Dictators know their power.
Movies can be useful propaganda.
I love movies. I’m sure you do too. But we aren’t alone.
Every totalitarian state has used film for controlling minds.
Are we being brainwashed? Watch our two minute Truth in Two (full text below)!
It’s not “just a movie.” Movies can change the way we think, feel, and act.
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from Comenius (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), hosts a weekly radio program with diverse groups of guests (1 minute video), and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).
Picture Credit: Luke Renoe, Snappy Goat
FULL TEXT:
Summer time means movie time in America. “Blockbusters” are all the rage running May to August. Hollywood counts on these months for a boost in revenue. So it is no surprise when we hear these words, “Of all the arts, the most important for us is the cinema.” The man who uttered these words was Vladimir Lenin. The year was 1925, the early days of the old Soviet Union, or the U.S.S.R. as it was later called. Lenin was one of the original leaders of what is now known as “communism.” Like all totalitarian, authoritarian regimes, Lenin’s Russia wanted to control peoples’ thoughts, their beliefs. When cinema became more readily available in the early 20th century, Lenin saw an opportunity to control a population through movies. Lenin called for an increase in the number of state-controlled films while censoring what was portrayed in the films. He wanted movies that would both entertain and educate. But “education” in Lenin’s Russia was better termed “propaganda” or indoctrination. Lenin wanted all films “checked” by Marxist writers.
George Orwell’s classic 1984 warns against the indoctrination of propaganda. Orwell lived the awful results of both fascism and communism. Winston, Orwell’s main character, defeated by state power, famously questions, “By what external standard could you check its judgments?” At the Comenius Institute we believe people are influenced by cinema. This is such an important topic to me that I wrote a book about the need to review film carefully entitled When the Lights Go Down (link here). Like Lenin, I believe film can have great power to persuade peoples’ thoughts and beliefs. But unlike Lenin, I instruct people to guard their thoughts and beliefs. As a Christian, I teach folk to “test the spirits” of our age, contrasting summer time movies with biblical truth.
For Truth in Two, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, president of the Comenius Institute, personally seeking truth wherever it’s found.