Tag: hollywood

How the Pentagon Dictates Hollywood Storylines. “War Propaganda Passed off as Entertainment”

According to Theaters of War, the US Department of Defense does not just subtly influence Hollywood’s depiction of US wars to present them in a more favourable light. The Pentagon actively demands script oversight and dictates storylines. In practice, it has been waging a full-spectrum propaganda war against western audiences to soften them up to support aggressive, global US militarism.

The documentary, based on data uncovered by recent Freedom of Information requests from UK investigative journalist Tom Secker and academic Matthew Alford, reveals the astonishing fact that the Pentagon has been the secret, guiding hand behind thousands of films and TV shows in recent decades.

Many more movies never reach the screen because the Defense Department’s entertainment liaison office refuses to cooperate, believing the wrong messages are being promoted.

Pentagon objections – usually the kiss of death – relate to any suggestion of military incompetence or war crimes, loss of control over nuclear weapons, influence by oil companies, illegal arms sales or drug trafficking, use of chemical or biological weapons, US promotion of coups overseas, or involvement in assassinations or torture. In fact, precisely the things the US military is known to have been doing.

How does the Defense Department exert so much control on film productions?

Because expensive blockbusters are far more likely to recoup their budget and turn a profit if they feature the shiniest new weapons. Only the Pentagon can supply aircraft carriers, helicopters, fighter jets, pilots, submarines, armoured personnel carriers, military extras and advisers. But it does so only if it is happy with the dramatic messaging.

As one academic observes in Theaters of War, propaganda works most effectively when it can be passed off as entertainment: “You’re more open to incorporation of those ideas because your defences are down.”

How many viewers would take seriously a film if it was preceded by a sponsorship logo from the Defense Department or the CIA? And for that reason, Pentagon contracts usually specify that its role in a film be veiled.

This is why few know that the Defense Department and the CIA have had a controlling hand in such varied projects as Apollo 13, the Jurassic Park and James Bond franchises, the Marvel movies, Godzilla, Transformers, Meet the Parents andI Am Legend. Or how the military regularly gets involved in baking and quiz shows.

The reality, Theaters of War argues, is that many Hollywood movies are little more than advertisements for US war industries.

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“TOP GUN: MAVERICK” IS MILITARY PROPAGANDA. OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS PROVE IT

“Top Gun: Maverick” is a box-office smash, a massive hit with both critics and the public alike. Navy and Air Force units across the country have set up recruitment stalls inside movie halls, hoping to sign up individuals buzzed after watching the high-paced aviation action. But documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the movie was made only after an agreement was signed between Hollywood and the Pentagon, with the Navy insisting on “weav[ing] in” their “key talking points” in exchange for granting the production company extensive access to military hardware.

Investigative journalist Tom Secker, author of “National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood,” was one of those who obtained the documents. Secker explained that “Top Gun: Maverick” was made with an explicit agenda behind it, telling MintPress:

It’s about rehabilitation of the military’s image in the wake of numerous failed wars. The film also helps foreground human pilots flying an actual combat mission – something very rare in these days of high-altitude airstrikes and drone warfare. It helps distract from all the drone pilots who’ve spoken out about the misery and horror inherent in that job.”

The sequel to the hit 1980s movie “Top Gun,” the new film follows the story of Pete “Maverick” Mitchell over 30 years later, as the renegade pilot who does not play by the rules is brought in to train the Navy’s best young pilots for a secret mission to blow up a uranium enrichment facility [a site implied to be in Iran]. Maverick instead shows that he is still the best pilot and is selected for the mission himself.

The production agreement between the Department of Defense (DoD) and Paramount Pictures is an explicit quid pro quo. In exchange for all manner of technical support and access to military equipment and personnel, the Pentagon was allowed to “[a]ssign a senior staff, post-command Officer to review with public affairs the script’s thematics and weave in key talking points relevant to the aviation community.”

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How the White House Correspondents Dinner Broke the Democratic Party

When I was a political reporter in Washington, I used to loathe the White House Correspondents Dinner. I hated how it portrayed Beltway journalism as a game. How it reduced the project of government accountability to performative antagonism practiced daily by reporters in White House press briefings — a performance exposed annually at a dinner where the most powerful people in the world would rub elbows and yuck it up about funny “inside jokes” like George W. Bush’s bungling of the Iraq War and the media’s culpability in helping him do it.

Maybe because I was a reporter at the time, I always considered the dinner’s rottenness from the perspective of the relationship between the media and politicians, lamenting that images from the Washington Hilton of the press mingling with administration officials in black tie undercut the public’s faith in an independent media.

But the further away I’ve gotten from the experience — and the faster our republic has tumbled toward oblivion — the more I’ve considered how the dinner contributed in other, significant ways to the brokenness of our current political moment: The dinner highlights the laughable disconnect between the people in Washington with the power to do something (the dinner attendees) and the rest of us mere mortals (people largely not watching the dinner at home on C-SPAN).

The presidency of Barack Obama transformed the Democratic Party in ways many pundits already have explored ad nauseum, from a revolution in data analytics to Obama’s creation of an entire political infrastructure outside of the Democratic National Committee. Yet, the White House Correspondents Dinner, now that it’s back from its hiatus in the two years we acknowledged the ongoing pandemic as real, is also a reminder of perhaps Obama’s worst contribution to modern politics: the marriage between actual Hollywood and the “Hollywood for ugly people” known as Washington.

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Motion Picture Association wants online ID checks to curb piracy

The Motion Picture Association (MPA) wants stricter online identity checks to be part of the new trade agreement between the US and countries in the Indo-Pacific region. The film industry group also wants offline enforcement tools to apply online.

MPA is concerned that website operators use unconfirmed identities when signing up for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) services. There are multiple types of IaaS services, but MPA narrows it down to CDNs, proxy services, domain registrars, and web hosting. Companies providing these services enable piracy by providing their services to piracy websites, MPA argues.

IaaS services providers are currently not legally obligated to carry out identity checks. MPA believes the new trade agreement between the US and Indo-Pacific region is an opportunity to introduce such a requirement, Torrent Freak reports.

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Kyle Rittenhouse Not Guilty Verdict Breaks Hollywood: ‘I Weep for This Country’

Left-wing Hollywood celebrities experienced a collective meltdown after a jury in Kenosha, Wisconsin, acquitted 18-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse of all charges on Friday. “I weep for this country,” one star lamented, while another claimed the verdict represented a victory for “white supremacy.”

Celebrities including Sophia Bush, Patton Oswalt, and Josh Gad took their cues from the establishment media by insisting on a racial angle to the verdict, even though all the parties in the case were white. Other celebrities simply vented their rage, like Alyssa Milano, who hurled expletives at her TV as the verdict was read.

“This is white supremacy in action,” Sophia Bush tweeted.

“So…the white guy goes free. Is that the message?” author Stephen King wrote.

“Fucking not guilty,” Alyssa Milano despaired.

In one bizarre instance, ABC’s Scandal star Kerry Washington paid tribute to the two men Rittenhouse shot and killed out of self-defense — Joseph Rosenbaum, a pedophile sex offender, and Anthony Huber, a habitual woman beater.

Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges on Friday following three days of jury deliberation. The 18-year-old faced two charges of murder, one charge of attempted murder, and two charges of reckless endangerment stemming from last year’s Black Lives Matter riots that saw large parts of Kenosha burn to the ground.

Rittenhouse’s attorneys argued their client acted in self-defense when he was attacked while helping to defend property against violent rioters. Rittenhouse shot and killed two rioters after they threatened him — Joseph Rosenbaum, who reached for Rittenhouse’s rifle, and Anthony Huber, who hit Rittenhouse in the head and neck with a skateboard, and reached for the rifle.

Hollywood celebrities didn’t appear concerned with the details of the case when they reacted with rage to the jury’s decision.

One Tree Hill star and left-wing activist Sophia Bush called the verdict a “miscarriage of justice,” adding: “This is white supremacy in action.

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