Pentagon and CIA shaped thousands of Hollywood movies into effective propaganda • Hacker News Board

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

#471

Post by bart_spoon » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 4:26 PM UTC

bgroat wrote: post #408

ByThyGrace wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now imagine House M.D. rehashed to a brilliant but callous software guru trying to diagnose various misbehaviours/misuse of tech all around town. I'm not sure if that's a promising pitch or straight up garbage!

I'm holding out for a Breaking Bad style show about a software consultant who realizes how much money they can make by pivoting to running a malware ransom ring

As others have suggested, Mr. Robot isn't quite this but it's close, and extremely well made. One of the best TV shows ever in my opinion.

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

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Post by JPLeRouzic » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 4:30 PM UTC

kerneloftruth wrote: post #367

JPLeRouzic wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a French citizen 65 year old. I remember that my father was bombed by US in Rennes (luckily he went out safe). Most ports on Atlantic coast were completely destroyed by US bombers and many towns (Lorient, Saint-Malo, Brest, etc) had to be completely rebuilt. Many people were displaced, homeless and had to be relocated in shelters. This lasted until the 60", see [0] Yet now, for French people and media, destructi…

It sounds like most French citizens and the media are correct in that view. For you though, the Nazis invaded and occupied France, taking over the ports. The US bombs them to stop their takeover of France... and it's the US you blame? If your house catches fire and you call the fire department to put it out, do you then blame the fire department for the water damage caused while putting it out?

That's not my point, my point is about the change of narrative which is also the topic of this thread. After the WWII it was wide misery in France up to 1960 and now it is supposed to have been the "30 glorious years".

You know, even if I was born in 1956, I have seen lot of those shelters.

The person who first wrote about the "30 glorious years" was Jean Fourastié. Jean Fourastié had strong link with Jean Monnet. Jean Monnet had been an advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1940 to 1946 [0].

[0] Jean Monnet (1988). Mémoires (in French). Fayard. ISBN 978-2-213-65802-5.

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

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Post by nyokodo » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 4:30 PM UTC

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…

> in the end the american has a good heart and conscience and should be forgiven.

Nothing about Apocalypse Now or Full Metal Jacket says that at all. Have you even watched them? They’re both about how war and the military machine are devastating and dehumanizing to the soldier, and to the enemy. All words seem like egregious understatements for them so I recommend seeing them (or seeing them again).

To my horror I did find out that the first half of Full Metal Jacket was attractive to enough teenage boys in the late 80s to eventually cause Jarhead to be produced [1]. I guess they stopped watching after the first half, or the idea of murdering teenage girls was attractive to them? Either way it is anything but propaganda.

As for the other movies that do involve righting a wrong or at least exposing them, that’s not state propaganda. Primarily because the state is the villain in them and they encourage suspicion of the state, neither of which promotes state power. A movie which gives the feels about being an American doesn’t make something propaganda it makes it a movie that wants to sell to Americans.

1: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/18/magazine/full-metal-jacke...

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

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Post by ZoomerCretin » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 4:31 PM UTC

q1w2 wrote: post #413

Threeve303 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine you have a tech industry that merged with madison avenue along with psychological methods learned from Guantanamo and CIA Black Sites, and you wanted to build a societal manipulation machine, otherwise known as propaganda. Makes me wonder if there is any relation between the changes mentioned here and some of what the social media infrastructure has been used to do.

If any of this exists, then they're doing a terrible job. There is far more anti-American propaganda online than anything American-made.

Public perception of the United States' new cold war foe has turned in most western countries. I'd say it is pretty effective.

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

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Post by throwawaylinux » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 4:33 PM UTC

shkkmo wrote: post #336

throwawaylinux wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I asked because whenever I hear about someone complaining of “wokeism” Forgive me if you were being genuine, but frequently when I see the word used on the internet, I see replies from people who seem utterly bewildered and claim that they really want to know what the word means. But it's trivial to find out what this or any other word or slang word means with a simple internet search, so it doesn't really seem lik…

> That's not what woke means though, it's clearly about hypocrisy and insincerity and performative pointless acts or gestures. Did you not read the definition I gave you, or were you being insincere when you asked about the meaning of the word in the first place? You seem to be the one asserting that the word has only one true meaning. That is absolutely false. The word originated with one meaning and has been co-opt…

No post body was provided.

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

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Post by matheusmoreira » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 4:36 PM UTC

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…

Yeah. I used to think space exploration was about pushing the whole human race forward. Now I realize it's about geopolitics. Superpowers competing for even more power. While we consume optimistic media like Star Trek, the USA is busy setting up constellations of surveillance satellites as well as a literal space force.

Wikileaks is such an incredible gift to mankind. Diplomatic cables leaked there showed me that the USA explicitly interfered in my country's attempt to develop a space program because they don't want us to have rocket and therefore missile technology. They actually wanted to use my country for launches due to it being under the equator but only if they could leave us out of it entirely, no one would even be able to enter the premises.

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

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Post by cloverich » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 4:38 PM UTC

cbaly wrote: post #387

wolverine876 wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the 1990s there were loads of superstar Black actors. I think if you look at overall black representation among actors, you will see it was very low. If you look for some in your memory, you will find them of course. Even now, almost everything is led by a white person. Even in animation, almost everyone is white. Or look at sci-fi movies, where there are often as many or more alien species as non-white humans.…

Quoted post unavailable.

> completely defined by their racial group

I don't know much about CRT but when I google high ranking results[1], the very first tenet is literally the opposite of your claim: Recognition that race is not biologically real but is socially constructed and socially significant.

[1]: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_r...

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

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Post by shkkmo » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 4:41 PM UTC

aaaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #452

shkkmo wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The origins of WWII have a lot to do with they way what WWI ended. Germany was blockaded and the german people were starved until they were forced to sign a very one-sided treaty. The holocaust, which is undeniably evil, is used to to hide all the other evils that lead up to WWII or were committed during it. This capped by the completely unnecessary nuclear bombing of Nagasaki by the US. WWII was not actually an exce…

Don’t forget the forced relocation of Germans after WWII, where the death toll is still debated, but could be as high as 2 million. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Germ... Also, the systematic destruction of civilian targets by allied bombing campaigns: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_bombing_directive Another example is the systematic starvation of German populace in the post-war years,…

I left out sooo many things.

Real history is complicated and messy. If you believe any war was just "good vs. evil" you are buying into propaganda.

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

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Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 4:41 PM UTC

wadadadad wrote: post #450

_xnmw wrote: post #436

As a person who grew up without a television at home (I was homeschooled in Canada), this is strikingly obvious. Even the differences in mentality and worldview between those who grew up watching American TV shows and those who didn't is immediately obvious to me within 5 minutes of having a casual conversation. One of the reasons I left Canada and moved to Eastern Europe is for the refreshing change in monoculture:…

What features or differences make this "strikingly obvious"? What conversation subjects do you talk about in a 5 minute casual conversation that demonstrate a person has consumed American TV shows?

[deleted]

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

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Post by SuoDuanDao » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 4:42 PM UTC

CodeGlitch wrote: post #252

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

White supremacy is the belief that white people and whiteness should hold power over black and brown people. No one in my social circles uses “wokeness” at all, certainly never seriously. It always seems like people upset at “wokeness” are actually just upset that people producing popular media support very simple concepts of diversity. Like when black actors get representation in media previously dominated by white…

> Like when black actors get representation in media previously dominated by white people, to me that is just a good thing, but I see reports that many think this is “wokeness”, which they think is bad. In the 90s Will Smith starred in Independence Day, and absolutely no one complained (as far as I know) because Will Smith is awesome and he deserved the role. See also Blade from the same era. People get upset when it…

>I can't actually think of any movies that have done this

The Dark Tower was a sore spot for me. The protagonist was a character inspired by Clint Eastwood and was depicted as fair skinned in every piece of cover art and spinoff before Idris Elba was cast in the role. Blackwashing a character fans of the story all imagined as white really underscored how little appreciation the movie makers had for the source material.