Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Hollywood and the War Machine
Empire examines the symbiotic relationship between the movie industry and the military-industrial complex.
War is hell, but for Hollywood it has been a Godsend, providing the perfect dramatic setting against which courageous heroes win the hearts and minds of the movie going public.
The Pentagon recognises the power of these celluloid dreams and encourages Hollywood to create heroic myths; to rewrite history to suit its own strategy and as a recruiting tool to provide a steady flow of willing young patriots for its wars.
What does Hollywood get out of this 'deal with the devil'? Access to billions of dollars worth of military kit, from helicopters to aircraft carries, enabling filmmakers to make bigger and more spectacular battle scenes, which in turn generate more box office revenue. Providing they accept the Pentagon's advice, even toe the party line and show the US military in a positive light.
So is it a case of art imitating life, or a sinister force using art to influence life and death - and the public perception of both?
© 2010 Al-Jazeera-English
66 Comments so far
Show AllThis artilcle poses a very good question. It takes us out of this hot air of Hollywood always being such "wonderfuL" peaceniks.
AD
This artilcle poses a very good question. It takes us out of this hot air of Hollywood always being such "wonderfuL" peaceniks.
AD
I'm glad this video starts with the word and concept "EMPIRE." This word needs to become a meme. It needs to be printed and said over and over again so that the masses equate who we are with the notion of what empire does - to us and to others.
In an article in the NYT (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html), Ron Suskind, Pulitzer Prize winning American journalist, wrote the following:
"In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
"The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''"
See, there is no ambivalence in Washington as to what we are. They know that we are Empire. They also know how to keep the people reeling and reacting and always a few steps behind the truth. This is what Empire does.
Let's keep the word Empire alive. Let's make sure that people see it and hear it as much as possible. It takes several iterations of a new term before it sinks into popular consciousness.
We. Are. Empire. And Hollywood is but a part of it.
Agreed. But if, as I recently read, 80% of USans believe the U.S.A. is "exceptional", a unique nation which does mostly good and stands for freedom and democracy (with overtones of being "God's chosen" to bring "light and progress" to the world), the word "Empire" will merely confirm most USans' delusions and self-satisfactions about our history and role in the world.
If most people are NOT swayed by facts, history, or appeals to reason, and most USans believe we are entitled to rule the world, what difference will it make to "keep the word Empire alive"?
And if, as many of us believe, this Empire is now beginning to collapse, what about the majority (no doubt) of ignorant, poorly-informed and/or egregiously misinformed USans who will blame that inevitable, welcomed collapse (by those of us who struggle for social/economic justice) on "liberals" and "leftists" and those who are anti-military and anti-capitalist (as all sane people SHOULD be)? What will we do once the gun-toting Tea Partiers, spurred on by Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and their despicable ilk, turn their Second Amendment-protected guns on us "traitors" as their frustrations with the corporate destruction of the U.S. explode but are misdirected away from the real cause, the corrupt, amoral, ruthless Corporatist-Militarist-Media Ruling Class?
I get your point regarding the level of mind control that has occurred, but honestly, I think you're over-reaching with what may happen. I'm not saying it won't, and sometimes I go there too, but nobody knows what will happen in the future. It doesn't do anyone any good to create scenarios that Hollywood is best at.
In answer to what we could do - do what you can. Honestly - I'm not being glib. It really comes down to a choice of living right or giving in. If you live right, you live right. You are being change. If you give in, you are part of the problem.
A good friend of mine has a great solution: Screw Empire. Let's just start living the way we believe in.
Indeed.
I already do that. I highly recommend it. It's easier for me now that I'm retired and will soon be getting out of debt.
If you want to be free of the empire however, you have to remember that while you are an individual all of us, individuals, nobody lives in a bubble. The things you choose to read, watch on tv, the people you are around, I don't like it but I am what I am; this is the way you choose to be who you are.
There is another Me that stands there and watches me. He is a duplicate of me and has my body only it's invisible. He watches me and tells me the truth which I would fain deny and dare not. He knows nothing, can't speak, knows nobody. None of that is important. In fact, He could not do what I depend on Him for doing if He knew anyone or anything or cared about anyone or anything.
He watches me every minute of every day, never makes judgments, never a word of praise. He used to talk all the time, but that was when He was my enemy who I feared. Now He is my friend. I won't say we are friends because while in many ways we are one, we are ontologically different, almost different species. Because He is not fully corporal the only way He can have any being is to become along with me me, but I won't allow that for more than a few seconds at a time. Christ, He is capable of anything---saying anything, doing anything.
If I have something difficult to do I think of the thing as already having been done, I bring Him along, and I never lack the will to do what I want to do because everything I want to do was His idea. He is what most people would call their mind or their Souls, but most of these people act as if He/She is a possession of they have, maybe at home in the closet or something.
They don't know it but it shows, this habit of going around incomplete. They think all the talking and acting they do hides this fact, but the more they talk and act the more evident it becomes---this truth. The truth is that they are not even there. They have sent corporal I out to represent them. They know he/she has no choice but to never surprise or disappoint.
When whole people meet each other they know it but that recognition is tacit, never spoken.
"Thy soul can be thine enemy, and thy soul can be thy friend."---Bhagavvad Gita
I grok, Nietzsche...I think.
Anyway, yes, that is the place one comes to when all other avenues have been tried. Funny that we go inward finally after looking so many other places. And the great thing is that we need no gurus or self-help books to do it - it's been within our grasp all along. It's so simple, yet for some reason, so hard to actually do.
As far as Empire - I don't think we will be free of it, and I'm not suggesting that we try to. What I am saying is that if we start living in a way that we know is right, Empire will not have the hold on us that it now does. It can still hurt us (and probably will) but in some important ways, living right will free us from the belief that there is nothing we can do, and all the suffering and mental anguish that disempowerment brings will diminish. I don't think we can accomplish this alone, but it is within ourselves that the work has to begin.
Really interesting thread, folks!
Thank you. I was afraid nobody would get it.
Well, every time I think I get it, I find out that I don't get it. Odd.
Anyway, I am sensing that more people are getting it. And isn't it funny how most of us search high and low for answers when all along they've been within us? This is what all the wisdom teachers have been saying all these years. And yet, I still go reluctantly. I wonder why that is...
Hopefully there will be more discussions like this here on Common Dreams. All the news about all the bad things is interesting, but it really doesn't get to the root of what we're all struggling for and suffering about. The struggle is necessary and good, the suffering isn't.
fascinating post, Nietzsche...thank you...and you...
to me, most films/hollywood (not that i see a lot of them) are an extention of the stupid t.v. (only difference is you have to leave your house to see one)............
'So is it a case of art imitating life, or a sinister force using art to influence life and death - and the public perception of both?'
i think it's a case of art imitating life (but not true to form)...........
yes, stupid tv...good riddance...
we must always remember newspaper, and lumber, magnate Hearst: you furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war...
capitalism leaves no scruple...
whatever sells movie tickets, or papers, or bombs...
best to you, coco!
let's not sully the word art with what comes out of hollywood..still, cinema is a medium that can take the form of art...i would propose as examples harry smith, or jean-luc godard...
hollywood cinema is more a kind of entertainment and (usually dis-) information technique
For those who are interested in this topic there is at least one book which does an excellent job of addressing this issue. That would be The Hollywood War Machine: U.S. Militarism and Popular Culture co-authored by Carl Boggs and Tom Pollard.
Another book which looks at how the American military insidiously involves itself in the lives of most Americans is The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives by Nick Turse.
"...I would like to allude to Ted (More Cowbell) Markow and the comments by Ron Suskind of the Puke Your Times."
Interesting. More Cowbell? Ad hominem attack, or something else?
Dunno. You talk tuff.
No actually, Markow sounds nothing like cowbell - it sounds like Marco. Though, your rhyme reminded me of something I heard in junior high.
I'm not attacking either, but honestly, if you were straight street you A) wouldn't need more than one alias, and B) wouldn't need aliases at all.
"I have been on here for years, I have a long track record of kicking ass, as a spiritual warrior."
I have been on here for years too. I used to feel like I needed to kick ass but finally wised up to the fact that I was just being an egoistic punk.
Namaste to you too.
Methinks the highkarate doth protest too much.
I've learned that those who must make a point to tell you how they're "straight street" and how "real" they are, usually aren't.
You really have to slow down, get off your high horse, and listen a bit more, my friend.
While at some level I do believe the people will have to do something fairly drastic to counter Empire, I am not one calling for violent revolution. At times I toy with that idea, especially when the pain of the boot is unbearable, but I know that violence will be met with bigger violence and it will not end well.
Please, read what I and others have written about going inside and changing ourselves and the way we live. More people are coming to this place and some from some pretty extreme places. When we keep crashing ourselves against immovable objects, we eventually break. If we are lucky, we break open and realize that the way is within us.
Slow down, my friend. Stop painting people with such a broad brush because it's very inaccurate. I have listed what I do many times here on CD and don't feel compelled to explain to you what I do. Just know that there are people here on CD who do more than type into our computers.
We're all in this together. It doesn't get any more real than that.
Peace, namaste, paz, pax, etc...
If we aren't making enemies then we aren't doing our job properly.
I guess I must be doing a great job.
Settle down and stop insulting others and maybe people wouldn't misinterpret what you write.
You wrote: "Let's say things work out, the people rise up, and take back the gov't. There will be chaos, people will probably get hurt, lots of people will have risked and lost alot."
People rising up, chaos, people getting hurt, etc. all allude to violence.
I never said that you were calling for violence. What I alluded to was your inference that I was calling for violence. I wasn't. If neither of us were calling for violence, then we're on the same page.
BTW, all that yelling and all those nasty words. Is that getting us anywhere?
Take a deep breath. Settle down. It's so not worth lowering yourself into the gutter for.
You can fool some of the people some of the time, you can fool the Americans about any damn time you want! Wanta start a war some where? Just slap a picture of a couple of foreigners burning an American flag on the boob tube and sit back and watch as the loonies start beating their chests and slobbering all over themselves and screaming kill, kill, kill, it's so damn easy! Throw in a couple of politicians and a couple of religious leaders telling the people that god wants them to kill all of these unbelieving foreigners and presto, you've got them lining up at the recruiters office. Nobody ever questions anything, it's just all too damn easy!
In Hollywood's defence they haven't made any pro-Iraq war (or worse pro-Iran war) movies.
See "The Hurt Locker".
See anyone of nearly a thousand movies where the Hero is some US GOvernment agent battling "terrorists" who are always obscenely cruel , generally greasy and dirty looking , Arabic , and out to slaughter "Innocent children".
A pro-war movie need not be just about A war itself. It need only be one where the Villians are the peoples of the next nation on the Pentagons "hit-list" put in as dim a light as possible.
How was the hurt locker pro-Iraq war? Because it was apolitical?
Hollywood also has movies a plethora of movies where the US government is the bad guy?
Best defence for Hollywood is that the neo-cons hate it.
I suggest you read this link. There are others like it.
http://politicalleft.blog-city.com/the_hurt_locker_prowar_propaganda.htm
This quote from the Movies director after accepting the word is about as pro-war as you can get.
>> “I’d just like to dedicate this to the women and men of the military who risk their lives every day in Iraq and Afghanistan and around the world.
>>May they come home safe.” She added later, “They are there for us, and we are there for them.”
Then look to the point I made on how a movie does not have to be a war movie to promote war. All it has to do is dehumanize..
How did this movie dehumanize Iraqis?
Again read the link...The Iraqi insurgents "shot" as blurry figures. They give the background of the American GI out to save Iraqis and Americans from IEDS...his tribulations, a figure of empathy but no context.
They are in a foreign land killing Iraqis and the Iraqis shown are just images on the film. Little more then "objects" none presented that generates the same sort of empathy.
Not the child he befriends. Did you really see the movie?
The insurgents shot as blurry figures probably how they are seen by the soldiers. If they had given a background of these "blurry figures" as heartless terrorists who had wives in burqas then I think you would have a better point.
If this is the best Hollywood can do to produce a pro-Iraq war movie than it has failed.
Well given how pro-military the United States of America is I suggest Hollywood is doing a very good job and has been for over 60 years.
Which is why the Government spends 54 percent of its budget on arms, has 1000 military bases around the world and why at the same time Social programs are cut, Military spending goes up.
The Pentagon would not be so eager to help Hollywood make these movies if they felt it would interfere with their business. The Military is everywhere in the USA.
You LIVE in it every day. You do not see it as people outside see it. You do not notice it because you are so immersed in it.
Another perspective from the WSWS.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/hurt-m11.shtml
A Vietnamese child is also befriended in "The Green Berets" yet the Vietcong are shown as ruthless monsters and US forces there to "defend the children" from them.
Its one of the more common hooks used in such films. The soldier then tends to "save the child" from the ruthless enemy or the child killed by that enemy and the soldier seeks revenge.
Your describing any of the low budget Chuck Norris movies!
The history of the Pentagon's involvement with Hollywood is fascinating. Today's interaction, though, pales in comparison to what was accomplished a couple of generations ago.
Tune in to Turner Classic Movies for a couple of months and watch the propoganda pile up. War movie after war movie after war movie. Always with the US painted as the planet's big brother. True blue and always there to save the day and spread the gospel.
Seems the Pentagon doesn't have to associate too closely with Hollywood anymore...and why should they? They now own the MSM. Hell, when you have psy-op members working at CNN who the hell needs to micro-manage Hollywood?
Another good vid...
CBC's The Passionate Eye - Operation Hollywood 57min
(as an aside...the gal hosting wound up being the Queen's representative in Canada...lol)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8071178277073763777#
I would like the Defense Department to explain how it expects to defend Americans by keeping them in a state of perpetual, unnatural war-advocacy. Everything from Vietnam on forward has been abetted by an American public too quick to war. This has already led to the deaths of many Americans (9/11), and will lead to the deaths of many more: the exact opposite of what the Defense Dept claims to want for America.
I'm concerned that the military-industrial-complex too often see's itself as the shepherd, and the American public as the sheep. They've been wagging the dog for way too many decades now, and its been a waste for the nation that can no longer afford it (and frankly never could). We can complain about those pacifists that wanted to keep America out of WWII, but it seems that only from such pacifism can America go to war with honest intentions. As Hedges indicates: what makes American nationalism scary is that we have the means to make it commit mega-death, yet that does no more to legitimize this nationalism than among those nations that don't have the means. Thus, we require the responsibility among our citizenry to distinguish true conflict from nationalism and war triumphancy, yet our own Defense department and media aristocracy is committed to keeping them from gaining that sense of responsibility toward war. The unspoken rule that guides such arrogance is 'You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!'
War is good business...
Invest someone else's son....
well summed up. nothing more to it.
Here are the anti-Iraq war movies produced in Hollywood over the last 4 years:
“Rendition”, “In the Valley of Elah”, “Lions for Lambs”, “Redacted”, “Stop-Loss”
Pro-Iraq war movies? 0
I would also add to that list a documentary that for some reason has gone under the radar for so many Americans and liberals and that would be the powerful documentary called Soldiers of Conscience.
I would also like to make a comment regarding the film Stop-Loss. I did not see the film and the reason why is because I had read that the main character, after deserting the army because he feared that he was going to be shipped back to Iraq, then bizarrely surrenders himself at the end of the film to the Army. If that ending is true, then I cannot possibly see how that film could be viewed as being an anti-war film if that soldier, unlike the film that I had recommended, did not develop a conscience when he ended going back to the very same organization that had placed him unnecessarily in harm's way and which was going to to do the same thing to him after he returned to his outfit.
I think it would have made a hell of a lot more impact if that soldier in Stop-Loss had decided to join the IVAW instead of stupidly returning to the Army.
As per usual, we have four men sitting around talking about why and how war has become a sacred expression of a culture (in this case, the US), and, as per usual, women are entirely left out of the narrative.
Not once did these four wise men ever discuss the fact that all these Pentagon-supported war films are targeted to male audiences. Not once did they ever touch on the social-psychology of gender and how it applies to war.
The closest they ever came to touching on gender was in their discussion of The Hurt Locker, which they all panned as a bad and largely immoral film. They appeared to base this negative assessment on the fact that the (female) director failed to portray the Iraqis as human. Yet war is a drug for BOTH sides, regardless of who has the moral high ground.
Although Stone, Hedges and Moore saw that this was the main point of Kathryn Bigelow's film, they preferred to dismiss it as compromised filmmaking, rather than trying to link the psychopathology of war to the war-as-masculinity belief sytem drip-fed to men from an early age. This is a pity.
Yeah, if only we would listen to the 150 million or so American women pacifists...
Get down off the cross. Men can be pacifists too. Women can be warmongers.
You may well be justified in asking why there wasn't at least one woman in the discussion. You got any suggestions?
As for why the film was dismissed, clearly it had nothing to do with the gender of the director, but with the fact that it did nothing to humanize the Iraqis, asked no fundamental questions about why we are there, and evidently had the air of "war porn" (it is worth pointing out that the implication was that "porn" is bad- give them some credit for that?).
"...rather than trying to link the psychopathology of war to the war-as-masculinity belief sytem drip-fed to men from an early age. This is a pity."
Did you even watch the whole interview?
Porn shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath as war.
why not? sick eye/mind candy for sexual violence against other human beings that happen everyday all around the world is not as important as war?
"Get down off the cross. Men can be pacifists too. Women can be warmongers."
At the risk of taking a beating, I am going to agree.
While I do get the whole patriarchy thing, we go astray when we try to lay too much white or black on either side. For every George Bush and Dick Cheney and Henry Kissinger, we have a Condoleeza Rice and a Hillary Clinton and a Margaret Thatcher.
We need to consider more than gender.
OZ READER: Important, apt observations.
Your name sounds new to me in the forum. May I warn you that only a few males can apparently take in a message like yours without either attacking the messenger, or being sure to remind us that several women stand out in history for their own acts of violence. (Some probably avoid the topic, altogether.) Somehow to those who post tirelessly in efforts to ward off the larger inconvenient truths, the small number of women willing to emulate the dominant patriarchal model ends the discussion once and for all, and disallows discussion of any deeper contributing factors. These individuals fully convince themselves that it's a matter of flawed human nature, not that access to powerful decision-making bodies has been off-limits to women for centuries, and that most of society's mechanisms work to condition both genders to adapt to a patriarchal set of asymmetric "values." The result manifested as a totally unbalanced society!
I have been mortified by the levels of aggression hurled at me when I share these references. (Luckily, there is solace to be found in private email discussions with several other female posters who have witnessed, if not experienced, the same thing.)
aggression against the enemy of the people who parade as friends of the people is more than justified.
a little self-reflection might help you to learn a new lesson, but i'm not holding my breath.
which female do you have in mind that could have made contribution that is not made by any of the four men?
and what would that contribution have been?
you mean the aggressor and the victim are the same in the war? that's the uniquely female perspective that was dissed? i'm gonna puke right now.
and why did you NOT mention that there was no racial minority in the group? is it safe to assume you're racist?
For those reasons, I would like to see women elevated in political power. One way might be a constitutional amendment to give each woman two votes, to the man's customary one vote. Another way might be for a man to volunteer to vote the same as his woman, effectively doubling her vote. More at http://TwoVotes.org
Run for President!
it's true that in the celtic culture, women were also warriors,,,maeve, aoife,...but usually it was the guys using the swords..maeve was a great queen, and so was eleanor of aquitaine, much later, who created her court as the court of love...