Movies
As a common form of entertainment for many Americans, motion pictures portrayed a positive image of relocation to non-Japanese movie-goers. Produced by the United States War Relocation Authority, such movies as A Challenge to Democracy (1944) and Japanese Relocation (1943), depicted the internment camps in a positive light and showed the Japanese people as happy and content, benefiting from their new life in the internment camps. To accomplish this, these government-issued propaganda films touched on common positive themes, such as:
- ensuring the safety of internee property
- providing Japanese-Americans with greater opportunities, such as education, employment, internal government, and religion
- cooperation of the internees with the local authorities and federal government
- language comparing the relocated people to early American frontiersmen
Such motion pictures were made with film from actual Japanese-American internment camps with a narrator informing the audience of what they were witnessing. As the UCLA Film and Television Archive writes:
film reminds us how easily unpleasant truths can be rationalized into banality and individual liberties can be swept away. (UCLA, 2007)
Read more about this topic: Propaganda For Japanese-American Internment
Famous quotes containing the word movies:
“People sometimes say that the way things happen in the movies is unreal, but actually it’s the way things happen to you in life that’s unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it’s like watching television—you don’t feel anything.”
—Andy Warhol (1928–1987)
“... in the movies Paris is designed as a backdrop for only three things—love, fashion shows, and revolution.”
—Jeanine Basinger (b. 1936)
“Now here this, now here this. Reveille. I repeat, reveille. Attention all hands. Because another cigarette butt has been found in the container of the Captain’s palm tree, there will be no movies again tonight. That is all.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)