A perfect example of this process of public manipulation by the Department Of Defense is the movie ‘Act Of Valor’ which was released this year. The project actually started out as a high budget MILITARY RECRUITMENT FILM, and then morphed into a concept for a full length movie which features real life special-ops personnel and unprecedented access to military technology and machinery. Though the DoD claims it did not directly fund the film in any way, it did provide nearly every set piece that was essential to the movie’s creation, including the actors! The storyline of the flick was mediocre at its best, and shameless propaganda at its worst. So voracious is its one sided portrayal of the establishment war machine I believe it would make the likes of Goebells blush. If you have ever seen those BMW featurettes starring famous actors doing superhuman things in BMW vehicles, that is essentially what most Hollywood films about the U.S. military are now; multi-million dollar commercials designed to sell you on a candy-coated image of the military industrial complex.
Another fine contribution by the DoD to the land of cinema was ‘Black Hawk Down’, a movie which outlined the civil war in Somalia completely out of context, removing any reference to the U.S. involvement in the development of the crisis from the beginning as well as the influences of oil giants Chevron, Conoco, Phillips, and Amoco. They even went so far as to change the name of real-life Army Ranger John Stebbins (played by Ewen McGregor) to “John Grimes”. Why? Because John Stebbins had been convicted to a 30 year prison term for molesting a girl under the age of 12, and this did not reflect well on the film’s message of purity and brotherhood in arms. After Black Hawk Down had been thoroughly edited to the liking of the U.S. military, the movie was released, and the premier was attended by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Oliver North, and numerous high profile generals.
This is not to say that there are not great men and women in the American Armed Forces; there certainly are. But, there are NO great men or women writing the foreign and domestic policies that our military follows today. None.
At its current pace, it is only a matter of time before the government cuts out Hollywood altogether, blatantly establishes its own film studio, and directly funds television and film media extravaganzas singing the praises of the grand Politburo…
