Propaganda: Symbolism of the Moon Landing

Yes, this picture is Photoshopped of my motorcycle on the moon. My blog entry is about the symbolism of the first humans landing on the moon in 1969. In an earlier blog, I commented on the symbolic value of building the pyramids. The moon landing was in many ways a similar project to the pyramids, in that there was almost no direct practical value. But there was enormous symbolic value in the hope for the future. Of course, like the pyramids I'm sure there were spin-off technologies developed, that in themselves proved useful. With the pyramids, Egyptians learned stonework, learned to manage large engineering projects, lots more I'm sure. And of course with the moon landing we got Tang (and some other stuff).

The true symbolism of the moon landing turned out to be the very opposite of what was first intended. The intended symbolism was that with technology, we could travel into space and eventually colonize distant planets. Our future was to be limitless. We would not have to worry any more about overpopulation and environmental destruction.

However, the moon landing made it abundantly clear that we were nowhere near ready to deal with the limitless expanse of space. It might take another thousand years, and even then it may be theoretically impossible. And furthermore it emphasised how small our planet was and how hostile outer space would be. And so the moon landing helped kick off the environmental movement, and the moon landing became a symbol of how necessary the Earth's environment was to our future.

The propaganda value to the USA vs. the USSR was still quite impressive, though. I remember at the time, being a teacher in a school in Sierra Leone West Africa. The cold war was raging, Americans and Russians were both trying to win over the people of Sierra Leone to their side. I was given the job of organizing a weekly outdoor movie night for the students, and I got practically all my films from either the US Information Service or the USSR embassy. It was not just my opinion, but the students also thought the US propaganda films were way more entertaining. Just an example, every time an American movie showed girls with short skirts (like football cheerleaders) the students would yell "Legs, Legs!". After a few nights of puzzling about this, someone explained to me that although girls typically went topless in Sierra Leone, they were very modest about covering their legs right down to the ankles. I didn't understand that at first, because a lot of Sierra Leonian girls I saw were dressed Western style, i.e. miniskirts and NOT topless. But in the villages it was the opposite.

I'm going to get sidetracked a little here, because this reminds me of one particular night, when we got the visit of the Soviet Ambassador himself, and I was supposed to show his very thinly disguised propaganda flick. Well wouldn't you know, but the power failed. We hooked up a spare generator, and brought the Russian vehicles in to shine their headlights just so we could see enough to thread the film. We got the film running OK, though a bit boring, but that was expected. Then the sheet we tied between two trees and used for showing the films on fell down. I got a bit of a dirty look from the Russian crew, but that was before the 1972 Canada vs. USSR hockey series, so they didn't hate Canadians too much back then. But they suspected that the Americans might have had something to do with it. It was the only time I ever had a problem with the movies.