Octopus & Propaganda

[Clem]

Avast Phil,

Thank you so much for posting that image. Seems Disney wasn't constrained by notions of culturally specific animals, as Uncle Walt supplied octopus mascots for American forces, as well.

Note that the Imperial Japanese octopus is green; the more corrosive wartime propaganda and cartoon images of the Japanese people often depicted them as yellow or green-skinned. (However, the octopus Disney produced for the crew of a US Navy submarine was also green.) Note too the octopus' arm stretched out to Alaska's Aleutian island chain. That seldom-remembered theater of war saw the Japanese occupy several islands in June of 1942: Attu, later the scene of vicious fighting between the entrenched invaders and returning American forces (May, 1943), and Kiska, which was evacuated by the Japanese in advance of American efforts to reclaim it (in August of 1943).

But, what are those islands in the octo's arms? Oahu? Midway? Are those the flags of the Rising Sun on them? Midway was saved from the Imperial Japanese Navy on 4 June, 1942, (just days before Kikska and Attu were successfully attacked) and Oahu, though it did receive the attention of a few long-range IJN flying-boats, was never the target of a large-scale attack after 7 December, 1941. This Lockheed poster, then, shows the moment the tide turned in the Pacific: June 1942, and the strategic reversal of Japanese expansion, which was effected largely by a few American Navy dive-bombers at the Battle of Midway. Sadly, the lone eagle couldn't be everywhere, and the two Aleutian islands were taken.

By a huge green octopus.

Clem

 

[WhiteKiboko]

my thoughts are that itd be hawaii and phillipines with the flags, signifying successful japanese attacks against the US.... and the aleutians were a feint for midway...

of course i could just be slinging nonsense

 

[Clem]

my thoughts are that itd be hawaii and phillipines with the flags, signifying successful japanese attacks against the US.... and the aleutians were a feint for midway...

of course i could just be slinging nonsense

Hello WK,

No nonsense, but I don't think the Phillipines are in the picture. The two territories within the octo's grasp are isolated, in the middle of the Pacific; if the Disney artist(s) had meant the viewer to think Phillipines, they'd most likely have included nearby China and Formosa (now Taiwan) in the picture as reference points.

You're absolutely right about Japan's Aleutian offensive being a feint. Admiral Yamamoto, chief architect of the Pearl Harbor strike, wanted to draw the remnants of America's aircrfat carrier force into a decisive fight, and reasoned that the US Navy's flattops would be divided in defense of Midway and the Aleutians and overwhelmed by the IJN's numerical superiority. Yamamoto also considered the Aleutians to have been a possible forward staging area for the Doolittle raid on Tokyo; only after the war did the Japanese learn that Doollittle's raiders had flown their normally land-based B-25's from the deck of the U.S.S. Hornet. In the event, the American carriers stayed put and prevailed at Midway, while the Japanese octopus took posession of two of the most inhospitable islands in the Northern hemisphere. The catastrophic defeat at Midway was kept under wraps, and the Aleutian gambit was spun by Japanese propagandists as a triumph.

:|

Clem

 

[WhiteKiboko]

No nonsense, but I don't think the Phillipines are in the picture. The two territories within the octo's grasp are isolated, in the middle of the Pacific; if the Disney artist(s) had meant the viewer to think Phillipines, they'd most likely have included nearby China and Formosa (now Taiwan) in the picture as reference points.

we of course must keep in mind that this is propaganda, not a geography lesson... its meant to stir the feelings not apease the mind.... those flags are meant to motivate the lockheed workers to keep them cranking out the planes to beat the enemy.... instead of 'remember the alamo" i think the disney artist is going for "remember pearl harbor and the bataan death march".... but then again we're speaking about a company that has a rodent dancing with cleaning implements, so i could be wrong....

 

[Clem]

The drawing below appeared in The American Issue, a newspaper produced under the auspices of the American Anti-Saloon League. The League, a driving force behind efforts to prohibit the sale of alcohol in the United States, published a number of papers in the years between 1893 and 1933, all of them dedicated to an evangelic approach to temperance. "The Liquor Octopus" appeared in The American Issue on January 4th, 1919.



Clem

 

[Emperor]

I'm not sure if it has come up but 'The Octopus' is a wide ranging umbrella conspiracy theory developed by Danny Casolaro (and only discovered when he as allegedly "suicided"):

http://www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/article/id901/pg1/

Untitled Document

http://www.constitution.org/col/octocaso.htm

http://www.totse.com/en/conspiracy/casolaro/

http://www.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/octopus.html

http://www.apfn.org/apfn/octopus.htm

Explanation of name:

http://www.rense.com/general/caso.htm

A book on it:

http://www.steamshovelpress.com/fromeditor24.html

whos most recent cover features a big octopus (of course):

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0922915393.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg?tag=tonmocomtheoctop

 

[Phil]

Thanks for bringing the Casolaro case up, Emperor. I once saw a lecture on that at a Fortean Times Unconvention and always intended mentioning it here, but could not remember enough about it to write anything meaningful.

Interesting paranoid stuff. Maybe he was onto something?

 

[Emperor]

Phil: Yes I must try and make an UnCon one of these days.

Maybe he was onto something?

If nothing else he was a major influence on the current mega-conspiracies.

Emps

 

[Jean]

Spotted this in the Otago Daily Times on Saturday!

J

 

[Clem]

Spotted this in the Otago Daily Times on Saturday!

Jean,

Good cartoon there, if rather unrealistic. The President would have a very difficult time controlling an automatic weapon.

Ever wondered what an animated American octopus with hegemonic aspirations would look like? Click here to find out.



Clem

 

[Jean]

. The President would have a very difficult time controlling an automatic weapon.

Well he might shoot himself in the foot..............it'd make a change from them being in his mouth all the time (apologies to any Dubya supporters!)

. Ever wondered what an animated American octopus with hegemonic aspirations would look like? Click here to find out.



Clem

J

 

[tonmo]

Of interest in the last few paragraphs of this page:

http://www.aijac.org.au/updates/Nov-03/251103.html

 

[tonmo]

Here's another, timely, and disturbing:

PA Daily Cartoons: 1. US Octopus is Dismembering Saddam

!!!!!

 

[Jean]

Poor octi

J

 

[Clem]

Here's another, timely, and disturbing:

PA Daily Cartoons: 1. US Octopus is Dismembering Saddam

TONMO,

Yeah, that's a rough one, and grossly unfair. We gave the man a haircut and shave, for Pete's sake.

The (annotated) illustration below appeared in an 1882 edition of The Wasp, a San Francisco newspaper founded in 1876 by the Korbel brothers, successful Bohemian immigrants who saw the value of diversifying their business interests to include print journals. Among the brothers’ established concerns were cigar-box manufacture and the production of wine and brandy; the latter business remains active under the Korbel name. Before selling The Wasp in 1881, the Korbels presided over a significant innovation in American newspapers: mass-produced color cartoons.

Tinted lithographs had been used to decorate the cigar boxes the Korbels produced, and they put their experience to use in The Wasp, commissioning G. Frederick Keller to illustrate the cartoons that appeared on the front cover, rear cover and centerfold of the paper. This layout was costly to produce and the paper lost money through a succession of different owners, but the drawings gave The Wasp its visual signature. Under the editorial direction of muckraking pioneer Ambrose Bierce, the paper routinely lobbed ordure at California’s most powerful men and institutions, with special attention given to the railroad monopoly controlled by the men known as The Big Four.

Keller’s illustration, “The Curse of California,” ran in The Wasp’s August 19th edition in 1882. It may not have been Keller’s inspiration to depict the Southern Pacific Railroad company as a monopolistic octopus, since the metaphor was also used in William Chambers Morrow’s 1882 novel, “Blood-Money.” Keller’s cartoon and Morrow’s novel shared a common inspiration, a bloody clash between farmers and representatives of the Pacific Railroad in the San Joaquin valley, at a place called Mussel Slough.

The Pacific Railroad was owned by Californian magnates known as The Big Four, these being Leland Stanford, President of the Central Pacific Railroad from 1863, and founder of Stanford University in 1884; Charles Crocker, President of the Southern Pacific Railroad and a member of the California State legislature from 1860; Mark Hopkins, and Collis Huntington. Control of the railways gave them de-facto control of the pace and direction of California’s economic development, since so many different concerns were allied to the transportation infrastructure. In “The Curse of California,” Stanford and Crocker’s visages appear within the octopus’s eyes.

Mussel Slough was a tributary of the Kings River whose surrounds had been settled by farmers; producing both agricultural crops and a small yield of shellfish, Mussel Slough was coveted by the Southern Pacific Railroad for its planned expansion into the San Joaquin Valley. Using their influence (and Crocker’s position) within the California State legislature, the owners of the Railroad arranged for land prices to be increased by over 1000%, far beyond the reach of the poor farmers who had settled the Slough, and on May 11, 1880 armed land-grabbers hired by the Railroad, accompanied by a U.S. Marshall, began the forcible repossession of homes and land. They were met by a group of armed farmers, and in the ensuing exchange of fire six men were killed.

Keller’s “Curse of California” is a prime, early example of how discrete elements of a narrative can be assigned to each of an octopus’s arms. The Wasp’s octopus has ten appendages, though one of the array has nothing to grasp. The arm clutching several head of livestock and their tender has the word “Freight” written on it, and is one of two arms to wear text; the other coils around a representation of San Francisco’s tony Nob Hill, home to the city’s economic and political elite, and is marked “Railroad Monopoly.” Rendered as a lonely burial plot, at the bottom of the page, is Mussel Slough.

Clem