Martin Scorsese once explained why you “can’t trust anything you see on TV”
Beyond his epic mob sagas, his bloody and expansive chronicles of criminal empires, and his candid, raw glimpses of Italian-American subculture, director Martin Scorsese has often used his cinema to highlight topical and relevant issues plaguing Western cinema. His 1973 Cannes-winning classic Taxi Driver was as much a tale of a sociopathic vigilante as it was an exploration of disenfranchisement among war vets.
His audacious 2013 biopic The Wolf of Wall Street was a searing indictment of corporate America. As Scorsese himself said in an interview with The Times, it was his “last explosive”, a movie meant “to shake it up and ask, ‘Is this really who we are?'” And his recent and incredible Killers of the Flowers Moon showcases American racism at the turn of the century.
Shining a spotlight on the rampant misogyny, greed and outright debauchery that had infiltrated and subsequently shaped the modern American economic system, Scorsese was able to make The Wolf of Wall Street a hugely enjoyable and bombastic ride that simultaneously taught its audiences about the innate problems of the finance industry. Like the best cinema, it balanced entertainment and education harmoniously.
It’s unsurprising, then, that the legendary director is particularly interested in how movies can spread disinformation – particularly how some can utilise and appropriate the medium for propaganda. Using the 1935 German movie Triumph of the Will as a famous example, Scorsese reveals how “propaganda can cut any way you want it to”. Bathed in optimism and bravery, Leni Riefenstahl’s movie cuts together 60 hours worth of four days of the 1934 Nuremberg Rally.
It depicts a nation of devoted and unwaveringly patriotic Germans, buoyant with hope and love for their leader, ecstatic as Adolf Hitler emerges from a plane like an angel descended from heaven to bring the people of Germany to new and unimagined levels of glory. Replete with tears of joy, thousands of arms raised in a Nazi salute, and implementing genuinely innovative filmmaking techniques, it’s regarded as one of the most potent works of movie propaganda ever. In retrospect, it’s chilling.
In 2007, speaking to Raffaele Donato, Scorsese explained how the propaganda medium had evolved. “We have propaganda here in America every day. CNN news has become propaganda. It’s in the choice of news stories they’ve chosen to tell. It’s in the camera placement: five feet to the left, you have a whole different story. Point the camera in a different direction, and you’re telling the story of the peasant who’s walking by, as opposed to the politician using the landscape as a backdrop. That’s why campaign teams have pre-designed camera angles.”
He continued, explaining, “You can’t trust anything you see on TV. The question is, are people aware of it? Have they figured it out? I don’t know. The problem is that it’s all about entertainment. So now we have 400 channels of entertainment— great. This has been the case for many years now, and it’s only getting worse.”
