Capitalizing on thousands of feet of accumulated footage captured by
combat camera crews during the early years of the Korean War, a small
group of US Army officers conceptualized a film series that would widen
viewers' understanding of the service and its mission. Their efforts
produced the documentary television series that in late 1951 would
become The Big Picture.
Although it would take years to fully utilize the emerging technologies
and develop the concept into a popularly recognized television series,
The Big Picture did evolve into a vehicle whose intention was to help
the army tell its story, sell its relevance in the emerging Cold War,
and inform and educate its audience about American ideals. Its messages
captured the early post-1945 zeitgeist and reflected a national mood
that was anticommunist, steeped in foundational principles of American
exceptionalism, and trusting of elite leadership.
John W. Lemza's The Big Picture argues that the show, like others
produced for television during that time by the armed forces, served as
a vehicle for directed propaganda, scripted to send important Cold War
messages to both those in uniform and the American public. In this first
systematic study of its production and reception history as well as its
themes and cultural impact, Lemza shows how the producers incorporated
specific Cold War themes, such as anticommunism, into episodes and
deployed television's small screen as the intersection of propaganda and
policy during the Cold War period.
John Lemza's study reveals that the longer The Big Picture maintained
those themes the more they began to lose their resonance, especially
when the cultural and social environment of the United States began
changing in the mid-1960s. The series producers chose to continue on a
course that was set during the early Cold War years, and the credibility
of the show began to suffer. Throughout the course of its two-decade
production run, however, The Big Picture cast a big shadow as the
premier military program influencing viewing audiences through primetime
television and syndication.
