Destination Earth [ 1956 ]
Channel: ReelingArchive
Date: 2020-09-11

Original Title : Destination Earth
Country : United States
Creator : Sutherland (John) Productions
Publication date : 1956
Usage : Public Domain
Digitizing sponsor : American Petroleum Institute
 
Description :
In this corporate-sponsored animated cartoon, Martian dissidents learn that oil and competition are the two things that make America great.

Unlike Mars, fettered by a centrally controlled command economy, Earth is prospering due to private enterprise and cheap oil. The Martians tried to control the spread of this subversive concept & information. But the idea of free enterprise is sufficient to foment a Martian revolution, and the planet begins to remake itself in a Terrestrial image. 

Throughout 1950s and 1960s, the oil industry made special efforts through the American Petroleum Institute and its Oil Industry Information Committee, used medium of booklets, brochures, speeches, press releases, planted news articles, "public service" advertisements and films for public relations offensive, making the case for oligopolistic ownership and marketing of petroleum.

Destination Earth avoids coming off as too doctrinaire or propagandistic through its self-deprecating humor but it's still an insidious, self-serving piece of corporate propaganda.