6 ms·

American films often use military assets and personal, and give the military final cut on the films. They follow rules set by the navy, Air Force, etc to portra

American films often use military assets and personal, and give the military final cut on the films. They follow rules set by the navy, Air Force, etc to portray their personnel and decision making in a certain, glorifying way. This program has been rampant in US film, but it's arguably increased in it's offerings to film makers; more money, more sets, more extras--and more demands. Film franchises work with U.S. forces to produce recruitment material using the film's IP, story, actors and brand. Black Mirror, from memory, season 3 episode 5(?), a soldier fights a non-human enemy that is simply hiding from them. [Spoiler ahead] Turns out, military manipulation of the soldier's brain causes him to see non-humans where there are actually helpless humans. Independence Day 2 lent their story, one of fighting alien invasion, to US armed forces recruitment videos. Actors gave mock interviews about their brave children who fought the aliens, and viewers were encouraged to join the REAL armed forces to be like the fictional ones fighting the fictional enemy. This scratches the surface of what I mean to compare Cook's alleged requests to. Apple, without military money, asked writers to be sensitive of another nation. Their motive: a wider audience and more subscribers and customers. Heinous and selfish--sure, why not--but a far cry from recruiting folks to dump napalm on villages or use Iraqi farmers as target practice. As a freaking media company, producers and other executives ask for content and define the market in which they want to address. It sounds like that's all Apple's really done. And if they've actually made an effort to curb US propaganda about China, then, even better. But I think it's more about expanding to a very promising market.

codesushi42 7y ago
Independence Day 2 lent their story, one of fighting alien invasion, to US armed forces recruitment videos. Actors gave mock interviews about their brave children who fought the aliens, and viewers were encouraged to join the REAL armed forces to be like the fictional ones fighting the fictional enemy. And if they've actually made an effort to curb US propaganda about China, then, even better Your entire post is fake news, and sounds like CCP propaganda.
- izacus 7y ago
  Except that it's all true - Captain Marvel is for example the new example of US Air force using a hollywood movie to drive their recruitment. (It's kinda funny really - in the movie the hero returns to earth disgusted because she had to help with operations colonising neutral worlds. And then joins the Air Force.)
  - codesushi42 7y ago
    False equivalency. Daffy Duck fought the Nazis during WW2. What's your point? How is that the same as Apple asking others to bow to an authoritarian government? Hence why GP is fake news.
    - izacus 7y ago
      It's all one-sided marketing for one political side (the word for it is usually - propaganda). The only difference is that it's not the US who's holding the purse strings this time.
      - codesushi42 7y ago
        I guess you missed the bit about false equivalency. The US government is not the same as the CCP, as much as you'd like to fantasize it is. Maybe you would have repeated the same line if Disney was making cartoons for the Soviets or Nazis last century. And to that I say, bug off.
        izacus 7y ago
        No, the US government obviously isn't (yet) the same, although it has been far from trustworthy in this last term. However - if you want to make a moral argument against another side in a conflict, you need to make sure that you're actually standing on a moral high ground. At least if you want to recruit allies on your side. And, if you read the news, current US administration hasn't been treating their allies too well these last years. And US will need allies to resist Chinese influence. I don't hold any sympathy for the Chinese, but it's also hard to see how following just another bully in an unequal relationship would benefit my non-US government.
izacus 7y ago
Yeah, the fact that any appearance of US military assets requires Pentagon to approve the script means that Hollwood is unable to record a movie depicting modern US millitary in any critical or non-heroic manner. Is you look at the records, you can see that the requirements are very strict, to the point where many movies aren't even allowed to depict US millitary losing in larger combat operations. This obviously shifts the tone of any war movie to the point where we could almost call it propaganda. How can movies be true to history if they're not allowed to ever show a major player in a bad light?
- speedplane 7y ago
  > Yeah, the fact that any appearance of US military assets requires Pentagon to approve the script means that Hollwood is unable to record a movie depicting modern US millitary in any critical or non-heroic manner. Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon ... There are probably more movies critical of war than promoting it. Actually, the general theme is to display the senseless of war than to glorify it. To say hollywood is in the pocket of the pentagon is to ignore most of its history. China on the other hand, won't approve a movie if winnie the pooh appears in it.
  - izacus 7y ago
    Yes, movies about old operations can be made because you can get/mock hardware without military approval. But note how those are all more than 50 years in the past. And we didn't even get to censorship of any sexual content, where depictions of human bodies make sure that US will censor it. It's really hard to be sympathetic to this US hand-wringing where we've had our own content censored constantly under conservative American value system on American platforms.
    - jaynetics 7y ago
      Everyone knows about sexuality anyway, but not about all of the topics that China wants people not even to mention.
    - intended 7y ago
StreamBright 7y ago
Yes, and the top of that mainstream media is always pro-war. Just look at this, "liberal" pushing for war without knowing anything about that is really happening in the word. People have to explain why they are against war, and this is the norm. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y1nylDLW-Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y1nylDLW-Y
- seppin 7y ago
  You just referred to an entire media landscape as one thing, then linked a tulsi gabbard video falsely claiming she is "anti-war" (she is very pro-Russian bombs killing Syrians, even criticized Obama for not killing more Syrians under the guise of fighting terrorism). https://theweek.com/articles/855766/tulsi-gabbard-no-peacenik https://theweek.com/articles/855766/tulsi-gabbard-no-peaceni... I struggle to define this "anti-war anti-democrat anti-media (usually pro-Trump)" demographic I see online. Just a light scratch of the fingernail and their entire ideology falls apart.
seppin 7y ago
> American films often use military assets and personal, and give the military final cut on the films Which is a voluntary process. How does that compare to top down state censorship?
- noah-kun 7y ago
  I know some are weak at geography, law and business. It's fine. But Tim Cook, nor Apple, are leaders of China nor a state. If an executive asks for changes to remove homophobic comments from a Western film, they are not engaging in "top-down state censorship". That's just a person helping other people not be jerks.
  - seppin 7y ago
    > If an executive asks for changes to remove homophobic comments from a Western film, they are not engaging in "top-down state censorship". That's just a person helping other people not be jerks. I seriously have no idea what you are talking about. If I had to guess, you are comparing removing hate-speech to adding CCP propaganda. Those are the same thing. Can that possibly be right?
- aquadrop 7y ago
  It creates unfair competitive advantage against those who don't want to adhere to state approved propaganda.
PavlovsCat 7y ago
> a far cry from recruiting folks to dump napalm on villages or use Iraqi farmers as target practice It's not. People get recruited to look the other way as Uyghur graveyards get disappeared, not to mention what is done to people. The main difference is that the Winter Soldier hearings didn't just take place, you can still watch them on American websites, or buy the movie from American sellers. Or take this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Tribunal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Tribunal > The Russell Tribunal was included by historian Guenter Lewy as part of a "veritable industry publicizing alleged war crimes", as increasing numbers of American servicemen were stepping forward with published accounts of their experiences with atrocities, and scholars and peace organizations were holding tribunals dealing with war crimes. That is not at all comparable with the situation in China. And even as bad as COINTELPRO was, notice the difference between https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#Intended_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#Intended_effects and "disappear anyone deemed an enemy, disappear who talks about it, if the people protest, roll over them with tanks". We also don't only ever hear about the Kent State shooting from people living in exile, or see it in archives of non-US news organizations. There is propaganda on both sides, but basically zero criticism or reflection (allowed within earshot of the government) on just one of them. That the crickets are chirping under the CCP while atrocities of the US military are heavily publicized and discussed, also by American filmmakers and journalists, in itself says a lot.

codesushi42 7y ago

Independence Day 2 lent their story, one of fighting alien invasion, to US armed forces recruitment videos. Actors gave mock interviews about their brave children who fought the aliens, and viewers were encouraged to join the REAL armed forces to be like the fictional ones fighting the fictional enemy. And if they've actually made an effort to curb US propaganda about China, then, even better Your entire post is fake news, and sounds like CCP propaganda.

izacus 7y ago
Except that it's all true - Captain Marvel is for example the new example of US Air force using a hollywood movie to drive their recruitment. (It's kinda funny really - in the movie the hero returns to earth disgusted because she had to help with operations colonising neutral worlds. And then joins the Air Force.)
- codesushi42 7y ago
  False equivalency. Daffy Duck fought the Nazis during WW2. What's your point? How is that the same as Apple asking others to bow to an authoritarian government? Hence why GP is fake news.
  - izacus 7y ago
    It's all one-sided marketing for one political side (the word for it is usually - propaganda). The only difference is that it's not the US who's holding the purse strings this time.
    - codesushi42 7y ago
      I guess you missed the bit about false equivalency. The US government is not the same as the CCP, as much as you'd like to fantasize it is. Maybe you would have repeated the same line if Disney was making cartoons for the Soviets or Nazis last century. And to that I say, bug off.
      - izacus 7y ago
        No, the US government obviously isn't (yet) the same, although it has been far from trustworthy in this last term. However - if you want to make a moral argument against another side in a conflict, you need to make sure that you're actually standing on a moral high ground. At least if you want to recruit allies on your side. And, if you read the news, current US administration hasn't been treating their allies too well these last years. And US will need allies to resist Chinese influence. I don't hold any sympathy for the Chinese, but it's also hard to see how following just another bully in an unequal relationship would benefit my non-US government.

izacus 7y ago

Yeah, the fact that any appearance of US military assets requires Pentagon to approve the script means that Hollwood is unable to record a movie depicting modern US millitary in any critical or non-heroic manner. Is you look at the records, you can see that the requirements are very strict, to the point where many movies aren't even allowed to depict US millitary losing in larger combat operations. This obviously shifts the tone of any war movie to the point where we could almost call it propaganda. How can movies be true to history if they're not allowed to ever show a major player in a bad light?

speedplane 7y ago
> Yeah, the fact that any appearance of US military assets requires Pentagon to approve the script means that Hollwood is unable to record a movie depicting modern US millitary in any critical or non-heroic manner. Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon ... There are probably more movies critical of war than promoting it. Actually, the general theme is to display the senseless of war than to glorify it. To say hollywood is in the pocket of the pentagon is to ignore most of its history. China on the other hand, won't approve a movie if winnie the pooh appears in it.
- izacus 7y ago
  Yes, movies about old operations can be made because you can get/mock hardware without military approval. But note how those are all more than 50 years in the past. And we didn't even get to censorship of any sexual content, where depictions of human bodies make sure that US will censor it. It's really hard to be sympathetic to this US hand-wringing where we've had our own content censored constantly under conservative American value system on American platforms.
  - jaynetics 7y ago
    Everyone knows about sexuality anyway, but not about all of the topics that China wants people not even to mention.
  - intended 7y ago

StreamBright 7y ago

Yes, and the top of that mainstream media is always pro-war. Just look at this, "liberal" pushing for war without knowing anything about that is really happening in the word. People have to explain why they are against war, and this is the norm. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y1nylDLW-Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y1nylDLW-Y

seppin 7y ago
You just referred to an entire media landscape as one thing, then linked a tulsi gabbard video falsely claiming she is "anti-war" (she is very pro-Russian bombs killing Syrians, even criticized Obama for not killing more Syrians under the guise of fighting terrorism). https://theweek.com/articles/855766/tulsi-gabbard-no-peacenik https://theweek.com/articles/855766/tulsi-gabbard-no-peaceni... I struggle to define this "anti-war anti-democrat anti-media (usually pro-Trump)" demographic I see online. Just a light scratch of the fingernail and their entire ideology falls apart.

seppin 7y ago

> American films often use military assets and personal, and give the military final cut on the films Which is a voluntary process. How does that compare to top down state censorship?

noah-kun 7y ago
I know some are weak at geography, law and business. It's fine. But Tim Cook, nor Apple, are leaders of China nor a state. If an executive asks for changes to remove homophobic comments from a Western film, they are not engaging in "top-down state censorship". That's just a person helping other people not be jerks.
- seppin 7y ago
  > If an executive asks for changes to remove homophobic comments from a Western film, they are not engaging in "top-down state censorship". That's just a person helping other people not be jerks. I seriously have no idea what you are talking about. If I had to guess, you are comparing removing hate-speech to adding CCP propaganda. Those are the same thing. Can that possibly be right?
aquadrop 7y ago
It creates unfair competitive advantage against those who don't want to adhere to state approved propaganda.

PavlovsCat 7y ago

> a far cry from recruiting folks to dump napalm on villages or use Iraqi farmers as target practice It's not. People get recruited to look the other way as Uyghur graveyards get disappeared, not to mention what is done to people. The main difference is that the Winter Soldier hearings didn't just take place, you can still watch them on American websites, or buy the movie from American sellers. Or take this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Tribunal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Tribunal > The Russell Tribunal was included by historian Guenter Lewy as part of a "veritable industry publicizing alleged war crimes", as increasing numbers of American servicemen were stepping forward with published accounts of their experiences with atrocities, and scholars and peace organizations were holding tribunals dealing with war crimes. That is not at all comparable with the situation in China. And even as bad as COINTELPRO was, notice the difference between https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#Intended_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#Intended_effects and "disappear anyone deemed an enemy, disappear who talks about it, if the people protest, roll over them with tanks". We also don't only ever hear about the Kent State shooting from people living in exile, or see it in archives of non-US news organizations. There is propaganda on both sides, but basically zero criticism or reflection (allowed within earshot of the government) on just one of them. That the crickets are chirping under the CCP while atrocities of the US military are heavily publicized and discussed, also by American filmmakers and journalists, in itself says a lot.