Have you watched any movies about the Vietnam War? Like Casualties of War (1989) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097027/, Apocalypse Now (1979), etc : https://www.imdb.com/list/ls000091595/ To argue that Americans have been 'heavily indoctrinated in the US to believe a ton of bullshit' doesn't square up with the coverage and popular media about Vietnam that I've seen since I've been alive. Virtually all of the movies and press are about disillusioned soldiers, brutality, violence, lost causes, etc.
The North had Hanoi Hilton and Desert Inn and plenty of places it kept and tortured political dissidents and American POWs in violation of the Geneva convention. The Vietnam War was a giant mistake, a huge blunder, however, as others have mentioned the Korean war was fought under similar pretexts and no one regrets the U.S. stepping in to save South Korea.
I don't know whether or not the U.S. made all the right choices in the Cold War against the U.S.S.R. Would you prefer a world in which the U.S. hadn't engaged at all against Russia or stayed completely out of Asia (as well as European conflicts)? I don't know if the world that exists today would be better or worse off, really hard to say.
I don't think "The Hurt Locker" was particularly critical of the military and didn't count it. Also not counting documentaries like "Restrepo".
I hereby dispute the idea that the DOD has made it impossible for big-budget Hollywood movies to criticize the US military, and suggest instead that the bias Hollywood in favor of the military is responding to customer preferences and not leading it. Given what I presume to be America's default position of "supporting our troops", I'm struck by how many films Hollywood produce that challenge that default.
Remember also that Hollywood confronts at least two vectors of consumer preference in marketing films: first, Americans (in the large) have a (typical) diffuse nationalistic home-team support for our overseas adventures, and, more importantly, there's a less-political less-issue-oriented reverence expected for the sacrifices made by the young people we send into combat which is especially intense during times when large numbers of people are serving in combat zones. In other words, it's especially tricky to criticize the military during active conflicts.
>> You're going to have to run the movie by the Pentagon first to make sure it portrays "The Right Side of the Story".
You mean like Avatar? Or Redacted? Stop-Loss? Battle For Haditha? Green Zone? Or any of a host of other war movies made by Hollywood in the last 40 years that trash the US military to varying degrees. Go further back in time and you get movies like Casualties of War, Apocalypse Now, etc.
You accuse others of lying in the service of their politics, all the while you engage in that very thing. The term for this is projection.
Hacker Cinema
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Have you watched any movies about the Vietnam War? Like Casualties of War (1989) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097027/, Apocalypse Now (1979), etc : https://www.imdb.com/list/ls000091595/ To argue that Americans have been 'heavily indoctrinated in the US to believe a ton of bullshit' doesn't square up with the coverage and popular media about Vietnam that I've seen since I've been alive. Virtually all of the movies and press are about disillusioned soldiers, brutality, violence, lost causes, etc.
The North had Hanoi Hilton and Desert Inn and plenty of places it kept and tortured political dissidents and American POWs in violation of the Geneva convention. The Vietnam War was a giant mistake, a huge blunder, however, as others have mentioned the Korean war was fought under similar pretexts and no one regrets the U.S. stepping in to save South Korea.
I don't know whether or not the U.S. made all the right choices in the Cold War against the U.S.S.R. Would you prefer a world in which the U.S. hadn't engaged at all against Russia or stayed completely out of Asia (as well as European conflicts)? I don't know if the world that exists today would be better or worse off, really hard to say.
Full Metal Jacket.
• Three Kings.
• In The Valley of Elah.
Good Morning Vietnam.
A Few Good Men.
Platoon.
• Jarhead.
Casualties Of War.
• The Men Who Stare At Goats.
The Deer Hunter.
The Thin Red Line.
• Syriana.
• The Green Zone.
• Stop Loss.
Also, • HBO's "Generation Kill".
(•'d relatively recent movies)
I don't think "The Hurt Locker" was particularly critical of the military and didn't count it. Also not counting documentaries like "Restrepo".
I hereby dispute the idea that the DOD has made it impossible for big-budget Hollywood movies to criticize the US military, and suggest instead that the bias Hollywood in favor of the military is responding to customer preferences and not leading it. Given what I presume to be America's default position of "supporting our troops", I'm struck by how many films Hollywood produce that challenge that default.
Remember also that Hollywood confronts at least two vectors of consumer preference in marketing films: first, Americans (in the large) have a (typical) diffuse nationalistic home-team support for our overseas adventures, and, more importantly, there's a less-political less-issue-oriented reverence expected for the sacrifices made by the young people we send into combat which is especially intense during times when large numbers of people are serving in combat zones. In other words, it's especially tricky to criticize the military during active conflicts.
Also, Three Kings is a fantastic movie.
>> You're going to have to run the movie by the Pentagon first to make sure it portrays "The Right Side of the Story".
You mean like Avatar? Or Redacted? Stop-Loss? Battle For Haditha? Green Zone? Or any of a host of other war movies made by Hollywood in the last 40 years that trash the US military to varying degrees. Go further back in time and you get movies like Casualties of War, Apocalypse Now, etc.
You accuse others of lying in the service of their politics, all the while you engage in that very thing. The term for this is projection.