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FTR#1219 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
FTR#1220 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: In these programs, we continue our discussion of Nick Turse’s 2008 tome The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives.
In this program, we examine how the military exerts dominant influence over our entertainment activities and how that, in turn, both affects and bolsters the Pentagon.
We begin by “going to the movies.”
The synthesis of Hollywood and “The Complex” is summarized by Nick Turse in the passage below. It should be noted that the melding of Hollywood and the military is a foundation of the derivative synthesis of the military and the video-gaming industry–the focus of the bulk of these programs.
“. . . . As David Robb, the author of Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies, observed: ‘Hollywood and the Pentagon have a collaboration that works well for both sides. Hollywood producers get what they want—access to billions of dollars’ worth of military hardware and equipment—tanks, jet fighters, nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers—and the military gets what it wants—films that portray the military in a positive light; films that help the services in their recruiting efforts.’. . .”
Indeed, the very genesis of video games in derivative of the defense industry: ” . . . . In 1951, Ralph Baer, an engineer working for defense contractor Loral Electronics (today part of Lockheed Martin) on ‘computer components for Navy RADAR systems,’ dreamed up the idea of home video games, which he termed ‘interactive TV-based entertainment.’. . . .”
The Hollywood/Pentagon/gaming industry synthesis is epitomized by the Institute of Creative Technologies:
” . . . . The answer lies in Marina Del Rey, California, at the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), a center within the University of Southern California (USC) system. There, in 1999, the military’s growing obsession with video games moved to a new level when Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera signed a five-year, $45-million contract with USC to create ICT, says the center’s Web site, ‘to build a partnership among the entertainment industry, army and academia with the goal of creating synthetic experiences so compelling that participants react as if they are real.’. . .”
The video game/Pentagon relationship has evolved into a fusion of the two: “. . . . The rest followed, leading to the current continuous military gaming/simulation loop where commercial video games are adopted as military training aids and military simulators are reengineered into civilian gaming money makers in all sorts of strange and confusing ways. . . .”
Author Turse looked ahead (in 2008) and foresaw a future that, to a disturbing extent, has become reality: ” . . . . Certainly, the day is not far off when most potential U.S. troops will have grown up playing commercial video games that were created by the military as training simulators; will be recruited, at least in part, through video games; will be tested, post-enlistment, on advanced video game systems; will be trained using simulators, which will later be turned into video games, or on reconfigured versions of the very same games used to recruit them or that they played kids; will be taught to pilot vehicles using devices resembling commercial video game controllers; and then, after a long day of real-life war-gaming head back to their quarters to kick back and play the latest PlayStation or Xbox games created with or sponsored by their own, or another, branch of the armed forces. . . .”
1. The synthesis of Hollywood and “The Complex” is summarized by Nick Turse in the passage below. It should be noted that the melding of Hollywood and the military is a foundation of the derivative synthesis of the military and the video-gaming industry–the focus of the bulk of these programs.
. . . . As David Robb, the author of Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies, observed: “Hollywood and the Pentagon have a collaboration that works well for both sides. Hollywood producers get what they want—access to billions of dollars’ worth of military hardware and equipment—tanks, jet fighters, nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers—and the military gets what it wants—films that portray the military in a positive light; films that help the services in their recruiting efforts.”
But recruiting is just part of the equation, and the phrase, “a positive light” is even a little soft. At the movies, the military gets sold as heroic, admirable, and morally correct. Often it can literally do no wrong.
Speaking about the big-budget, live-action blockbuster Transformers (2007) Ian Bryce, one of the producers, characterized the relationship this way, “Without the superb military support we’ve gotten . . . . it would be an entirely different-looking film . . . Once you get Pentagon approval, you’ve created a win-win situation. We want to cooperate with the Pentagon to show the off in the most positive light, and the Pentagon likewise wants to give us the resources to be able to do that.” On the military side, air force master sergeant Larry Belen spoke of similar motivations for aiding the production of Iron Man: “I want people to walk away from this movie with a really good impression of the Air Force, like they got about the Navy seeing Top Gun,” he said. But air force captain Christian Hodge, the Defense Department’s project officer for Iron Man, may have said it best when he unabashedly opined, “The Air Force is going to come off looking like rock stars.” . . . .
2. Indeed, the very genesis of video games in derivative of the defense industry:
. . . . In 1951, Ralph Baer, an engineer working for defense contractor Loral Electronics (today part of Lockheed Martin) on “computer components for Navy RADAR systems,” dreamed up the idea of home video games, which he termed “interactive TV-based entertainment.”. . . .
3. The Hollywood/Pentagon/gaming industry synthesis is epitomized by the Institute of Creative Technologies:
. . . . The answer lies in Marina Del Rey, California, at the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), a center within the University of Southern California (USC) system. There, in 1999, the military’s growing obsession with video games moved to a new level when Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera signed a five-year, $45-million contract with USC to create ICT, says the center’s Web site, “to build a partnership among the entertainment industry, army and academia with the goal of creating synthetic experiences so compelling that participants react as if they are real.”
To accomplish their gaming goals, ICT assembled a team fit for the task, including Executive Director David Wertheimer, formerly the executive vice president of the Paramount Television Group (where he established Paramount Digital Entertainment, the studio’s Internet technology group); Creative Director James Korris (also the executive director of USC’s Entertainment Technology Center), a veteran television writer; and Cathy Kominos, formerly the deputy director of research at the Pentagon, where she oversaw the Army Basic Research Program, Simulation, Training and Instrumentation Command, and Army High Performance Computing programs. . . .
4. The Pentagon/video game synthesis is summarized yet again in the following brief passage.
. . . . The rest followed, leading to the current continuous military gaming/simulation loop where commercial video games are adopted as military training aids and military simulators are reengineered into civilian gaming money makers in all sorts of strange and confusing ways. . . .
5. A longer passage analyzes the essence of the video game/military relationship for our society, today and in the future.
. . . . Today, the military, toy, and gaming worlds are completely entangled, and the future promises only more interpenetrations and complex collaborations that would have made Dwight Eisenhower’s head spin. . . .
. . . . Certainly, the day is not far off when most potential U.S. troops will have grown up playing commercial video games that were created by the military as training simulators; will be recruited, at least in part, through video games; will be tested, post-enlistment, on advanced video game systems; will be trained using simulators, which will later be turned into video games, or on reconfigured versions of the very same games used to recruit them or that they played kids; will be taught to pilot vehicles using devices resembling commercial video game controllers; and then, after a long day of real-life war-gaming head back to their quarters to kick back and play the latest PlayStation or Xbox games created with or sponsored by their own, or another, branch of the armed forces.
More and more toys are now poised to become clandestine combat teaching tools, and more and more simulators are destined to be tomorrow’s toys. And what of America’s children and young adults in all this? How will they be affected by the dazzling set of military training devices now landing in their living rooms and on their PCs, produced by video game giants under the watchful eyes of the Pentagon? After all, what these games offer is less a matter of simple military indoctrination and more like a near immersion in a virtual world of war, where armed conflict is not the last, but the first—and indeed the only—resort. . . .
In my view, this could well be one of the most important topics facing our society today.
The entertainment industry’s role as state propagandists is well-documented at the website spyculture.com, which has been using FOIA requests to unveil just how much the Department Of Defense has been altering movie and TV scripts for decades.
Just about every film with a military theme or sub-plot, even seemingly innocuous films like ‘Pitch Perfect 3’, enjoy Pentagon-level re-writes before final release. Once you see this rotten influence of the MIC, you just cannot un-see it.