 100: Season 1
Shooter: Season 2
Terrace House: Opening New Doors: Part 2
Tig Notaro Happy To Be Here
MAY 23
Explained
MAY 24
Fauda: Season 2
Survivors Guide to Prison
MAY 25
Ibiza
Steve Martin and Martin Short: An Evening You Will Forget for the Rest of Your Life
The Toys That Made Us: Season 2
Trollhunters: Part 3
MAY 26
Sara's Notebook
MAY 27
The Break with Michelle Wolf
MAY 29
Disney·Pixar's Coco
MAY 30
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Season 4
MAY 31
Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story
My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman: Howard Stern
If your main interests are true crime and cooking, you’re in the middle of a Renaissance Age. The Michelangelos of nonfiction are consistently bringing stellar storytelling to twisty tales of murder and mayhem as well as luxurious shots of food prepared by the most creative culinary minds.
But these aren’t the only genres that documentary series are tackling. There’s a host of history, arts, travel, and more at your streaming fingertips. When you want to take a break from puzzling out who’s been wrongfully imprisoned, that is.
Here are the 20 best docuseries to watch right now, so start streaming.
1. WILD WILD COUNTRY (2018)
What happens when an Indian guru with thousands of American followers sets up shop near a small town in Oregon with the intent to create a commune? Incredibly sourced, this documentary that touches on every major civic issue—from religious liberty to voting rights—should be your new obsession. When you choose a side, be prepared to switch. Multiple times.
If your heart is broken by what’s going on in Flint, Michigan, be prepared to have that pain magnified and complicated. The filmmakers behind this provocative series were embedded with police in Flint to offer us a glimpse at the area’s local struggles and national attention from November 2015 through early 2017.
Narrated by Meryl Streep, this three-part series covers a half-century of American experience from the earliest days of second-wave feminism through Clarence Thomas’s Supreme Court nomination in the 1990s. Ellen DeGeneres, Condoleezza Rice, Sally Ride, Hillary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, and more are featured, and the series got six more episodes in a second season.
After the massive success of Serial in 2014, a one-two punch of true crime docuseries landed the following year. One was the immensely captivating study of power, The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, which chronicled the bizarre, tangled web of the real estate mogul who was suspected of several murders. The show, which could be measured in jaw-drops per hour, both registered real life and uniquely affected it.
The second major true crime phenom of 2015 was 10 years in the making. Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos uncovered the unthinkable story of Steven Avery, a man wrongfully convicted of sexual assault who was later convicted of murdering a different woman, Teresa Halbach. Not just a magnifying glass on the justice system and a potential small town conspiracy, it’s also a display of how stories can successfully get our blood boiling.
Speaking of good conspiracies: documentary titan Errol Morris turns his keen eye to a CIA project that’s as famous as it is unknown—MKUltra. A Cold War-era mind control experiment. LSD and hypnosis. The mysterious death of a scientist. His son’s 60-year search for answers. Morris brings his incisive eye to the hunt.
Based on Mark Harris’s superlative book, this historical doc features filmmakers like Steven Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro discussing the WWII-era work of predecessors John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, Frank Capra, and George Stevens. Also narrated by Meryl Streep, it looks at how the war shaped the directors and how they shaped the war. As a bonus, Netflix has the war-time documentaries featured in the film available to stream.
If you can’t afford film school, and your local college won’t let you audit any more courses, Mark Cousins’s 915-minute history is the next best thing. Unrivaled in its scope, watching it is like having a charming encyclopedia discuss its favorite movies. Yes, at 15-episodes it’s sprawling, so, yes, you should watch it all in one go. Carve out a weekend and be ready to take notes on all the movies you want to watch afterward.
David Chang, the host of the first season of The Mind of a Chef, has returned with a cultural mash-up disguised as a foodie show. What does it mean for pizza to be “authentic”? What do Korea and the American South have in common? With his casual charm in tow, Chang and a variety of special guests explore people through the food we love to eat as an artifact that brings us all together.
A legend of nonfiction, Ken Burns has more than a few docuseries available to stream, including long-form explorations of the Civil War and baseball. His 10-episode series on jazz exhaustively tracks nearly a century of the formation and evolution of the musical style across the United States. You’ll wanna mark off a big section of the calendar and crank up the volume.
In 2001, author Michael Peterson reported to police that his wife had died after falling down a set of stairs, but police didn’t buy the story and charged him with her murder. Before the current true crime boom, before Serial and all the rest, there was Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s Peabody Award-winning docuseries following Peterson’s winding court case. The mystery at the heart of the trial and the unparalleled access Lestrade had to Peterson’s defense make this a must-see. (Netflix just announced that it will be releasing three new episodes of the series this summer.)
The sequel to the 2006 original is a real stunner. Narrated (naturally) by Sir David Attenborough, featuring music from Hans Zimmer, and boasting gorgeous photography of our immeasurably fascinating planet, this follow-up takes us through different terrains to see the life contained within. There are snow leopards in the mountains, a swimming sloth in the islands, and even langurs in our own urban jungle. Open your eyes wide to learn a lot or put it on in the background to zen out.
13. THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA’S BEST IDEA (2009)
The cheapest way to visit Yosemite, Yellowstone, Muir Woods, and more. This Emmy-winning, six-part series is both a travelogue and a history lesson in conservation that takes up the argument of why these beautiful places should be preserved: to quote President Roosevelt, “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.”
Experience the too-often-untold stories of conflict zones through the lenses of world class photographers like Nicole Tung, Donna Ferraro, and João Silva. This heart-testing, bias-obliterating series is unique in its views into dark places and eye toward hope.
Far more than a sports documentary, the story of the players at East Mississippi Community College will have you rooting for personal victories as much as the points on the scoreboard. Many of the outstanding players on the squad lost spots at Division I schools because of disciplinary infractions or failing academics, so they’re seeking redemption in a program that wants them to return to the big-name schools. There are two full seasons to binge and a third on the way.
Currently in its sixth season, the series is known for asking tough questions that need immediate answers and giving viewers a street-level view of everything from killing cancer to juvenile justice reform. Its confrontational style of gonzo provocation won’t be everyone’s cup of spiked tea, but it’s filling an important gap that used to be filled by major network investigative journalists. When they let their subjects—from child soldiers suffering PTSD after fighting for ISIS to coal miners in Appalachia—tell their stories, nonfiction magic happens.
From David Gelb, the documentarian behind Jiro Dreams of Sushi, this doc series is a backstage pass to the kitchens of the world’s most elite chefs. The teams at Osteria Francescana, Blue Hill, Alinea, Pujol, and more open their doors to share their process, culinary creativity, and, of course, dozens of delicious courses. No shame in licking your screen.
For those looking to learn more about culture while chowing down, world-renowned chef Nobu Matsuhisa guides guest chefs to different regions of Japan to ingest the sights, sounds, and spirits of the area before crafting a dish inspired by the journey. History is the main course, with a healthy dash of culinary invention that honors tradition.
Should a jury decide if a child is sentenced to life in jail without parole? How can you go to jail for 20 years for shooting your gun inside your own home to deter thieves? These are just two of the questions examined by this knockout series about the conflicts, outdated methods, and biases lurking in America’s criminal justice system. Insightful and infuriating, it makes a strong companion to Ava DuVernay’s 13th.
It won’t be available until April 27 (so close!), but it’s well worth adding to your queue. This four-part series utilizes a wealth of footage, including unseen personal videos, to share the tragic story of Robert F. Kennedy’s run for president in the context of an era riven by racial strife. Watching this socio-political memorial told by many who were there (including Marian Wright and Congressman John Lewis), it will be impossible not to draw connections to the current day and wonder: What if?
