Rise Of Totalitarian Governments

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Rise of Totalitarianism

No other war was as devastating and world altering as WWI; it changed the face of Europe forever as four empires disappeared, Germany, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and the Russian. This war left Europe burned to the ground, and out of these ashes rose new forms of Totalitarian governments, Fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany . The rise of these states are marked by profound differences to each other but they share many similarities as well, namely that their existence owes itself entirely to WWI and the actions taken by the victorious allies particularly the Peace Treaties.

The Italian Government was faced with many problems after the war. The first was with Italian dissatisfaction with the territorial settlements at the Paris Peace Conference. The Italians were expecting big land gains when they had entered the war and according to the Treaty of London, released to the public by the Bolsheviks as a way of showing the corruption of Western governments, they were promised Trentino, Trieste, Southern Tyrol, Istria, Dalmatia, the coastal districts of Albania, a share in the division of the Ottoman Empire and of the German colonies in Africa. Even though the Italians had fought bravely in the war loosing 600,000 men, the territories ceded to Italy in the Paris Peace Conference only included Trentino, Trieste, Tyrol and Istria, but she did not get any former German colonies nor any land in Asia Minor, Albania and Dalmatia.# There was much resentment against the weak and unsuccessful foreign policy of the Italian government. In September 1919, a band of alien patriots, under Gabriele D'Annunzio, took Fiume, a port on the Dalmatian coast, by force in defiance of the decision of the

Paris Peace Conference. But the Italians could not enjoy their victory for long because in November 1920 the Italian government had signed the treaty of Rapallo with Yugoslavia, by which Fiume became a free city under the League of Nations and Italy renounced Dalmatia as her sphere of influence.# In January 1921, the Italian troops drove D'Annunzio and his followers from Fiume. Many Italians were deeply disappointed with their government which seemed be too weak in its foreign policy.

Another problem that Italy faced was economic failure. Italy was a poor nation. She could only support her war effort by obtaining foreign loans. Immediately after the war, as Europe was exhausted by the war, the Italian tourist trade and export trade came to a standstill and there was large-scale unemployment throughout the country. The problem of unemployment was aggravated by the return of millions of ex-soldiers to Italy and a new immigration law of the U.S. government which restricted entry of immigrants. Moreover, runaway inflation added to the sufferings of the Italians. The lira had only one-fifth of its pre-war value.# Encouraged by the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the unemployed workers and peasants stirred up riots and strikes throughout the country.

With the current government losing popularity, many citizens turned to the Socialist parties and in the elections of 1919 the Socialist Party won more than one-third of all votes and became the largest single party in the Chamber of Deputies. They were followed at a distance by the Popular Party which won one-fifth of all votes on a platform of social reform. The ruling parties (the Liberals and Democrats) lost heavily. Encouraged by this success, the General Confederation of labor called for strikes in September 1920.

During the strike, workers took over more than six hundred factories and established soviets on the Russian model to rule a number of industrial towns in northern Italy.#

This set the stage for Benito Mussolini to gain power. A former socialist himself, he came emerged from the war with 40 pieces of shrapnel and a realization that the idea of socialism is a failure. On March 23, 1919, Mussolini reformed the Milan fascio as the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Combat Squad), consisting of 200 members.# The party platform was based on universal suffrage, the abolition of the Senate, land for the peasants, improvement of workers' conditions and a strong foreign policy. It seemed that Mussolini had not completely discarded his early socialist thought. The property class did not like his radical party program. In the elections of November 1919 for the Chamber of Deputies, Mussolini and one of his close associates failed to win a seat for themselves.#

Several key factors lead to Mussolini’s rise to power, one of those factors was D’Annunzio and his followers were driven from Fiume by the end of 1920. This caused the many Italian nationalists to see Mussolini as their leader, for he advocated a strong foreign policy and the annexation of Fiume and Dalmatia. Another factor was that the socialist government from 1919-1920 failed to solve the nation’s most urgent problems, those of economic despair and civil unrest. The most important factor was that after the General Strike of 1920, the wealthy industrialists and landowners feared a communist revolution and desired a strong central government to return law and order. With the support of the property class, Mussolini and his National Fascist Party were able to gain 35 seats out of 355 in 1921, a tremendous gain compared to their pathetic loss 18 months ago.# From 1921-22 the Communists and Mussolini’s Blackshirts fought bitter street

battles which the government did little to prevent. The culmination of this was another strike by the Communists and Socialists in August 1922, but this one was ill-prepared and put down by government troops with Mussolini’s help.

On October 26, of that same year, Mussolini threatened a “March on Rome” if he was not accepted into the cabinet. Bands of armed supporters from all over the country marched to Rome, which caused genuine alarm in the politicians of Rome who failed to deal with the emergency. The liberal Prime Minister, Luigi Facta, stepped down quickly on October 28 when he didn’t receive any support from King Victor Emmanuel III. The King then handed power over to Mussolini who created a new coalition government of Fascists, nationalists, liberals and even two Catholic ministers from the Popular Party.#

Mussolini then started to slowly build up his totalitarian state, from 1922-23 he put loyal Fascists in key political positions, integrated the Blackshirts into the Italian Military, thus securing the army under his control. Also in 1923 he sent Italian forces to invade Corfu in what is known as the “Corfu Incident” which proved that the League of Nations was powerless and the Treaties of Paris could be defied without repercussions.#

He introduced strict censorship and altered the methods of election so that in 1925-1926 he was able to assume dictatorial powers and dissolve all other political parties. Skillfully using his absolute control over the press, he gradually built up the legend of the "Duce, a man who was always right and could solve all the problems of politics and economics.”# Italy was soon a police state. With those who tried to resist him, for example the Socialist Giacomo Matteotti, he showed himself utterly ruthless. But Mussolini's skill in propaganda was such that he had surprisingly little opposition.

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Mussolini personally took over the ministries of the interior, of foreign affairs, of the colonies, of the corporations, of the army and the other armed services, and of public works. Sometimes he held as many as seven departments simultaneously, as well as the premiership.

Most of his time was spent on propaganda, whether at home or abroad, and here his training as a journalist was invaluable. Press, radio, education, films--all were carefully supervised to manufacture the illusion that fascism was "the doctrine of the 20th century that was replacing liberalism and democracy.”# The principles of this doctrine were laid down in the article on fascism, reputedly written by himself, that appeared in 1932 in the Enciclopedia Italiana. ‘...The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone.…”.# In 1929 a concordat called the Lateran Agreements, was signed with the Vatican by which the Italian state was at last recognized by the Roman Catholic Church.# All teachers in schools and universities had to swear an oath to defend the Fascist regime. Newspaper editors were all personally chosen by Mussolini himself, and no one could practice journalism who did not possess a certificate of approval from the Fascist party.# The trade unions were also deprived of any independence and were integrated into what was called the “corporative system”. The aim (never completely achieved) was to place all Italians in various professional organizations or “corporations” , all of them under governmental control.

In order to combat the disastrous economy, Mussolini launched many public

works projects, the most famous of which was his “Battle of Wheat” in which 5000 new farms were created and marshes were reclaimed in order to make more farmland. This was ultimately unsuccessful in creating a self-sufficient Italy because the land that was used for the production of wheat took away from the production of valuable crops like olives and grapes.

In foreign policy, he proved to be an aggressive nationalist, starting with his invasion of Corfu and the setting up of a puppet state in Albania. In 1936 Italy conquered Ethiopia in the second Italo-Abyssinian War.# From 1936 to 1939, Mussolini gave unlimited support to Francisco Franco and the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. His support of Franco officially ended all relations with France and Britain, but gained him an ally in Adolf Hitler. When Mussolini decided to ally with Germany officially in the “Pact of Steel” of 1939, and unofficially since 1936, he became the subordinate, agreeing to Germany’s annexation of Austria and the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia.#

In the years following the German revolution of 1919 Hitler was employed by the Army’s Political Department as a V-man, someone who investigated all the political organizations that seemed to have communist ties. It was at this time that he attended a meeting of the small Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German Workers' Party, abbreviated DAP) on September 12, 1919.# During the meeting Hitler joined in and severely criticized a man in the audience who suggested that Bavaria should be independent of Germany and join Austria. Hitler’s oratory skill impressed the DAP leaders who invited him to join the party. Hitler decided to join the party because it was poorly organized and he therefore could be more influential in it. In the early 1920’s Hitler’s party began to gain attention

and they added National Socialist to the party’s name forming the NSDAP, it was at this time that Hitler began giving speeches regarding Jews, the Treaty of Versailles and political phenomenon. He also created a detachment group called the SA, much like Mussolini’s Blackshirts, these were ex-soldiers who would be the enforcers at NSDAP meetings.

Inspired by Mussolini’s “March on Rome” Hitler decided a coup d’etat would be the only way to secure power, so in November 1923, Hitler led the Beer Hall Putsch which failed and Hitler was put on trial for treason. The trial was in fact a way that Hitler could put the Weimar government on trial in front of a national audience. He was sentenced to five years but was paroled after eight months in which time he wrote Mein Kamf where he put down on paper all his ideas and prejudices.

After his release in 1924, he decided that the best way to achieve power was through democratic means within the Weimar Republic. For five years the NSDAP struggled to gain seats in the Reichstag despite the Brownshirts best efforts. Street violence increased as the SA members attacked the Rotfront during Hitler’s campaign for presidency. He lost to the monumentaly popular Hindenburg, but by the end of July, the Nazi party had secured 230 seats in the Riechstag and Hitler asked to be made Chancellor.# The current Chancellor, Franz Von Papen offered him the position of Vice Chancellor, but Hitler refused. After Chancellor Papen left office in 1933 he told Hitler he could sway Hindenburg to make him Chancellor only if Papen was made Vice Chancellor, to this Hitler agreed and on January 30, 1934, Hitler was made Chancellor of a coalition government of the NSDAP-DNVP-Centre Party.# SS and SA members held

torchlight parades throughout Berlin. After the death of Hindenburg on 2 August 1934, Hitler called a referendum to approve his assumption of full power as Führer and Chancellor of Germany. In a speech given by Rudolf Hess a few days before the referendum, he called upon the German people to vote yes, and 90% did indeed. “As I said when I began, I cannot explain why Hitler, and only he, can be the Führer.”#

The question still remains as to why a person like Hitler or Mussolini was able to gain support and eventualy institute their totalitarian governments. The answer to this question lies in the treaties signed by the victorious allies in Paris after the war and the war itself. The effects that the war had on the populations of Germany and Italy set the scene for unrest afterward, thousands of returning soldiers were out of work and disillusioned with the liberal governments that had failed them. The harsh punishment leveied on Germany by the Versailles Treaty was scene as an unforgivable insult against the German people. Had the leaders been able to put aside their animosity and political aims, the situation in Europe might have been less inviting to an ultranationalist like Mussolini and Hitler.

The Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, in it was laid out the conditions of which Germany had no choice but to comply. One of the most important and controversial required Germany to accept sole responsibility for causing the war and, under the terms of articles 231-248 (later known as the War Guilt clauses), to disarm, make substantial territorial concessions and pay reparations to certain countries that had formed the Entente powers.# The result of the sometimes conflicting goals among the allied victors, notably Loyd George, Clemenceau, and Wilson would leave no party

happy, Germany was not pacified nor permanently weakened

France came into the negotiations of the treaty seeking revenge and protection from any other German threat. This was understandable because most of the fighting had taken place on French land and she had lost over 1.5 million military personel and 600,000 civilians.# President Woodrow Wilson came in to the talks with high ideals and soaring ambition, and represented this with his 14 points. His plan called for the establishment of a Leauge of Nations to prevent any future conflicts from spiraling out of control and self-determination of nations. England and Loyd George were in the middle between, he supported reperations, but to a lesser extent than France, and was cautious of Wilson’s idea of self-determination for he wanted to keep Britians empire intact. In the end the treaty laid out the following restrictions on Germany: Article 231 (the "War Guilt Clause") lays sole responsibility for the war on Germany, which would be accountable for all the damage done to civilian population of the allies. The Rhineland will become a demilitarized zone administered by Great Britain and France jointly. German armed forces will number no more than 100,000 troops, and conscription will be abolished.

Enlisted men will be retained for at least 12 years; officers to be retained for at least 25 years. German naval forces will be limited to 15,000 men, 6 battleships (no more than 10,000 tons displacement each), 6 cruisers (no more than 6,000 tons displacement each), 6 destroyers (no more than 800 tons displacement each) and 12 torpedo boats (no more than 200 tons displacement each). No submarines are to be included. The manufacture, import, and export of weapons and poison gas is prohibited. Armed aircraft, tanks and armored cars are prohibited. Blockades on ships are prohibited. Other articles of the treaty

dealt with the transference of territory, particulary Germany’s colonies were divided up and Alsace and Lorraine were returned to France.#

A major cause for outrage among the German people in reponse to the treaty was the fact that no fighting had actually taken place on German soil. The returning soldiers were greeted as victorious heroes, not defeated and broken boys. The general feeling was that the German High Command had stabbed the army in the back, Hitler capitalized upon this and used it as propaganda in his caimpagn against the Jews.# The treaty was seen as unacceptable on both the left and right side of politics. Since Germany after WWI was engulfed by inflation, partially stemming from the $56,500,000,000 France and Britain wanted in reparations, the German economy floundered. At the end of the war, the mark was worth about 25 cents; by November 1923, the value of the mark had shrunk a billion times.# Workers in Essen took their pay home in barrels, and three hundred paper factories and one hundred and fifty printing establishments were unable to turn out notes fast enough to keep the economy off a barter basis. Eventually, Hjalmar Schacht, later Hitler’s Minister of Economy, introduced the Rentenmark, based, theoretically on a mortgage of all Germany. This device created a new currency but did not salvage the ruined and embittered middle class. John Maynard Keynes wrote about the failings of the Versialles Treaty in his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace, “The Treaty includes no provisions for the economic rehabilitation of Europe, - nothing to make the defeated Central Empires into good neighbors, nothing to stabilize the new States of Europe, nothing to reclaim Russia; nor does it promote in any way a compact of economic solidarity amongst the Allies themselves; no arrangement was reached at Paris

for restoring the disordered finances of France and Italy, or to adjust the systems of the Old World and the New.”#

The treaty proved to be a failure in its design to keep Germany in check. Violations were committed by Germany, Italy and Britain at various times leading up to WWII. When the Weimar government failed to pay the reparations, France occupied the Ruhr valley where it took control of the coal and heavy industry, but this only further antagonized the population as German workers called for a “passive resistance” in which they refused to work for French factories. Many nationalists gave their support to Hitler at this time because he was so vehemently against the Treaty.

As stated before, Italy was dissatisfied with the treaty because it denied her the acquisition of Fiume, which it had been promised. The Italian PM Vittorio Orlando left the negotiations after his claims were rejected, but returned in June to sign.# Although Italy did gain a lot from the treaties it signed, the people and especially the fascists saw it as a “mutilated victory”. The combination of economic hardship in converting an inflated war industry back to civilian production and the large amount of crippled ex-soldiers led to social unrest.

WWI ended with an armistice and a feeling that war was over for good. It was the War to End All Wars, and the leaders who met at the Palace of Versailles attempted to make sure of it. Unfortunately the treaties that were drawn up in Paris did little to prevent future war and allowed for the rise of totalitarian governments promising an end to the economic hardships the war and Peace Treaties forced upon them. Hitler and Mussolini rose to power through the use of violence that so many former soldiers were accustomed

to, charisma, and sheer greed for power. The environments were ripe in postwar Italy and Germany for fanatics like these to find a sympathetic audience and a weak central government. Had the victorious allies focused more on returning all of Europe to normalcy rather than revenge and punishment , there might not have been an interwar period at all, for the governments responsible for WWII would never have come to fruition.

Politics Through film essay, Dr Strangelove and Nuclear War

A.E. Politics through Film. 2/22/2011

Hollywood loves war. It’s been a recurrent theme in the film industry for the since the first films came out during WWI. The success of the war movie is no surprise as Ernest Giglio points out in his book, Here’s Looking At You, because it “fulfills the audience’s heroic fantasies while celebrating patriotism” He goes on to say that “it explores the dualities of the human condition; individual decency and courage versus brutality of the enemy; individual loyalty and duty versus self-interest and survival; and self-sacrifice versus the collective good.” These topics are readily seen in traditional war movies where a mission has to be accomplished by a band of soldiers the audience can easily relate to and watch as they sacrifice themselves to save others. Nuclear war movies are not always clear-cut like that. These films deal with non-conventional weapons whose power to destroy is almost God-like, which inspires awe, fear and demands an incredible amount of responsibility from those few in charge of their use. Tensions in a nuclear war film are built out of the unknown fear as the world teeters on the edge of obliteration.

Some of the most awarded films in history have been about war. From the 1939 film Gone with the Wind, to the 2008 film The Hurt Locker, the story of war and the struggle by those involved has captivated audiences. War is a time of extremes, when raw human emotion and nature come to the surface to reveal something true about all people. Sometimes these truths are the romanticized versions of self-sacrifice and honor, and at other times it’s the truth that all people are brutish, savage animals that can do unspeakable things in the name of a made-up concept like territory or government. Hollywood tries to show the duality of human nature in these cases but tends to portray Americans as the more noble people who overcome evil in the name of good.

WWII is the most romanticized of the American wars, mainly due to the fact that during the war the OWI was very influential in making propaganda films that sought to inspire and garner support for the troops. The war was seen as a good war because the Allies were fighting to stop the totalitarian Nazi regime from taking over the world and subjugating millions of people, a noble cause that is easily supportable. Hollywood has done its part to memorialize the war with films like Patton; Battle of the Bulge, and Saving Private Ryan, each film glorified the actions of American soldiers in battle as they overcame the evil Nazi forces. The financial success of WWII films in the few years after the war solidified the genre as a dependable mold.

The messages behind these movies spoke to the audience in a way that inspired them to support the government in times of need when there was something greater at work than their own lives. This is reflected in the movie Casablanca where the love that Humphrey Bogart has for Ingrid Bergman is put aside so that the head of the Resistance can escape and continue the “Good Fight”. This form of sacrificing one’s own life for the collective good is constantly reiterated throughout most war movies, but not most nuclear war movies.

Since the end of the Second World War there has been a leveling force in the realm of warfare that Hollywood has used extensively. Nuclear war is a whole different kind of game. In nuclear war there are no large armies facing off with each other, down in the trenches. Instead these wars are fought in the offices and war rooms of country leaders, like in the movie Dr. Strangelove. Here the tone was set by the looming threat of total annihilation because of a mechanical malfunction.

There are five categories of nuclear film that Ernest Giglio describes and they are the following: science fiction/horror film, nuclear war/attack, nuclear accident/ disaster, nuclear survival, nuclear terrorist films. Each film deals with the extreme cost of nuclear war in its own way but a main theme throughout all of them is the idea that man has created a great and terrible technology that changes the landscape of war forever. In the 1964 black comedy film Dr. Strangelove, Kubrick has shown how ridiculous the nuclear scare was during the Cold War. It also shows how technological advances can also be our downfall when they are trusted too much.

These types of accident/ technological breakdown films have a lot to do with the fact that man has come to rely on our own inventions too much, and often we are hoisted with our own petards. Great men of science gave the world this knowledge, but its creation was befouled by its own existence. Hollywood has made many movies in which the unintended consequences of atomic use are disastrous and in most cases, monstrous. From the 1955 film, Tarantula to the 2008 Incredible Hulk, experiments gone wrong serve to teach man one thing, he is not ready or responsible enough to control this amount of power.

This is a far cry from traditional war movies in which the power comes from the men themselves, the sheer cooperative force of destruction that is one army bent on killing another is also awe-inspiring. This can be seen in movies like Saving Private Ryan, where the 30 minute opening sequence of the Normandy Invasion shows the audience the terror of war up close, where thousands of men sacrifice themselves for a few miles of beach. It’s easier for the audience to put themselves in the boots of those men and imagine what it was like to fight that day than it is for them to imagine the blinding light of a nuclear blast.

Another way traditional war movies differ from their nuclear war counterparts is the way they have been used in history. During WWII Hollywood was very involved in the war effort by making hundreds of movies for the US government and for the American people so that they can relax after a hard week of working in the factories. This was a country united and Hollywood put out propaganda films along with inspiring films to keep the country united, or just to profit on the extreme amount of patriotism and a little bit of racism. The Battle of Midway was shot on the decks of the ships involved and was some of the best war footage ever shot, and it occurred at a key time when the US Navy started to turn the tide of battle in the Pacific. At this time the films started to change from being inspiring underdog stories of perseverance to glory-filled films of conquering the Japanese and winning the war.

Nuclear war movies don’t come with this same sense of inspiring virtue. In most cases they are cautionary tales with the threat of doom always apparent. There can’t be movies made in which the use of nuclear weapons is an honorable action it is always something that must be avoided at all costs. This is where the brave characters are those who are able to convince the politicians not to use the bomb, as was the case in the Michael Bay film, The Sum of All Fears, where Ben Affleck’s character is able to convince the Russian president to stand down and avoid total thermonuclear war after a terrorist group detonated a device in a football stadium.

The glory days of Hollywood nuclear war movies seem to be in the past, along with the cold war, but it may in fact turn out that these movies are more relevant in today’s world filled with terrorist groups, unstable third world countries acquiring the technology and a crumbling Soviet Union defense system. The ironic part is that traditional war movies are almost extinct do to the fact that America has been engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq for the last decade trying to win the hearts and minds of the people instead of trying to take a position. The modern war story is that of the struggle of individuals dealing with extraordinary circumstances where there is no clear-cut enemy and the reasons behind the fighting are vague and/or controversial. If this is the case than the intangible fear of the unknown is much more in line with a nuclear war film for the future, where decisions are made by rash men and women in high government that the country is trusting less and less. Hopefully in the end these new films will do for the modern country what they did for it in the forties, unify it in belief that there is something greater than the individual, but that it is each individual life, instead of the government’s sovereignty.

Nature Valley Commercial/Food Inc essay

Commercials serve one purpose in today’s world, and that is to sell something to a target audience. Corporations spend millions of dollars trying to craft the perfect ad that will stick in the consumer’s head and maybe persuade them enough to buy the product. That product can be anything; it doesn’t even have to be consumer goods, ideologies and agendas are sold just the same way through a visual argument presented to every eyeball glued to the T.V screen. The same can be said for General Mill’s ad promoting Nature Valley Oats N’ Honey granola bars. A fairly short ad that doesn’t scream, “Buy our product!” but is effective in its use of location, actress and music. The subtle nuances of these elements are what make it a compelling visual argument without giving the viewer any information about the product itself. The question that needs to be asked is how honest is this advertisement about its product and the company that manufactures it, and what were the driving forces behind making an ad such as this.

The commercial starts out with a shot of a beautiful blond haired woman looking at the perfectly opened Nature Valley Bar with a contented smile on her face, wind gently blowing her hair and she takes a small bite, smiling while she chews. The golden sun shining on her perfect skin is the pinnacle of health, she is almost radiating health as she enjoys a “100% Natural” Oats N’ Honey bar. The camera then circles her face to show the evergreen trees and rugged mountains behind her as it finally gets over her shoulder and pulls back to show the beautiful Montana mountain range she’s gazing upon. As the camera pulls out further it the scene is shown to be imbedded in a granola bar that is drawing its ingredients together and finally is wrapped up in its iconic green wrapper as the words “The energy bar nature intended” scrolls along the bottom. This quick and effective visual display of natural beauty was coupled with the soothing narration of a woman’s voice and the repeating electric guitar chords from the song Live Spark by Andrew Britton that gives the sense of accomplishment or possibly emphasizes the sex appeal of the model in the scene.

The main point of this ad is that eating a Nature Valley bar brings you closer to nature, because it uses 100% natural ingredients and that it’s a healthy choice. They are trying to appeal to the 20-30 something year olds who enjoy the outdoors or those who wish they could. By using the beautiful blonde model Nina Bergman they are trying to show that you can be as beautiful and healthy as she is by eating the bars. That is another point of disingenuousness, there is no possible way that a nature valley bar can be eaten as portrayed, it would crumble and crunch, require a good deal of jaw movement and not many people can chew a crunchy brick-like bar such as these with a Mona Lisa smile on their face the entire time.

The nutritional value of the bar is clearly implied by the actress used, but the overall feeling of consuming a Nature Valley bar is given by the location used and words said by the narrator. Nature Valley has undergone a shift in its ad campaign. It is now marketed as the natural energy bar to be enjoyed while hiking mountains, biking through forests ect. By show the majestic mountains of Montana they are appealing to the aspirations of a generation of independent and environmentally conscious Americans. There is no logic or real reasoning behind the idea that Nature valley bars bring you closer to nature, only the ambiguous title of being “100% Natural” and the marriage between the images of nature and eating the granola bar. It is this vague sense of organic-ness that sells the bar. There are many granola bars on the market, all with varying levels of industrial production involved, but the name Nature Valley is clearly trying very hard to appear to be the most nutritional and environmental conscious choice. How natural or nutritious these bars are is the real question that should be going through the minds of anyone viewing this commercial.

As to whether or not these granola bars are bad for the consumer is fairly subjective, it depends on how thorough they want to be about all the ingredients and manufacturing processes that are involved with the bar. Compared to a regular candy bar, the Nature Valley bar is a healthy choice, with only 190 calories per package, but most consumers will be sitting around, not hiking the mountains, while eating the bars. Therefore its misleading to market these as health bars, as respites from the modern office grind as they do in other commercials, for any extra calories while being sedentary will lead to weight gain. It does not matter whether or not these are “100% Natural” calories or artificial calories, the body doesn’t know the difference. There is a difference in the terms however, a very subtle but important difference.

As Monica Eng outlined in her article for the Chicago Tribune entitled, “Organic vs. Natural a source of confusion in food labeling”, the use of the term Natural to describe a food product is directly related to the company’s desire to cash in on the growth of the Organic market while simultaneously offering a slightly cheaper version that seems the same. In her article she describes the actions of dairy company Dean Farms, which chose to roll out a new line of “Natural” yogurt. The reason that this action is seen as regressive is because the company previously had a line of organic products but the Natural brand name was a cheaper solution that would bring in more profits while devaluing the farmers that have to struggle with all the FDA regulations concerning the label of Organic.

The owner and distributer of Nature Valley is of course General Mills, the sixth largest food company in the world which markets the bars as a better-for-you snack and as such has seen their sales of said bars increase by 15 percent in 2010. This is representative of the whole foods and whole grain health fad that has gripped the Baby Boomers and Millennial’s. Nature Valley Bars have been marketed as the healthier choice for people who want to be active since its inception, but it has really found a niche now that the organic market has increased to $46 billion by 2007, when this Nature Valley commercial came out. The term natural is largely defined by the producer themselves and not by the FDA. So the sources that the ingredients are derived from may be “natural” but their production still involved the use of tons of pesticides, herbicides, possibly GMO crops and other non-organic products.

Willer, Helga; Kilcher, Lukas (2009). the organic world homepage "The World of Organic Agriculture. Statistics and Emerging Trends". Bonn; FiBL, Frick; ITC, Geneva: IFOAM.