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Pentagon and CIA shaped thousands of Hollywood movies into effective propaganda

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Re: Pentagon and CIA shaped thousands of Hollywood movies into effective propaganda

#211

Post by user-the-name »

fvdessen wrote: post #56
nyokodo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The other country that is doing this at Hollywood scale is China The difference being that while state propaganda has infected Hollywood it does not wholly control Hollywood. You’d be hard pressed to find any rough equivalent to Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, All the President’s Men, or The Post etc in China.

> Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, All the President’s Men, or The Post Those movies are also propaganda, but in a more subtle and effective way; The message of these movies being that while america sometimes makes mistakes, in the end the american has a good heart and conscience and should be forgiven. You don’t see in these movies american soldiers raping civilans, laughing about it, and suffering no ill conseque…

This is true, but the way these movies were propaganda is actually a lot more interesting: One big thing they do is cover up the fact that the Vietnam war ended up in basically a huge mutiny in the US forces, and a de facto truce with the Vietnamese.

Here is a twitter thread about it: https://twitter.com/mmabeuf/status/1433597396613832706

This is something the US really doesn't want to admit happened.

Re: Pentagon and CIA shaped thousands of Hollywood movies into effective propaganda

#213

Post by thinkingemote »

democracy wrote: post #84

Speaking about movies I am more confused why modern Russian movies portray Soviet soldiers as a bunch of idiots either drinking, shooting each other or being killed by KGB. And most of such movies are sponsored by the government. Go figure!

Comradeship. Solidarity with your brothers.

Re: Pentagon and CIA shaped thousands of Hollywood movies into effective propaganda

#214

Post by avgcorrection »

systemvoltage wrote: post #43
ilaksh wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, because there is this magical line in history where everything was different. It's just that the propaganda for that war was so incredibly effective for so long, it is nearly impossible to find people who see it in a realistic light. Normally the magic line goes the other way -- people think propaganda or such may have existed in the bad old days but in "modern times" of course everything is copacetic.

What people don't realize is that the following: > In 1939, estimates of the Army's strength range between 174,000 and 200,000 soldiers, smaller than that of Portugal's, which ranked it 17th or 19th in the world in size. [1] Despite of the abundant resources, it was largely a sleeping nation militarily prior to WWII. Air Force was essentially non-existent. Pearl Harbor was the critical moment that kicked the US Milit…

Oh my. It’s almost as if the Soviet Union contributed a lot more bodies to the war than the nation that was separated from most of the war by two major bodies of water. But I’m sure happy that the American propaganda worked, or else the War would have surely been lost...

This is hilarious, yet I’m not laughing.

> The allies had seen the eye of evil and walked into its belly so it was straight forward to sell.

Tell that to Poland.

Re: Pentagon and CIA shaped thousands of Hollywood movies into effective propaganda

#216

Post by imiric »

azalemeth wrote: post #101
xcambar wrote: post #63

Aside from military, this tactic became obvious to me when space became (again) a theater of conquest around 2010, involving both private and public sectors, internationally. The narrative around space became very strong, sending messages of conquest, entrepreneurship, science, dreams, you name it. At the exact same period, bloomed movies like: Mission to Mars, Gravity, Interstellar. I won't be surprised to see a sur…

While that's true, the fundamental missions in space that we are likely to fly are basically all about science and engineering. Even (I speculate) the classified ones. Satellites provide either telecommunications or fundamental information about our world or the universe in which it sits. That information is not going to be inherently military -- it's the purposes that it is put to that may be. On the other have, eve…

> It is an unfortunate but unavoidable fact of humanity that armies are required to exist.

Is it really unavoidable? I'll play the naïve part here and say that the military is an extension of humanity's tribal nature. The entire concept of countries and borders is rooted in our deep desire to belong to a specific tribe, be defensive of other members of our tribe, and offensive towards other tribes that might want to do us harm. The fact we manage to communicate and exchange goods and ideas is a testament of our collaboration skills, but this "us vs. them" mentality is always present in the back of our monkey brains.

If we ever manage to overcome this innate distrust—either via natural evolution (unlikely) or merging with a neutral AI (more likely?)—it would boost our capacity of working towards common goals as a species to unprecedented levels.

> There is definitely good that comes from them, ranging from humanitarian aid to the research into high end technology

There's no reason these efforts couldn't come from a nonmilitary organization. While competition and developing better weapons of war than other countries is a large component of technological advancement, I'd argue that global collaboration without distrust and politics would accelerate that progress even more. It would certainly help with current issues like climate change, space exploration and pandemic mitigation, while avoiding all of the pain, death and misery that wars and conflicts have brought us throughout history.

Re: Pentagon and CIA shaped thousands of Hollywood movies into effective propaganda

#217

Post by denton-scratch »

heavyset_go wrote: post #7

Once this was pointed out, I can't unsee it. It's kind of ruined movies that involves the military or military equipment for me, since it can be really obvious when creators toe the line for the military. When I see military equipment my gut reaction is to anticipate the other shoe dropping, and to look for shoehorned hero worship or some good-versus-evil plot point.

I thought this has been common knowledge forever. I mean, if you see before the closing titles something like

  "With grateful thanks to the US Navy and Airforce, without whom this film could not have been made"
then you have to assume that the helpful armed forces at least got approval of the final cut. At any rate, I've always thought that stuff like The Green Berets with John Wayne was pure war propaganda.

Re: Pentagon and CIA shaped thousands of Hollywood movies into effective propaganda

#218

Post by thinkingemote »

The Institute for Propaganda Awareness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Propaganda_Analy... from 1937 to 1942 was set up to train the American people about usages of propaganda in the emergence of fascism and communism in the early 20th century.

It was scrapped entriely when USA joined in WW2.

I wonder if other neutral countries had similar propaganda awareness education efforts, or if anyone could imagine this state run initiative to exist today anywhere.

Re: Pentagon and CIA shaped thousands of Hollywood movies into effective propaganda

#219

Post by TaylorAlexander »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #81
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think Hollywood is lot less subtle now at trying to push political propaganda I think the past efforts were pretty blatant. I think we just know more about how they operate and so it becomes easier to see. > wokeism Would love to know what this means.

For all the feigning of ignorance, 'woke' is well entrenched in in mainstream language now. It would definitely have made it to one of those "word of the year" things within the past few years if it wasn't for wokeism. Urban dictionary can help you out if you really don't know https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woke Pretending to be bravely battling fascism and tyranny on behalf of the oppressed while ce…

I asked because whenever I hear about someone complaining of “wokeism” they’re complaining about things that I think are good.

Giving black actors roles in areas normally dominated by white actors? That’s awesome! But whenever this happens loads of people online will claim that is “wokeism”.

Representation for gay, lesbian, queer, and trans people in media? Wow that’s great! Many complain this is “wokeism”.

Recognizing that trans women are women and trans men are men? 100% that’s the bare minimum and I am happy to see it. “Wokeism”

The real reason I asked was to get people on here to reveal what kind of progress they are against.

Of course there is sometimes an element of hypocrisy suggested in the “wokeism” complaint. But there’s always hypocrites. Sometimes accusations of hypocrisy are used as a smoke screen to simply complain about there being gay people on the television.

Re: Pentagon and CIA shaped thousands of Hollywood movies into effective propaganda

#220

Post by avgcorrection »

fsloth wrote: post #104
prmoustache wrote: post #20

I cringe every time I hear the US president being described as the leader of the free world, as if there were 2 specific sides and USA were leading it and as if USA was an advocate for freedom.

USA is an advocate of very specific stability. "Free world" is a hyperbolic but US is still a huge global power. In cold war it was obvious there were two sides, and the other was obviously more free than the other. Go ask for example Estonians, Lithuanians or Latvians who they enjoyed the yoke of the USSR. Now, as China is becoming an ever more stronger player, we again see that there are two sides arising. While pa…

> Go ask for example Estonians, Lithuanians or Latvians who they enjoyed the yoke of the USSR.

Ah yes, proximity. Now go ask the small Central American nations if they enjoyed living close to the USA during the 70s and 80s.

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