How Hollywood has helped militarism creep into American society

During World War II, the Office of War Information (OWI) declared that movies were an essential industry for morale and propaganda. The creation of this government office would mark the start of a long relationship between the government, Hollywood, and how Americans were manipulated in how they viewed their military. During the War, the Office of War Information enlisted many leading actors into the war effort including such great names as James Cagney, Clark Gable, Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth. With the release of The A Team starring the beautiful Jessica Biel and the handsome Liam Neeson, it appears the Department of Defense, has reinstituted the Office of War Information and enlisted a new group of Hollywood professionals to promote the military and a never ending war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Beginning with movies in the 1940s, like the classic Casablanca, to television shows of today such as NCIS and Army Wives, Hollywood has acted as both a mirror on how the American public perceives its military, and how political leaders have used Hollywood to shape public opinion. Taking a trip through television history over the last 50 years, an astute and alert citizen can see how militarism has creped into American society in the way the military is portrayed in movies and television shows.

During the Golden Age of television, long before the savage fighting in the Vietnam War would be beamed into American living rooms on a nightly basis, the military was often depicted in situation comedy shows such as Gomer Pyle (1964), Hogan’s Heroes (1965), and F Troop (1965). Due in part to large segments of the television industry having served their two-year draft requirement in the military during the 1950s and early 1960s, most of the sitcoms reflected the consensus on what life was like in the military. This consensus included inept officers like Colonel Klink in Hogan’s Heroes, oblivious of the fact that his prisoners were escaping on a daily basis, to bumbling and naïve officers like the one depicted in command of F troop. At the same time, the popular sitcom Gomer Pyle showed how the easy going common sense approach to most things in civilian life, were turned into bureaucratic nightmares of complexity and inefficiency for the recently drafted Gomer Pyle, played brilliantly by Jim Nabors.

With daily images of the Vietnam War being beamed into living rooms across America on a nightly basis, the American population soon began to view its military in a different perspective. The naïve and bumbling images of officers on television sitcoms like F Troop and Gomer Pyle were replaced with daily images of compassionless officers such as General Westmoreland and inept bureaucrats like Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. The iconic photograph of a Vietcong prisoner being executed on a street in Saigon in 1969 forever turned the majority of the American public against the war in Vietnam. The growing anti-war sentiment of the American people was reflected in the 1970 movie, M*A*S*H*, starring Elliot Gould, Donald Sutherland, and Robert Duvall, followed by a television sitcom based on the popular movie beginning in 1972.

Although the television show was about an Army medical hospital in the Korean War, the series was as much an allegory about the Vietnam War (still in progress when the series began) than a television series about the war on the Korean peninsula where over 36,000 American service members lost their lives. Reflecting the popular anti-war sentiment in the country at the time, M*A*S*H* often had plots involving civilian casualties, the bureaucratic inefficiency of the Pentagon, and the senseless nature of war. The years M*A*S*H* aired on television between 1972 and 1983, reflected the public’s general apathy and indifference toward the military and its political leaders in Washington DC. Compounding the public’s apathy toward the military after the Vietnam War was the Iranian hostage crisis and the subsequent failed rescue mission Operation Eagle Claw, which exemplified the poor condition and mission readiness of the US military.

Helped dramatically by the release of the American hostages released after 444 days of captivity on its first day in office, the Reagan administration used similar propaganda techniques used by the Office of War Information during World War II to gain public support for the use of the military. Although television executives did not know it at the time, the 1983 television series The A Team featuring a rogue band of special ops soldiers, would eerily resemble the actions of Colonel Oliver North and his use of mercenary soldiers in the jungles of central America during the Iran Contra Affair.

Beginning with the decision to send US military advisors to El Salvador in 1981, Ronald Reagan would use the US military over 20 times during his eight-year term in office. From battling the powerful Libyan air force in 1981 to invading and conquering the tiny island nation of Grenada in 1983, Ronald Reagan and his administration used these military incidents to demonstrate to the world that the United States military had recovered from its humiliating defeat in the Vietnam War. Helping the American public to heal the wounds of the Vietnam War, the television drama China Beach (1988) with the beautiful female lead of Dana Delany greatly contributed to more Americans having a more favorable opinion of the military and coming to terms with the Vietnam War. Reflecting the change in public opinion, other television shows and movies such as Major Dad (1989) and the movie Top Gun (1986) starring Tom Cruise as a handsome fighter Pilot, further helped to heal the wounds from the Vietnam War era.

At the end of the 1980s with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and America’s main adversary the Soviet Union defeated, the Pentagon faced the enormous challenge of justifying the size of its budget and its purpose. Almost as soon as the wall came crumbling down, President H.W. Bush and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher began talking about a peace dividend in order to help recover from an economic recession in 1989 and 1990 that was commanding their attention. Luckily, for the Pentagon and the large permanent armament industry, a former Middle East ally, Saddam Hussein, would give the Pentagon and the arms industry the justification it was seeking, when Iraq invaded the oil rich country of Kuwait. Perhaps encouraged by shadow government officials with connections to companies who would profit from any conflict in the Gulf, Saddam Hussein and the fourth largest military in the world would be quickly defeated by the United States and its allies.

Following the ending of the war, the failure to remove Saddam Hussein from power was reflected in an ever increasingly partisan atmosphere in American government. The television shows of the 1990s reflected the partisan divide in Washington with the pro military and conservative establishment represented in JAG (1995) battling a more progressive and liberal segment of population reflected in the television series The X Files (1993).

Although based largely on paranormal and extraterrestrial themes, the X-Files also explored topics involving government conspiracies and secret government agencies. While some of the episodes involving the government conspiracies were far fetched, most of the plots for these episodes were based on variations of actual CIA experiments and operations like giving students LSD and seeing if they could be used for mind control. While the series began to run out of interesting plots and government conspiracy cases for the FBI agents to investigate, any anti-government feelings the public might have been supporting were quickly marginalized after the country rallied around the flag after the September 2001 terrorist attacks.

Reflecting the constant exposure to an administration determined to use military power as the centerpiece of its foreign policy, the involvement of the military in civilian society and the growing use of military contractors was evident in the 2003 premier of the CBS television series, NCIS. Centered on a civilian character, the portrayal of the military in civilian settings, further seduced the American public and helped blur the line between the domestic uses of the military inside America.

Reflecting the perpetual state of war in America, and the existence of two segments in society where one segment experiences the sacrifices war demands and another that does not sacrifice anything, was the premier of the television show Army Wives (2007). In a surreal parallel television world, the lead female actress Catherine Bell, who played a Lt. Col on the television show JAG, stars in the television show Army Wives.

The release of The A Team further glorifies perpetual war and indoctrinates the American public to think that mercenary soldiers have the best interests of the American people in mind. In reality, as the political philosopher Nicolo Machiavelli warned Prince Lorenzo Medici in his classic book, The Prince, “The wise prince, therefore, has always avoided these arms and turned to his own; and has been willing rather to lose with them than to conquer with others, not deeming that a real victory which is gained with the arms of others.”

James Madison one of the founding fathers in America echoed this sentiment when he declared: A well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.

Unfortunately, unlike the noble and just cause of World War II, movies like The A-Team and television shows like JAG and NCIS characterize how Hollywood has helped militarism to creep into American society over the last 20 years, conditioning more Americans to feel comfortable with perpetual war and the use of mercenary soldiers.