Propaganda?

I've been watching a lot of old movies this week, for lack of better things to do. One of them was one of my childhood favorites, "Babe."

Look at that poster and say it with me: "awwww..."

Anyway. You've probably seen this movie, and if you haven't, you probably should. It's still as good as it was when we were little. It's the story of a little pig who is won at a county fair for Christmas dinner but ends up winning everyone's heart and becoming the world's first sheep-herding pig. With it's adorable animatronic talking animals and sweet storyline, it's a childhood classic.

After watching the movie, I decided to go online to see if it had won any awards or critical acclaim(yes, I do this for fun sometimes. I'm a nerd and I'm okay with it:) Well, it did. Critics love it and it was nominated for a bunch of Oscars, but that's not my point. As I was looking around the IMDB site for the movie, I found something on the message boards that caught my eye.

Apparantly, some people view the movie "Babe" as a modern propaganda film.

Wait, what?

I don't know about you, but when I hear "propaganda" I think of Nazis, and cults, and communism, and other things that aren't good. Propaganda tries to convince people to think a certain way. So how does "Babe" fit into this genre? Say it with me: vegetarianism. Is that a word? You know what I mean if it's not, I guess. Because of Babe's cute little face and adorable way of talking, people view him(it?) as a ploy to turn people against eating meat. Interesting. I guess I can see how this could be, but to call this cute movie a propaganda film is a bit much.

There were other movies that this person called propaganda that surprised me, including Casablanca. I guess people can turn media into anything they want it to be, which is kind of cool, but also a bit strange. If the right person analyzes it, anything could be propaganda, couldn't it? The purpose of a lot of films is to make the viewers leave with different opinions than they came in with. for example, after seeing "The Green Mile," I was against the death penalty. Does that make that movie propaganda for the death penalty? I'm not sure. I'd love to research and puzzle through this further. Maybe later.

The next time I watch a movie, I think I'll look at it differently. I'm sure I'll ask myself, what does the filmmaker want me to think about this? Are my opinions and beliefs going to change after viewing this? The film industry is such a powerful form of media--they have the power to make us think certain ways and believe certain things. Interesting.