iii Looking at Labor-Capital Films

Conservative Films continued

Many of these films were made by employers' associations and took a decidedly pro-capitalist view in explaining contemporary labor problems (fig. 18). These films portrayed capitalists as agents of order, prosperity, and leadership. Unlike workers, capitalists were able to remain calm in the face of disaster(fig. 19, 20).

fig 19:Steve Hill's Awakening (1914)

Conservative filmmakers also utilized caricatures created in the wake of the Haymarket riots of 1886, to portray radical movements as savage affairs led by a handful of foreign-born agitators who relied upon violence and duped good but naive workers into serving their own corrupt needs (fig. 21). Words were not needed, for ideological messages were conveyed through visual stereotypes.

fig 21:Haymarket Riot (1886)

Films like The Nihilists (1905) portray socialist and anarchist men as eastern European foreigners with disheveled hair, wild beards, and bulging eyes that shine with madness (fig. 22). Their female counterparts, what Rush Limbaugh would disparagingly call Fem-Nazis, dress in male clothes and look like "modern" women but are decidedly unattractive, unfeminine women.

fig 22:The Nihilists (1905)