Quote from: K-Dog on Apr 21, 2024, 05:11 AMFunding and collaboration comes at a price. The DOD takes creative control. Movies, TV, and games. As propaganda delivery tools they are all the same. An uncritical attitude to the military is successfully cultivated.
The most recent completely BLATANT propaganda for the military coming out of Hollywood was the Avengers series of superheroes which was so over the top in terms of how it depicted the arms industry, the CIA and WMDs it boggles the mind.
Tony Stark, aka Iron Man is a Billionaire who inhserited his wealth from his dad, a WWII sientist who built up the fortune making more and better bombs, and Tony picks up and goes dad a few better, turning himself into a WMD. Early in the 1st movie he's giving a demonstration of his latest smart bombs and says:
"The best weapon isn't one you never have to use, it's one you use only once and your enemies are so terrified they'll never fuck with you again." This being an obvious reference and excuse for the nukes we dropped on Japanese civilians living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but since have not (yet) dropped another one.
Then there is Captain America, a comic bok character that actually originated during WWII, another living WMD who is the product of a German scientist who defected from the NAZI side after first creating the Red Skull, his WWII era nemesis. Then he gets a Cold War era nemesis, the Red Guardian, who steals ecret information for mind control being done by Amerikan scientists to then deliver to the Soviets who use it to create "Black Widoes", child and female Assassins, one of whom defects back to Amerika to become an Avenger.
They all work for SHIELD, a CIA style Black Ops agency that battles HYDRA, a stateless group of shadowy fascist Globalists who overthrow governments and want to rule the world. The local enemies are Terrorist mostly Muslims but also a significant number of Asians usually depicted as North Koreans since we are sorta friendly with China and they want to sell the movies in China too.
The big enemy though is Thanos, who wants to bring balance back to the universe by killing off half the population of every planet in the universe, which is called genocide but it's not really, since your objective in genocide is to get rid of everyone. Thanos also wants to do this cmpletely randomly, killing off equal percentages of rich and poor, races etc. Supposedly after he does this the planets become paradises again because they aren't so overpopulated, but Thanos obviously knows nothing about the exponential function and that even if successful the populations would double up again.
Anyhow, death and destruction are everywhere in these films, and the US military is potrayed heroically throughout, although they always need help from SHIELD and the Avengers because the rule book gets in their way and the Avengers don't pay attention to any rules.
I loved Superhero comics as a kid, which were slightly more anti-heroic in the 60s & 70s when I read them but not by much. Superman still fought for Truth, Justice and the Amerikan Way. Spiderman, while somewhat more conflicted and rebellious and considered a criminal by the NYPD and the newzpapers wasalso basically a hero who fought gangsters and other NYC type criminals like drug dealers.
Somehow however despite my addiction to reading them beginning at age 10 and collecting them right up until college, I never got sold on the violence and the military as being cool. I just loved the idea of having super powers like being able to walk through wall or read minds etc. Flying of course, who doesn't wish they could fly? Comicbooks don't have near the visceral impact of modern movies loaded with CGI explosions and space battles though.
Anyhow, there's no doubt that this stuff along with all the 1st person shooter games makes the recent generations more violence prone and accepting of the demonization of other countries and religions used to justify dropping death from above on towns and villages that have to be destroyed in order to save them.
And the Beat Goes On.
RE