War Is Peace, Culture Is Propaganda
The Iraq war, once so easily accepted
by so many Americans, has become a rather hard sell,
as reflected in the increasingly desperate
and hysterical anti-antiwar rhetoric of
stay-the-course advocates like Dick Cheney
It’s enough to make a popcult observer start relating everything to the war: Is "300" setting the anti-Persian mood to smooth public opinion for an Iran invasion?
Over these last four years, war has become
ever more deeply embedded in our hearts and minds
It’s big on TV, where the siege mentality
the Bush Regime has created for us shows up
in settings ranging from 24’s endless endgames
to Battlestar Galactica’s civilization-in-tatters
Pssst. Wanna buy a war? Yeah, I know. You’ve already got one, and it’s more than you bargained for.The Iraq war, once so easily accepted by so many Americans, has become a rather hard sell, as reflected in the increasingly desperate and hysterical anti-antiwar rhetoric of stay-the-course advocates like Dick Cheney.
And yet the endless state of conflict perpetuated by the “war on terror” continues to pick up steam in pop culture.
Recently a friend commented on the increasing intensity of the torture depicted on Fox’s 24, where super agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) is apparently often forced to resort to clipping off a finger or suffocating an adversary in the name of expediently retrieving vital information.
The most disturbing part, my friend says, is that the poking/stabbing/burning always works. To me the most disturbing part is that Bauer would never crack under such duress.
We know because he was once literally tortured to death (he got better) without giving up info. And his physical invulnerability seems to confer upon him a moral imperviousness known in some circles as “might makes right.”
The show’s use of physical/psychological coercion for information extraction has been criticized by everyone from the Parents Television Council to U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, dean of West Point military academy.
But cocreator Joel Surnow is a conservative Republican who supports President Bush, so it’s no surprise that 24 pushes the notion, not just that torture works, but that the urgency of the situation justifies whatever means-to-an-end Jack requires.
That’s the 9/11 rationale behind the Bush war on Iraq: We must do what is “necessary” to protect our way of life. Of course Surnow would toe the party line. No matter that, in reality, torture is a highly ineffective interrogation tool.
Over these last four years, war has become ever more deeply embedded in our hearts and minds. It’s big on TV, where the siege mentality the Bush administration has created for us shows up in settings ranging from 24’s endless endgames to Battlestar Galactica’s civilization-in-tatters.
But also fashion designs sport military-uniform elements, Hummers remain popular despite soaring gas prices, and our bumper stickers are preoccupied with where we stand on the war.
It seems even to have touched Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once a fiercely free agent, she’s gone paramilitary with her army of Slayers in a new comic-book incarnation.
Mainstream comics are awash in paradigm-shattering issues of vigilantism, terrorism, and government control.
This month’s assassination of Marvel Comics hero Captain America created a buzz from blogs to The New York Times, and rival DC is poised to launch a miniseries titled World War III.
It’s enough to make a popcult observer start relating everything to the war: Is 300 setting the anti-Persian mood to smooth public opinion for an Iran invasion?
Was the Raconteurs’ album Broken Boy Soldiers actually a comment on the state of the wounded troops returning?
As for those troops, I actually like that soldiers in uniform haven’t been confined only to TV news.
As U.S. troops deploy, return home, and redeploy, it’s natural that an active-duty presence would emerge in pop culture, as with the McDonald’s ad showing a young soldier and his dad bonding over McBreakfast, or Extreme Home Makeover remodeling residences for servicemembers and their families.
Indeed, the culture acknowledges the troops in a far more human way, as individuals who are part of our society, than Bush and his cronies, for whom our soldiers are merely pawns in a game.
Still, the perpetual war looms larger all the time – the more durable product that is a softer, more insidious sell.
One example that disturbs me more each time I see it is an ad touting wireless company Cingular’s absorption by telecom giant AT&T.
It shows a variety of folks happily going about their business due to the company’s wonderful products, while Oasis’s reassuring “All Around the World” plays in the background.
Against this sonic backdrop of a peaceful, groovy, Beatles-y song, fighter jets suddenly soar, the whoosh of their passing cutting over Liam Gallagher’s dulcet tones. Soon their fluffy white trails turn into the AT&T logo.
Whoa. I can handle the become-a-man military recruitment ads and even the apologist propaganda of 24.
But when a telecommunications company tells me war is peace, well, that brings on an Orwellian freakout of the first order. Natalie Nichols @ LA City Beat