"So it's time for your exams," Mitchell announced, slumped back on a couch in the back of the room. "It's fairly simple, really. Pick up that pen and that paper, pick a country, and write about what you found interesting or horrifying or even good about their approach to the media during one of these wars." He beamed at the class. "Then write down ( Read more... )

"There's one last big power in the war we haven't spoken about at all," Mitchell announced. He was, as always, sitting cross-legged on the couch with a slight quirk of a grin on his face. "The Soviets." He patted the giant expanse of the USSR on the map behind him. "As you may remember, the communists took control of the country during the First ( Read more... )

"So today we'll be seeing about Britain during the Second World War," Mitchell announced, rubbing his hands together. "This is the second to last one before we give Hitler a kick in the backside, so pay attention." Hey, that almost made him sound teacherly. "They started with a mostly naval battle - I won't go into the tactical points, since this ( Read more... )

"I know last week's film was a little heavy," Mitchell began, pointedly not looking in Kate's direction (although if it was PMT, he could hazard the guess it would be over by now, thankfully), "So I thought it was time to compensate a bit. Don't worry, we'll get to the fat man next week," and his mouth split into a slight grin, "But there's ( Read more... )

Once everyone had entered the class, Mitchell closed the door. Rather than saying anything, he leaned over his laptop, hitting one button-- and then hitting several others with an annoyed, frustrated look on his face-- "--Hold on, sorry." -- but eventually, a recording began to play.( Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force )

"We called it the Holocaust," Mitchell started. His mood seemed more solemn today, "The Germans called it the Final Solution. One of the main lessons about the media is how you word it, the phrases you use, the vocabulary you set up. You can spin almost anything to sound like it's a good thing in the end." He was standing, his hands in his pockets ( Read more... )

"Triumph des Willens," Mitchell spoke, "Triumph of the Will. Or as the lot of you will come to know it as today, 'an excuse to have a film day'. This is a German film that is considered to be one of the greatest of all time - both as a film, and as a masterpiece of propaganda."

He turned off the light, projecting the poster onto the viewscreen ( Read more... )

"Last week, we were talking about the amount of dancing going around during the 1920s, relief after the end of a war, that kind of thing," Mitchell started, regarding the class. "Which was nice for those of you on this end of the Atlantic, or at least outside of Germany, which was wracked by poverty in the wake of the Treaty of Versailles. In 1919 ( Read more... )

"'The League of Nations could make no better investment than to buy up the master-print, reproduce it in every language, to be shown in all the nations until the word "war" is taken out of the dictionaries,'" Mitchell greeted them, once they'd entered. "Pretty big, idealistic words, but that's the hope of it. And that's what Variety said about the ( Read more... )

"War," Mitchell started, once everyone had pooled into the class. "This week, we're not going to get to any of the good bits just yet, so buckle up. Rather, we're going to talk about the First World War, or as it was known in the early 20th century, the Great War, which began the cycle of conflicts that ravaged the century. It started rather ( Read more... )