The NFB’s Pin-Up Girl
“Propaganda,” declares Carol Payne, an associate professor of art history at Carleton University. She’s referring to the patriotic images scrolling across the screen of her laptop. There are landscapes, industrial scenes, and even some government-funded cheesecake of a sexy woman caressing a rifle barrel.
These pictures represent the approximately 100 photographs in a travelling exhibition Payne organized. The photographs will be at Carleton University Art Gallery Feb. 27 to April 30 for a show called The Other NFB: The National Film Board of Canada’s Still Photography Division, 1941–1971.
Starting in 1941 — this was the Second World War, remember — the federal agency best known for its documentary films sent photographers across the country to increase patriotism by capturing images of a happy, healthy, modern country. No slums allowed. No striking workers. Instead, we got hearty Caucasians at work and at play.
It’s not that the images lied, but they did not tell the whole truth. These photos are Canada’s version of Stalinist propaganda posters showing merry, athletic comrades marching off to work with their hammers and sickles. And they are images that coaxed generations of Canadians to think of their country in a particular way: white, prosperous, and content. Those sentiments linger.
Many of these images, some accompanied by so-called news stories, were sent free of charge to newspapers and magazines for publication. The readers of these publications were not always aware they were viewing government material, just as newspapers and magazines today slip in “advertorials” — corporate messaging disguised as news.
During the Second World War, there was a particular propaganda campaign to encourage women to work in factories to replace men fighting overseas. Consider Ronnie the Bren Gun Girl, whose real name was Veronica Foster. In one shot (below), Foster sits in a munitions factory, smoking and caressing the long barrel of a Bren gun. The image conveyed the notion that women working in a factory could be glamorous and sexy. Political correctness would never allow such an image today to be generated by a government agency.