Chapter 14: Further Reading

Film, Television, and the Moving Image

Propaganda, Power, and Persuasion: A Critical Study of Influence, Disinformation, and Resistance

The literature on film, television, and propaganda is unusually rich, because film studies and media studies both developed partly through engagement with propaganda as a problem — both historically and theoretically. The readings below are organized by subject and annotated to help you identify the most relevant entry points for different research questions.

Foundational Theoretical Works

Eisenstein, Sergei. Film Form: Essays in Film Theory. Edited and translated by Jay Leyda. Harcourt, 1949.

The primary theoretical text for understanding montage as a propaganda technique. Eisenstein's essays collected here develop the theory of dialectical montage — the collision of images that produces a third meaning — in systematic detail. The essays are not easy reading; Eisenstein's prose style reflects both his intellectual ambition and his training in theatrical theory. But the core arguments are essential: "The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram," "A Dialectical Approach to Film Form," and "Methods of Montage" are the most directly relevant to Chapter 14's analytical framework. Leyda's editorial apparatus provides useful context for the theoretical debates Eisenstein was engaged in.

Eisenstein, Sergei. The Film Sense. Edited and translated by Jay Leyda. Harcourt, 1942.

A companion volume to Film Form, more accessible and more directly focused on how film creates emotional experience. The concept of "synchronization" — how visual rhythm and audio rhythm interact to produce meaning — is developed here. Particularly relevant to the question of how music and editing combine in propaganda cinema to create emotional states that are then associated with political content.

Nazi Film Propaganda

Sontag, Susan. "Fascinating Fascism." New York Review of Books, February 6, 1975. Reprinted in Under the Sign of Saturn. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980.

The most influential critical essay on Riefenstahl's work and the broader aesthetics of fascist cinema. Sontag's argument — that Riefenstahl's films are not merely aestheticized records of fascism but are themselves embodiments of fascist aesthetics — has been debated extensively but not superseded. Essential reading for anyone studying Triumph of the Will or the relationship between aesthetic quality and political content in propaganda film. Sontag's conclusion that fascist aesthetics and fascist politics are inseparable is the analytical position this course finds most defensible.

Rentschler, Eric. The Ministry of Illusion: Nazi Cinema and Its Afterlife. Harvard University Press, 1996.

The most comprehensive academic study of Nazi cinema in English. Rentschler's analysis covers the full range of German film production under National Socialism — not just the overt propaganda films but the entertainment genres that carried embedded ideology. His analysis of Jud Süß and the category of "entertainment film as propaganda vehicle" is particularly relevant to Chapter 14's argument about fiction film as the most insidious propaganda form. Extensively footnoted; excellent bibliography for further research into primary sources.

Riefenstahl, Leni. The Sieve of Time: The Memoirs of Leni Riefenstahl. Quartet Books, 1992. (Published in German as Memoiren, 1987.)

Read critically rather than as a reliable historical source. Riefenstahl's memoirs represent her sustained, highly managed self-defense against the charge of complicity with National Socialism. The memoir's significance is precisely its analytical value as a propaganda text: it demonstrates how a perpetrator constructs a narrative of innocence through selective memory, aesthetic claim, and the deployment of post-hoc rationalization. Compare with Rentschler's and Sontag's analyses to understand what the memoir omits, distorts, and strategically frames. The gap between the memoir and the historical record is itself a lesson in how documentary evidence operates.

Rosenfeld, Alvin H. The World Hitler Never Made: Alternate History and the Memory of Nazism. Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Broader than its title suggests; includes substantial analysis of how Nazi visual culture — including film — has been processed, repurposed, and responded to in post-war culture. Relevant to the question of how Triumph of the Will has functioned in the decades since 1945 and to the ongoing debate about whether it can be studied in ways that advance understanding rather than extending the film's original influence.

Hollywood and U.S. Military Cooperation

Robb, David L. Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies. Prometheus Books, 2004.

The most accessible and comprehensive journalistic account of the Pentagon-Hollywood cooperation arrangement. Robb, a journalist who spent years reporting on the entertainment industry, documents the deal structure, traces its history from WWII through the early 2000s, and provides case-by-case analysis of specific productions and documented script changes. Some of his source documentation has been challenged for precision, but the overall framework and the specific documented cases are well-established. The book is readable for non-specialist audiences and provides the empirical foundation for the case study analysis in this chapter.

Secker, Tom, and Matthew Alford. "National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood." American Journal of Economics and Sociology 76, no. 2 (2017): 522–560.

The peer-reviewed academic version of the argument for which Robb's book is the journalistic predecessor. Secker and Alford's FOIA-based research produced the figure of over 800 feature films and 1,100 television productions with documented DoD cooperation — the most comprehensive count available. The journal article is more methodologically careful than Robb's book and provides the strongest available evidence base for the scope of the arrangement. Available through standard academic databases.

Koppes, Clayton R., and Gregory D. Black. Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits, and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies. Free Press, 1987.

The definitive historical study of the OWI-Hollywood relationship during WWII. Koppes and Black's research was based on extensive archival work with OWI records, studio files, and production documents, and it remains the authoritative account of how the wartime propaganda coordination actually operated in practice. Particularly valuable for the detailed case studies of specific films and the documentation of how BMP guidance translated into specific content decisions. Essential for anyone writing about the WWII foundation of the Pentagon-Hollywood arrangement.

Cultivation Theory and Television Effects

Gerbner, George, and Larry Gross. "Living with Television: The Violence Profile." Journal of Communication 26, no. 2 (1976): 172–199.

The founding empirical paper of cultivation theory. Gerbner and Gross lay out the theoretical framework and the first systematic empirical evidence for the relationship between heavy television viewing and the mean world syndrome. The paper is readable for social science beginners and has been cited over 10,000 times in the subsequent literature. Primary source reading for anyone who wants to understand what cultivation theory actually claims rather than secondhand summaries.

Morgan, Michael, James Shanahan, and Nancy Signorielli, eds. Living with Television Now: Advances in Cultivation Theory and Research. Peter Lang, 2012.

A comprehensive collection of essays assessing the state of cultivation theory research after four decades. Includes both empirical studies and theoretical extensions, including work on the transition from broadcast television cultivation to digital media cultivation. The editors — all direct inheritors of Gerbner's research program — provide a useful framework for understanding what the theory has established robustly and where debates remain open.

Early Film and WWI Propaganda

Brownlow, Kevin. The War, the West, and the Wilderness. Knopf, 1979.

A comprehensive history of American silent film that includes substantial material on WWI-era propaganda cinema. Brownlow's research is based on interviews with surviving participants from the silent era and provides primary-source grounding that more theoretical accounts sometimes lack. The sections on the CPI film division and its relationship to commercial production are particularly relevant.

Rydell, Mark, dir. D.W. Griffith: Father of Film. 1993. Documentary.

For visual learners, this documentary provides extensive archival footage and contextual analysis of Griffith's career, including the Birth of a Nation and its propaganda effects. Not a substitute for the academic literature but useful as a visual introduction to the period.

The Kennedy-Nixon Debate

Kraus, Sidney, ed. The Great Debates: Background, Perspective, Effects. Indiana University Press, 1962.

The most comprehensive immediate academic response to the 1960 debates. Includes the original polling data on radio listeners versus television viewers and the first systematic analysis of what that data implies about the medium's relationship to political evaluation. Primary source reading for the Kennedy-Nixon debate's place in media studies.

Jamieson, Kathleen Hall. Packaging the Presidency: A History and Criticism of Presidential Campaign Advertising. Oxford University Press, 1996. 3rd ed.

The definitive academic study of televised presidential advertising. Jamieson's analysis of the Daisy Ad and its structural role in the history of political television advertising is essential for understanding how emotional montage techniques were transferred from film propaganda into direct political communication. Highly readable and thoroughly documented.

Broader Propaganda and Media Studies Context

Bernays, Edward. Propaganda. Horace Liveright, 1928. Reprinted by Ig Publishing, 2005.

For context: Bernays's frank account of public relations as organized propaganda, written in the year that Eisenstein completed October. Reading Bernays alongside Eisenstein is instructive: both are theorists of how manufactured representation shapes mass consciousness, working from opposite political commitments and toward different ends, but using overlapping analytical frameworks.

Jowett, Garth S., and Victoria O'Donnell. Propaganda and Persuasion. 6th ed. Sage, 2015.

The most comprehensive general textbook in propaganda studies. Chapter 8 covers media and propaganda with substantial attention to film and television. Useful as a reference for the full range of academic definitions and frameworks that bear on the questions raised in Chapter 14.

Chapter 14 | Propaganda, Power, and Persuasion