The Pentagon and CIA Have Shaped Thousands of Hollywood Movies into Super Effective Propaganda
The Pentagon and CIA Have Shaped Thousands of Hollywood Movies into Super Effective Propaganda
Propaganda is most impactful when people don't think it's propaganda, and most decisive when it's censorship you never knew happened. When we imagine that the U.S. military only occasionally and slightly influences U.S. movies, we are extremely badly deceived.
started reading, waiting for the examples of before and after a script went through the process. Started skimming looking for it. Not a word? Wow.
Well, there was this...
In the original script for the first Iron Man movie, the hero went up against the evil weapons dealers. The U.S. military rewrote it so that he was a heroic weapons dealer who explicitly argued for more military funding.
Which is about where I stopped reading. If this is true, then the military saved the movie. Iron Man was originally written as an alcoholic, billionaire, weapons dealer. Stan Lee created him as a totally unlikable character
Iron Man debuted in Tales of Suspense #39, introduced as a billionaire weapons dealer who turned into a hero after forging his own armor that led to his freedom from capture. At face value, Tony Stark doesn't seem like someone readers would grow an immediate attachment to, as he was a self-absorbed industrialist who sold extremely dangerous weapons to the highest bidders. Initially, Stark was a selfish egotist who rarely thought about the consequences of his actions.
In an interview from 2013, Lee admitted he intentionally created Tony Stark to be unlikable as a dare to make readers love someone who wasn't a good guy. He said that readers weren't exactly fans of war and the military when Iron Man was created during the midst of the Cold War. In response, he made a hero who represented all of the bad things about war. Lee said he shoved Stark down readers' throats to make them like him - and it worked.
Propaganda is most impactful when people don't think it's propaganda, and most decisive when it's censorship you never knew happened. When we imagine that the U.S. military only occasionally and slightly influences U.S. movies, we are extremely badly deceived.
I mean, it doesn't take a genius to figure out this is a thing...
So there goes the main point of the article.
Consider the typical audience for blockbuster Hollywood action movies featuring America-Fuck-Yeah! teams using good old American military tech to defeat the bad guys. It may be obvious to you and us that these movies feature a heavy amount of pro-military and pro-US propaganda. But the average viewer probably just wants to shut off half their brain, see big explosions, and watch other heart-pumping action. Do you think they're considering the ethical implications of the military vehicles and weapons featured in these films? They just leave the movie feeling pumped up and generally happy, and to some degree they'll associate those feelings with the US military.
That’s exactly the problem. The propaganda is so nuanced that most people just want to see an action movie, and leave with a higher feeling of trust in the US military. They’re supposed to feel happy afterwards, that means it worked