Propaganda & Mass Persuasion: Light and Heavy Duty

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Light and Heavy Duty

In the book Wartime by Paul Fussel, in chapter one he talks about the issues of light and heavy duty. One for instance for light duty was using a jeep truck as to fight with. "Over half its 11,600 men were mounted, the rest driving armored cars, jeeps, and motocycles". Also they used football helmets for standard equipment for men in the army this showed light duty. Also as light duty men wearing nice uniforms and proud to go off to war. "He wears a clean field jacket, properly buttoned, We half expect a necktie, The caption reads, Pvt. Joe Louis says, we're going to do our part.. and we'll win because we're on gods side" This states that they are proud to go off to war and that they are doing their part. On the other hand Heavy duty is shown on a poster in 1943 of a drowned sailor who was cast up on the beach. Posters were now showing the war to be bloody, brutal, and horrible. The Battle of Bull Run was at first a light duty war. People even wanted to have a picnic and watch them fight. Some women even brought along their evening glowns expecting a victory ball right after. The heavy duty was when this light duty war turned in to a heavy duty war. When journalist Marguerite Higgins when she went to Europe she was shocked. "Cities were runied and stinking". She said there were dead bodies everywhere and some were torn apart, as well as people who were badly wounded. I think that when we go to war we think and hope that it will be a light duty war but most times it turns up to be a heavy duty war. Especially right now we can all say that the war in Iraq is a pretty heavy duty war.

1 Comments:

Blogger A. Mattson said...

Is this transition from "light" to "heavy" just the nature of war? Or is it the way that the government and the media represent war to the public?

3/13/2006 9:45 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home