Hollywood's dirty little secret

[james1441]

Operation Hollywood

“You must glorify war in order to get the public to accept the fact that your going to send their sons and daughters to die.”

Never let the absurdities of history get in the way of a box-office blockbuster.

The inside story of the cozy relationship between big box office American war movies and the Pentagon

informationclearinghouse.info/article8163.htm

 

[jennyr]

yikes

 

[Liberalsaved]

Scary, but a tactic that has been both true and utilized since the days when talking about Hollywood would have gotten you funny looks. The blame for that sort of thing is far more on militaries than on Hollywood.

 

[Chickamauga]

Trying to shift the conspiratorial “blame” onto the “militaries” is equally ridiculous.

 

[Liberalsaved]

Trying to shift the conspiratorial “blame” onto the “militaries” is equally ridiculous.

Oh so? Militaries have glorified war for millenia. To place the blame on Hollywood, which has been in existence for a little more than a century, is most ridiculous of all. If this is true, then Hollywood is simply another tool the military uses to make war seem like wonderful heroics.

At any rate, I say “if”. I’m fairly sure the new, more common breed of war movie, in which violence and death are depicted accurately, do not fall in this catagory. I can testify that Saving Private Ryan, Enemy at the Gates, We Were Soldiers and The Thin Red Line don’t exactly stir a passion for war in me.

 

[KayDeeNici]

Depends on if the movie(s) fall into the “Greek heroic” category or the “Byronic hero” category. Read The Norton Book of Modern War (1991) ed. by Paul Fussell and see what the modern view of war says, vs. the Hollywood view. Oh, and Jarhead is another good read.

 

[Chickamauga]

The acsertion that the “militaries” are behind some grand conspiracy to glorify war is ludicrous. The people who actually go out and fight the wars are the ones who like it least:

"My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth. - George Washington, soldier & statesman

*“Although a soldier by profession, I have never felt any sort of *
*fondness for war, and I have never advocated it, *
*except as a means of peace.” - Ulysses S. Grant, soldier & statesman *

“What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.” - Robert E. Lee, soldier

“I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.” - William T. Sherman, soldier

“We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.” - Omar N. Bradley, soldier

“I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.” - Dwight D. Eisenhower, soldier & statesman