Big Jim McLain (1952) polarised the moral universe of the viewer: the confrontations between Jim McLain (John Wayne) and Sturak (Alan Napier) highlighted melodramatic polarisation, in which "characters represent extremes, and they undergo extremes, passing from heights to depths, almost simultaneously." The film's narration by McLain also served this function, because "the middle ground and the middle condition are excluded." [61]

Another polarisation moment is the famous lipstick sequence in Black Narcissus (1947), in which Sister Phillipa (Flora Robson) reveals to Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) that she is going to leave the convent to seduce Mr. Dean (David Farrar). "Nothing is spared because nothing is left unsaid;" wrote Peter Brook, "the characters stand on stage and utter the unspeakable, give voice to their deepest feelings, dramatize through their heightened and polarized words and gestures the whole lesson of their relationship." [62]

Sister Clodagh's tribulations "demonstrates over and over that the signs of ethical forces can be discovered and made legible." [63] Her failure ('muteness') to establish order exemplifies the struggles that the 'moral voice' must undergo to be victorious, for "virtue, expulsed, eclipsed, apparently fallen, cannot effectively articulate the case of the right . . . virtue, fallen and eclipsed will, then, not so much struggle as simply resist." [64] Peter Brook also grasped the influence of place on our psyche: he defined 'muteness' as "a repeated use of extreme physical conditions to represent extreme moral and emotional conditions." [65] Black Narcissus (1947) achieves this via atmospheric shots of the convent gardens.

By 'collapsing' the moral universe to polarized values, the Ellulian propagandist can pre-determine the emotional outcome. By using landscape shots and music to bypass language, the Ellulian propagandist can gain an international audience. The non-diegetic presence of wind on the film's soundtrack, and the psychological power that the setting asserts over Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) and her order 'anchors' the "ritual of melodrama" in an environment that highlights the 'flawed subjectivity' of the characters. No-one is spared the ordeal of exposure.

Evangelical Propaganda and the Receptive Mass Audience

Big Jim McLain was filmed during the ascendancy of Edward Barrett and the Voice of America service. [66] Wayne's control of film form, a tactic further honed during 1980s 'Reaganite' entertainment-as-oppression, such as John Milius's film Red Dawn (1984), was first argued for by Donald McGranahan in PSQ Journal (1946). He suggested that "full frontal attack" and "evangelical propaganda" would be more effective. McGranahan felt that the "lowest common denominator" would create a receptive mass audience. [67] This directive meant that monopathic forms of propaganda film would become dominant, especially in newsreels [68] and horror films. [69] Significantly, because melodrama was sourced from 19th century short story and theatrical conventions, [70] it created trance-like social fictions and moral codes that an audience 'conditioned' by such conventions would more readily accept.

However, more manipulation is occurring in the deep text, as Wayne instinctively recognised that "modern man does not think about current problems: he feels them." [71] Propagandists data-mine the 'moral occult', for they try "to create myths by which man will live, which respond to his sense of the sacred." [72] This manipulation occurs through controlling film form, hence the "most 'radical' moments are in fact codified through generic conventions." [73] Notably, the sequence's usage of spatial continuity editing means that the spectator is "an ideally placed onlooker," hence in a receptive state of consciousness. [74] Big Jim McLain is an example of Ellul's 'sociological' propaganda, which he defined as the "penetration of an ideology by means of its sociological context." [75]

Similarly, Joseph Natoli observed that Flight for Freedom (1943) "suggests unstable future, chaotic events, but then re-writes the ending in the context of a larger, pre-determined framework." [76] This framing of issues is semiotic, according to Dana Polan, who acknowledged the influence of Roland Barthes. "There is no reality that can exist outside an ideological framing; those elements of reality that an ideology ignores become non-realities with no force or substance." [77] This framing is both context and time specific, for effective propaganda "proceeds by psychological manipulations, by character modifications, by the creation of feelings or stereotypes useful when the time comes." [78] In both films everything, from narrative structure to character stereotypes, is connected, since "the discourse of war affirmation works, then, to write reality within the monocular framework of a singular, closed set of values." [79] But Wayne's Big Jim McLain, like Casablanca before it, embedded its sub-text within the narrative because "even if a movie-goer is "taken" with a film, he remains passive. He has a personal opinion of the picture he sees. He will soon participate in public opinion about it, but that remains external." [80]

Whilst Big Jim McLain represented Ellul's propaganda of 'integration' (enforcing conformity), Wild In The Streets (1968) tapped the 1960s youth protest current typified by MC-5, the White Panthers, and the Youth International Party, to highlight Ellul's propaganda of 'agitation' (dissent). [81] Wild In The Streets is part of a rich legacy of radical cinema, including Bertolt Brecht, Jean-Luc Godard, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, whose "films are not conceived of as commodities for exchange and generation of profits but as ideological instruments for social action." [82] Propaganda, here, is in the eyes of the beholder, the viewer's reaction shaped by their personal values system.

Political Agitation and the Primal Scene

Political agitation's proximity to indignation is also evident in Bob Roberts (1992), a film which critiques the American Moral Majority's political discourse. [83] In both films the "propaganda frequently works by arguing that adversaries have possession of the cliches of the real, while the propagandist has possession of a higher, less commonsensical truth." [84] Indignation thus spans inter-generational conflicts, as Joseph Natoli observed: "The rioters that face today's angry fathers don't show any signs of knowing the drill. They're inexplicable. The way they're haunted can't be brought down to an articulate level, can't be identified, re-presented within an identity we seek and value." [85]

Psychoanalyst Karen Horney noted a close link between righteous indignation, neurosis, and societal rebellion (actions impelled by effective propaganda). [86] Horney's views confirm the centrality of the 'primal scene' to Freudian-inspired analysis of melodrama. Acknowledging the influence of Freudian psychoanalysis upon critical literature studies, Peter Brooks noted that "melodrama regularly rehearses the effects of a menacing 'primal scene', and the liberation from it, achieved through articulation and a final acting-out of conflicts." [87] Closer analogies may be found in Eric Berne's Transactional Analysis school, which is concerned with uncovering the 'psychotic core' twisted by parental programming, and post-Kleinian therapeutic psychodrama.