War and Its Effect on Pop Culture

             War has a great impact on popular culture within a society and in fact, infiltrates every aspect of pop culture including music, television, film, and even video games that children play. This has been highly evidenced during the present ongoing war in Iraq which culminated following the tragic events of September 11, 2001 however; the impact of war on popular culture can be traced back to World War I in the United States and even further in world history.
             The work of Betty Warner Sheinbaum entitled: "Warner's War: Politics, Pop Culture & Propaganda in Wartime Hollywood (2002) states that Hollywood "believes in America as firmly as any community or any business believes in it..." (2002) Sheinbaum states a belief that Hollywood has "an ever-present duty to educate, stimulate and demonstrate the fundamentals of free government, free speech, religious tolerance, freedom of press, freedom of assembly and the greatest possible happiness for the greatest possible number." (2002) Sheinbaum states her father held that the screen "should attempt to explain the why and wherefore of the current struggle and not repeat on formula proved profitable. There are forces in this land who would like people to live in darkness." (Sheinbaum, 2002)
             According to one report the paths of Hollywood and Washington "always cross paths during wartime, starting with the Creel Commission, President Wilson created the committee to regulate the film industry during World War I – to mixed effect." Creel enlisted the voluntary collaboration of the film industry in the war effort, while threatening that a failure to cooperate would result in direct government censorship of all movies." (Blakley, nd) As noted in the work of Sheinbaum, Harry Warner made a decision to use his Hollywood studio to fight fascism and this was received with anger by other studios during the 1930s because Germany was regarded as a...

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War and Its Effect on Pop Culture. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 18:33, March 28, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/203437.html