Esta película es maravillosa porque:
1) Muestra la artera conducta de los promotores estadounidenses del imperialismo.
The Buying and Selling of the Pentagon (Part I)
(La Compra y Venta del Pentágono (Parte I)
VALERIE PLAME TESTIFIES IN CIA LEAK HEARINGS (PART 1):
"25 years later, how ‘Top Gun’ made America love war
As Mace Neufeld, the producer of the 1990 film “The Hunt for Red October,” later recounted to Variety, studios in the post-“Top Gun” era instituted an unstated rule telling screenwriters and directors to get military cooperation “or forget about making the picture.” Economics drives that directive, Time magazine reported in 1986. “Without such billion-dollar props, producers [have to] spend an inordinate amount of time and money searching for substitutes” and therefore might not be able to make the movie at all, the magazine noted.
Emboldened by Hollywood’s obsequiousness, military officials became increasingly blunt about how they deploy the carrot of subsidized hardware and the stick of denied access to get what they want. Strub described the approval process to Variety in 1994: “The main criteria we use is . . . how could the proposed production benefit the military . . . could it help in recruiting [and] is it in sync with present policy?”
Robert Anderson, the Navy’s Hollywood point person, put it even more clearly to PBS in 2006: “If you want full cooperation from the Navy, we have a considerable amount of power, because it’s our ships, it’s our cooperation, and until the script is in a form that we can approve, then the production doesn’t go forward.”
The result is an entertainment culture rigged to produce relatively few antiwar movies and dozens of blockbusters that glorify the military. For every “Hurt Locker” — a successful and critical war film made without Pentagon assistance — American moviegoers get a flood of pro-war agitprop, from “Armageddon,” to “Pearl Harbor,” to “Battle Los Angeles” to “X-Men.” And save for filmmakers’ obligatory thank you to the Pentagon in the credits, audiences are rarely aware that they may be watching government-subsidized propaganda.
Until this year, this Top Gun Effect seemed set in stone. But a quarter-century after that hagiographic tribute to the military’s “best of the best,” an odd alignment of partisan interests has prompted some in Congress to question the arrangement.
Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, recently sent letters to the CIA and the Defense Department demanding an investigation of the upcoming Bin Laden movie. He criticized the practice of granting ideologically compliant filmmakers access to government property and information that he says should be available to all. The “alleged collaboration belies a desire of transparency in favor of a cinematographic view of history,” he argued.
Considering King’s previous silence on such issues, it’s not clear whether he’s standing on principle; more likely, he is trying to prevent a particular piece of propaganda from aiding a political opponent. Yet, even if inadvertent, King’s efforts make possible a broader look at how the U.S. government uses taxpayer resources to suffuse popular culture with militarism.
If and when King holds hearings on the matter, we could finally get to the important questions: Why does the Pentagon treat public hardware as private property? Why does the government grant and deny access to that hardware based on a filmmaker’s willingness to let the Pentagon influence the script? And doesn’t such a practice violate the First Amendment’s prohibition against government abridging freedom of speech?
David Sirota is is a syndicated columnist, radio host and the author of “Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now.” He will be online to chat on Monday, Aug. 29 at 12 p.m. ET.
3.2. THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (Viernes, 26 de Agosto de 2011):Hollywood Tries a New Battle Plan
After years of war movies about conflicted fighters, a new crop of films is shifting focus: to tactics, technology and teamwork. Making a fictional drama with real-life SEALs.
By JOHN JURGENSEN
On a 2010 training exercise, a team of Navy SEALs converged on an ocean rendezvous point. Crouched beside the sailors on a bouncing Zodiac speedboat was a filmmaker, dressed in camouflage with his camera rolling as a submarine broke the surface. "We ran those boats right up on the back of that nuclear sub," said director Mike McCoy.Producer Jerry Bruckheimer recently struck a deal with ABC for a pilot about the family life and field missions of Navy SEALs. Universal is readying "Lone Survivor," a script about a decorated SEAL who fought through a rout in the mountains of Afghanistan. Sony recently set an October 2012 release date for "Hurt Locker" director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal's account of the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden, capped by the SEAL-led killing of the al Qaeda leader.
The box-office taint on movies with a perceived political bent, combined with the budget pressures that combat narratives bring, have made many contemporary war stories seem too risky for the studios, says director Peter Berg. He co-wrote the script for "Lone Survivor," which he will direct, based on a memoir by former SEAL Marcus Luttrell. For research, Mr. Berg embedded with a special-forces team at a remote base in Iraq near the Syrian border. Universal signed off on the project only after Mr. Berg agreed to first direct "Battleship," a big-budget extrapolation of the board game property, slated for release next spring.
Nevertheless, Mr. Berg says "Lone Survivor" wouldn't have been greenlighted had it not offered some commercial potential for the studio. "The idea of a good old-fashioned combat yarn, in which the politics are very clear—we support these men—was more appealing to them." Unlike many of the portraits of soldiers at war presented in recent years, "Lone Survivor" is about "the core warrior spirit," he said. "It's an unabashed tribute to the courage of these men." Production is scheduled to begin next spring.
In 2008, Navy Special Warfare invited a handful of production companies to submit proposals for a film project, possibly a documentary, that would flesh out the role of the SEALs. The goals: bolster recruiting efforts, honor fallen team members and offer a corrective to misleading fare such as "Navy Seals," the 1990 shoot-em-up starring Charlie Sheen as a cocky lone wolf. "In the SEAL ethos, the superman myth does not apply. It's a lifestyle of teamwork, hard work and academic discipline," said Capt. Duncan Smith, a SEAL who initiated the project and essentially served as producer within the military.
The project offered filmmakers access to SEALs as well as military assets, but no funding. A production company called the Bandito Brothers, which had previously worked with Navy Special Warfare on a series of recruiting videos, got the assignment. Co-founded by Mr. McCoy, a former off-road racing champion and stuntman, and Scott Waugh, who had run a stunt company, the Bandito Brothers specialized in shooting action-driven viral ads for brands such as BMW and Mountain Dew.
The Los Angeles-based Bandito Brothers began shuttling back and forth to Coronado, Calif., the SEALs training base near San Diego, to conduct on-camera interviews. They initially planned to work the research into a script, then hire actors to play the lead SEALs. The filmmakers' calling card within the military was a 2005 documentary called "Dust to Glory," for which they positioned about 55 cameras on dirt bikes, trucks and dune buggies in the bone-jarring Baja 1000, an annual off-road race in Mexico. The gritty camaraderie depicted in the movie resonated with the SEALs, as did the on-screen tenacity of Mr. McCoy (nicknamed Mouse), who did the team-based race solo on a motorcycle. He crossed the finish line in 18 hours, nursing broken bones from a crash.
As the SEALs' stories unfolded on camera and over beers, the filmmakers began to question the idea of casting actors to play the sailors. In one interview, a lieutenant spoke articulately and without affect about feeling envious while looking down at a comrade's coffin, knowing the man had fulfilled his duty to the end. In the lieutenant and another SEAL, a voluble father of five, the directors realized they'd found their leads. But it took them four months to persuade the men and a half-dozen other SEALs to take roles in the movie, thus bucking their community's ideal of the "quiet professional." For the SEALs, the decision meant potentially risking "ridicule for the rest of their careers for stepping outside the community," Mr. McCoy says.
After they made a group decision to participate, deciding the project served the SEALs' greater good, the Navy made the film a formal task for the sailors, who were between deployments. Their names won't appear in the "Act of Valor" credits; instead, the film will list Naval Special Warfare members killed since Sept. 11.
The Bandito Brothers commissioned a script from Kurt Johnstad, who had co-written "300," a comic-book-style depiction of ancient Spartan warriors that has many fans among U.S. troops, but that many critics dismissed as heavy-handed and excessively violent. His "Act of Valor" screenplay revolved around a SEAL team's mission to stop a Chechen jihadist cooperating with a smuggler to send suicide bombers across the Mexican border toward U.S. targets. (A villain from Eastern Europe was a less obvious and potentially sensitive choice than an Arab, the filmmakers say.) Most of the story's big action scenes were plotted around training operations that the Navy already had on the calendar.
To plot a scene in which the smuggler is apprehended on his yacht, the SEALs and their commanders used whiteboards to sketch out how such an operation would unfold in reality. To capture it, a Bandito crew, armed with 16 cameras, shot a squad in real time as it ran the simulated "maritime interdiction operation" in domestic waters. A boat-mounted machine gun opened fire and sailors plunged out of a helicopter on ropes to take control of a 150-foot yacht, rented by the filmmakers for the two-day exercise. In between training runs, the crew shot a key scene aboard the yacht, where the villain (played by an actor) is questioned below deck by a SEAL, working mostly off script.
The filmmakers came away with key scenes for "Act of Valor," while the Navy would receive blanket footage of the exercise for use in future training. Having paid for the initial shoot themselves, at less than $1 million, the Bandito Brothers showed the clip to potential investors to demonstrate they could execute the film's unusual concept. Over time, financing came from about dozen parties, including Legendary Entertainment, the company behind blockbusters such as "The Dark Knight" and "Inception." Bandito Brothers Chief Operating Officer Max Leitman declined to discuss the film's total budget.
The Bandito Brothers' L.A. headquarters is nestled in a maze of converted warehouses. A loft-style office space opens onto a cactus-studded garden, where a silver Airstream trailer serves as an office and clubhouse. In an adjacent lot, a hangar-size building is being converted into a production facility, supplementing a garage that houses a studio and a small fleet of dusty motocross bikes. On a recent afternoon, artists at computer monitors toiled over visuals for the coming superhero movie "The Avengers," directed by Joss Whedon. The digital-effects job resulted from the Bandito Brothers' joint venture with design studio Cantina Creative.
"Radness?" Mr. McCoy said to one worker as he walked by. "Making radness?" The director has a slight, wiry build (hence his nickname since childhood). He smokes small Macanudo cigars, and his loping gait suggests both a swagger and a history of broken bones.
Mr. McCoy and his partners have clearly been influenced by their time in the SEALs' midst. Six out of their seven SEAL "actors" have been deployed since the film wrapped. Just days after a helicopter had been shot down in Afghanistan carrying more than 30 men, 17 of them SEALs, the filmmakers spoke carefully about the "really heavy burden" they felt to accurately portray the sailors' skills and sacrifices. On Friday, the Navy Special Warfare community gathers at Arlington National Cemetery for a private burial ceremony.
In the movie, authenticity came with some trade-offs. Some dialogue-driven scenes seem stilted, including banter between the SEALs, who address each other as "dude" or "sir." The sailors' rapid descriptions of their mission plans could speed over some viewers' heads. Mr. McCoy acknowledged, "These guys are not Johnny Depp or Daniel Day-Lewis."
The filmmakers say the SEALs tackled their acting duties methodically, as they would a new tactical skill. In a scene where one of them discovers a female CIA operative who has been kidnapped and tortured, the directors coached him to slow down and tap into the emotion of the rescue. "For the audience, you need to get really compassionate. The women are going to need to connect," Mr. McCoy recalled saying.
By contrast, in the movie's many battle scenes, the sailors move with a fluid precision that makes typical Hollywood action movies look bogus. When the SEALs picked off enemies and moved through buildings in a tight snaking column, some footage was captured by helmet-mounted cameras. Certain plot points were based on true stories from the field, including a scene in which a sailor takes a rocket-propelled grenade to the chest at close range and lives.
By last March, the filmmakers had completed a final version of the film, following a tactical "scrub," during which officials screened 1,800 hours of footage for scenes that could divulge sensitive tactics. For instance, a re-edit made it less obvious how a SEAL team would line up to storm a room. Sales agents at William Morris Entertainment were deciding on a plan for selling the film to a distributor when, on May 1, news broke that Osama bin Laden had been killed.
Studios immediately angled for projects that might capture some of the public fascination with the SEALs who led the strike. The most high-profile was the Bigelow and Boal script, which had been in development since 2008. Sony scooped up the movie about the bin Laden hunt within three weeks of his death. The movie is expected to be released in October 2012, a date that has drawn some political controversy. Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.) called for an investigation into whether the White House gave the filmmakers access to confidential information and suggested that the film's planned release next fall could influence the presidential election soon after. White House spokesman Jay Carney called the suggestion "ridiculous"; the filmmakers said in a statement that their film had no political angle.
Bin Laden's death found the Bandito Brothers sitting on a completed SEALs movie, but they didn't immediately put it on the auction block. "We were nervous about seeming exploitative," says WME agent Liesl Copland. The agency set up two "Act of Valor" screenings for potential buyers in June, four weeks after bin Laden was killed, by which time most of the related deal-making had died down in Hollywood.
A half-dozen distributors, including Alcon Entertainment and Film District, made serious bids for the movie. It sold to Relativity Media, known for titles such as "Bridesmaids" and "The Social Network," for $13 million. In addition to the financial terms of the deal, the filmmakers said they were won over by the company's plan for a long-term rollout, led by marketing head Terry Curtin, who comes from a line of Navy aviators and admirals. Relativity plans a wide release on Presidents Day weekend, Feb. 17.
The Bandito Brothers acknowledge that the bin Laden timing helped them land a faster, more attractive deal than they might have otherwise. But they're gratified that Relativity didn't want to rush the movie out just to capitalize on the SEALs' moment in the spotlight. By February, Mr. Leitman says, "Act of Valor" can be expected to "sink, swim, live or die on its own."
The U.S. military's Hollywood connection
The relationship between the services and the film industry has served each side's needs over the years but not without tension and constant debates over access.
Reporting from Camp Pendleton — — On a sultry mid-July afternoon on this military base, a few hundred Marines, some with spouses and children in tow, were mustering for a free screening of the movie "Warrior" at a squat cement cinema house on Mainside, the section of the 200-square-mile facility reserved for civilian comforts like the Stars and Strikes bowling alley and Smokey's House of BBQ.
In the film, which won't arrive in theaters until September, a Marine just home from Iraq (played by Englishman Tom Hardy) and his estranged brother, a fighter-turned-teacher (Australian Joel Edgerton), train for a mixed martial arts tournament.
The military's involvement ran deeper, though, than just throwing open the doors to the Bulldog Box Office at Camp Pendleton. The "Warrior" script was vetted by a Marine Corps liaison to the entertainment industry, and more than 200 real Marines appear in uniform in a crowd scene.
Photos: Hollywood and the military
The Department of Defense regularly cooperates with Hollywood on projects large and small, from Lifetime's fictional Army base-set series "Army Wives" and CBS' naval police procedural "NCIS" to Paramount Pictures' warring robots franchise "Transformers" and Sony's Columbia Pictures film "Battle: Los Angeles," about Marines fighting an alien invasion. The military has allowed Universal Pictures to film its upcoming action movie "Battleship" on the battleship Missouri and permitted Navy SEALs to appear in Relativity Media's February thriller "Act of Valor."
Over the decades, the relationship between Hollywood and the military has served the needs of both sides: Filmmakers gain access to equipment, locations, personnel and information that lend their productions authenticity, while the armed forces get some measure of control over how they're depicted.
That's important not just for recruiting but also for guiding the behavior of current troops and appealing to the U.S. taxpayers who foot the bills. Given that less than 1% of the U.S. population is currently serving in the military, entertainment — including movies, TV shows and video games — is key to shaping the public's idea of what it means to be a soldier.
"Hollywood feature films have served as the most significant medium to argue for the military," said Lawrence H. Suid, author of "Guts & Glory: The Making of the American Military Image in Film." "Americans love violence, and war movies provide all that violence without the danger."
But controversy over an upcoming movie about the killing of Osama bin Laden — and how much U.S. officials should assist director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal — has shed light on some of the minefields that must be navigated by real-life warriors and the showbiz engine that seeks to portray them.
There are constant tensions over how troops are depicted — the military brass is often uncomfortable with the defiant, cocky heroes that filmmakers, and moviegoers, like to embrace. And rank-and-file troops have complaints from everyday details like the color of a soldier's boots to broader questions about the true character of men and women in uniform. There are debates about how much access is too much and even whether certain films might serve partisan purposes.
On the surface, cooperating with filmmakers on a movie about the Bin Laden mission would appear to be a no-brainer for the Defense Department — after all, the operation was a spectacular victory for U.S. forces.
Bigelow's movie — which was gestating long before May's deadly raid in Pakistan by U.S. Navy SEALs and CIA operatives — is slated for release by Sony in October 2012 and will attempt to chart the decade-long pursuit of the terrorist leader. The filmmakers haven't locked a script or announced casting or location shooting plans.
Though many details remain to be determined, the story of an anonymous team of highly trained soldiers working successfully off the intelligence of multiple agencies and political administrations would seem to please the military and stand in stark contrast to many of the most iconic pop culture images of soldiering. From George C. Scott's swaggering World War II general in 1970's "Patton" to the counterculture Korean War Army doctors in "MASH" (both the 1970 film and the long-running TV series) to Robert Duvall's unhinged air cavalry commander in 1979's "Apocalypse Now," the most remembered military heroes in movies in the last 30 years are arrogant, independent mavericks.
"There are these enduring stereotypes, Jungian archetypes, and they often show up in uniform in movies and TV shows," said Phil Strub, director of entertainment media at the Defense Department. "One of the things that comes up all the time is … to be a hero, you have to defy the rules of your organization because they're not good. And you also have to do it as a loner. Going on your own and recklessly prevailing seems to be a very popular way of portraying people and of course totally antithetical to the military ethos. Just about everything we do, the whole notion of teamwork is kind of fundamental."
Bigelow and Boal ran into such objections from the military on their last movie, "The Hurt Locker." The 2008 film, an adrenalized thriller about a renegade Army bomb defuser in Iraq, won the Academy Award for best picture, but the filmmakers' early discussions with the Army broke down over differences about the script, Boal told The Times last year. According to Strub, the DOD never signed a production assistance agreement for "Hurt Locker" or provided any physical support.
"'The Hurt Locker' was problematic for us because it departed from what we thought was the real military ethos," Strub said. "Of course we want to get the ribbon rack correct, of course we want people saluting looking properly. [But] the bottom line for us is how do people feel — how does a serviceman or servicewoman feel about the portrayal? … That portrayal is more important by far than whether the eagle is facing forward."
In the case of the Bin Laden movie, though, Bigelow and Boal have run into a different, more political set of concerns. Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, sent a letter to the CIA and the Department of Defense asking for an investigation into whether the White House has granted filmmakers access to classified information for the project, intelligence that could prove useful to America's enemies.
He also voiced concern about the timing of the movie's release: Coming less than a month before the 2012 presidential election, he suggested, it could influence the race. In a press briefing, White House spokesman Jay Carney dismissed the claim that Bigelow and Boal had received access to confidential information as "ridiculous" and chided the committee, saying it should have "more important topics to discuss than a movie."
Strub said the Defense officials have yet to determine whether they will officially cooperate with Bigelow and Boal's project. But Strub did acknowledge that Bigelow and Boal met with Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers this summer.
"They have had one or two interviews with one of our senior intelligence officials...," Strub said. "Mr. Vickers was extremely discreet and very careful in his wording. He was speaking entirely of the kinds of things he had spoken about at various other unclassified interviews."
Bigelow and Boal, who declined to be interviewed for this story, issued a statement through Sony that did not address whether they have been privy to confidential information. But they disavowed any political motivations.
"Our upcoming film project … integrates the collective efforts of three administrations, including those of Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama, as well as the cooperative strategies and implementation by the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency. Indeed, the dangerous work of finding the world's most wanted man was carried out by individuals in the military and intelligence communities who put their lives at risk for the greater good without regard for political affiliation. This was an American triumph, both heroic and nonpartisan, and there is no basis to suggest that our film will represent this enormous victory otherwise."
Bigelow and Boal's film isn't the only Hollywood project related to the Bin Laden operation that's run into resistance in Washington. Less than 48 hours after the White House had announced the news of Bin Laden's death, the Walt Disney Co. filed a patent application seeking the exclusive right to use the term "SEAL Team 6" — the elite special forces unit that led the raid — on movies, TV shows, video games and toys. When the Navy vocally objected, Disney quickly withdrew the request.
Each branch of the armed forces has its own intermediary to the film and television industries, all of them housed in an office building on Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood, while the DOD overseas the largest-scale collaborations from Washington. Some Hollywood heavyweights including "Black Hawk Down" producer Jerry Bruckheimer and "Transformers" director Michael Bay have enjoyed long affiliations with the offices. Strub said the number of productions — including documentaries and even game shows — that receive some form of military assistance annually are too many to quantify and said that producers reimburse the government for out-of pocket expenses such as dedicated flight hours or servicepersons' time.
While often it's Hollywood that comes knocking on the Pentagon's door seeking help, sometimes the appeals flow the other way.
In June, Michelle Obama beseeched an audience of about 500 producers, writers, actors and directors in Los Angeles to tell more military families' stories in entertainment, part of a larger White House initiative called "Joining Forces" tasked with improving housing, education, health and other programs geared toward those in uniform.
"You have the vehicle to tell stories that just pull people in," the first lady told the audience. "I … urge you to do what you do best. Be creative. Be funny. Be powerful. Move us, [and] move America to think differently about these issues and about these families, and about our men and women who serve so graciously."
In early 2012, she will appear on an episode of the Nickelodeon show "iCarly" to bring awareness to the effort, a bid to bring public attention to the largely anonymous struggles of military families.
Sometimes, a third party will play matchmaker between Hollywood and the military. For example, National CineMedia, which sells ads in movie theaters, paired the Army and 20th Century Fox for a marketing campaign designed to reach potential recruits. The campaign intercut footage from the Fox superhero movie "X-Men: First Class" with images of real soldiers as a voice-over intoned, "Heroes — ordinary people who discover they can do extraordinary things."
The spots played in cinemas, and exit polls of 17- to 24-year-olds leaving the movie theater found that those who saw the ad were 25% more likely to say they would consider joining the Army than those who didn't, according to U.S. Army Accessions Command Chief Marketing Officer Bruce Jasurda.
"We get asked all the time, 'Why do you market?'" said Jasurda. "We're a nation at war going on 11 years, which is … the longest period of consistent conflict that the U.S. Army's ever been involved in, that the nation's ever been involved in, longer than any war we've been in, and all-volunteer force at that.
"That's why we market. We want to make sure people understand the full nature of this product. The Army is the ultimate considered purchase. It's a very dangerous way to make a living."
Reaching the right kind of recruits, though, is important, Jasurda said — as is disabusing young people of some inaccurate notions about the military that Hollywood may have imparted.
"Rambo types — people who are very brazen, bold, stick out their chest, braggadocios — they're not the people we're looking for," said Jasurda. "All the physical and mental research we've done shows that those Rambo types are gonna get weeded out pretty quickly and are probably the poorest recruits."
Sgt. Cy Sibounma, a motor transport chief waiting in line for the Camp Pendleton "Warrior" screening who has completed two tours of duty in Afghanistan, said Hollywood movies fail to accurately show the temperament of those in uniform.
"You can get the haircut right, the boots, but you can't emulate a Marine," Sibounma said. "It's the intangible things that movies get wrong, the character, what's inside."
After signing autographs and shaking hands with Marines, Hardy, "Warrior's" star, considered Sibounma's comment and described "five minutes" he served in the Parachute Regiment of the British Army.
"I left 'cause I wasn't tough enough," Hardy said.
Photos: Hollywood and the military
rebecca.keegan@latimes.com
The Pentagon's strengthening grip on Hollywood
ttp://www.salon.com/news/New projects, including Kathryn Bigelow's bin Laden film, show rising pressure on filmmakers to please the military
Yesterday, I had a big article in the Sunday Washington Post looking at the long-term legacy of "Top Gun" - a film that turned 25 years old this summer. This is part of my unofficial beat reporting on the Military-Entertainment Complex - reporting I first started a few years back as part of the research for my book "Back to Our Future."
For too long, the media has ignored the relationship between Hollywood and the Pentagon. Knowing this, I figured my Washington Post piece would vanish into the ether. However, to my surprise, it came out in the same week that the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal provided stunning new details about how the shadowy relationship between Hollywood and the Pentagon is setting new standards for government-subsidized propaganda.
Hollywood As Complicit As Ever
First and foremost, both the Times and Journal tells us that collusion between the military and Hollywood - including allowing Pentagon officials to line edit scripts - is once again on the rise, with new television programs and movies slated to celebrate the Navy SEALs. They also give us up-to-date proof that major Hollywood directors remain more than happy to ideologically slant their films in precisely the pro-war, pro-militarist direction that the Pentagon demands in exchange for taxpayer-subsidized access to military hardware.
The Journal, for instance, quotes director Peter Berg saying that his upcoming cinematic tribute to the SEALs was approved by Pentagon-compliant studio execs specifically because the project avoids any nuanced take on the politics of war. "The idea of a good old-fashioned combat yarn, in which the politics are very clear - we support these men - was more appealing to them," he said, noting that his film will be "an unabashed tribute to the courage of (the SEALs)."
Likewise, the Times reports that after facing questions about inappropriate Hollywood-government collusion on a film to glorify the mission to kill Osama bin Laden, director Kathyrn Bigelow issued a defensive statement reiterating that her film will not dare raise anythorny questions the Pentagon doesn’t want raised - questions such as whether the mission was "kill only" and whether bin Laden could have been captured. "(The mission) was an American triumph, both heroic and nonpartisan, and there is no basis to suggest that our film will represent this enormous victory otherwise," she said, no doubt deliberately reassuring the Pentagon officials that she plans to produce exactly what they want.
This, of course, is the Top Gun Effect in action. With taxpayer-subsidized access to Pentagon hardware so crucial for filmmakers, and with the Pentagon so aggressively permitting and denying such access on the basis of a filmmakers’ loyalty to a pro-militarist message, directors like Berg, Bigelow and others know that they still must "get the cooperation of the [military] or forget about making the picture," as one director described it during the "Top Gun" era. "Getting cooperation," means being willing to make seemingly apolitical entertainment products into highly ideological vehicles for pro-war, pro-militarist propaganda.
Pentagon Now Soliciting Movies On Its Own
Of course, this Top Gun Effect has been the norm for a long time, and word that it is stronger than ever is not nearly as big a revelation as the other part of the Journal dispatch - the news that the Pentagon is now reverse engineering the propaganda process. That’s right, instead of simply waiting for Hollywood studios to pitch collaboration projects as they have in the past, military brass are now actively soliciting bids for studios to make recruitment ads camouflaged as apolitical feature films. In order to do this, the Pentagon is now using active-duty taxpayer-funded special forces soldiers as actors. As the Journal reports:
In 2008, Navy Special Warfare invited a handful of production companies to submit proposals for a film project (that) would flesh out the role of the SEALs. The goals: bolster recruiting efforts...The project offered filmmakers access to SEALs as well as military assets...
The Los Angeles-based Bandito Brothers began shuttling back and forth to Coronado, Calif., the SEALs training base near San Diego, to conduct on-camera interviews. They initially planned to work the research into a script, then hire actors to play the lead SEALs...(But) as the SEALs' stories unfolded on camera and over beers, the filmmakers began to question the idea of casting actors to play the sailors.
After they made a group decision to participate, deciding the project served the SEALs' greater good, the Navy made the film a formal task for the sailors...
So not only are compliant filmmakers getting taxpayer-subsidized access to military hardware, they are now getting an additional subsidy in the form of taxpayer-paid real-life soldiers ordered to also be actors. And again, we can infer that Hollywood filmmakers only get this subsidy as long as they are willing to produce films that serve the goal of "bolstering recruiting efforts" - and do not question war or militarism.
Military Calls War a "Product" to Be Sold
The intensifying Military-Entertainment Complex, as described by the Times and Journal, raise again the big question: Why is the Pentagon so focused on using Hollywood as a propaganda machine? The answer is simple: At a time when more and more Americans are questioning the fundamental tenets of militarism (ie. budget-busting defense expenditures, never-ending wars/occupations, etc.), military officials are desperate to turn the public opinion tide back in a pro-militarist direction - and they know pop culture is the most effective tool to achieve that goal. Why pop culture? Because audiences don’t see movies and TV shows as ideological at all. That means movie and TV audience’s psychological filter guarding against propaganda is turned off - making the militarist propaganda in these mediums that much more persuasive.
This is why (as I previously reported) the Pentagon sponsored the new "X-Men" movie and then used it to produce recruitment ads that portray the soldier’s life as just as fun, exciting and safe as being an superhero. As the Journal notes, it is incredibly effective:
The spots played in cinemas, and exit polls of 17- to 24-year-olds leaving the movie theater found that those who saw the ad were 25% more likely to say they would consider joining the Army than those who didn’t, according to U.S. Army Accessions Command Chief Marketing Officer Bruce Jasurda.
"We get asked all the time, ‘Why do you market?’" said Jasurda. "We’re a nation at war going on 11 years, which is … the longest period of consistent conflict that the U.S. Army’s ever been involved in, that the nation’s ever been involved in, longer than any war we’ve been in...That’s why we market. We want to make sure people understand the full nature of this product. The Army is the ultimate considered purchase."
This is exactly how the Pentagon sees militarism - it’s a "product" to be sold via pop culture products that sanitize war and, in the process, boost recruitment numbers.
The Military-Entertainment Complex’s Threat to the First Amendment
No doubt, the Pentagon and its apologists would have us believe that military officials have every right to use publicly owned hardware as a means of suffusing our pop culture with militarist propaganda. As the argument goes, it’s in the Pentagon’s institutional prerogative to defend its image, mission and "product." And this line of logic might work if the Pentagon was a private corporation. But (all jokes about Halliburton and private security contractors aside) the Defense Department is not a private corporation.
Indeed, as taboo as it might be to say it out loud, as much as often as you will get called an unpatriotic traitor for even mentioning it, it remains an indisputable fact that all those military planes and tanks and warships are funded by your and my taxpayer dollars. That makes them not the private assets of some military spinmeister - it makes them all of our property. Thus, when the government decides to grant and deny the public access to that property on the basis of a citizen’s particular political/ideological bent, it is inherently abridging that citizen’s First Amendment rights.
Journalist David Robb, author of "Operation Hollywood," explained this very real First Amendment issue succinctly in a previous interview withMother Jones:
"The First Amendment doesn’t just give people the right to free speech; fundamentally, it prevents the government from favoring one form of speech over another. There’s a great 1995 Supreme Court case called Rosenberger v. University of Virginia that says, "Discrimination against speech because of its message is presumed to be unconstitutional. It is axiomatic that the government may not regulate speech based on the substantive content of the message it conveys. In the realm of private speech or expression, government regulation may not favor one speaker over another." And yet that’s what (The Pentagon) is doing every day."
The way to really understand why this is so unacceptable is to consider comparable examples. Imagine if, say, the Obama administration didn’t let a reporter from Fox News attend a White House press briefing. Or imagine if, say, the Bush administration didn’t let a reporter from MSNBC be part of the press pool on Air Force One. In both cases, the outrage would be obvious, and those being persecuted would rightly insist that the government has no right to grant or deny access to public property on the basis of a citizen’s particular political principles.
This isn’t to say the Pentagon can’t or shouldn’t be involved in filmmaking. But it is to echo what New York University’s J. Hoberman told the Boston Globe in 2004: "If the Pentagon wants to go into business of leasing to the movies it should be open to whomever wants to lease and can afford to. It's our Army. If you can afford the rates you should be able to rent" regardless of your political ideology or partisan affiliation.
Because this isn’t the standard - because the military so aggressively uses our public property to preference saber-rattling propaganda - entertainment industry economics are unduly tilted toward projects that glorify militarism. That, in turn, tilts our entire culture toward war. Only when we fundamentally change this Military-Entertainment Complex and recognize the deep connections between pop culture and militarism can we hope to have a more pragmatic, less bellicose national security politics and posture.
David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book "Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com. More: David Sirota4) Resalta la candidez, la inocencia, la voluntad por la vida que irradian los filmes de DON LEÓNIDAS ZEGARRA UCEDA, en contraste con la actitud imperialista de los miembros del complejo militar - industrial estadounidense.
Título: La Maquinaria de Propaganda del Pentágono. (THE PENTAGON PROPAGANDA MACHINE). Autor: Senador James William Fulbright. Editor: Liveright, primera edición: Noviembre de 1970, 166 páginas.
El Museo De Comunicaciones Emitidas Electrónicamente (THE MUSEUM OF BROADCAST COMMUNICATIONS) tiene el placer de recordarnos que el libro del Senador James William Fulbright (La Maquinaria de Propaganda del Pentágono) fue utilizado como base para elaborar un documental hermoso emitido por la CBS el 23 de Febrero de 1971 en horario de gran sintonía. El productor fue Peter Davies. El documental indica que se toman mayores cantidades del dinero de los contribuyentes estadounidenses debido al aumento del uso de actividades de relaciones públicas por parte del complejo militar - industrial estadounidense con la finalidad de dar forma a la opinión publica en beneficio de la milicia. El documental, narrado por Rober Mudd, se enfoca en tres áreas de actividad del Pentágono para ilustrar el tema de la manipulación pública: contactos directos con el público, filmes del Departamento de Defensa y el uso de los medios de comunicación comerciales (prensa y televisión) por parte del Pentágono. Un caso jurídico fascinante se suscitó luego de la emisión del documental.
28 comentarios:
http://www.revistacomunicacion.org/pdf/n6/articulos/6_cine_y_propaganda_reaganista_en_la_trilogia_original.pdf
Cine y propaganda reaganista en la trilogía original de Rambo
David Selva Ruiz
(Universidad de Sevilla)
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2011/03/15/sirota_excerpt_back_to_our_future
http://www.salon.com/news/david_sirota/2011/05/26/pentagon_propaganda_xmen
http://www.upf.edu/materials/fhuma/guerrafria/docs/gfriacultural.pdf
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html?hp
Message Machine
Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand
By DAVID BARSTOW
Published: April 20, 2008
A PENTAGON CAMPAIGN Retired officers have been used to shape terrorism coverage from inside the TV and radio networks.
http://www.amazon.com/Pentagon-Underground-Dina-Rasor/dp/0812912497
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Rasor is the founder of the Project on Military Procurement, a nonpartisan, privately funded group that investigates Pentagon waste. Using information leaked by Defense Department insiders, the group has presented to the press appalling facts about collusion between the military and its contractors, and resulting shoddiness in such products as the M-1 tank, the C-5 cargo plane and the Cruise missile. Here Rasor describes those scandals as well as how she came to front for the Defense "underground," whose members she deems courageous and patriotic. Her purpose, she maintains, is to protect taxpayers from being defrauded. What emerges is an infuriating picture of irresponsibility and duplicity on the part of the military and, ultimately, inferior weapons for our armed forces. Foreign rights: Andrew Wylie. November 14
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2011/08/11/rep-peter-king-cia-considers-bin-laden-films-political-release-date-a-breach-of-faith/
Rep. Peter King: CIA Considers Bin Laden Film’s Political Release Date a ‘Breach of Faith’
by John Nolte
http://www.amazon.com/Betraying-Our-Troops-Destructive-Privatizing/product-reviews/1403981922/ref=cm_cr_pr_redirect?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0#R33WCLCLKUBFGY
Betraying Our Troops: The Destructive Results of Privatizing War [Hardcover]
Dina Rasor, Robert Bauman.
Jonathan Alter(Foreword)
http://www.truth-out.org/more-bucks-less-bang-ineffective-weapons-disease-infects-another-generation-weapons/1307469650
More Bucks, Less Bang: The Ineffective Weapons Disease Infects Another Generation of Weapons
Wednesday 8 June 2011
by: Dina Rasor, Truthout | Solutions
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/08/peter_king_calls_for_pentagon_and_cia_to_investiga.php
http://admin.utep.edu/Default.aspx?tabid=69696
U.S. Security Course Dispels Movie Myths
By Daniel Perez
Posted: 8/01/11
UTEP’s initial “National Security and the Cinema: Fact or Fiction” course starts in the fall and will include aliens, dog fights and weapons of mass destruction, and that’s only on the first day.
http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/23340/Spytainment_IJICI.pdf
“Spytainment”: The Real Influence of Fake Spies
Amy B. Zegart
To cite this Article Zegart, Amy B.(2010) '“Spytainment”: The Real Influence of Fake Spies', International Journal of
Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 23: 4, 599 — 622
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/08850607.2010.501635
http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/23340/Spytainment_IJICI.pdf
“Spytainment”: The Real Influence of Fake Spies
Amy B. Zegart
To cite this Article Zegart, Amy B.(2010) '“Spytainment”: The Real Influence of Fake Spies', International Journal of
Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 23: 4, 599 — 622
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/08850607.2010.501635
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/10/106406/why-the-cia-is-spying-on-a-changing.html
http://www.voltairenet.org/El-Imperio-y-la-CIA-contra-America,123921
http://despertaruniversitario.org/2011/04/09/cia-y-socios-contra-america-latina/
http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/MSC/ToMsC650/MsC642/Koop.htm
MsC 642
Iowa Author
Manuscript Register
PAPERS OF THEODORE F. KOOP
Collection Dates: 1940 -- 1976
1.5 linear ft.
This document describes a collection of materials held by the
Special Collections Department
University of Iowa Libraries
Iowa City, Iowa 52242-1420
Phone: 319-335-5921
Fax: 319-335-5900
e-mail: lib-spec@uiowa.edu
Posted to Internet:November 1997
Acquisition Note: The Koop papers were given to the University of Iowa Libraries in 1989, by his sister, Laura K. Merikle.
http://weblog.theviewfromthecore.com/Kerry_1971_Testimony.pdf
COMPLETE TESTIMONY OF LT. JOHN KERRY TO SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE 1 of 40
From the Congressional Record (92nd Congress, 1st Session) for Thursday, April 22, 1971, pages 179-210.
COMPLETE TESTIMONY OF LT. JOHN KERRY
TO
SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE
On Behalf of Vietnam Veterans Against the War
From the Congressional Record (92nd Congress, 1st Session)
for Thursday, April 22, 1971,
pages 179-210.
https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/mordecai/www/
http://whatreallyhappened.com/content/meet-some-pentagon-traitors-who-are-selling-out-america
http://www.islandpacket.com/2011/09/01/1776554/helping-hollywood-the-militarys.html
Helping Hollywood: The military's service in film runs deep
By REBECCA KEEGAN
Los Angeles Times
Published Thursday, September 1, 2011
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/09/cia-pitches-hollywood/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
CIA Pitches Scripts to Hollywood
By Mark Riffee
September 16, 2011
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/hearing/ny03_king/filmbinladenmission.html
King Calls for Investigation of Reports of Obama Administration-Sanctioned Film on Classified bin Laden Mission
August 10, 2011
Administration’s first duty in declassifying material is to provide full reporting to Congress and the American people
http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2010/05/10/hollywood-at-war/
Hollywood at War
by Kelley B. Vlahos, May 11, 2010
http://www.serendipity.li/wtc.htm
The World Trade Center Demolition
and the So-Called War on Terrorism
http://www.davidsirota.com/articles/hollywood-glorifies-military-at-taxpayers-expense/
http://www.offnews.info/verArticulo.php?contenidoID=26083
Inteligencia y Seguridad
17/11/2010 | La espía que se pasó a Hollywood
Rocío Ayuso
http://www.schoolguides.com/sgarticles.asp?rcatid=12&gclid=CNyCru-vvq4CFRNa7AodUQsLMA
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