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This is going to be an online meetup using Zoom. If you've never used Zoom before, don't worry — it's easy to use and free to join.

Click on the Zoom link below at the assigned date/time...

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THE IMPLICIT (AND EXPLICIT) POLITICS OF WAR MOVIES & GAMES:
DID HOLLYWOOD MISLEAD US ABOUT THE WAR ON TERROR & HYPE US FOR FUTURE WARS - OR DID THEY TRY TO WARN US?

INTRODUCTION:

As I mentioned earlier this year, I plan to occasionally take a break from the quantitative, social science topics we usually cover in this meetup and focus instead on more qualitative types of pop culture analysis. And since we're now into summer when the big action blockbusters often debut, I figured we could look at films & TV shows that feature war & espionage, as well as popular video games that feature wars. We'll focus on portrayals of the War on Terror over the last 20 years, and we'll omit the depictions of older wars like the Revolution, Civil War, WW1, WW2 or Vietnam.

There's a few questions worth considering before we dive into this topic:

(1) How do American civilians view the military and foreign policy issues (e.g. War on Terror, Ukraine War), and how this differs from veterans? We can partly answer this by looking at Pew Research Center polls...

(2) What level of contact does the average American have with the military, so that the representations of war in pop culture can be put into some realistic perspective? A Vox video from 2016 pointed out that less than 1% of Americans served in the military during the War on Terror. While 76% of Americans over 65 say an immediate family member served in the military, the same is only true for 33% of 18-29 year-olds, and military service is becoming concentrated in fewer families. (A 2007 Pew Research poll showed people with a close friend or family member in the military were more likely to be Republican, Southern, religious, and near the middle of the socio-economic spectrum.) The Vox video suggests the increased distance between most civilians and the military has led to media stereotypes of veterans as either macho heroes or ticking time-bombs being more likely to be believed.

(2) Can we infer anything about the general public's underlying beliefs by looking at box office receipts for war films & spy films, and sales for war games? The general assumption we'll make is that the larger the audience of a film, TV show or videogame, the more it connected with people on an emotional level. This doesn't necessarily mean the audience agreed with the director's intended message, but it suggests something spoke to them - even if it was unintended. However, some films with a weak message may have still attracted large audiences due to the star power of some A-list actors and impressive special effects. Other films with a stronger message may have flopped merely due to bad timing in their release date or some bad editing that got fixed with a director's cut, so we may want to look at streaming numbers for older films that have reemerged as "sleeper hits" (e.g. Green Zone, Fair Game).

(3) Given that audience reactions to films & TV shows and fan theories can vary quite a bit even among those who saw the exact same story, how can we determine which messages the audience took away from a particular work of fiction? This is the hardest question to adequately answer, although I've linked some studies under each section below that try to address this question. We can often find empirical studies that delve into the demographics of who watches different film genres and plays certain types of video games...

We should note that since social scientists don't typically run randomized control trials with movies, we're often left with a "chicken & egg problem" - i.e. it's often not clear whether watching war films & playing war games changed people's minds, or whether specific types of people tend to prefer fictional depictions of war. In many cases, we'll have to make educated guesses about audience reactions by extrapolating from reviews by journalists & bloggers and online discussions on social media. We should probably keep our opinions on the social effects of movies & TV shows somewhat agnostic until we've got better empirical studies -- but that doesn't mean we can't have some fun speculating until then!

RELEVANT MATERIAL FROM PAST MEETUPS:

We had a meetup back in January entitled "Is Politics Downstream from (Pop) Culture?" where we reviewed some of the basic concepts from media effects theory, and then looked at the debates over the social effects of sex, drugs & violence in mass media, the Marxist argument that pop culture serves as an "opiate of the masses", and the recent debate over diversity in pop culture. We also looked at how the gatekeeping abilities of creators & critics may have weakened as online fandoms arose in the 21st century, allowing the public to reinterpret pop culture and even demand changes.

In March, we had a meetup entitled "The Implicit Politics of Historical Epics & Fantasy Films" and in the 1st section we discussed how & why audiences flocked to fantasy films & epics rather than war films for the first decade of the War on Terror. We look at how films like the LOTR trilogy, the 'Harry Potter' series, '300' and 'Kingdom of Heaven' appeared to contain subtle allusions to the ongoing war which audiences interpreted either as endorsements or critiques.

Back in Sept. 2022, we had a discussion entitled "Hard Lessons from the War on Terror" where we covered how we can learn from the failures of the War on Terror and improve our approach to instability in the Middle East, the emerging "Cold War 2.0" with Russia & China, and the "Cold Civil War" here at home. And back in Sept. 2021, we had a meetup entitled "Lessons from Afghanistan?" where we discussed some of the possible lessons from the War in Afghanistan, such as whether the 9/11 attacks were caused by "blowback" from the CIA sponsoring the Mujahideen in the Soviet-Afghan War, the conflict between the Powell Doctrine and the "Pottery Barn Rule", the problem of kleptocratic client states, and whether U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine fell prey to the "McNamara fallacy" or the "hearts and minds fallacy".

We also dealt with the different threats posed by Russia as a declining power and China as a rising power in a meetup back in March 2022 entitled "Are We Headed For World War 3?", and we talked about different frameworks for understanding the Ukraine conflict (i.e. liberal, critical, realist, constructivist) in a meetup back in April 2022.

Back in Mar. 2021, the Heterodox Academy hosted psychology professor Chris Ferguson to talk about why many journalists erroneously claims that violent video games inspire players to commit violent crimes. He attributes this false link partly to "publication bias" in older studies from the 1990s-2000s, i.e. meaning only research that confirmed prevailing views in the field about the dangers of violent video games tended to be accepted for publication. He also the false link to "availability cascades" - i.e. lots of media coverage of violent video games makes the idea that they're dangerous highly salient in many people's minds.

DIRECTIONS ON HOW TO PREPARE FOR OUR DISCUSSION:

The videos & articles you see linked below are intended to give you a basic overview of some of the major debates over the implicit political messages of war films and video games. As usual, I certainly don't expect you to read all the articles prior to attending our discussion. The easiest way to prepare for our discussion is to just watch the numbered videos linked under each section - the videos come to about about 64 minutes total. The articles marked with asterisks are just there to supply additional details. You can browse and look at whichever ones you want, but don't worry - we'll cover the stuff you missed in our discussion.

In terms of the discussion format, my general idea is that we'll address the topics in the order presented here. I've listed some questions under each section to stimulate discussion. We'll do our best to address most of them, as well as whatever other questions our members raise. I figure we'll spend about 30 minutes on each section.

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I. THE RISE OF AFGHAN & IRAQ WAR MOVIES/SHOWS IN THE 2000s & 2010s:

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1a) Vice News, "The Subtle (and Not So Subtle) Military Propaganda in Movies" (video - 5:11 min, start at 0:56)

1b) Jack Nugent, "Is There An Iraq War Genre?" (video - 12:45 min.)

II. THE RISE OF SPY MOVIES/SHOWS SET DURING THE WAR ON TERROR:

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2a) Storytellers, "Jason Bourne and 24: the Reality of Counter-Terrorism” (video - 7:18 min, listen to 6:15)

2b) ABC News, "Kathryn Bigelow discusses controversial torture scenes in Zero Dark Thirty" (video - 9:08 min, start at 3:08 & listen to 8:50)

2c) VOA w/ Robert Baer, "The man behind SYRIANA" (video - 7:49 min, start at 4:51)

III. WAR GAMES IN THE 2000s & 2010s & THEIR USE AS RECRUITMENT TOOLS - AND POSSIBLY AS WARNINGS:

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3a) Madlinerose Kossmann, Dane Lewis & Tyler Brown, "Media Ethics: Military Video Games" (video - 5:22 min.)

3b) IGN, "This War of Mine Review/Commentary" (video - 5:21 min.)

IV. HOW MOVIES & VIDEO GAMES MAY BE PREPARING US FOR FUTURE WARS:

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4a) Young Turks, "Top Gun Sequel Serves As A Sweet New Piece Of U.S. Military Propaganda" (video - 6:11 min.)

4b) Western Centrist Rants, "Russia and China are [the new] Hollywood Movie Villains" (video - 22:25 min, listen to 15:00)

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Related topics

Politics
Watching Movies
International Relations
Iraq Veterans
Foreign Policy Topics

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