When you watch any American blockbuster, you should think that what you are looking at is probably not just a neutral work of art, but a carefully hidden Export of American culture and other propaganda goals. In fact, according to a batch of non-public documents obtained by the American journalist Tom Secker, an article published in the independent media Mint Press revealed that a considerable part of the hundreds of film and television media programs produced in the United States before this were involved by the military or other government agencies, especially some military-themed films, where every line and frame of image was carefully reviewed by the military and signed by senior leaders. All of this work is designed to persuade the audience to be more supportive of the U.S. war operations around the world.
Behind many Hollywood blockbusters, the export of American culture and war propaganda are carefully hidden
Hollywood played an important role in this process. In recent years in particular, they have consciously or unconsciously cooperated with the Pentagon to make positive propaganda for the war in Afghanistan, helping the latter artificially boost American public interest and support for the killings in Afghanistan. This collaboration involves both directly editing and controlling the content of the script and removing any content or scenarios that might be detrimental to the military. In exchange, the U.S. military generously provided human resources, film shooting venues, and various high-tech equipment such as vehicles and airplanes, making Hollywood profit billions of dollars as it wished. This kind of trading behavior has turned Hollywood and the entire film and television entertainment industry into a hegemonic "cheerleaders".
Tom Seck, an independent journalist who unveils the military's manipulation of Hollywood
Through the documents obtained by Tom Seck, it is clear how large the military's involvement in film and pop culture is. For example, between 2015 and 2017, the U.S. Army's Western Director of Public Affairs Office (OCPA-W) — which happens to be "located" on the outskirts of Hollywood, California — typically intervened in 40 to 70 media and entertainment projects simultaneously, playing a variety of roles as script review, production consulting, talent training, and on-site coaching. OCPA-W is one of the Army's 3 regional offices, with the other 2 offices located in Chicago and New York. In addition, the Navy, The Air Force, coast guard, CIA, and other government organizations have similar agencies that manipulate their image in the mass media. For example, according to OOPA-W's weekly summary for the week of December 22, 2016, it was working on 63 projects, or 63 films, including 15 in the pre-production stages, 26 in the production process, and 22 in post-production. In their 2017 book, National Security Films, Tom Syke and Matthew Alford noted that the U.S. Department of Defense has supported or participated in the production of at least 814 films and 1,133 independent television programs, most of which have been in recent years.
OCPA-W and similar agencies are deeply involved in and control American film and pop culture
Before the war in Afghanistan, the country was virtually far removed from the usual American perception, and Hollywood had no interest in it. But after 9/11, everything was different. When the country appears frequently on screen, it does not indicate that the top americans want the public to scrutinize the legitimacy of the military or the U.S. government there, but rather to ensure that the war is presented in a way that best serves its interests. Especially when the 20-year occupation period ended, the US military hastily and shamefully retreated, the Afghan puppet regime set up by NATO lasted less than 2 weeks, and former President Ashraf Ghani fled to the UAE with $170 million in cash. This still requires Hollywood to "round up lies", turn "aggression" into "liberation", "killing" into "construction", and "defeat" into "glory". Here are 5 case studies of films about the war in Afghanistan or the setting of it, and see how Hollywood did this and how it worked with the military to "pre-process" these films before they appeared in the public eye.
Hollywood is an expert in creating an "American image" and a master of "round lies"
I. The Twelve Warriors (2018)
Based on a true story, the film tells the story of a 595 detachment of 12 elite U.S. special forces forces who entered Afghanistan after 9/11 and joined forces with Dostum's anti-Taliban forces in an attempt to capture Mazar-e-Sharif before NATO forces arrived. "If we don't capture the city, the World Trade Center is just the beginning," says one of the film's heroes. The film mentions "50,000 Taliban and al-Qaida personnel" as if they were close allies rather than sworn enemies. In fact, the Taliban's attitude toward the 9/11 attacks was to immediately condemn it, and according to Western estimates, al-Qaida had fewer than 100 members around the world at the time.
In 12 Warriors, the preconceived notions of The Antithesis of The United States are all labeled terrorists
Documents obtained by Seck show that the military rushed to help with such a chauvinistic film to meet what they called "breathtaking" requirements, including allowing film crews to enter multiple military bases in New Mexico for filming, providing costumes for actors, various "target" vehicles that could be blown up, helping to rent multiple aircraft, including Chinook and Seahawk helicopters, and Soviet tanks used to play enemy forces, and even helping production companies recruit extras to play mass roles.
The revised script portrays all 12 warriors as bearded, brave, and rugged
Despite the strong militant message of the script, OCPA-W, the Air Force, and other military organizations insisted on combing through the script over and over again, removing any small inappropriate details. This included asking the writers to change their plans and portray the 12 warriors as rugged men with beards and tattoos on their necks, which were not actually portrayed in the U.S. military at the time. Weeks later, this seemingly insignificant problem remains unresolved. To show how strong the military's control over the creative direction is, OCPA threatened to withdraw from the film, alerting the production companies via an email to the agreement they signed: "If disagreements about the image cannot be resolved through negotiations within 72 hours, the Department of Defense will retain the right to suspend support (filmed for the filming of the film)..."
The Ministry of Defense is well aware that the free equipment, shooting locations, and other help they provide is not impossible for production companies to obtain independently, and the cost of use is very expensive, and any production company has to consider it. As a result, the military uses their influence to control every aspect of the movie or TV show they produce. This even means going against facts, such as the OCPA instructing production companies about Sergeant Sam Keele, one of the 12 Warriors, to change his experience of losing his job in a bar fight, although this is entirely true.
The Ministry of Defense provided free equipment and filming locations for the producers of 12 Warriors
Hollywood has always been pragmatic, and the production team quickly agreed to the changes, sending a new script a few weeks later for approval by the OCPA and the Air Force. They replied in an email. "We changed the backstory based on your suggestions. Please tell me if this suits your requirements? "None of the military's requests seem to have met with major resistance within the production company. In fact, at the end of the shooting, a senior member of the production team even emailed OPPA and the Office of the Secretary of Defense to express "deep gratitude" for the latter's service: "... The whole team, including the Army personnel, was brilliant and helped us shoot the amazingly effective shooting scene tonight. They are all the most professionals who are trained. We know that if it wasn't for the tremendous effort you put into making this movie, we would never have had such a team, so thank you! ”
The Lone Survivor (2013)
Lone Survivor tells the true story of the Navy SEALs who were discovered and countered by the Navy SEALs during a special operation to assassinate Taliban commander Ahmed Shah. The Navy SEALs suffered devastating damage, leaving only one man— Marcus Letreer — to tell the story. The film's plot revolves around the commandos who stumble upon a local shepherd and how to make a decision about whether to kill the shepherd to cover up or risk exposing himself to release him. In the end, the team members decided to let their captives leave, which almost immediately proved to be a fatal mistake, and the shepherds reported their whereabouts to the Taliban.
The central contradiction and controversy in Lone Survivor comes from the treatment of the three local shepherds
The story is based on a book by real survivor Marcus Letreer, who is now a particularly trump-admiring media anchor in the conservative television outlet "The Blaze." Letrell's book reads like a white supremacist manifesto and is filled with his intense hatred of liberals. Letrell regretted his decision to agree to let the Afghans go, without insisting on his instincts to silence the shepherd and his two children. "This is the stupidest, southernest, stupidest decision I've ever made in my life," he wrote. ...... I became a liberal, an illogical idiot, wholeheartedly, without a brain. At the time he told the other SEALs: "You all have to understand that the bodies [of three people] will be found and the Taliban will make the most of it." They will report in the newspapers, and the Liberal American media will attack us mercilessly. We will almost certainly be charged with murder. ”
The white supremacist rhetoric in Marcus Letreer's original book disappears entirely from the script
Marcus Letreer's book extolls the so-called righteous violence against "non-human" opponents. As he elaborates: "In the global war on terror, we have rules that our adversaries use against us." We try to be reasonable, but they do whatever it takes. They will use any form of means: torture, beheading, mutilation, attacks on innocent civilians, women and children, as well as car bombs, suicide bombs, and anything else they can think of. ”
The original script is very close to the description of the events in LeTrell's book. Needless to say, the military demanded a major rewrite of the script. In the finalized version, the Navy SEALs commander simply decided to let the herders go, without arguing whether to kill them and hide their bodies, and certainly without the aggressive language of the liberal media as in the book.
The revision of the script of "Lone Survivor" is also intended to maintain the image of the US military
The military often claims that they meddle in film and television media productions, simply to ensure that the description of the event itself or the military is more accurate. However, by reading the 131-page declassified email between them and The company Film 44, which is responsible for producing the film, it became clear that this was not the case. In fact, Philip Strub, chief Hollywood liaison officer at the Department of Defense, made it clear in an email: "While it is our task to restore historical authenticity to the maximum extent possible, we still have responsibility for the reputation of the 4 SEALs and the memories of their families." ”
Philip Strub is a figure of great influence on Hollywood but unknown
Strub and his colleagues insisted on removing some details from the script, such as visible tattoos on the Navy SEALs, as well as part of the dialogue, to ensure that the image of the 4 members was not as rude as Letrel portrayed in his own book. "I just learned from Sarah and Braden at Film 44 that they're ready to submit to us the latest iteration of Pete. They said that they had checked one by one against our requirements and addressed all our concerns. You'll soon receive a watermarked script via email," Strub wrote in an email, suggesting that every draft script for the film needed to meet the military's strict standards. Strub is one of the most powerful people in the entertainment industry, yet his name is hardly known to the public. In exchange, the military provided the producers of Lone Survivor with access to Cortland Air Force Base in the rocky and sandy region of New Mexico, which is very similar in topography to Afghanistan; to deploy a large number of expensive military aircraft, including the Black Hawk and Apache, as well as professional paratroopers and various other military personnel.
The position of Philip Strub (later) represents the position of the U.S. government
Of particular note for the film, its entire premise — that if the SEALs choose not to kill the shepherds, they will be discovered — is clearly untenable. Interviews with locals, including those who later hid and protected Letrell, confirmed that everyone there knew where the SEALs were. Thanks to the absurdity of mission objectives and the inability of elite forces to hide their tracks, a huge American helicopter roared down on Afghanistan's most remote rural area, leaving behind evidence of a landing that was enough to arouse the suspicion of any obtuse militant. Strubu and his colleagues successfully used "potential alternative reading," and what you see in the movie is the humanitarian feat and brotherhood of 4 heroes, masking the fact that a group of clumsy Americans were defeated and killed in a clumsy operation. Although this part of the film is about one of the deadliest U.S. military blunders in the entire Afghan war, the audience will still be enthusiastic after watching it, supporting the military and government's actions in Afghanistan, so that Strub's purpose is achieved.
Lone Survivor itself is doomed to be a failed operation
Charlie Wilson's War (2007)
"Charlie Wilson's War" tells the story of the Texas politician of the same name, who is known for promoting "Operation Whirlwind"— the CIA funding and training Afghan resistance groups to resist Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the collateral consequences of this operation made Afghanistan the world's largest drug producer. The original script did not show particular sympathy for Wilson or his efforts, and made clear his support for extremists like Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.
Charlie Wilson's War changes from neutrality to a positive stance
In the original screenplay, 9/11 was seen as one of the foreseeable consequences of American support for these fanatics. In fact, the original script ended in the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, when Wilson heard the deafening screams of an airliner about to crash into the building. However, all of this, including al-Qaida and all 9/11-related scenarios, was removed from the script after the CIA review. Instead, the film ends with Wilson receiving a medal for his contribution to "freedom" in Afghanistan.
The ending of Charlie Wilson's War has been subversively modified
In addition, scenes discussing the massacre in the Beirut refugee camp, where Israeli-backed Christian militias massacred between 800 and 3,500 Palestinian refugees, were also removed from the film. Early versions of the play also evaluated the Soviets relatively fairly, with one character pointing out that soviet "atrocities" in Afghanistan included "forcing them (afghans) to learn to read and write." The line was also removed to make it easier to portray Soviet soldiers as savage monsters that slaughtered the local population without thinking.
IV. Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot (2016)
It's a paramount pictures biopic comedy starring Tina Fey, Margot Robbie and Martin Freeman that tells the story of an English-speaking journalist sent to Kabul, the afghan capital, where he chronicles the life of civilians during the war. The film was a box office flop, but it was filmed through Cortland Air Force Base in New Mexico (like Lone Survivor) and using the real U.S. Marine Corps as an extra, significantly reducing losses. In exchange, the producers handed over the editorial rights to the script to the military.
Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot reflects the lives of journalists based in Afghanistan
The military insisted on changing the scene in which a U.S. military truck crashed into a group of civilians. It was a real incident that took place in 2006 when the truck swept through the streets of Kabul during rush hour, killing at least three civilians and injuring many others. However, there is no specific footage of the incident in the released film, but instead mentioned in a news clip about 20 seconds long, describing it only as a "fatal traffic accident involving a military truck".
Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot's exposure to U.S. military atrocities has been drastically reduced
"Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot" is adapted from the memoir of American journalist Kim Barker, "Taliban Shuffle". The truck incident is highly important in the book because it made her finally understand how pointless and unwinnable this war was, how there was no accountability for the rich and the strong, no justice for the poor and civilians, and she described it and the ensuing anti-American unrest as "a major turning point in Afghanistan when we first saw how angry some Afghans were, how lacking leadership the Afghan nation was, and how ripe the time was for the Taliban to make a comeback." In the film, however, the incident is mentioned only in passing, and the unrest in Afghanistan looks like irrational anger and violence, which is the typical impression that Afghan war movies bring to the audience.
V. Iron Man (2008)
The original Iron Man script was absolutely pacifist, with the protagonist Tony Stark trying to use his vast manufacturing empire to counter war merchants and military-industrial complexes. However, after the Pentagon stepped in and Philip Strub again served as a military liaison, the tone of the film changed radically. Most of the battles in the film take place in modern Afghanistan, where the U.S. military plays the role of the "division of justice," and the film's stance on the war is reversed. In exchange, the production agreement states that the military will allow the film to be filmed at Edwards Air Force Base north of Los Angeles, which will provide about 150 cast members to play military and Afghan civilians from various branches of the military, while helping to make 100 uniforms and provide access to a range of expensive military aircraft.
The protagonist's position on war in Iron Man is fundamentally reversed
Of course, the Pentagon's focus isn't limited to Hollywood movies with billions of dollars in budgets. Virtually every type of media is used to spread the message of militaristic belligerence, even pop culture. Pop star Katie Perry's song "Part of Me," for example, was filmed at Camp Pendleton Military Base in California, showing a girl who rediscovers her worth and grows up by joining the Marine Corps. At the time, Fox News asked Perry's team if they would pay the military for the filming, which declined to answer. The video is currently viewed 887 million times on YouTube. "The idea for the whole video came directly from [Nazi filmmaker] Lenny Riefenstahl: the same angles, the heroic upward shots, the same fascination with physical strength, glittering weapons, and the condensation of living individuals into rigorous military units." Critic Naomi Wolfe wrote that she called the song "war propaganda." The declassified documents also show that OCPA-W meticulously planted military spectators on the game show "The Price is Right"; the military paid millions of dollars to the National Football League to use large-scale matches as the scene of recruitment activities; and even set up a video game team called "U.S. Army Esports" to connect the military with the fun of kids.
Katie Perry's "Part of Me" MTV is full of belligerence and provocation