The Importance Of Art In Art

Thank You For Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion is a title written by the not-so-famous, (but extremely well-versed) Jay Heinrichs. Although the title is indeed a mouthful, it serves its purpose in drawing the reader in. Also; the extremely long title is a little hint of what Heinrichs entails in his book, an endless supply of information on how to correctly and influentially utilize rhetoric, the art of persuasion.

In her essay, “Propaganda: How Not to Be Bamboozled”, author Donna Woolfolk Cross explains the different types of propaganda and how it is used in the United States. The essay was first published in Speaking of Words: A Language Reader (1977). Cross defines propaganda as “simply a means of persuasion and so it can be put to work for good causes as well as bad” (247). In her article she discusses how propaganda works and explains how propaganda is used with thirteen different devices to manipulate people’s thoughts, opinions, and ideas. She uses this essay as an informative piece, giving advice on how not to be manipulated by propaganda.

Propaganda takes many forms, the most aggressive example in society is political campaigning for powers in office. A prominent

Propaganda is a way of information in an effort to manipulate or influence society. The language people use in a persuasive speech, news articles, or other communicating articles of can be a very powerful tool for propaganda. There are many different types of propaganda such as suggestion/stimulation, hints, insinuations, indirect statement, and appeal to the known desire/fear, songs, slogans, and poems (American Historical Association). All of these were used in the 1946 novel, Animal Farm, written by George Orwell. Also most of these methods in modern day. In the novel they use propaganda to show how a revolution, no matter how good a person's intentions is at first, can slowly turn into a system that was no better than when they began. Language used in propaganda is a very powerful tool.

When was the last time you were exposed to propaganda? If you think it was more than a day ago, you are probably unaware of what propaganda really is. According to Donna Woolfolk Cross in “Propaganda: How not to be Bamboozled,” propaganda is “simply a means of persuasion” (149). She further notes that we are subjected daily to propaganda in one form or another as advertisers, politicians, and even our friends attempt to persuade us to use their product, vote for them, or adopt their point of view. Propaganda is usually considered in a negative sense. However, when viewing propaganda as mere persuasion, one can readily appreicate that it is

Propaganda advertises a political issue through the means of humor, speech, and cartoons, or any other sources found necessary. Bandwagon or peer pressure is often shown in propaganda. Propaganda is mainly used for politics but can be used for other topics. “By 1918, and the end of of hostilities in the European theater, more than a hundred Americans had lost their lives.” This song talks about the soldiers who fought in the war that passed in 1918” (Miller). This is effective propaganda because of its appeal to emotion (pathos). When we need the lyrics, we could feel the strong emotion of loss of the American soldiers who fought for us. “Take up our quarrel with the face: To you from failing we throw the torch, be yours to hold it high. Of

Propaganda is information published by a government (or other group of people) to influence the beliefs or ideals of its subjects (or another group of people). The information is often times of biased or misleading and used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.

Propaganda is used by a person to promote their own personal opinions to influence others. There are many types of propaganda as stated in the essay “How To Detect Propaganda”. While the essay was written in 1937, its examples of propaganda are still used frequently today. Although propaganda is not as intense and noticeable as it once was, it is still prevalent and important to know when a propagandic device is in use. The republican Presidential candidate, Donald Trump, used the name calling device in his campaign announcement speech on many occasions.

"Propaganda tries to force a doctrine on the whole people... Propaganda works on the general public from the standpoint of an idea and makes them ripe for the victory of this idea." ( Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1926).

Propaganda is used in controversial matters, but it is also used to promote things that are generally acceptable. For both those purposes propaganda can be expressed in different forms such as, exhibits, drawings, goal-pictures, graphs, parades, songs and many more. Propaganda can be found concealed or open, emotional or containing logical appeals to reason, or in combination (Casey,

First, one must define propaganda and since many have done so already, I shall use the Sheryl Ross model. Her model defines propaganda as “an epistemically defective message designed with the intention to persuade a socially significant group of people on behalf of a political institution, organization, or cause.”

Art has been used as a powerful medium for centuries and many rulers used art as propaganda. Before plunging deeper into this topic we need to examine the meaning of propaganda. Propaganda is information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread to help or harm a person, group, institution, etc. “In defining propaganda first, one can properly identify not only its power over people, but the usefulness it holds it holds in art.” Arbor, Ann. The Art of Persuasion: Political Propaganda from Aeneas to Brutus. U of Michigan, 1992. Print.

Propaganda is an easy trap to fall into when you are attempting to do something more than entertain or simply lay your personal feelings bare for an audience. The propagandist isn’t interested in exploring an issue in a dialogical fashion, but only seeks to sermonize or indoctrinate an audience with a very specific viewpoint. Even if that viewpoint is correct, the method of hammering home a given message discourages dialogue, conversation and the audience/artists/activist reciprocity discussed by Carter. Fear of propagandizing causes many artists to avoid producing work that could be interpreted as political or contains too clear a message. Just because some artists cross over into propaganda doesn’t mean that one should be afraid of producing meaning art. Since propaganda doesn’t allow for dialogue or conversation, a solution that falls into this practice would not be desirable.

There are two types of propaganda: sociological propaganda; the spreading of an ideology through the mass media, and political propaganda; efforts that are sponsored by governments and political groups that alter a persons’ interests. All propaganda has a direction, and the overall quality determines whether it will have a positive or negative effect over the masses. Our entire nation is a vast propaganda operational system that is greatly linked to education, consumerism and politics. A great deal of what makes up propaganda and how it is placed among the masses lies in understanding the overall emotional and physical states of these groups of people and in finding a way to draw a persons’ attention to capture their hearts, breaking down

Chomsky (1997) uses, what he calls, the first modern government propaganda operation, the Creel Commission, to identify that the opinions of a population can be easily manipulated with a few well-timed messages and slogans. Woodrow Wilson was elected president using the “Peace Without Victory” platform in the middle of World War I (Chomsky,