Patriotic Posters on the Silver Screen

Like all the other comic book geeks who could not get tickets to Comic-Con in San Diego, I took consolation in being able to see Captain America: The First Avenger (Dir., Joe Johnston, 2011) in theaters its opening weekend. Although I am sure historians will have some understandable frustrations with certain aspects of the period piece, I hope, like me, they will be thrilled by the reproductions of US World War II-era propaganda posters scattered throughout the film and its closing credits. I may be biased though, as part of my duties at the Hoover Institution Archives includes regular perusal of our Poster Collection.

After seeing Captain America, I realized that the red, white, and blue supersoldier and the propaganda posters contemporary to his creation were collaborating media of the WWII-era. Like the posters, Captain America originally appeared in a paper-based medium, comic books, to encourage support of the war effort. The image on the cover of his first comic book appearance, featuring Cap punching Adolph Hitler in the jaw, could have been used for a propaganda poster. The filmmakers, conscious of these cultural ties and his origins, incorporated Captain America as a poster boy of patriotism into the film’s narrative. Thus featuring the posters throughout the movie and credits not only conveys the era the film is set in but reinforces for the audience the nature of the character and what he stands for.

I have only seen the film once (so far) but recognized a number of posters that we have in our collection (see the accompanying slide show). In fact, Rok!t Studios, the company behind the closing credit sequence, ordered scans of a number of our posters earlier this summer, so we're confident that some of those in the film came from our collection of over 100,000 posters. For information on any of the posters in the slide show, search using their poster ID in our database. For more information on Captain America, consult your local comic shop.

US 1692, Poster collection, Hoover Institution Archives

Resolved: That Firing Line Fans Want to Know Why All Episodes Aren't Available

Without a doubt one of our most popular collections at the Hoover Institution Archives is the Firing Line Broadcast Collection; as a result we get a lot of comments about it through the website. Going through these comments has made the assistant archivist for visual collections and I (the administrative associate for AV services) realize that, aside from the collection having a vocal and enthusiastic fan base, most users have the same questions. We at Hoover have therefore resolved to explain the logic and methodology behind our seemingly cryptic treatment of Firing Line programs.

Let us begin with the core question that most fans ask in some way, shape, or form:

Why aren’t all the episodes available?

There’s a long answer and a short answer to this question. Because the short answer—“because not all of them have been preserved yet”—only leads to more questions, here’s the long answer:

As we explain on the Firing Line website, there are 1,505 episodes in the series. The general policy of the Hoover Institution Archives is to allow researchers only to access copies of audiovisual material so as to limit excessive handling of the originals. This policy especially applies to Firing Line where the archival master videotapes are in obsolete broadcast quality formats. Those tapes must be shipped to a laboratory specializing in archival media that reformats them to access and preservation copies on modern videotape stocks so that not just the general public but we archivists can actually view them.

The preservation treatment and reformatting costs are not inconsequential. Depending on the videotape format, its condition, and the duration of the program, creating the necessary preservation and access copies currently costs between $325 and $800 per episode. To do all 1,505 programs at once would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars!

Since funding is limited and we have numerous collections requiring preservation and digitization, we send the programs to the laboratory in batches of twenty to thirty at a time. Due to the physical toll shipping and lab work inflicts on videotapes, we only send unpreserved archival master videotapes to the laboratory if preservation work will be done on that trip. To date, approximately a third of the programs have been preserved.

The pace of preservation may not wholly satisfy every one; keep in mind, however, that “slow and steady wins the race” and the race to preserve all Firing Line programs in our collection is one we intend to finish.

William F. Buckley, Jr. meeting audience members Mrs. Fred Harris and her mother at the WETA studio, Washington, D.C., Sept. 14, 1971. Box 8, Firing Line Broadcast Collection, Hoover Institution Archives