NOTE: David Sirota's new book Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now is just out this week. This post draws on the research he did for his book about the deep connections between the Pentagon and the entertainment industry - connections that intensified in the 1980s and still shape our culture today.
All the buzz in the entertainment/tech world about the blockbuster new video game Homefront brings back memories of the 1984 film Red Dawn - and rightly so. The creator of Homefront is none other than John Milius, the writer/director of the 1984 film that later became the deliberate namesake of the most famous operation in today's Iraq War. But it should also bring back memories of the larger militarist themes that continue to define our entertainment culture - themes that ultimately bring up the direct but little-examined connections between the Pentagon and the entertainment industry. It is the legacy of those connections, first intensified in the 1980s, that continue to embed militarism in seemingly non-political products like video games and action movies.
More...
0 comments
Post a Comment