Fun and Facts about American Business: Economic Education and Business Propaganda in an Early Cold War Cartoon Series

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 491-520 ◽  
Author(s):  
CAROLINE JACK
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Economic Education ◽  
American Business ◽  
Industrial Workers ◽  
Free Enterprise ◽  
Short Films ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
The Cold War

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, millions of theatergoers, students, and industrial workers saw one or more animated short films, shot in Technicolor and running eight to nine minutes, that were designed to build public support for the principles and practices of free enterprise. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation quietly funded the production of this series of cartoons, titledFun and Facts about American Business, through multiple grants to industrial animation house John Sutherland Productions via Harding College, an evangelical college in rural Arkansas that would become known nationally for its anti-communist and conservative political activism. This article examines the creation and distribution of theFun and Factsfilms in the years 1946 through 1952 as a notable case of ephemeral film and as an example of the Cold War public relations movement known as “economic education.” Further, the article examines the consequences of economic education as a conceptual category on the production and distribution of Cold War industrial propaganda.

The Ground Observer Corps: Public Relations and the Cold War in the 1950s

2013 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenton Clymer
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
Air Force ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Air Defense ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Homeland Defense

This essay examines the development and demise of one of the least studied elements of U.S. homeland defense efforts in the 1950s: the Ground Observer Corps (GOC). The article recounts the history of the GOC from its founding in the mid-1950s until its deactivation in 1959 and concludes that it never came close to achieving its goals for recruitment and effectiveness. Yet, despite the major shortcomings of the GOC, the U.S. Air Force continued to support it, primarily because it was seen as helpful for the public relations interests of the Air Force, continental air defense, and, more generally, U.S. Cold War policies. The lack of widespread public support for the GOC raises questions about the view that Americans were deeply fearful of an imminent Soviet nuclear strike in the 1950s.

Cold War, Bottom-up: The 1956 Catholicos Election

2020 ◽  
pp. 126-166
Author(s):  
Tsolin Nalbantian
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Top Down ◽  
War Powers ◽  
Internal Politics ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

Chapter 3 examines the 1956 Catholicos election in Lebanon.While the excitement and success of the repatriation movement was a public relations victory for the USSR supported by local Armenian institutions and assisted by Lebanese and Syrian governments, this election became a site of contestation by Cold War powers and by their state and non-state allies and proxies in the Middle East. This analysis allows us to look at the Cold War in the Middle East not from the top down, through the eyes of Washington or Moscow (or Lebanon’s or Egypt’s state authorities, for that matter) during flash points like the 1958 U.S. intervention in Lebanon or the U.S. and Soviet reactions to the Tripartite Aggression against Egypt in 1956. Rather, in that election, Armenians made use of Cold War tensions to designate a leader of the Armenian Church who was seen to suit the community’s interests. That story also expands our understanding of Lebanon’s Armenians: from refugees and outsiders in national politics to true participants, whose own internal politics, moreover, were of interest to Lebanon’s authorities and who by now felt free to invade and use public spaces beyond their own neighborhoods to make political statements.

“More Than a Magazine”

2019 ◽  
pp. 99-122
Author(s):  
Carol V. R. George
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Positive Thinking ◽  
Free Enterprise ◽  
Public Identity ◽  
National Geographic ◽  
Political Conservatism ◽  
Cultural Status ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter examines how Norman Vincent Peale disseminated his gospel using the “Guideposts” magazine, which used the motto, “More than a magazine.” Founded in 1944 by Peale, “Guideposts” gave Pealeism a public identity that was easily understood. Politically, early “Guideposts” found a home for the potentially antinomian message of positive thinking within Cold War conservatism. Its editorial philosophy reflected Peale’s civic and religious priorities, best summarized as the ideas of Americanism, free enterprise, and practical Christianity. The chapter shows how “Guideposts” emerged from Peale’s practical Christianity and political conservatism and how it fared in the 1940s. It also discusses the strategies adopted by Peale to build a new image for “Guideposts” and concludes by explaining how the magazine evolved from a political broadside of the Cold War to achieve a more enduring cultural status along the lines of “The Reader’s Digest” and “National Geographic.”

Business Social Responsibility

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gavin Benke
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
Social Responsibility ◽  
Government Regulation ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Business ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Economic Developments ◽  
Environmentally Sound ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Corporate Social

“Corporate social responsibility” is a term that first began to circulate widely in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Though it may seem to be a straightforward concept, the phrase can imply a range of activities, from minority hiring initiatives and environmentally sound operations, to funding local nonprofits and cultural institutions. The idea appeared to have developed amid increasing demands made of corporations by a number of different groups, such as the consumer movement. However, American business managers engaged in many of these practices well before that phrase was coined. As far back as the early 19th century, merchants and business owners envisioned a larger societal role. However, broader political, social, and economic developments, from the rise of Gilded Age corporations to the onset of the Cold War, significantly influenced understandings of business social responsibility. Likewise, different managers and corporations have had different motives for embracing social responsibility initiatives. Some embraced social responsibility rhetoric as a public relations tool. Others saw the concept as a way to prevent government regulation. Still others undertook social responsibility efforts because they fit well with their own socially progressive ethos. Though the terms and understandings of a business’s social responsibilities have shifted over time, the basic idea has been a perennial feature of commercial life in the United States.

Masculinity and Modernization in Democratic Party Politics during the 1950s

2019 ◽  
pp. 58-81
Author(s):  
Sean J. McLaughlin
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Public Support ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Coalition Governments ◽  
Liberal Democrats ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact

This chapter addresses the impact on Democrats of a dominant postwar political framework that demanded a certain ideal of robust manhood in response to international and domestic circumstances. This rediscovered emphasis on toughness had its roots in the upheaval of World War II and the rise of totalitarian ideologies, leading liberal Democrats to revamp the entire way they viewed the world in the early Cold War years. During the same period France was led by a series of seemingly weak, unstable Fourth Republic coalition governments. This fed American perceptions of French decadence and irrationality to the point that they grew into fears that France was undermining Washington’s efforts to win the Cold War. Liberal Democrats were on the defensive, attacked for their privilege and softness by McCarthyites and right-wing conservatives. McCarthyism had strong lingering effects on Democrats into the 1960s, prompting party leaders to adopt an exaggeratedly tough approach just as Kennedy was beginning to make his mark in American politics. Kennedy had already concluded that France was an obstacle to American defense of the “free world,” while many of his fellow Democrats concluded that offering strong public support for any French position in international affairs was political suicide.

Monstrous Science: The Great Monster Yonggari (1967) and Cold War Science in 1960s South Korea

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 397-421
Author(s):  
Chung-kang Kim
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
South Korea ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Success ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Nuclear Disaster ◽  
Box Office ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
Korean Film ◽  
The Cold War

AbstractThis essay explores the cinematic Cold War in 1960s South Korea, focusing on a popular film, The Great Monster Yonggari (Taegoesu Yonggari, 1967), and its transnational production, circulation, and responses. Initially produced as a children’s movie by Korean film director Kim Kidŏk, Yonggari had great success at the box office in South Korea. Later, with cooperation and international marketing by the Japanese company Toei, this film was introduced by American International Pictures television in the United States in 1969 with the title Yongary, Monster from the Deep. The transnational cultural nexus in the production and distribution of The Great Monster Yonggari obviously reflects the global Cold War politics among the nations in the “free world.” While paying attention to this ideological aspect of the film and the centrality of science as a national developmental agenda in South Korea, the essay also looks closely at the anxieties behind the Cold War science within Yonggari, as the “silenced” nuclear disaster of Japan started to be publicly spoken in South Korean media in the mid-1960s. The film reminded Koreans of the victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and of East Asian “Hot Wars” that were hidden behind monstrous Cold War science.

scholarly journals Neutrality as Identity? Finland's Quest for Security in the Cold War

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 51-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juhana Aunesluoma ◽  
Johanna Rainio-Niemi
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Final Phase ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
Foreign And Security Policy ◽  
National Consensus ◽  
The Cold War

This article examines Finland's Cold War neutrality, highlighting its political and ideational dimensions. In contrast to other scholars who have stressed the pragmatic realpolitik considerations behind Finnish policymaking, the article demonstrates that political and ideological considerations were at least as important in shaping Finnish Cold War neutrality. The ideological and political identity dimensions are connected to the strong national consensus that lay behind Finnish neutrality policy and its wide, sustained public support. Paying attention to these dimensions helps us also to understand continuities in Finnish foreign and security policy that have continued into the post–Cold War period. The continuities of Cold War–era neutrality formulations are illustrated by a discussion of Finnish foreign policymaking in the final phase of the Cold War and the early 1990s.

U.S.-Thai Public Diplomacy

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-87
Author(s):  
P. Michael Rattanasengchanh
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The People ◽  
United States Information Agency ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Hearts And Minds

During the Cold War, u.s. and Thai leaders invested in public relations programs to win the hearts and minds of the people of Thailand. Changes in Thailand between the years 1957 and 1963, which gave rise to Thai General Sarit Thanarat and King Bhumibol Adulyadej to positions of political authority, strengthened u.s.-Thai relations. To project their power, Washington and Bangkok relied on practicing public diplomacy through the United States Information Agency (usia) to demonstrate the benevolence of the United States, the army’s paternalism, and the god-like image of the king. The period from 1957 to 1963 saw the beginnings of a strong u.s.-Thai relationship and the creation of a stable anti-Communist, military-monarchical government that lasted until the end of the Cold War.

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