I have a special interest in propaganda films and how they're made. Unlike a film made to merely entertain or distract, a propaganda film has a specific and identifiable goal. It is concocted to get an audience or at least a part of the audience to think and act in a particular way. I am interested in relating the films to each other- to compare the various WW2 propaganda films from different countries and to distinguish the various sub-types- propaganda films used to stimulate civilian domestic production efficiency, for example.
TIGER CRUISE is the first example I've seen of a Navy recruiting film aimed at teen-aged girls. The story is this: A "tiger cruise" apparently is the last days sailing of a ship after its been rotated out from a long term deployment. In this case the super carrier Constellation is sailing back after have been in "the gulf". On these tiger cruises relatives of the compliment are invited along on the last leg. (Did anyone realize that we paid for this?) So the story opens with the relatives preparing for their flights to Hawaii to meet the ship in Pearl Harbor. Ominously the first date superimposed over the action is "September 2001". I know. I kept thinking about the HMS Hood too.
The story centers one one teen age girl, apparently a member of the Disney teen age girl assembly line, the greatest kitch-pop teen queen production outside of Japan.
Her father, Bill Pullman, is the Executive Officer on the Constellation and she wants him to quit the Navy and come home so they can be a real family. He insists that this is his job. It takes 9/11 to convince her that her father's work is more important. Of the some 800 relatives making the trip the only identifiable people are teen queen's (she actually has the blond corkscrew curls popular in barnstorming melodramas of 125 years ago) circle of two friends, a Hispanic girl and an African-American boy and a little boy played by the actress's brother. An older man visiting his son, a baker, provides a sub-plot which stresses the importance of even the peripheral jobs in the Navy even though dad promises his brother in the Pentagon could find him something more important. The brother is killed on 9/11. The other girl, not as pretty, is there because her big sister (what a knock out even if more than a little bit butch) is a jet fighter pilot, so I guess who says girls can't do that? The boy is an undisciplined tearaway who learns the seriousness of things because of 9/11. Meanwhile there are tours of the ship and the various jobs and tasks on display as well as the amenities. Exhibitions of patriotism are frequent and taken for granted.
It all reminded me of the episode of The Simpson's where Bart joins a boy's band whose existence is merely a front for a Join the Navy campaign. If a certain number of teen age girls who see the picture are inspired to join the navy and prepare biscuits five or ten years in the future then the picture will have done its job. Except for some really cheap rear projection work meant to show the ship at sea, Disney has certainly come a long way in the 50 years since they spent a season on the Mickey Mouse Club showing how cool it was to fly TWA coast to coast. (And that airplane was a Constellation too.) After all, propaganda is just advertizing for a concept rather than a product.
TIGER CRUISE is the first example I've seen of a Navy recruiting film aimed at teen-aged girls. The story is this: A "tiger cruise" apparently is the last days sailing of a ship after its been rotated out from a long term deployment. In this case the super carrier Constellation is sailing back after have been in "the gulf". On these tiger cruises relatives of the compliment are invited along on the last leg. (Did anyone realize that we paid for this?) So the story opens with the relatives preparing for their flights to Hawaii to meet the ship in Pearl Harbor. Ominously the first date superimposed over the action is "September 2001". I know. I kept thinking about the HMS Hood too.
The story centers one one teen age girl, apparently a member of the Disney teen age girl assembly line, the greatest kitch-pop teen queen production outside of Japan.
Her father, Bill Pullman, is the Executive Officer on the Constellation and she wants him to quit the Navy and come home so they can be a real family. He insists that this is his job. It takes 9/11 to convince her that her father's work is more important. Of the some 800 relatives making the trip the only identifiable people are teen queen's (she actually has the blond corkscrew curls popular in barnstorming melodramas of 125 years ago) circle of two friends, a Hispanic girl and an African-American boy and a little boy played by the actress's brother. An older man visiting his son, a baker, provides a sub-plot which stresses the importance of even the peripheral jobs in the Navy even though dad promises his brother in the Pentagon could find him something more important. The brother is killed on 9/11. The other girl, not as pretty, is there because her big sister (what a knock out even if more than a little bit butch) is a jet fighter pilot, so I guess who says girls can't do that? The boy is an undisciplined tearaway who learns the seriousness of things because of 9/11. Meanwhile there are tours of the ship and the various jobs and tasks on display as well as the amenities. Exhibitions of patriotism are frequent and taken for granted.
It all reminded me of the episode of The Simpson's where Bart joins a boy's band whose existence is merely a front for a Join the Navy campaign. If a certain number of teen age girls who see the picture are inspired to join the navy and prepare biscuits five or ten years in the future then the picture will have done its job. Except for some really cheap rear projection work meant to show the ship at sea, Disney has certainly come a long way in the 50 years since they spent a season on the Mickey Mouse Club showing how cool it was to fly TWA coast to coast. (And that airplane was a Constellation too.) After all, propaganda is just advertizing for a concept rather than a product.
