@Time slip gave me an excellent idea for a contribution. But the other inspiration came from
an old post by
@Mr. C, where he gave ol'General MacArthur a very clever nickname that I will use.
www.FilmDictionary.UASR
Macaco Movie
A Macaco Movie are films produced in Cuba between the 1940s and 1960s they were seen as pro-Cuban propaganda, and were defined by their militarism, paternalistic racism, and patriotism.
The term "Macaco" was a derogatory nickname left-wing Cubans had given Douglas MacArthur, and whose cultural policies influenced the direction of these movies.
Origins
With the failure of MacArthur's counterrevolution, he and his White forces fled to Cuba, and established a military government-in-exile for the former White forces.
To win and hearts and minds, MacArthur created the Department of Communication in 1935. On paper, it was an PR bureau that whose mission was to "create a fair dialogue between the true American government and loyal Cubans". In reality, it was MacArthur's propaganda mouthpiece, and was created to make movies and other media that would promote "American values", i.e. justify MacArthur's colonization of Cuba.
MacArthur's two recruits were two former Hollywood executives: Jack Warner and Harry Cohn. Both men, having had staunch anti-communist leanings and ties to big business, were among the many capitalists who fled to Cuba in the aftermath of the Revolution. Like many media executives, they had reputation of ruthlessness and venality. Cohn was rumored to have kept a photo of Benito Mussolini on his desk, while Warner was rumored to have murdered his brother Sam and given his other brothers misleading instructions during the Civil War to send them to their deaths.
In 1935, both men re-established Columbia Pictures and Warner Bros. in Havana. While on the surface, they were private studios funded through private loans, both men were being subsided by the Department of Communications, which had given them an unofficial state monopoly on film, and MacArthur had a heavy involvement in the film-making process. So great was the collusion between MacArthur and the two moguls, that Cohn and Warner have been nicknamed "MacArthur's version of Goebbels".
Heydey of Macaco Movies
As World War II spread to the Americas, MacArthur found himself in an unenviable position of working with his Red opponents to stamp out Latin American fascism. Despite this, MacArthur saw the war against Integralism as a means of legitimizing his government and securing support from Western Europe. (Jack Warner, himself more pragmatic in his politics, as well as put off by the antisemitism of Salgado's regime, was said to have convinced MacArthur to pursue this course).
In 1943, Columbia and Warner Bros. jointly released the first "Macaco Movie,"
In The Jungle. The film depicts the early battles in Allied-controlled South America, and stars character actor and World War I veteran William Demarest as Harold Marks, an American exile who fights for "American ideals" in the jungles of South America.
The film was defined largely by two things: innovative action scenes, and paternalistic racism. Demarest was lauded for incredible actions scenes, which were helped by the aid and equipment offered so generously by MacArthur.
But the film has become notorious for its crude and bigoted depiction of Latin Americans, particularly Cubans, as lazy buffoons who needed Demarest's firm guidance and "American values" to achieve anything. Adding insult to injury, most of these actors were white males who wore makeup.
In The Jungle has been dubbed "The Cuban
Birth of a Nation". In the words of one Cuban exile "I would love to praise Warner for his cinematography, but strangle him for thinking Cubans sit under trees."
Despite
In The Jungle's lack of popularity among the majority of Cubans, it achieved success among white American exiles and native born Cuban elites who were all to eager to kiss up to MacArthur, and even the British public fell in love with the film, since it depicted the struggle of their Cuban alies.
It was thus the first internationally successful Cuban film, and was the first of Cohn and Warner's works to earn more than MacArthur's subsidies. Since
In the Jungle was able to earn a profit, it meant the Macaco model would remain the base for future productions.
With Allied victory, more movies depicting heroic whites leading infantile native Cubans were churned out throughout the 40s, 50s, and 60s.
Decline and Fall of Macaco
The death of MacArthur in 1964 would mark the beginning of the end of Macaco movies.
With Harry Cohn's death in 1958, Columbia was quickly absorbed into Warner Bros., forming Warner Bros-Columbia, making official what was already been a profitable, if difficult, partnership going back to the 1930s. But having taken on Columbia, Warner Bros. found itself extremely overstretched. It was only thanks to MacArthur's subsidies that Warner Bros.-Columbia could stay afloat. But the death of Macaco in 1964 meant the end of the cozy relationship Jack Warner had enjoyed.
Having lost a source of subsidies, Warner attempted a financial gamble called
The Fires of Venezuela, which was intended to be a war epic about the Cuban role in the Venezuelan War. Warner's attempt at making history became one of the biggest disasters in film history.
Warner's use of outdated techniques, micromanagement from the Havana government, and poor editing turned a promising idea into a financial flop, as white Americans and traditional Cuban elites couldn't sit through the whole thing without vomiting.
But what was more damaging to Warner's reputation was the use of racist tropes that depicted Cubans as outright infantile. By the 1960s, a native-born Cuban middle class had emerged. While subservient to capitalism, this new generation would not kiss up so much to racism like their predecessors, and demanded to be seen as part of the Cuban nation.
When the film was released in January 1968, it led to a flurry of protest across Cuba, as the new Cuban middle class saw Warner's tripe as the ultimate symbol of their disenfranchisement. Cuban rights groups, in one of the first Cuban protests, led a successful boycott of any theater that showed Warner productions to bring down
The Fires of Venezuela. And with the loss of traditional funding and revenues from expected audiences, Warner Bros-Columbia was destroyed within months.
On May 10, 1968, Warner Bros.-Columbia declared bankruptcy, and Jack Warner himself would never re-enter the film industry, dying in relative poverty and obscurity in 1978.
Overnight, a film model built off of bigotry and militaristic machismo was annihilated. And a new model would take its place.
A new era in Cuban film began in 1972, with the release of
A Long Night. The producer, Frank McCarthy, founder of Santiago Studios and former McArthur loyalist, learned greatly from Warner's mistake, having himself obtained many of Warner's properties, sought to create a film that would "make the Cuban feel part of Cuba."
While still pro-Cuban and pro-American values,
A Long Night would largely abandon the racism of the past, with Cuban actors instead of white actors in black face, and adopt moral nuances of its white lead. Lieutenant Harrison, portrayed by Harry Dean Stanton, was unabashedly shown as a serial womanizer and a racist whose condescending attitude is portrayed as a mix of racism and insecurity. His assistant, Marco (Emiliano Diez), is man who is more infuriated rather than inspired by Harrison's moralizing. The character was seen as one giant insult toward Macaco films.
A Long Night would not only gain critical acclaim in Blue nations, but was even a cult classic among the Cuban diaspora for the compelling portrayal of Cubans. It would be the final end of the Macaco era in Cuban film.
