Graig Uhlin

All of America is abuzz: "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" plays in theaters Friday. The film is already breaking box office records in Britain and is predicted to surpass "Titanic" as the highest-grossing film of all time. Say what you want about the J.K. Rowlings creation, but this is a film that knows how to pack audiences into theaters.

This is part of what Josef Stalin was referring to when he said, "Film is the strongest art," because film, like no other artistic medium, can unify and mobilize huge numbers of people. It can disseminate information, true or false. It stirs people to action and lights fires in their bellies, whether that entails a mad dash to the store for "Harry Potter" merchandise or support for a war.

What Stalin's quote meant is that film's strength lies not in its status as art but in its use as propaganda - or, more accurately, as both. There is perhaps no better time than now, as the United States wages war on terrorism, for us to become cognizant of the use of mass media, including film and television, to shape public opinion.

This weekend, the big players in Hollywood - I'm talking about Jack Valenti, Sherry Lansing and Les Moonves, not Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts - met with White House officials, including senior adviser Karl Rove, to discuss Hollywood's role in these troubling times. The tone of the summit, which lasted nearly two hours, was cautious, with both sides eager to dispel any impression that the government will dictate what Hollywood can and cannot produce.

"I will say it up front: There was no mention of content," Valenti said, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter. "That was not the subject. Content was off the table."

While no specific action was taken - there was discussion of public service announcements and entertaining the troops - knowing the long history of propagandist uses of film, I'm still cautiously awaiting the coming output of Hollywood studios.

Hitler was well aware of the influence film holds. He hired filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl to film the Nazi Party's Nuremberg rally and the 1936 Berlin Olympics, creating films that justified his right to fascist political ideology. Under Stalin, Russian filmmakers produced hundreds of films glorifying the Russian state.

And propaganda is not simply a tool for "evil." During both World Wars, Britain established a Ministry of Information that used film and other media to boost morale and justify government action. In America, during World War I, the Committee on Public Information disseminated pro-U.S. propaganda to Russia, and 30 years later, Hollywood produced a slew of patriotic war films and newsreels to bolster the war effort.

While this time around there may be no (publicly announced) directive by the government concerning Hollywood output, the American public must still be on guard for the messages it is receiving from these influential institutions - including those messages it has already received.

For example, we might examine the way repeated depictions of Arabs as enemies in action flicks before Sept. 11 helped indoctrinate the public's acceptance of the rhetoric of good vs. evil.

Further, we might look at how the notion of "collateral damage" is so entrenched in our political ideology - even the epic poem "Beowulf" addressed the dangers of an endless cycle of revenge - that we cease to question it when it is deployed.

This is not to say the terrorist attacks weren't "evil," but simply that we cannot reduce the dense network of political, ideological and religious differences that underlie the war against terrorism into Hollywood clichˇs of the good guys vs. the bad guys. And more importantly, patriotism and media literacy are not mutually exclusive categories - the American public should be able to support the need for action against terrorists while questioning the rhetoric in which those actions are being couched.