Meet King Joe

Length: 9 Minutes | Produced:1949

Meet King Joe is a classic animated capitalist propaganda film from the 1940s. The agenda is convincing discontented workers of the time that American business was the best in the world and because of it, American workers were king of all the workers. As evidence of this, the film touts American factory machinery as being so efficient that American workers create the best products at the lowest prices, which allows them to stretch their wage farther in the marketplace. American workers also have the shortest working hours (also due to the wondrous machinery). The main character and narrator of the film, Joe, a worker in overalls, spouts bizarre statistics such as Americans own 92% of the worlds bathtubs and almost every refrigerator ever made, in order to prove the point that American workers can afford a higher standard of living than those in any other country. Joe is shown sitting on top of a machine that spits out cars, televisions, and washing machines with no help from him or any other workers, something that seems vaguely insulting to the very workers for which this film was intended. Overflowing with irony, Meet King Joe is a special relic of a different time in American history.