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The Pentagon and CIA have shaped thousands of movies into effective propaganda

worldbeyondwar.org

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

#31
post #16

"The loan was followed in 1948 by a free grant of $2.3 billion from the Marshall Plan, with no repayment. In exchange, French cinemas would replace the numerical quota with a "screen quota". This meant that French cinemas were required to show French-made films for four weeks out of every thirteen and leave the other nine weeks of every quarter open to free competition, namely from American films.[5]" https://en.wiki…

Wow that's insane. If China did that same thing today, we would be up in arms.

Spain has quotas for regional languages too, this made Netflix had to produce on those languages.

Governments keep doing this, it's just bad if the one doing it is also the -global- leader of right now...

Random article talking about this https://www.catalannews.com/culture/item/spain-s-netflix-law...

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

#32

Yes and everything else. "Walt Disney shaped 20+ Hollywood Films into Super Effective Marvel Ads"

US military has its fingers in Marvel to. Captain America, Iron Man, and Captain Marvel all used military assets in exchange for looking good

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

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point, I'm going to believe all conspiracy theories from now on.

There are three types of people circling around conspiracy theories. 1) Literate people who care about history and know that industry does what's best for profit at all costs. 2) People who don't read much looking for a hobby. 3) Liberals hoping to pass off their empty skepticism as allegiance to the mainstream.

> The term 'conspiracy theory' was itself a product on CIA influence operations in this country, specifically intended to squash interest in the assassination of JFK.

The ol' "conspiracy theory conspiracy": https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-conspiracy-theory-jfk-...

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

#34
post #12

I wonder if "Contagion" was propaganda. It really made me believe that if a SARS pandemic ever happened, a bunch of incredibly competent scientists and government agents would swoop in and save us all. The "Olympus Has Fallen" series also made me believe that if a mob ever stepped foot on the White House lawn, a bunch of auto turrets would pop up and gun them all down. The last few years has shown that the world is r…

Contagion got things pretty much spot-on. Conspiracy theorists with fake cures, political officials who fight mitigation measures, contact tracing, panic buying, at-home substitutes for school events, fairly rapid vaccine development and the initial scarcity of it.

The major difference was the mortality rate; the movie's virus killed something like 25%. One of the odd difficulties with COVID is it's deadly enough (especially pre-vaccine) to make a serious pile of excess deaths on a population-level scale, but low enough people can just get used to it.

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

#36
This effects not only the movies we see, but also influences which movies get made in the first place. There's little telling what kind of anti-war movies we might have gotten, which withered on the vine because producers knew it wouldn't be possible to make the movie on a reasonable budget to the standard audiences have come to expect (e.g. real aircraft instead of mediocre scale models or CGI.)

Try making an anti-Navy response to Top Gun; you won't get access to real fighter jets so your movie is doomed to look like second-rate shit, while simultaneously requiring a huge special effects budget to even get close. Bigger budget for an inferior product is a recipe for a commercial failure, so it just doesn't happen.

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

#37
post #20
post #10

Similar things have been said about the rise of FSP games. I’ve heard the military basically created FPS games for their combat simulators. They also pushed or gave money to developers to popularize FPS games. FPS=first person shooter.

I've never heard this argument ever for FPS games - the history of the FPS is extremely well documented. The earliest FPS games are frankly far too basic to be of much use for military training.

Indeed, the market demand for Doom was basically pre existing. There was a sort of assumption this was what people wanted and what was preventing it to that point was the technology.

I am not sure you see too many situations like that. Spotting them in advance is much harder than hindsight.

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

#38
post #12

I wonder if "Contagion" was propaganda. It really made me believe that if a SARS pandemic ever happened, a bunch of incredibly competent scientists and government agents would swoop in and save us all. The "Olympus Has Fallen" series also made me believe that if a mob ever stepped foot on the White House lawn, a bunch of auto turrets would pop up and gun them all down. The last few years has shown that the world is r…

[deleted]

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

#39
Someday, I hope, the general US voting public will get past this propaganda and become aware that they are an unwitting cog in a wheel of war and destruction across the world. We have been repeatedly lied to about how, when, and why the US engages in war, coups, and other violent actions disguised as "intelligence activities." These are powers the Constitution attempted to restrict to the people (e.g. congress), and not the executive branch.

One example, not many people know that Obama's administration unilaterally executed a 16 year old US citizen by drone. No trial, no rights, just killed by the CIA and military because his dad was a very bad guy. Trump did the same to his little sister years later.

Source: https://theintercept.com/2017/01/30/obama-killed-a-16-year-o...

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

#40
post #12

I wonder if "Contagion" was propaganda. It really made me believe that if a SARS pandemic ever happened, a bunch of incredibly competent scientists and government agents would swoop in and save us all. The "Olympus Has Fallen" series also made me believe that if a mob ever stepped foot on the White House lawn, a bunch of auto turrets would pop up and gun them all down. The last few years has shown that the world is r…

  > the world is run by a bunch of jokers, no different than me
Your (our) lack of audacity is the only difference.
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