And the band played on... Art as distraction from disaster.

Depending on your definition we'll be rather fast and loose with the term "Art" in this piece. At times it may be more accurate to say creation or media, yet there's artistry and artists woven throughout it all. These works use the artists tools and hands, even if the end creation is merely a cousin to what we consider art.

The headlines stand as amputated lines from poems, adorning novels dressed as articles in faux fact. Implications in magazines flirt with fiction on the front page. Paparazzi shoot unwilling models, picking the least flattering of moments in a wilful distortion of studio photography. Vapid pop drowns out the chorus of truths song, symphonies for the few played louder than many calls for sympathy. The most advance CGI artists and their machines churn out military propaganda dressed up in tights, capes, transformers and a call of duty.

As a creator you can deny your place on this battlefield, fingers in ears and head ducked beneath the foxholes rim, but it is happening. It has happened. Propaganda has for centuries spun forth from arts loom. From royal portraiture to 'The birth of a nation', the Bayeux tapestry to 'Battle: Los Angeles'. The pervasive evolution of propaganda and the creation of the Military entertainment complex is not a tin foil hat theory. It is observed and evidenced through FOI requests, and in quotes from the annuls of power. In 1943 the precursor to the C.I.A (the O.S.S) circulated memos claiming cinema as "one of the most powerful propaganda weapons at the disposal of the United States".

The director of the O.W.I (office of war information) was even more direct in his assessment, stating "The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people's minds is to let it go in through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realize that they are being propagandized". We find this thinking mirrored in quotes from President Eisenhower in the 50s, and we see examples of its legacy it in action everywhere.

Prominent examples come post Vietnam, as the DoD (department of defence) were desperate to revitalise the image of the U.S military. They were happy to provide advice and equipment to filmmakers, all they wanted in return was to approve the final script. One of the most notable of which is 'Top Gun' which saw both scenes and characters altered to paint the Navy leadership more positively, a trade of fighter jets for favourable light. The militaries conviction in this propaganda was so strong they set up recruiting booths in cinemas, and it worked. The Navy would see a rise in recruitment of 8% that year, that's 17,000 people convinced to fight and die by a film. (A figure the navy would go on to propagandise further claiming it was as high as 500%)

Yet it is not solely in the overt or militaristic that we find this manipulation of creation and media. The ways in which the news media and magazines manipulate our perceptions cannot be ignored or understated. One such practice known as cloaking is particularly subtle and unique to the modern age. It plays on the structure of algorithms and search engines to subdue unflattering news. To do this interviews and quotes are given to generate stories in the press, using either outlandish statements or similar key words about the people in question, this pollutes the algorithm with these often benign and humorous headlines, forcing older headlines further down the list, changing search auto suggests, and pushing the original story out of the public eye.

Former U.K prime minister Boris Johnson was a master of this, a more nuanced trump he was apt to play the fool in pursuit of diverting the course of news media. From his intentionally awful hair cut to strange turns of phrase, he would always capture the least harmful headline. One of his most well known cloaks was drawn up in the wake of the Brexit Bus fallout. For context a bus was used heavily by Johnson and others in the pro brexit campaign. The claim plastered on the busses side said that £350million was sent to the E.U each week, and that would be used to fund the NHS instead. Post brexit the NHS did not receive this boost in funding. Yet today the top result from google is a BBC article with a quote Boris gave about how he likes to make model buses in his spare time.

These moments of propaganda are not limited to governments, groups like the Daily Wire are full fledged media companies dedicated to spreading their ideology through everything from music to children's videos. The manipulation, bastardisation, and invention of new art and media is a real and present issue in all of our lives.

My point in writing all this is not to instil a sense of doom or shame in those who participate in the creation or consumption of this media, this art. It is just to make you aware of the breadth and depth of propaganda, to highlight how it can appear anywhere. It can be subtle, a simple omission of a line from a script, an innocuous news story, or a blatant lie on a bus. But this should not fill you with dread, rather hope, because everywhere they are you can be too. Everything they do, you can do twice as well. A film sets fiction is no match for the street photographers fact, novelists craft better tales than poor excuses for journalists, and no matter what picture those in power try to paint, a rattle can will reveal its truth.

We wont win this game by not playing, dont let them define culture through control of art and creation, paint truth to power, and if all else fails, make better propaganda.