How Your Taxpayer Dollars Subsidize Pro-War Movies and Block Anti-War Movies

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/david-sirota/35002/how-your-taxpayer-dollars-subsidize-pro-war-movies-and-block-anti-war-movies

All the buzz in the entertainment/tech world about the blockbuster new video game Homefront brings back memories of the 1984 film Red Dawn -- and rightly so. The creator of Homefront is none other than John Milius, the writer/director of the 1984 film that later became the deliberate namesake of the most famous operation in today's Iraq War. But it should also bring back memories of the larger militarist themes that continue to define our entertainment culture -- themes that ultimately bring up the direct but little-examined connections between the Pentagon and the entertainment industry. It is the legacy of those connections, first intensified in the 1980s, that continue to embed militarism in seemingly non-political products like video games and action movies.

As I show in my new book Back to Our Future, much of the video game industry was subsidized by the military and military contractors, and many of the earliest games were consequently martial in thrust. Think: Atari Combat and Missile Command, which then grew into a larger video game world that, as one Konami executive said in 1988, "takes anything remotely in the news and makes it a game." You could see that in Nintendo's Iran-Contra era game Contra just as you can see it in today's hits like Call of Duty. And in almost each of these games, the ideology of militarism (i.e. military action solving all problems) is reiterated and reinforced.

Same thing when it comes to the Pentagon-Hollywood relationship since the 1980s -- only in that case, we're now seeing military officials quite literally line-editing scripts to make them more pro-military.

Remember, the military has been working with filmmakers since 1927, when it helped produce Wings, the winner of the very first Academy Award for Best Picture. Pentagon involvement varied through the first two-thirds of the 20th century, but it always had kids in its sights. In the 1950s, for example, the military worked with Lassie on shows that highlighted new military technology and produced "Mouse Reels" for The Mickey Mouse Club, one of which showed kids touring the first nuclear submarine. As investigative journalist David Robb discovered, a Pentagon memo noted at the time that child-focused media "is an excellent opportunity to introduce a whole new generation to the nuclear Navy."

More at the link --

[Jokerman]

1. The military has a strangle-hold on our society.

The notion that the civilian government should have control over the military has become a thing of the past.

[Bandit]

2. People discovered a long long time ago that propaganda works..

:shrug: should come as no surprise to anyone that the government "catapults the propaganda".

[Pacifist Patriot]

3. And my kids wonder why I'll let them play Harry Potter video games and not Call of Duty.

Because mom is fairly certain they won't grow up to be wizards. Of course, I'm open to the idea that I might be wrong.

[azul]

4. Psy-ops, it's supposed to be illegal.

But it has been contracted out and so it's OK.