[mikejb]

Another country that comes to mind is India - but I've never been enough of a Bollywood fan to be able to make any assessment on this topic.

But it's a very effective tool to shape public opinion. I'm fairly certain without the overwhelmingly heroic portrait of (members of) the military, the public would be more inclined to question the huge investments that go into warfare. Particularly the display of highly achieved individuals in the military leads to both public respect of military members, and enlistings to service.

[crate_barre]

Pretty much. It’s no different that glorifying Gordon Gekko in Wallstreet.

Michael Douglas on why he doesn’t get why Gekko was an inspiration:

https://youtu.be/I8ruk8wjhuQ

We’re all vulnerable to this. Just here in tech we’ve deified the guy in a t-shirt/hoodie (zucks of the world) or mythical 10x programmers, built up and tore down people like Adam Neumann, all caricatures.

Propaganda works sadly.

With respect to war, it takes observing a war play out to realize how stupid it actually is. It took Americans 20 years of just watching Iraq/Afghanistan to conclude all that nationalism stuff is just not worth it at all. I don’t know how it’s all going to play out in the next 50 years, but I’m pretty sure in the aftermath of any American/Chinese conflict the conclusion of america-bad by the Chinese and China-bad by the Americans will just seem quite silly also.

[unmole]

Haider is the only Indian movie that I can think of that doesn't take the establishment position when it comes to the portrayal of the armed forces.

More recently, a certain Canadian national has carved out a niche for himself by staring in ultra patriotic movies that are very popular with the Indian audience.

[saimiam]

And the dude in question peddles ceramic tiles made with “desh ki mitti” aka “soil of this country”. The hypocrisy rankles.

Still, it is clearly working because he’s ubiquitous while the erstwhile big 3 of Indian cinema have all but disappeared from ads.

FWIW, I hear he’s applying to become an Indian citizen again.

[unmole]

> FWIW, I hear he’s applying to become an Indian citizen again.

He claimed to have applied for an Indian passport in 2019. But then again he claimed he was an honorary citizen of Canada in the past. He's not exactly a reliable source.

[metb]

>Another country that comes to mind is India - but I've never been enough of a Bollywood fan to be able to make any assessment on this topic.

Curious why India came to mind especially if you are not able to make an assessment of this topic as you put it.