This blog is solely interested in Cold War Fiction, whether it is by novelists, film studios, music composers or governments. This propaganda cartoon, released in 1972 by the USSR, is very powerful and quite shameful. Shameful in the sense that I am embarrassed to be a human and yet, be so inhumane. I realize that this is state propaganda, but this simple cartoon has moved me. I have always been a student of propaganda, and I am consider myself to be mostly immune from its effects as I have seen so much from all sides, however this one actually reached out and suckered me in.

The cartoon, with the underscoring of Schubert’s Ave Maria opens with images in the style of the Adoration of the Magi, with Mary presenting the infant Jesus. This adoration, instead of being the Three Kings, is by fascist dictators and United States generals who are sending their soldiers off on a crusade in Vietnam. This crusade is to primarily support corporate America as money and our material possessions are the new God rather than God. The cartoon then pans to a Vietnamese family enjoying dinner, drawn in the style of da Vinci’s Last Supper, who then get incinerated by the black helicopters of the US. The aftermath of this Christian cleansing fire bombing results in dead bodies before the cartoon fades in a poster where the clean cut GI states how proud we are of our crusaders.

A woman, crucially not Vietnamese but white and dressed similarly to like the Virgin Mary talks about how the “Black Boeings in the night, steal our husbands away, far out of sight” and this theme is repeated for the next minute or so as it shows that not just Vietnamese husbands die, but also American ones as they will also be shot down too and you will have the US military funeral. On a side note, I bought a Vietnamese propaganda poster years ago in Vietnam which showed American B-52 bombing, and underneath was American prisoners in their stripy blue uniform with the meaning along the line of “if you bomb us, we will shoot you down”.

The cartoon also brings up the chemical bombing performed by the US and how it is destroying the Earth, and that GIs now in gas masks have no compunction in killing innocent children in a style reminiscent of the My Lai massacre that was carried out 4 years before this cartoon was made. The cartoon reinforces that the Vietnam War is a religious war, and that the tread of American soldiers will wipe out the right of other nations to worship a different God, and that the War is also ethnic cleansing. This ethnic cleansing has the full support of the decadent materialistic Americans who raise a glass in toasting the massacre of children.

The cartoon then splices actual footage of Vietnamese and American citizens protesting the War, and the suppression of those Western protesters. This footage from the newsreels lasts the final 2 minutes of the film and it actually destroys the message and effectiveness of the film. This is amateurish propaganda as it tries to show that the USSR is the caring Big Brother and whose role is to defend the rights of all men/children and the right of religious freedom and that frankly is nonsense. It would be to easy for me to point of the state enforced atheism of the USSR, how they sent millions of their own people to labour camps and the constant repression of the freedom expression, instead I wish to point out that this last two minutes of the film actually redeems the West. This redemption, in my view, shows to the Soviet audience that we have the right of expression, that we can protest the actions of the government, and even though the menacing looking riot police are fighting the protesters, this protestation is still shown to world unedited. How often do you think protests against the decrees of the Politburo were shown on Russian State television? There is also an attempt by the filmmakers to try and globalise the footage of protesters as it shows protesters from maybe East Germany, and their protest is very staid, orderly and impassioned and it contrasts sharply with the American protesters who are fighting and screaming against authority.

Why did this 9 minute cartoon effect me and make me feel so inhumane? Maybe it was the nice bottle of pinot noir that I am drinking influenced my emotions, but the Catholic Church, which this cartoon took aim at, annoys me. Graham Greene became a devout Catholic in later life, but instead I have lost my devoutness over time. This does not mean I am not happy to fake it, even if it means going to church every week for the next 15 years, in order that my daughter gets into a good Catholic school where we live.
My concerns with the Catholic Church include how that they tried to hide the abuse of the priests, they should have did a public cleansing and prosecuted the transgressors to the full extent of the law when the complaints were first raised. The Church comes second to your congregation, not the other way about.
Also how your actions don’t really count for much in the eyes of the Church. Rather it is whether you join the Church that saves you. It’s the same attitude of the medieval times where it didn’t matter if you were a lord who raped and pillaged across foreign lands, as long as on your deathbed you became a Catholic and gave a portion of your lands to the Church you were sorted in heaven. (too much Blackadder watching? maybe!) Your actions determines your character, not membership of some religious organization.
But my biggest bugbear is that every year the church is looking for funds to fix their leaky roofs, or to save children in Africa and this whole sense of poverty. I wager that if I went into the Vatican I could sell one painting and fix every Church roof in the world, and 3 paintings every Third World child would go to sleep every night contented for the rest of their life. At this point I would like to say a big hello to the Paix liturgique who send me their weekly French newsletter as they feel that my soul needs saving. Yes, I agree with some of your aims, that the Church is fragmented and you don’t really know what the Church stands for, with all its infighting and the possibility it betraying it roots and the wishes of its congregation. However, Latin is not very inclusive and I can’t stand an organization that coddles their hierarchy in untold wealth and riches. Wasn’t Jesus a carpenter who lived in modest means unlike your Pope.

The other main reason this cartoon resonated with me is that like most people I lead a sheltered life in that my life isn’t hard. I give money to charity, but should I mention that as isn’t there that quote which says something along the lines of the hidden deeds that you do when no one is looking determines who you are, (am I simply fishing for a backhanded complement), but my point is I don’t really struggle. I am not like the kids you see when you go to say Thailand begging in the streets from day dot. Surely my life should have more of a point than simply being a great dad , reading Cold War books, and watching Chuck, NCIS and Psych? Volunteering is an easy answer, but the opportunities available are demeaning and pointless. The only volunteering where I live is to sell old clothes and old books to old women, rather than actually using my skills and education to do something useful. My life lacks a purpose that I can be passionate about and be amply rewarded monetary and spiritually. This cartoon showed that it is great to display and convince an audience of your point of view through using your talents and for someone like me ,almost 40 years later, to still appreciate the beauty of your art.

When I watched this film, I didn’t see The West celebrating the death of children through the bombing, as the Vietnam War was a generation or more ago, rather I saw today The West celebrating the death of children due to their work in sweatshops through our constant desire to be judged by our materialistic gains. By the same token, if I watched this in the late 1800s I would have seen the death of children through coal mining. It doesn’t matter which era one lives in, there is always exploitation of the weakest. This is the selling point of Communism and therefore of this cartoon, that they will do away with all exploitation, that we are all equal. However Communism is the biggest disappointment of all our political systems as it brooks no opposition and out of all systems it creates the largest gap between the haves and have-nots with no possibility of social advancement.

Ignoring the newsreel, this cartoon is simply fantastic, but only if you absorb the message in isolation and ignore any contradictory thoughts you may have about Communism or more specifically the groups which lead the Communists. How it portrays the crusade if the West in it’s attainment of a singular worldwide religion and material wealth is very well done, how the artists have used the religious style of paintings and the sound of Ave Maria is great and by the end you do feel appalled by the callousness of man, but to do something about it is another story.

I have found that someone has already added this to youtube, so here it is:

On a final note, I had planned to do a Vietnam Month, but the same messages were getting raised from all the books and films, fiction and factual that i was simply repeating myself. Therefore I will split the posts out across the rest of the year, rather than forcing you to read the same points that all the sources were making.