🎬 The End of "Art for Art's Sake": How WWI Weaponized Cinema
https://jscenter.ir/jews-and-the-media/jews-and-hollywood/21086

On the anniversary of cinema's creation, we examine the war that exposed its true power as a tool for mass influence, not just entertainment.

World War I was a turning point in cinematic history. This global conflict stripped away cinema's innocent facade as a mere "art form" and revealed its immense potential as a tool of "soft power" and public diplomacy. It became clear that the "silver screen" could shape public opinion, rally nations, and forge modern myths.

📽️ Case Study: "The Battle of the Somme" (1916)

This five-part documentary, produced with direct support from the British War Office, is a prime example:

· It brought 20 million British viewers into cinemas within just six weeks of its release (from a population of ~46 million).
· British Prime Minister David Lloyd George personally promoted it, urging citizens to "see this picture" which showcased "the bravery of our men."
· After influencing the domestic audience, it was rapidly distributed internationally by the government's public diplomacy apparatus, affecting viewers in 18 other countries.

This film proved that cinema could be a powerful engine for social capital and national morale.

🌍 The Ideological Shift: From Theism to "Isms"

Beyond geopolitical changes, WWI triggered a profound civilizational shift. It weakened traditional, theism-centered (God-focused) values and paved the way for man-made, humanist ideologies to fill the void.

· The war created the perfect conditions for removing religion from public life.
· The post-war world saw the rise of competing secular "isms": Socialism in the USSR, Individualism in the USA, Nationalism in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.
· Cinema, as a new and powerful medium, was quickly seized upon by these emerging ideologies. A "tsunami of isms" flooded the cinematic landscape, each using it to promote its worldview.

💡 The Triple Revelation: Industry, Art, Medium

Before WWI, cinema was seen mainly as a novel industry—a technical and commercial venture. Its artistic and, most importantly, its media/mass communication dimensions were obscured.

· Its high financial barriers and need for artistic talent naturally led to significant involvement from the globally connected Jewish community, which had the capital and artistic networks.
· After the war, theorists like Ricciotto Canudo began calling cinema the "Seventh Art," emphasizing its aesthetic value. While this developed film's artistic language, it also served as a brilliant smokescreen.
· The slogan "Art for Art's Sake" or "cinema for cinema" diverted public attention from its core function: a mass media tool. This disguise allowed the new "isms" to maximize their use of cinema for propaganda while the public saw only "art."

🔚 Conclusion

World War I ended the naive era of cinema. It proved film was not just an industry or an art, but a potent three-fold entity: Industry-Art-Media. The conflict ripped off the veil, showing governments and powers that whoever mastered this medium could shape minds, build social capital, and advance ideologies on an unprecedented scale. The age of cinematic innocence was over; the age of cinematic power had begun.

Source: Jewish Studies Center - "World War I; The End of the 'Art for Art's Sake' Myth in Cinema"

#CinemaHistory #WWI #Propaganda #SoftPower #FilmStudies #Media #TheBattleOfTheSomme

✅ @rahyafte_en

🎬 The Cold War's Grip on Iranian and World Cinema
https://jscenter.ir/jews-and-the-media/jews-and-hollywood/9715

On the occasion of the screening of "#Abi_va_Rabi" – Iran's first silent feature film, shown at Mayak Cinema (Dec 30, 1930):

The post-World War II era saw the world divided into a bipolar order, with the Soviet Union and the United States as rival superpowers. While they never engaged in direct military conflict, their global rivalry—known as the Cold War—lasted 45 years and reshaped international relations.

The term "Cold War" itself was first used by an American Jewish politician, Bernard Baruch.

🎥 Cinema as the Main Battlefield

This period proved that the primary arena of superpower conflict was not direct warfare, but the realm of "Soft Conflict" – a battle for hearts and minds. Cinema became the ultimate weapon in this struggle.

· In the Eastern Bloc, Vladimir Lenin declared, "For us, cinema is the most important art," and put his wife in charge of Soviet film. The state used it for socialist propaganda in films like Battleship Potemkin and Solaris.
· In the Western Bloc, Hollywood took the lead. It projected American myths, lifestyle, and liberal values worldwide, constantly strengthening its media power to win the ideological war.

Historical analysis suggests that many regional wars (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Korea) and crises (Berlin Wall, Suez) during this time were, in essence, proxy battles and tools for these superpowers to expand their global influence through media and propaganda dominance.

🇮🇷 The Lost Path of Iranian Cinema

While the world was engaged in this cultural-ideological war, the Iranian film industry, which began in 1904, took a passive and directionless path.

· For its first 26 years, Iranian screens were dominated by foreign films from America, France, Germany, the USSR, and Egypt.
· When Iran finally produced its first silent film, Abi and Rabi (1930), and later its first talkie, The Lor Girl (1934), it did so without a clear intellectual direction or regard for the profound global transformations.
· Instead of addressing national concerns or the impact of World Wars, Iranian cinema under the Pahlavi regime became a tool for Western cultural infiltration. It focused on shallow entertainment, romantic melodramas, and gradually morphed into the infamous "Film Farsi" genre.

🍿 The "Film Farsi" Phenomenon

By the 1960s, Iranian cinema had crystallized into "Film Farsi," a unique hybrid that mixed shallow Hollywood and Bollywood storytelling techniques. Its hallmarks became:

· Sensationalism (sex, alcohol, cabaret dancing)
· Violence (fistfights)
· Shallow plots centered on trivial relationships
· A growing emphasis on indecency and breaking social norms

The peak was the massive commercial success of films like Ganj-e Qarun (1965), a copy of Indian melodramas. However, by the early 1970s, the Iranian society began to reject this culture of "distraction" and moral decay that Film Farsi promoted.

The Cold War era starkly revealed cinema's power: it could dismantle cultures or help civilizations rise. While the superpowers wielded it as a strategic weapon, pre-revolutionary Iranian cinema, unfortunately, became a vehicle for cultural alienation and lost identity.

Source: Jewish Studies Center - "The Reign of the Cold War in Iranian and World Cinema"
Author: Dr. Musa Ismailnejad

#ColdWar #IranianCinema #FilmHistory #Hollywood #Propaganda #FilmFarsi #AbiAndRabi #SoftPower #MediaStudies

✅ @rahyafte_en