According to author Toby Clark in Art and Propaganda, Saliger's paintings, as well as those of other German artists who adopted similar themes, represent “qualities of Aryan superiority . . . [and this] supposedly superior physical beauty was held to be the ultimate evidence of natural supremacy” (67). Clark reveals how art can become propaganda when, in works like Saliger's, arts that “intentionally promoted the concept of Aryan beauty and excluded ‘ugliness' and ‘impurity' were actively complicit with the practice of excluding and ultimately exterminating non-Aryan people” (68). It is no coincidence that German art during the Third Reich looked so similar. There are at least two other paintings almost identical to Saliger's—Adolf Ziegler's Urteil des Paris (1939), and Georg Friedrich's Das Urteil des Paris (1939), and many more that impel similar themes—idolizing powerful male bodies and slim female bodies.
[...] Foucault uncovers this normalization of fixtures in his conclusion to “Panopticism”: it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?” (128). And it should come as no surprise that I add the room” to this list. Selected Bibliography Clark, Toby. Art and Propaganda in the Twentieth Century: The Political Image in the Age of Mass Culture. London: George Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd Ellul, Jacques. The Ethics of Freedom. Trans., Ed., Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans The Political Illusion. Trans. Konrad Kellen. New York: Knopf Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes. Trans. Konrad Kellen and Jean Lerner. [...]
[...] These media would supposedly reflect the unity of the people in a nation, or as Clark states: “Wartime propaganda attempts to make people adjust to abnormal conditions, and adapt their priorities and moral standards to accommodate the needs of (103). Clark asserts that politicians in the “image-conscious politics of the television (105) used this type of manipulation with aid from “theories in behavioral psychology” and “market research surveys” (105). As an example of this manipulation, Clark also describes how, in America by the late 1960s, televised news widely portrayed such cultural as truths using methods like “Happy “Television pictures of fighting in Vietnam and on riot-torn streets in America were ‘packaged' by broadcasters in ways designed to lessen their shock effects on audiences” (117). [...]
[...] In his book Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault recounts a significant instance of normalization dating back to the Middle Ages. He describes how “spatial partitioning” (115) occurred as a deterrent to the plague epidemic. Such quarantines attempted to impose order on the chaos of the plague. Foucault states that this order “lays down for each individual his place, his body, his disease, and his death, his well-being, by means of an omnipresent and omniscient power that subdivides itself in a regular, uninterrupted way even to the ultimate determination of the individual, of what characterizes him, of what belongs to him, of what happens to (115). [...]
[...] The social implications of the Panoptic concept are still widespread today, outside of simply the physical penitentiary structure: By means of specific propaganda and media individuals are still, if not more so, subject to a ruling, Panoptic gaze. But the source of this gaze is not simply psychoanalytical phenomena. Rather, like the Panoptic tower, a gaze is ultimately broadcast by a controlling elitist entity or entities. And like the Panoptic, plague-ridden society—and like the Panoptic structure—specific media and mediums can work to isolate, domesticate, and ultimately govern individuals. [...]
[...] Certainly, Putnam's findings would suggest that television is a major form of the propaganda that Chomsky speaks of, and is another way of “dividing people Despite offering many reasons for the decline of civic engagement, Putnam's Bowling Alone offers very few reasons for the growing popularity of television. Nevertheless, he asserts that “Those of us who have grown up in the television age are much more likely than our elders to consider TV a natural constant companion” (226). So for many, television has replaced the social life. [...]
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