Experts explain how 2,500 films and shows have been weaponized to promote war
  • PicoBlaanket@lemmy.mlEnglish
    19·
    5 months ago

    Here are some good examples from the article:

    • In 2017’s “The Fate of the Furious” (F+F8), rapper and actor Ludacris reads a 30-word seeming-advertisement hyping Textron Systems’ remote-operated Ripsaw tank. It turns out Ludacris’ lines were written not by a scriptwriter, but by the Entertainment Liaison Office (the DOD). The scene effectively became an unskippable ad, brought to the viewer by the U.S. military.

    • …In the 2017 film “The Long Road Home”… in one scene, a military colonel claims that the 2004 Sadr City operation during the Iraq War, which resulted in the deaths of 22 servicemen and 940 Iraqis, was necessary to rid two million Iraqis from the oppression of a dictator and to provide them with a “better future.” That claim ignores the series of false narratives — like the existence of WMD or Iraq’s purported ties to al-Qaida — that got U.S. boots on Iraqi soil in the first place.

    • …The second season of “Jack Ryan” has lovable Jim from “The Office” working through the CIA to topple a nuclear-armed Venezuelan dictator in hopes of installing a magnanimous liberal populist. The season aired around the same time Washington was parading Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s new leader.

    • …For “Mission Impossible 7”: The Defense Department loaned a Boeing-made V-22 Osprey for use in at least two scenes in which the aircraft would be filmed both internally and externally. The Osprey, known as the “widowmaker,” is a $120 billion disaster that is one accident away from being decommissioned, as it has already caused the deaths of 62 service members.

    • According to Stahl, these scenes are intentionally designed to “forge an emotional connection between the viewer and the weapon systems.” A connection that could ease the blow in a scenario where the viewer realizes how useless and expensive the F-35, Osprey and other systems like the LCS program have turned out to be. This serves to “normalize these huge expenditures,” he added.

    • While American people focus on state subsidies and welfare programs, they are “oblivious to the costs of our militaristic engagement with the world” — a cost that was briefly summarized at the end of the documentary as reaching $8 trillion in the period after 9/11 alone.

    Imagine how much we could improve the world with that $8 trillion.

    • miz@lemmygrad.ml
      6·
      5 months ago

      for real. “succumbs” is hilariously lib to the point of amnesia. The Green Berets came out in 1968!

      Let’s begin with the classic case of US military film propaganda. In The Green Berets, Western star John Wayne convinces sceptical news reporters that the Vietnam War is necessary and leads a team of Green Berets (US Special Forces) and Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) soldiers on a successful mission to capture a top North Vietnamese field commander.

      During production of Green Berets, the DOD requested that the scriptwriter delete any mention of the soldiers entering Laos because it ‘raises sensitive questions.’ Presumably, these questions revolved around the fact that in the real world the US had been secretly bombing a neutral country for the past three years.
      In a scene that explains the purpose of the war at the start of the film, Francis Tully, Speech Review Staff for the Department of State, also suggested that the scriptwriters insert the following language:

      We do not see this as a civil war, and it is not. South Vietnam is an independent country, seeking to maintain its independence in the face of aggression by a neighbouring country. Our goal is to help the South Vietnamese retain their freedom, and to develop in the way they want to, without interference from outside the country.

      These lines do not appear in the final film, but Tully’s suggestion indicates that he hoped to simplify the war in Vietnam in a way that Americans could support, and this simplification occurs though in the final version of the scene, as military leaders explain to reporters that the war boils down to stopping ‘Communist domination of the world.’

      from National Security Cinema by Alford & Secker