Razões para o sacrificio : as justificativas para a guerra em anúncios comerciais de revistas brasileiras e norte-americanas (1942-1945)

Abstract

During World War II, many advertisements that circulated in Brazilian and American general interest magazines represented the event. Among these advertisements, some were dedicated to justifying the war. They set the reasons why it would be acceptable to recruit the means of production, capital, support shortages of products, work harder, volunteer, send loved ones to kill and die. These would be reasons which would legitimize the war, at the same time as they would aim to encourage the mobilization of the population of both countries. This dissertation aims to understand why advertisements in Brazil and the United States would have gone beyond their commercial functions and assumed political discourses that led them to justify the war. We also seek to answer what would be the reason for different justifications to appear. We analyzed the recurrence of justifications for war in advertisements, paying attention to how they were constructed, their motivations and the network of symbols, discourses and imaginaries that feed them. This dissertation problematized the existence of three advertising projects: an American one to the domestic population, formulated by the Office of War Information (after being briefly preceded by the Office of Facts and Figures) in partnership with the (War) Advertising Council and the private sector; another, headed by the Office of Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, also in partnership with the private sector, based on the ideals of the Good Neighbor Policy and built in dialogue with the countries involved; and the last one, Brazilian, of the exclusive initiative of the advertisers, without an explicit governmental demand, but aligned with the nationalist ideals of the Estado Novo. These projects were built on dialogue, with mutual inspiration. Indeed, sometimes they generated strength in each other. However, each project presented a different view of the world, appealing to different imaginaries. We argue that advertisers use war vocabulary to insert themselves into political discourse. Through them, advertising entered the political sphere and politicized its actions, establishing alignments and dialogues with political currents. The uses given to the war vocabulary were different in different historical, political and linguistic contexts. The representations of the war in the advertisements pointed to individual projects – to the improvement of the advertising field –, as well as to political projects. By being linked to different political currents, the elements of the war vocabulary gained new and distinct layers of meaning. Although all the political advertising projects analyzed in this dissertation make explicit the fight of the same enemy, the Axis, each one of them presented different arguments of what would need to be defended, what would be threatened and what would be desired with the victory. Therefore, we seek to understand the different ways in which advertisers, as historical actors, perceived, imagined and reflected on the war, producing arguments to legitimize it. Despite being the same war, the reasons to fight were different. We discuss the formulation of these projects – of advertising with a political nature, at the same time that they were political projects of an advertising nature –, emphasizing the circulation of ideas, as well as the appropriations and differentiations of each one of them, which resulted in different representations. We also frame all these projects as integral parts and, at the same time, constituents and diffusers of a culture of war.