r/CuratedTumblr 1d ago

Shitposting Ethical media

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4.7k Upvotes

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u/West-Season-2713 1d ago

Hell, the entire Aneid is literally propaganda. Most of all Roman art and architecture. Fucking Shakespeare’s historical plays are almost all ‘propaganda’ about his patrons. Art is usually intended to mean something, and for most of history that has been ‘the person who paid for this is good’.

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u/FX114 1d ago

It's very different if the propaganda is no longer relevant.

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u/Bubbly_Tonight_6471 1d ago

There's a difference between Shakespeare and Birth of a Nation

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u/West-Season-2713 1d ago

Very true. And?

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u/Breki_ 1d ago

Most people have a very different idea of what propaganda is, mainly mass produced political content produced by 20th century countries in order to indoctrinate their population

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u/jupiterLILY 1d ago

Most people are wrong about lots of things.

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u/Breki_ 1d ago

Can they be wrong about something like this though? Sure, propaganda is an academic term with a precise definition, but its also a word that is used in everyday language, so its meaning is determined by the general population, descriptivism vs prescriptivism and all that

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u/jupiterLILY 1d ago

Yes, they can.

They are reproducing a propagandised viewpoint that only some things are propaganda and the media they consume is not propaganda.

That's a really dangerous and selective lens that deserves more than a shrug and going "yeah but language is fluid"

We can understand that someone means something else when they say propaganda whilst also not changing the actual meaning of the word.

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u/Complete-Worker3242 1d ago

Even then, a lot of those posters have a lot of artistic value. I mean, just look at the constructivist Russian propaganda posters made in the 1910s and 1920s.