Page 97 - Art First: Simon Morley: Lost Horizon

would seek to use the goodwill of its denizens against their
own good. Capra grew increasingly uncertain about this
though, as his films leading up to World War II delineate,

and a darker-hued vision of the nation, its institutions and
the power structure guiding them overtook his films.

e utopian impulse collapsed into geopolitical pragmatism

as the world plunged into war again, and Capra was enlisted
to construct a visual culture rationale for US involvement.
His contributions became the famous propaganda Why
We Fight series for the war effort. Asia and its imaginaries

take centre stage when Capra wheels out his own directed,
Disney-animated, Ruth Benedict-influenced, and ultimately
never-screened Japan: Know Your Enemy. at the ‘docu-
mentary’ is only seen retrospectively says much about the

perspective needed to view a post-war world that looks both
forward and backward: forward with the power exemplified
in teletechnological control of terrain, thus rendering the
world global (that is networked, under surveillance and con -

trolled) and backward with the erasure of the orizon.We lost
it: the horizon, that is. Gone like that, in an atomic flash.

During WWII the fact that the aircra that flew the Doo little

Raid over Tokyo had to be concealed as the aircra carrier