No one understands the power of cinema more than a dictator. The way movies can manipulate filmgoers to laugh, cry, and jump out of their seats in fear can be quite an attractive tool for controlling hearts and minds. Hitler and Stalin knew how to push propaganda to moviegoers in an effort to gain support for their respective pursuits. But propaganda is easy, art is hard. And while Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany both had robust film industries, neither would ever reach the heights of the West. Yet in a small east Asian country lived a film lover and future dictator who thought differently. He believed that cinema could both serve the state and garner international attention and acclaim. On today's episode we’re going to discuss how one despot yearned to legitimize the film industry of his little nation state and the extreme lengths he would go to do so. So let's start up the projector for Dictator Cinema: the Films of North Korea.
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No one understands the power of cinema more than a dictator. The way movies can manipulate filmgoers to laugh, cry, and jump out of their seats in fear can be quite an attractive tool for controlling hearts and minds. Hitler and Stalin knew how to push propaganda to moviegoers in an effort to gain support for their respective pursuits. But propaganda is easy, art is hard. And while Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany both had robust film industries, neither would ever reach the heights of the West. Yet in a small east Asian country lived a film lover and future dictator who thought differently. He believed that cinema could both serve the state and garner international attention and acclaim. On today's episode we’re going to discuss how one despot yearned to legitimize the film industry of his little nation state and the extreme lengths he would go to do so. So let's start up the projector for Dictator Cinema: the Films of North Korea.
Boats are a marvel. A human invention, mastered over thousands of years to provide food, travel and commerce to the ever evolving need of modern man. Boats are fun. They’re buoyant excuses for rich people to drink champagne, wear white floppy hats and have poor people serve them oysters. But boats are scary. There’s only a layer of wood and fiberglass keeping you from drowning, getting eaten by a sea creature and keeping you from catching hypothermia. And boats are traumatic. The slightest thing can go wrong and if you survive, will be left with a lifetime of mental anguish and trauma and maybe even some survivors guilt. Slate’s final episode of an elongated Season 7 will cover all of these topics, but mostly the traumatic ones in an episode he coined called BOATSASTER.
Slums of Film History
No one understands the power of cinema more than a dictator. The way movies can manipulate filmgoers to laugh, cry, and jump out of their seats in fear can be quite an attractive tool for controlling hearts and minds. Hitler and Stalin knew how to push propaganda to moviegoers in an effort to gain support for their respective pursuits. But propaganda is easy, art is hard. And while Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany both had robust film industries, neither would ever reach the heights of the West. Yet in a small east Asian country lived a film lover and future dictator who thought differently. He believed that cinema could both serve the state and garner international attention and acclaim. On today's episode we’re going to discuss how one despot yearned to legitimize the film industry of his little nation state and the extreme lengths he would go to do so. So let's start up the projector for Dictator Cinema: the Films of North Korea.
