Entertainment Media as a Record of Recorded History

Documented popular entertainment culture often provides some of the best sources of history in our world. Sources of entertainment often contain hidden or subtle meanings which are representative of certain ideologies or agendas of the time period of which they are a part of and therefore can be studied and analyzed in order to tease out these deeper meanings.

Historians do not always tell the whole story, especially if telling the whole story would be contradictory to the popular ideologies of the time. For example a historian during the cold war would not become very popular if they began to point out all of the problems which Capitalist America was causing as a result of their overly consumeristic habits. Indeed, that historian would probably be labeled a 'commie' and would not receive his or her research grant the following year. That being said, a content analysis of the popular entertainment of the time can provide an avenue for finding trends which were not explicitly stated during the time being studied.

Doing a content analysis of Disney's Latin American oriented films provides a means of uncovering some of the hidden meanings present in these seemingly helpful and innocent educational films. Put into historical context, these films were created at a time during the Second World War when America was at war with many European and Asian countries and realized that they could not afford to make any more political or economic enemies. They saw Latin America as not only a place where they could hopefully find friends and allies, but also as a convenient location to set up industries which would provide an almost endless source of cheap labour.

Disney's series of films were intended to serve two main purposes. The first was to educate the American people on the subject of their neigbours to the South. Disney created his Latin American themed films at the bequest of the American government. One of the films included was The Three Caballeros which documented Donald Ducks playful romp through Mexico and Brazil and depicted these places as beautiful and full of life and energy. It really only highlighted the good aspects of each society and some parts almost came across as an advertisement for tourism. It seems that this film was intended to make the American people feel at ease about the friendship being created between their government and those of Latin America, regardless of the corrupt dictators with who the United States was forging friendships with at the time.

Propaganda has been used countless times as a means of altering the state of the general consensus in terms of mindset and ideology that it is no surprise to think of Disney's government initiated as a form of propaganda intended to influence the thinking of both the domestic Americans watching Donald Duck trump through Latin America, to those Latin American's themselves who were watching Disney's educational films. A historian during this time of intense political tension might not have accused the American government of trying to use propaganda to make its actions seem more favourable and expected to the public. However, a content analysis of the work from the perspective of the future can reveal the true colours and purpose of the said artistic or entertainment project. Much can be learned about the cultural, political and economic aspect surrounding Disney's series of Latin American themed films however, for the purposes of this argument, the point is that a researcher can in fact use such mediums as a provider of actual recorded history, capable of being studied academically.

Cartwright, Lisa and Goldfarb, Brian. "Cultural Contagion: On Disney's Health Education Films for Latin America". CMST 4D03: International Communication. McMaster Universty Custom Courseware 2008. 7-13.