[tptacek]

Full Metal Jacket.

• Three Kings.

• In The Valley of Elah.

Good Morning Vietnam.

A Few Good Men.

Platoon.

• Jarhead.

Casualties Of War.

• The Men Who Stare At Goats.

The Deer Hunter.

The Thin Red Line.

• Syriana.

• The Green Zone.

• Stop Loss.

Also, • HBO's "Generation Kill".

(•'d relatively recent movies)

I don't think "The Hurt Locker" was particularly critical of the military and didn't count it. Also not counting documentaries like "Restrepo".

I hereby dispute the idea that the DOD has made it impossible for big-budget Hollywood movies to criticize the US military, and suggest instead that the bias Hollywood in favor of the military is responding to customer preferences and not leading it. Given what I presume to be America's default position of "supporting our troops", I'm struck by how many films Hollywood produce that challenge that default.

Remember also that Hollywood confronts at least two vectors of consumer preference in marketing films: first, Americans (in the large) have a (typical) diffuse nationalistic home-team support for our overseas adventures, and, more importantly, there's a less-political less-issue-oriented reverence expected for the sacrifices made by the young people we send into combat which is especially intense during times when large numbers of people are serving in combat zones. In other words, it's especially tricky to criticize the military during active conflicts.

Also, Three Kings is a fantastic movie.

[dobbsbob]

Three Kings actually paints the military in a good light as benevolent, and ultimately having the best interests of the Iraqi people: http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/theatrefilm/projector/page91...

[tptacek]

No, Three Kings paints a few AWOL oddballs on a quest to steal a treasure as benevolent, and apart from the whole theme of the movie being the ill impact of our involvement in the Middle East, goes out of its way to talk about how the US military killed children.

[michaelt]

Three Kings is critical of the decision to encourage and promise to support an uprising by anti-Saddam Iraqis, then failing to deliver that support/not invading.

Whether you respond to this criticism by saying "we shouldn't have encouraged it" or "we should have invaded" or just "ain't war hell" depends on your politics, of course :)

[tptacek]

It's also critical of:

* The training of US Army soldiers, who kill innocent and/or surrendering Iraqis,

* the relationship between the US Army and the media and the careful control the military exerts over the media,

* the entire US mission in the (first) Iraq war ("what are we doing here?", &c),

* the American bombing of Iraqi civilian centers, which, in a long monologue that is basically the heart of the movie, are revealed to have killed the antagonist's baby son.

There is no way to watch this movie and come away thinking that it glorifies the US military.

(Also: it's a great movie that is nothing like what it's marketing suggested it was; it's David O. Russell, who is a smart and funny storyteller, and is not a Clooney/Wahlburg action vehicle; if you haven't seen it, do! It's not a masterpiece of American cinema, but it's thoroughly engaging. Three stars.)

[tsotha]

>I hereby dispute the idea that the DOD has made it impossible for big-budget Hollywood movies to criticize the US military, and suggest instead that the bias Hollywood in favor of the military is responding to customer preferences and not leading it.

Yeah, the problem with anti-military movies is nobody wants to watch them. It certainly hasn't been a lack of effort on the part of film producers.

[scott_karana]

Are you kidding me? Many movies on that list are both critical and box-office successes.

[tsotha]

Well, critical success means nothing. As far as financial success goes, post 1991 there isn't much.

[scott_karana]

I'm not sure if there's data to back it, but my guess would be that critical success correlates to a longer, slower run-out of money, as opposed to box-office returns. Would be an interesting analysis.

[beedogs]

I hereby dispute the idea that the DOD has made it impossible for big-budget Hollywood movies to criticize the US military, and suggest instead that the bias Hollywood in favor of the military is responding to customer preferences and not leading it.

That's a bit difficult to defend in light of the fact that this film and Zero Dark Thirty were demonstrably influenced by the DoD.

[tptacek]

It was not my argument that no films made in Hollywood were influenced by the DOD.

[clicks]

And my assertion wasn't that DOD has made it altogether impossible to create movies that shed America in a bad light, they've just made it really, really difficult.

When your competing movie has all kinds of bells and whistles, shots of real helicopters and aircraft carriers and all -- and you can't afford to have that because you don't have access to the stuff that the competing movie got for free, this puts you at a disadvantaged position at the box office. Movie production is pretty damn expensive: these days it's not at all surprising to see film production budgets exceed hundreds of millions of dollar (the last Pirate of the Caribbean cost $300 million to make). When movie studios are under the kind of financial pressure that they usually are -- leaving aside advertisement costs, this can actually be a make or break point for them. So, the government is incentivizing the production of a certain kind of movies... and we see the effects of that play out.

A recent Pew research piece revealed that 7% of Americans use Reddit, and the significant majority of that 7% is millennials. If you go to Reddit you probably know they overwhelmingly support Wikileaks (and/or Assange), so the argument that there's no demand for content that challenges America is very weak (whether it be related to the Wikileaks scandal or not). If a high production value movie unabashedly cast Assange as a hero without faults, the movie would be accepted fine by a sizable amount of people, it would make a lot of money: a lot of people see Assange as a mystical hero, they'd shell out money to see that movie.

[mpyne]

Actually if you go to Reddit you'll see that support for Assange is not universal, even on subreddits like /r/worldnews.

The day used to be that being negative of Assange at all got you "downvoted into oblivion", but that's no longer the case. People are even able to mention the idea that Assange might have actually did it without having their comment necessarily achieve negative karma.

For example, go read the /r/movies link talking about Benedict Cumberbatch's comments from Fifth Estate about the topics. Assange was certainly positively mentioned, but he had a lot of opposition as well, along with people simply keeping their minds open.

[tylerkahn]

One of the problem with your logic is that getting support from the US military would lessen the appeal of the film to the reddit demographic.

Another one that comes to mind is the fact that redditers believe it is their God given right to pirate movies.

[rayiner]

I'd bet only some tiny fraction of that 7% is part of the crowd that supports wiki leaks. Reddit is a very diverse community. My wife frequents several mommy/pregnancy subreddits. She's totally not on board with the political views you might see on /r/politics.

[rdtsc]

> When your competing movie has all kinds of bells and whistles, shots of real helicopters and aircraft carriers and all

But that's expected I presume. Military owns all those toys (well technically we as a people do but military is the one in charge of them). So if they want to see fit to use them for advertising whatever position they want they can. Most of the time it will be 'Merica Fuck Yeah! position.

Remember one of military's primary PR role is to attract young American men to join it. It is very conscious of marketing. If it also help promote a large goal of justifying war, torture and invasions, I imagine it is a secondary effect.

I don't even know how to possibly "fix" the perceived problem you pose. Make a law to disallow military to give, lend, advertise, promote? Maybe. Or force it to provide equipment, time and expertise to movies it doesn't want to support?

[jules]

> I hereby dispute the idea that the DOD has made it impossible for big-budget Hollywood movies to criticize the US military, and suggest instead that the bias Hollywood in favor of the military is responding to customer preferences and not leading it.

Of course it's not impossible. There is a scale from possible to impossible, and the truth is somewhere in between. Contrary to what you suggest: (1) clearly the DoD doesn't think that this propaganda strategy doesn't have a substantial effect, otherwise they wouldn't be spending their funding on it (2) clearly Hollywood's script writers think that their audience would prefer the original less pro-DoD script. It's not impossible to go with the original script, but the original script without aircraft carrier would be a less competitive movie than the modified script with aircraft carrier (according to Hollywood decision makers).

[pliny]

The scale is from easy to impossible.

[ChuckMcM]

Seriously, you omit Apocalypse Now? :-)

[tptacek]

Not recent enough!

[jdale27]

Apocalypse Now is more recent than The Deer Hunter.

[tptacek]

Yeah, I should have just added it.

[cam_l]

A bunch of exceptional films in that list.. you have good taste.

So, you acknowledge that there is a default, and that the films you mention challenge that default. I think everyone can agree on this.

Why are films like 'the thin red line' or 'full metal jacket' so powerful. The only pro-american-military film which I can remember having such a deep impact on me was 'black hawk down', and I think we all know the story behind that one.. I would argue that they tell a truth, and in the face of 60 years (give or take) of holywood military propaganda. And what does it matter that a dozen critical films come out over a thirty year period when, lets say 50 films a year come out pro-military.

Breaking it down your essential argument is - there is no propaganda because people like the propaganda. Question you should be asking is, who created that default?

[chrischen]

The default is in the hearts and minds of the American public. The American public usually are not anti-military, even if they are anti-war. They usually oppose military policy set by the administration, and not the soldiers or the military itself.

If Hollywood went against this mindset, they'd be going against the default, and they would need good reason to do so.

[eru]

Interestingly, the consensus respect for the military is relatively recent (i.e. since WWII). See http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21586311-america...

[cam_l]

That is just such a lazy answer, and to a question i did not even ask.

I would point you back to my original comment (which you either did not read, or did not understand) but for fear that it may create a recursive loop from which there may be no escape.

[chrischen]

Did you edit your response after I posted mine?

Anyways, the world isn't a ball which is pushed once and moves with constant velocity.

There are always forces tugging and pushing to modify the default. So unless the military is actively changing the default, they aren't not manipulating the default.

[cam_l]

No I did not, but thanks for the clarification.. which I quite like (though I don't really understand the double negative).

I think along pretty similar lines, and the ball analogy is quite apt. It took a lot of propaganda to get the ball moving in the first place, but only takes a little bit to keep it going in the same direction. But make no mistake, it is manipulation and it is forced, however gentle that force may be..

[tptacek]

My argument isn't that there's no propaganda.

[cam_l]

For the record, I understood that your assertion about 'the bias' against the relative impact of propaganda is not the same as 'there is no propaganda'.. I concede my pointless hyperbole clouded my argument.

However, implicit in your assertion is that the effect plays a minor role, whereas I would argue it plays a compounding role. My contention is given time and a reduction in military involvement, the marketability of pro-war propaganda would naturally decrease.

[malandrew]

I haven't seen all those movies, but I have seen many of them and the thing that IIRC all of them have in common is that they all use props that Hollywood can get their hands on without the cooperation of the US Army, Navy or Air Force. For example, if you wanted a military helicopter in your movie, you can probably get your hands on one, but if you wanted an aircraft carrier, then you are going to have to cooperate.

The bright side is that CG is now good enough that you can recreate most of those props entirely digitally without relying on cooperation from the military. On top of that, it is probably now also cheaper to do so in CG than seeking any cooperation in the first place. Where cooperation is still needed is consulting work to keep things realistic, but even that can be had by employing private citizens that served previously.

[digitalengineer]

"Anybody's son will do" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0222730/ This documentary explains in great detail the nature of military basic training and its psychological component. It's on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DShDaJXK5qo