Ever since the 19th century, when what was considered the first coverage of wars in mass media ---- the Crimean War took place, the American public were constantly exposed to military-related issues and also affected by the idea of militarism on a daily basis. However, with the emergence of new media form in the late 20th century, the methods used by the government in the “war efforts” shifted dramatically. Nowadays, militarism ideologies are being dissimilated via revolutionary mediums such as video games, Hollywood blockbusters, television series and even pop music. Furthermore, the spread of such war efforts is no longer like the old-fashioned propagandistic materials. Instead, it is often presented as or fused with entertainment. Thus, younger generations (who are more familiar with these new mediums) are exposed to greater and stronger implicit influences.

First of all, I will be discussing how video games as a form of media help reinforcing militarism more deeply compare to other mediums. Video games establish its own virtual realities and operate within such virtual spaces, realities are always being depicted falsely to different degrees, lacking any serious real-life consequences. Thus, this leads to false judgments. For instance, in the article “Wargames as a New Frontier”, the author mentioned that how video games tend to depict places like Iran and Iraq (which are common background spaces for events to unfold to such wargames in correlation to real-life events) as "wastelands", as places lack civilizations (King, Leonard, 91). For instance, in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Iran was one of the main places players carried out major missions as a U.S. Marine Corps member. And in the game Iran was depicted as a place without any signs civilization: collapsed buildings, debris, broken cars, barbed wires along with terrible visibilities due to the constant sandstorms (as shown in figure 1). In addition, there is not a single civilian, like you would definitely encounter in real life. This further become justifications for U.S. / Western interventions for they are the ones who can bring “civilizations”, freedom as well as democracy to these places.

In addition, the article also argued that military-related video games are not just an innocent form of electronic entertainment. Instead, they are also being utilized by the government as versatile apparatus from generating propaganda, recruiting new soldiers (especially effective among young boys) to as actual training tools for the ones that are already recruited (King, Leonard, 95).  America’s Army is the living proof of such practice. It is a free-to-play video game developed and published by the U.S. Army and it is open to the public across various platforms from PCs and MACs to PlayStations. America’s Army has an ESRB rating of Teen, which means that it is deemed that the violent and bloody contents in the game is “suitable” for ages 13 and up? This demonstrated how the U.S. Army and the Pentagon purposefully wanted to use such game as a tool to affect and further to literally prepare youngster as young as 13 years old to be ready for future wars considering the fact that America’s Army was designed to virtually recreate the training performed in the U.S. Army as realistic as possible. In comparison, Grand Theft Auto V, which was another video game came out in the same year as the latest variation of America’s Army in 2013, earned an ESRB rating of Mature (18 and up).

Nevertheless, the crux of such problem or the true reason as for why video games are significantly worsening the situations of the unstoppable growth of militarism in the United States is the fact that with video games, one essentially becomes active agents. This was never seen before with traditional mediums, where one was simply passive consumers and/or audiences.  The interactive nature of video games is what makes it such an effective medium to affect one's psychological factors, particularly the younger generations. Young boys and girls spend hours upon hours on such games, after repetitive interactive consumptions, eventually, they would eager to practice these things in another reality: the reality we actually physically live in. This becomes the incentive that drives them to join the U.S. armed forces. Sooner or later, they will get deployed, only to finally realize that reality is far from how video games they liked so much depicted. There is blood, innocent civilians, children. Now they are forced to call tough decisions and face consequences. They won't be able to heal themselves within seconds or even "respawn" next round (like what they were used to in the games). Now, this is not to say that these youngsters are not mature enough to distinguish between virtual realities and real-life. Instead, I am merely pointing out the problematic ways that these video games were created in the first place and how as a result, how young Americans can be totally misguided and buy into the government's plot: utilizing attractive video games to literally lure them into believing the so-called "ideologies".

The film “Born on the Fourth of July” directed by Oliver Stone is one perfect example of what I really meant by "realities" that are not depicted in the video games. Through depictions of the life of the character---Ron Kovic (played by Tom Cruise), the director created vivid imageries for those who didn’t live through those years, and more importantly, to expose the cruelty nature and ugly truth of wars so that he can give a critique of wars. In the film, protagonist Ron was a typical American teenager who grew up in the 1950s: educated and filled with patriotism and believed that men ought to serve his country without asking any questions regarding the legitimacy of the armed conflicts, in this case, the Vietnam War. At the time, teenage boys such as Ron were mostly influenced by the traditional forms of media such as television programs. Nevertheless, to put it into perspectives, teenagers now are similar to him in almost every way except, of course, now the primary implicit medium that is influencing them is the video games. The film portrayed the ugly side of war, the side that way never mentioned in televisions nor video games. For instance, when he was first deployed in actual combat zone during Vietnam War, Ron and his comrades once accidentally killed and wounded several innocent villagers (women and babies) and then realizing what he has done, he was extremely confused and panic to the point where he accidentally takes his comrade---Wilson as the enemy and killed him. This incident continues to haunt him even after he was severely injured, paralyzed and eventually sent home, where he suffered from PTSD, discriminations from friends, families etc.; judgements from the anti-war activists, poor treatments as a veteran, and the fact that he had to lived his life on a wheelchair for the rest of his life. All of these were certainly not and never will be included on the boxes of the next "Battlefield" game. And this is exactly what the authors of “Wargames as a New Frontier” meant by wargames are problematic in various ways.

Next, I will be discussing the relationship between the entertainment industry and the U.S. military as discussed in the reading “American Militarism, Hollywood, and Media Culture” (Boggs, Pollard, 457). Such a close relationship between the two is a "win-win" for both sides. With help from the military, the industry would receive equipment that will greatly assist their production whereas for the military (the Pentagon to be more specific), the products produced by the entertainment industry (films, tv program) serve as advertising tools. For example, the 1986 classic Top Gun. It was one of the most efficient and successful recruitment tools for U.S. naval aviators. In addition to the otherwise cliché plots, there are several key characteristics found in this film that demonstrated just how much Pentagon really was backing up it. According to The Washington Post, Paramount Pictures paid only $1.8 million to the Pentagon in exchange for using all the fighter jets, naval personnel, aircraft carriers seen in the film (Sirota, 2). This amount of money is nearly nothing especially when the total box office of the film was $356.8 million! Of course, this is because of the effect of militainment: Pentagon offered their equipment at a discounted price and in return, they would gain the control over the script in order to make sure that the navy is presented in a favorable way in the film. At around 1:00:23, there's an actual U.S. Navy recruitment poster clearly visible in the background, it reads: "Your roads to adventures start here. Navy, it's not just a job, it's an adventure." This is a special kind of product placement in a film, the kind where the product they are trying to sell is military services. Also, at approximately 1:29:04, we see the iconic example of a so-called “Sunset Shot” where fighter jets lining up on the aircraft carrier which glorious sunset scene in the background.

From a cinematic perspective, such construction of a shot is, without a doubt, glamorous. Nevertheless, again, it is yet again promoting the idea of American Militarism for it blurs the line between civil life and military. And this result in civilians becoming more cooperative as well as supportive toward the expansions and extensions of the military (Boggs, Pollard, 457). Hollywood helps creating rationales for U.S. armed interventions overseas or shifting focuses by letting the audiences pay more attention to other aspects (such as a romantic relationship between the protagonist, or exceptional visual elements). While America projects and imposes its physical military forces and power worldwide (which cost American taxpayers roughly $70-100 billion each year), Hollywood is also continuing to expand its influences and hegemonies all around the world, through the process known as cultural imperialism (Boggs, Pollard, 461). President Eisenhower’s warning against a “military-industry complex” has come true and the reality nowadays is way beyond what Eisenhower ever could have imagined in his presidential farewell speech to his fellow Americans (Boggs, Pollard, 462).

Two main ideas associated with how militarism is infiltrating the media are "techno-fetishism" and "clean war". Techno-fetishism refers to the obsessions with war machines or the positive attitude/enthusiasm towards weapons that are designed to kill. The television series “Lock n’ load with R. Lee Ermey" is a perfect demonstration: in episode 2 (they only made one season) named "Machine Guns", the host Lee introduced various kind of machine guns throughout history. Not just telling the history, but instead, test each and every kind of machine gun himself with actual bullets. Throughout the entire episode, Lee spoke with great enthusiasm and an extremely positive attitudes towards all the machine guns that were designed to kill human beings and have killed thousands of people on actual battlefields, using terms like the "art of war", "men and horses are cut down", or even nicknaming the Maxim machine gun as the "Devil's Paintbrush". All of these are examples of "techno-fetishism" because Lee is glorifying these killing weapons, describing them as something with inherent moral goodness, attractive characteristics, "incredible" statistics and so on and so forth. It's like Lee is pursuing the audiences that they should bow down and worship these filthy weapons. The key part lies in his tone and voice, he is introducing the machine guns in a proud manner. Furthermore, such "techno-fetishism" is also often seen on news mediums. For instance, whenever the mainstream news media is covering some sort of wars ongoing, they would introduce the "advanced" "state-of-the-art" weapons, war technologies, fighter jets, missiles being put to use in the current war in a similar fashion as Lee's TV series: with statistics to show their capabilities, refer these weapons as some kind of god or goodness creature that deserves our worships and respects.

As the authors in the “American Militarism” article illustrated, the idea of “Clean War” is essential for militarism to function as a form of entertainment via media as the primary platform. It is responsible for transforming war from a cruel, ruthless and bloody scenery into a more "TV friendly" content for audiences to watch. The Pentagon, as well as news media, adopted a few methods in order to build the illusion of the U.S. are always fighting a "Clean War". For instance, the government will have strict control over wartime images/footages to prevent unwanted contents to be broadcasted to the public. Also, with any published images/footages, the media outlets will minimize the sense of death. They will also depict the weapons as precise machines that will only destroy crucial strategic targets without any innocent causalities. By doing so, they are trying to depict and present any wars as short, abstract incident.

“Wake Me Up When September Ends” by Green Day was an extremely popular song in the early 2000s. Even though the lyric itself has something to do with the military, the music video, however, depicted a young couple separated because of presumably the Iraq War (given the time period). Indeed, no one can deny nor disrespect the countless young soldiers who gave up his or her lives in such wars. Nevertheless, this very popular song's choice of the content of its music video once again demonstrated just how much militarism actually intertwines with the entertainment industries.

In conclusion, media is a vital mechanism within this gigantic system with other realms such as entertainment and education all closely linked with one another, and together they function to create and reinforce the ideology of (American) militarism. Undoubtedly, militarism as an ideology pervades the American society and culture, and media is the key apparatus, and newer forms of media simply allowed it to grow stronger than ever.

Works Cited

Boggs, Carl. Pollard, Tom. American Militarism, Hollywood, and Media Culture. 457-480.

King C. Richard, Leonard J. David. “Wargames as a New Frontier: Securing American Empire in Virtual Space.” 91-104.

“Machine Guns”. Lock n’ Load with R. Lee Eremy, season 1, episode 2, History, 10 Oct. 2009. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr1INupPSf4&t=718s

Scott, Tony, director. Top Gun. Paramount Pictures. 1986.

Stone, Oliver, director. Born on the Fourth of July. Universal Pictures. 1989.

Sirota, David. “25 years later, how ‘Top Gun’ made America love war”. The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/25-years-later-remembering-how-top-gun-changed-americas-feelings-about-war/2011/08/15/gIQAU6qJgJ_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.b3066ea2923d. Accessed 24 July 2018.