Sunday Times 2
The Reader’s Digest as propaganda: A review 71 years ago
View(s):I was rummaging through university students’ magazines of the 1930s-50s in the Ceylon Room of the Main Library of University of Peradeniya, when I happened upon this writing by Tissa Devendra in Ceylon University Magazine. It had been written 71 years ago in 1951, when Mr. Devendra was an undergraduate of the University of Ceylon. I believe it is as conceptually topical and relevant in today’s sociopolitical climate as it was 71 years ago. Incidentally, on February 5, 2022, the magazine marked 100 years since its inception, making it an apt anniversary to scrutinise the magazine’s progression throughout the last century. Extracts of the article is published with Mr. Devendra’s permission. Rochana Jayasinghe, University of Peradeniya .
The Reader’s Digest was first published in 1922. To-day in 1951 in addition to the four English language editions (in U.S.A., Canada, England and Australia), it publishes editions in the following languages – French, Danish, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Spanish, Portuguese and Swedish. In 1946 it also claimed Chinese and Arabic editions. I am unable to quote exact figures, but the circulation of this magazine must be enormous. Its popularity is very great, even in Ceylon.
My aim in this article is limited. I do not intend to assess the literary quality of the pre-digested fare The Reader’s Digest presents. I merely intend to discuss the magazine as a vehicle of American propaganda.
The “free” world, as the Americans call it, is at present being submitted to such an intensive propaganda, by The Reader’s Digest and like magazines, as it has never been before. The Cold War is unparalleled in history, and so is the propaganda machine the Americans use as a weapon in it. British propaganda in the heyday of the Empire was rudimentary. The Empire was so solidly established that no necessity arose of instilling into people the superiority of the British way of life to any other. German propaganda during the war employed only two colours – black and white – so that its nature was realized by all but the simplest minds. What little we see of current Russian propaganda shows its affinity to the German variety. The line is so very clearly drawn between the peace-loving peoples’ democracies and the war-mongering bourgeoise-democratic-capitalist-imperialists that it ceases to be successful propaganda. American propaganda is far subtler, it is more palatable and above all gives the superficial impression of impartiality thus making it acceptable to the unwary reader.
It is beyond my scope to discuss American propaganda as a whole or its dissemination through “literary” magazines. I have decided to analyse The Reader’s Digest as propaganda as I consider it typical of its kind.
Intellectual lethargy has made for the acceptance as factual of the attractively presented matter in The Reader’s Digest. The only criterion people apply to its “interestingness,”- and as it is very much so, they accept it. It is essential in their own interest that people should begin to look critically at what they read. Once that is done, and a balanced and critical attitude is adopted towards The Reader’s Digest, it will be possible to enjoy this magazine not as a repository of its interesting facts but as one of the most effective propaganda magazines ever published.
A bird’s eye view of the recent issues of The Reader’s Digest shows its main propaganda trends. The pro-Allied anti-Axis propagandas of the war years has given place to pro-American anti-Russian propaganda. The now far-famed “American way of life” is being given a tremendous boosting among the “freedom-loving peoples of the world.” We are presented with rosy pictures of American home-life, business and culture; we are shown such characteristics of American life as equality of opportunity, illustrated by numerous success stories with occasionally one of a prominent Negro; we get intimate glimpses showing us such “typically American” qualities as generosity, sympathy and humour; we are shown the fine ways in which the institutions of American democracy work. To balance this rosy vision we are presented with “authentic” accounts of the dark horrors of the secret-police-ridden life behind the Iron Curtain from such “reliable” sources as escaped flyers, visiting diplomats and refugee officials. Apart from these regular features on life behind the Iron Curtain, the articles that appear on non-American subjects are very few. Articles do appear on other lands and peoples but they are few. Any Reader’s Digest picked up will show that almost all the articles are American in interest. It does indeed show a great mental lassitude among the “free” peoples that they so unquestioningly consume this magazine so parochial in interest and propagandist in purpose.
All I have said so far has been of necessity vague. One cannot criticise a magazine by vague and general references. To justify my criticism I have chosen for detailed analysis one particular issue of The Reader’s Digest – that of November, 1946. It has been picked up at random and, I think, is as typical as any one issue can be of a magazine.
The back-cover was the place generally reserved by The Reader’s Digest for publishing appreciations of it by its wide and varied reading public. On various occasions it has published messages of thanks for providing intelligent reading matter for G.Is. in the South Pacific jungles, for exhibiting the glorious American democratic way of life to the down-trodden folks behind the Iron Curtain, or for being the best magazine of its kind in America or the whole world. The message in this issue belongs to the third category. It is by Pastor Harry Emerson Fosdick, apparently one of those bright, high-powered padres in the Dale “How to Win Friends and Influence People”) Carnegie tradition as can be seen from the titles of his books “Adventurous Religion” and “On Being a Real Person.” His message is full of things said arrestingly, e.g. “we read carelessly, letting any casual straggler down the literary street buttonhole us and waste our time while kings are waiting.” While complimenting the magazine he gets in a jab at communism – “Standardization of opinion and conformity of mental patterns are to the individual the death of intellect and to society the end of progress.” His whole message unfortunately boils down to this – that he prefers this reading matter to be like the multi-vitamin pills extracted from various sources and pre-digested. “As a devotee of The Reader’s Digest I am particularly indebted to it for the way it digs out for me from the mass of magazine material the articles which I would not otherwise see, and probably would not read if I did see them.” – Which is not saying much for his critical faculty.
The first article is based on Hesketh Pearson’s biography of Oscar Wilde and is titled “The World’s Wittiest Talker.” Its aim is to pad a skeleton life of Wilde with as many examples of his brilliant conversation as possible. But the article lacks balance. Four paragraphs are devoted to show that, after all, Wilde was a burly he-man – a type dear to the American heart – who could “back up his tastes against all-comers – whether they came singly or in a bunch.” But his homosexuality and its tragic aftermath are dismissed in two paragraphs. Similarly, comparative excessive attention is paid to his American tour and his ability to drink all-comers under the table. This is rather a poor article – neither is it a thorough condensation of Pearson’s book nor does it show enough of Wilde’s witty conversation to justify its being titled “The World’s Wittiest Talker.”
The other article of purely “literary” interest in this issue is the condensation in the Book Section of “We Shook the Family Tree” by Hildergande Dolson. It is, the blurb tells us, a “funny family story” – a form of literature of which The Reader’s Digest seems particularly fond. A more recent protégé of it has been filmed – ”Cheaper by the Dozen.”. Miss Dolson’s book is an averagely written account of the adventures that any family of lively kids passes through. But it does not end here. It goes on to become just another American Pilgrims’ Progress – from log-cabin to White House. The heroine, a provincial girl, goes to New York to seek a fortune in writing. She passes through many vicissitudes which are characterised by the warmth and generosity of everybody around her, like her landlady who finds her a job and her co-workers who build her an office and place flowers on her desk. She, however perseveres in her original ambition with true American doggedness and goes on writing and collecting rejection slips till The New Yorker accepts one of her stories. It can confidently be said that the literary value of this book is nil. This poses the question – why was it included? I think it was because of its propaganda value – painting in bright colours the large-heartedness pervading American life whether in small town or big city, and the ease with which perseverance brings success in its wake – in America.
“Veteran’s Enterprises, Unlimited” is a series of chattily written, straightforward, short, success stories. It related how enterprising G.I. Veterans made paying businesses out of bright ideas they got while serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.
“College at the Factory” highlights a captain of industry with a difference – Mr. Willkie of Seagram’s Distilleries. He is indeed exceptional with his system of paying for his employees’ College and University education and more so with his ideas “The freezing of industry is anathema to Mr. Willkie. The hoarding of patents and technological advances, he regards as pernicious. His plants are open to all-comers.” However, the spotlighting of Mr. Willkie is suspect because the ideal employer is a fairly regular feature in The Reader’s Digest, which thus subtly suggests that such broad-minded, humane and intelligent men as it features are the typical American employers.
Like the English, the Americans too have now begun a sentimental rewriting of their history. “Old Ironsides – Eagle of the Sea” is the story of America’s most famous battleship, which, we are told, chased French privateers from the West Indies, broke the power of the Barbary pirates and almost single-handed won a sea-war against Great Britain. The author claims “Indeed, no one ship in history ever did more to win and war than Old Ironsides.” The whole article is most emotionally written to call up the proud patriotic sentiments of all Americans. The building of the ship is thus described - “For her decks they cut the pitch pine of South Carolina, and for the gun floor solid white oak of Massachusetts; red cedar and tough black locust went into her beams. White oak of New Jersey built her keel. And for her mast they cut three towering white pines of Maine, arrow-straight, peeled like a swift runner.” The laudatory adjectives carefully applied to the various trees, and the names of the various districts from which the trees came suggest a contrived and deliberate attempt to present the ship as a symbol of national unity. The article ends on just the right note of nostalgia and national pride – she “still rides salt water, her keel murmuring to her sweetheart the sea, her rigging in the breeze still faintly thrumming old chanties…. And still over her mainmast snaps her starry ensign.”
There is, however, one article in this issue which is very different from the others in that it does not indulge in praising America, Americans and things American. This is “Do American Men like Women?” by David L. Ohn. It hits refreshingly hard at many American attitudes, e.g. “In this culture, it is ‘manly’ to drink whisky but not wine ; to take coffee but not tea ; to collect daggers but not Persian silks. It is suspect for a man to read verse.” After discussing the immaturity of the American man’s attitude to women, the author concludes that this is because “There is nothing in the teaching the average man receives at home as a youth, nothing in the philosophy of his elders or companions, to show him the profound satisfactions that may flow from cultivating a woman as a beloved garden is cultivated.” The tone of this article is so very different from everything else in this magazine that the only reason I can think of for its inclusion is that the occasional publication of such an article consolidates the impression of impartiality The Reader’s Digest attempts to give.
Two articles in this issue describe life behind the Iron Curtain – “Yugoslavia’s Tragic Lesson to the World” condensed from a book by Bogdan Radista and “The Scared Men in the Kremlin” by John Fischer. Raditsa is introduced as having been for many years a high-ranking Yugoslav government official and is now a refugee from Communism. This article is interesting in that it is a typical example of the stereotyped ways in which American journals describe life in the U.S.S.R. and its satellite states. The counters it uses have been so worn by persistent use that intelligent readers have come to doubt their sincerity. We have been surfeited with those details Raditsa uses so naively – the strong resemblance between fascism and communism ; the all-powerful secret police ; frequent liquidations and purges ; anti-Christinaity ; implicit dependence on Moscow ; anti-Americanism ; engineered elections ; anti-“democracy,” and balanced against all this the unpopularity and inferiority of the Russians and the power of the Church in the peoples’ hearts. This list of Raditsa’s propagandist clichés will suffice to indicate to any discerning reader the quality of this article.
“The Scared Men in the Kremlin” in spite of its suggestive title and blurb (“They have absolute control over the largest country on earth – yet they behave like frightened neurotics? Why?”) is not such a crude piece of propaganda. Fischer, who visited Russia as a member of an U.N.R.R.A. mission, makes a fair attempt to analyse Russia’s national fear neuroses from the American point of view. His is a competent article though even he cannot resist inserting touches reminiscent of a spy melodrama, e.g. “Our car slid to a stop on the narrow ramp which leads to the Forest Gate of the Kremlin. A Colonel and three soldiers who carried automatic rifles closed in on us. They were crack Internal Security Troops of the N.K.V.D., the political police.” There is also an occasional suggestion of an un-American way of life – we are told the N.K.V.D. officials “have been entitled to the choicest food, clothes, cars and ballerinas”!
The rest of the articles are not propagandist in purpose and seem to be included on account of their general interest to Americans. Their background is without exception American. “Why Not Worry?” by Frank Sullivan is one of those bright, unusual, pseudo-psychological sermons. “They Get Up and Live” and “Communique on Cancer” are medical articles of general interest with an American background. “Emotions Can Kill” is a bit of elementary psychology asking people not to drive when emotionally moved, and copiously illustrated with American examples. “Why I Gave Up Liquor” is, as the title says, the story of how a drinker (American of course) went dry. “Rats Bite the Dust” describes the discovery in America of a potent new rat-poison. “Sad Sam” is the biography of a bucking bronco of the rodeos of Western America. “Earth’s Hardiest Creature” tells the story of how an American survived almost impossible physical trials in the Arctic to live a successful life as a businessman. “Hollywood’s Frustrated Music Makers” is about the composers of American film music. “The Greatest Hoax of the War” describes how the Germans were fooled as to the real point of the Second Front invasion. “The Most Unforgettable Character I’ve Met” is a regular feature of The Reader’s Digest. In this issue it is about a lady from China, but this feature is quite often used to portray various admirable American types.
It would be unfair to accuse all the lesser features of being propagandist. “Spiced Tongue” (at one time “Picturesque Speech and Patter”) and “Hollywood Round-up” are collections of smart quips and remarks. “It Pays to Increase Your Word Power,” in spite of the commercial appeal of its title, is only a sort of guess-the-meaning game. Most of the jokes have no deeper significance, but a few seem to point the American moral of “get on,” e.g. the tale of the young fruit-seller who makes more money than his fellows from the tips he gets by showing the scenery to tourists and giving them “free” fruit. “Life in the United States” contains stories, mainly humorous with an occasional “tear-jerker,” chosen to illustrate varied aspects of American life. Often they picture incidents showing “typically American” characteristics, e.g. two of the five stories in this issue illustrate independence and warm-heartedness. In one, an old man determined to get places by his own volition refuses a proffered car-lift ; in the other, a young girl looks after children of harassed mothers in a station as a labour of love, for she remembers her own worried mother in wartime.
In conclusion, I must stress again that this article is not a complete analysis of The Reader’s Digest. It is only a study of this magazine as propaganda. In order to emphasize this aspect of it, it is possible that certain things have been distorted. If this is so, I apologize and hope that the degree of distortion is no greater than that which is unavoidable when viewing anything exclusively from a single standpoint. I hope my analysis of a particular issue of The Reader’s Digest has justified my criticism of this magazine. The purpose of this article will be served if, to some extent at least, it makes readers critically aware of what I believe is the main purpose of The Reader’s Digest..