Pissing into the Well

Framegrab from 'Vandet paa Landet'
In 1946, Carl Th. Dreyer's short film Vandet paa Landet ("The Water in the Country") was shelved because it was feared that it might harm Danish agriculture's image abroad. The film was intended to humorously propagandize for improved well-water hygiene by getting the audience disgusted with the water in poorly maintained wells. In the article, Dreyer's short film is used to show how we can combine a rhetorical and a cognitivist approach in an analysis that can explain both the film's propagandistic features and the significance of the disgust it evokes in the viewer.