autobiography (13. 120)

Courtesy of Public Domain Review, we enjoyed this propaganda piece touted by the overseas film unit of the US Office of War Information, released in 1943—two years after the vehicle’s public debut—which was not only addressing an audience of soldiers and patriots as the all-terrain concept that will defeat America’s enemies, but also consumers for the eventual surplus market, narrated from the Jeep’s perspective as a radical, utilitarian departure from the normal decadence of most domestic models by Irving Lerner, soon hereafter blacklisted as a left-wing filmmaker with allegations of espionage for the Soviets for displaying over-interest in the Manhattan Project which he was commissioned to document, although later rehabilitated with posthumous credits for Spartacus, Steppenwolf and Executive Action. Accompanied by his friend the American GI and featuring cameos by Desi Arnaz and the Queen Mother, Wendell Willkie and FDR, the Jeep mentions he comes from a highly developed country with many roads and cars and how pre-war plans for expansion of highways were sacrificed for the effort, finally given a field exam crossing deserts and fording rivers. *     *     *     *      *

synchronoptica

one year ago: Yellow Submarine Crocs (with synchronopticæ), the Church commission plus a lean large language model

twelve years ago: a stolen relic of John Paul II 

thirteen years ago: guesthouse signage 

fourteen years ago: artificial sweetener plus Der Zauberberg and Davos

sixteen years ago: old thing—undesirable; new thing—desirable