section_path: Culture/Popular culture
section_name: Popular culture
paragraph_text: Popular culture
  
  In Italy, the Mussolini regime created the Direzione Generale per la Cinematografi to encourage film studios to glorify fascism. Italian cinema flourished because the regime stopped the import of Hollywood films in 1938, subsidized domestic production, and kept ticket prices low. It encouraged international distribution to glorify its African empire and to belie the charge that Italy was backward. The regime censored criticism and used the state-run Luce Institute film company to laud the Duce through newsreels, documentaries, and photographs. The regime promoted Italian opera and theatre as well, making sure that political enemies did not have a voice on stage.
  
  In Nazi Germany the new Reich Chamber of Culture was under the control of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's powerful Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. The goal was to stimulate the Aryanization of German culture and to prohibit postmodern trends such as surrealism and cubism.