As director of the War Relocation Authority Photographic Section, Tom Wesley Parker (1907-76) produced hours of unedited footage and several completed films, which were integrated into an expansive World War II propaganda program in a period that has become known as the "Golden Age of Propaganda." On March 18, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had formed the WRA, a civilian agency that was responsible for the forced relocation and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. In addition to overseeing the incarceration camps, part of the WRA's stated mission was to document every step of the removal process by means of printed materials, posters, photographs, and films. This thesis contends that Parker's films constitute a particular strand of cinematic domestic propaganda, a category of visual media thus far underdeveloped in scholarly literature. By synthesizing the discourse of propagandized media with critical film texts, I develop a framework to understand the WRA films' considerable place in the complex narrative of visual rhetoric in America. Furthermore, I reveal how these films demonstrate the WRA's conscious effort to investigate cinema's formal and communicative limits in America's burgeoning industrial society. In particular, I explain how in Japanese Relocation (1942) and A Challenge to Democracy (1944) Parker synthesized cinematic techniques and rhetorical devices from a myriad of non-fiction film genres, including social documentaries, educational films, and newsreels. In doing so, Parker devised a form of filmic practice that simultaneously recalled the history of social documentary films, simulated wartime reportage, and engaged with both the anxieties of postwar resettlement and the desires of an emergent American consumer culture. What is at stake here is not only an acknowledgement of the films' significant position as domestic propaganda, but also their engagement with entrenched notions of nationality, and their participation in visual tropes of modernism and modernity. I conceptualize the WRA films as performing the task of regulating or reshaping the Japanese American citizen to satisfy existing anxieties about post-war resettlement and urban-industrial expansion. Moreover, the WRA films take part in an effort in the mid-twentieth century to institutionalize an array of visual media for propagandistic aims, and, most striking, the WRA films depict a conflict between visual culture and politics that is as relevant today as ever. Thus, this thesis lays the groundwork for a more nuanced formal and conceptual analysis of this genre of nonfiction film. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of
Arts. / Spring Semester, 2014. / March 27, 2014. / Film, Japanese American, Propaganda / Includes bibliographical references. / Karen Bearor, Professor Directing Thesis; Adam Jolles, Committee Member; Laura Lee, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_254510 |
| Contributors | Stricklin, Krystle (authoraut), Bearor, Karen (professor directing thesis), Jolles, Adam (committee member), Lee, Laura (committee member), Department of Art History (degree granting department), Florida State University (degree granting institution) |
| Publisher | Florida State University, Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text |
| Format | 1 online resource, computer, application/pdf |
| Rights | This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The copyright in theses and dissertations completed at Florida State University is held by the students who author them. |
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