Saturday 30th of March 2024

propaganda for war...

scouts

Picture from Gus' collection of useless things...

Jim Harrison’s novella Legends of the Fall, made famous by the 1994 film starring Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins, recounts the tragedies that ensue when the three sons of an aristocratic Montana rancher ride north in 1914 to enlist in the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Given that an estimated 17 percent of Montana’s young men volunteered or were conscripted to fight in the bloody trenches of France and Belgium during World War I, Harrison drew from the real history of a young state that was largely enthusiastic about that war. 

Such ardor can, however, have a darker side. In 1918, Montana passed the nation’s harshest sedition law, which criminalized criticism of the war effort and served as a model for the federal government’s own Sedition Act enacted a few months later. Although the war was nearly over when it was passed, 200 Montanans, many of them German immigrants beset by a nationwide anti-German hysteria, were charged and 79 were convicted for being vocal in their opposition to the war.

Walking through a new exhibition at the de Young Museum in San Francisco entitled Weapons of Mass Seduction, one gets more insight into how such fanaticism was whipped up. Drawn from the extensive collection of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts of the San Francisco Fine Arts Museums, the exhibition chronicles martial propaganda from countries on both sides of the two world wars. Visitors see French recruiting posters, German calls to arms, and copies of sheet music for cheery Great War ditties meant to be sung by family and friends around the American parlor piano. Posters, films, leaflets, and other items in this well-curated exhibition highlight the ways in which tools being developed by burgeoning advertising and entertainment industries were pressed into service to shape public sentiment and gin up popular enthusiasm.

The iconic Army recruiting image of a finger-pointing Uncle Sam saying “I Want YOU” greets the visitor entering the gallery. Recruitment, however, plays a surprisingly small role in the exhibition, perhaps because of the dominant role that conscription played in both world wars. The Uncle Sam poster made its recruiting debut in 1917, the same year that the draft was instituted.

Much messaging was instead aimed at affecting morale on the home front and at changing domestic habits to avoid waste and stretch resources. A cluster of posters records the push for Americans to garden, can their own food, eat less meat, and collect and turn in everything from scrap iron to rags to kitchen drippings. Multimedia exhibitions seem to be the thing these days, and visitors here are treated to a collection of animated short films produced for the U.S. government by Walt Disney during World War II. One features Minnie Mouse in the kitchen—when suddenly a stern voiceover stops her from putting leftover bacon grease into Pluto’s dog dish. Initially angry at losing his treat, Pluto ends by proudly carrying a bucketload of grease to the local butcher shop, where such renderings are collected to make bombs that, as the viewer is vividly shown, will be dropped on Hitler’s Germany.

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-dark-side-of-war-pr...

 

 

jews, error, truth, christianity...

Self-appraisal tends to be a bit sirupy and dangerous... Propaganda is war. Not quite, but it helps in the motivations for war. Symbols are used to glorify victory and forge the dead soldiers into remembrance — all sterile of blood, engraved in marble columns. In the early 1920s, such propagandist art was being used to promote the Western civilisation — the best on the planet— such as the "Genius of the Latin People" — a bit like the Ramsay Foundation for the Western Civilisation... 

 

genius

This sculpture in Paris, Monument to the Genius of the Latin People, was instantly derided by the Dadaists, especially Picabia. 

If Dada, as claimed by the Dadaists, was a noisy alarm that woke up modern art from merely aesthetic slumber, then this Picabia drawing shows us how the alarm was sounded. It is the wiring diagram of a Dada alarm clock (made in Switzerland in 1919) which historically plots the flow of the current of modern art, from Ingres to 391, Picabia's own Dada magazine."

read more:

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/35993

 


Here is Picabia's piss-take on "Monument to the Genius of the Latin People" as published in his own magazine:


391

Here, Picabia, was the publisher of his own views and art. Most likely, no "respectable" publisher would touch it. But for a few francs one could explore the world of nonsense — the world that many generations of humans had more or less tamed by inventing a lot of crap — but a world of illusions exposed by Dada, contrary to the traditional motivations. For many people, Dada was refreshing and challenging, while offering a way out of the self-appraisal that inevitably would lead to yet another war.

Jews, error, truth, Christianity... are the only words in parallel with what appears to be a crooked line (possibly a phallus) stemming from a what appears to be a "pair of balls"... But whether this is what Picabia meant or not is irrelevant. 


The title of the piece (1921) is "Monument to human stupidity"... So there.


 

leaded neckerchief sliders...

Approximately 110,000 Boy Scouts neckerchief sliders have been recalled over lead content, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) said Wednesday.

“The colored enamel on the neckerchief slides contains levels of lead that exceed the federal lead content ban,” the agency said in a release.

Blue Webelos, green bear, orange lion and red wolf neckerchiefs are impacted by the recall, according to the CPSC, which noted there have been no reported injuries.

The agency also gave information about what customers should look for on their products.

“‘Made in China’ and P.O. number 200228276, 20023175, 200233281 or 200236630 are printed on a white label attached to the back of the neckerchief slide,” the group explained. The items were sold at several places, including Boy Scouts of America stores and its online shop.

The CPSC said customers can return the items for new ones at no cost.

 

Read more:

https://nypost.com/2018/09/27/boy-scouts-neckerchief-sliders-recalled-ov...

 

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