The CIA and Other Government Agencies Dominate Movies and Television

by George Washington
Washington's Blog

The Winners of the Academy Award and Golden Globe Are … Government Propagandists

Rob Kall points out that the military-industrial complex is the winner of the Golden Globe award:

Homeland won best TV series, best TV actor and actress. It IS a highly entertaining show which actually portrays some of the flaws of the MIIC system

Argo won best movie and best director. It glorifies the CIA and Ben Affleck spoke with the highest praise for the CIA.

And best actress went to Jessica Chastain of Zero Dark Thirty, a movie that has been vilified for propagandizing the use of torture.

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The Military Industrial Intelligence Complex is playing a more and more pervasive role in our lives. In the next few years we’ll be seeing movies that focus on the use of drone technology in police and spy work in the USA. We’ve already been seeing movies that show how spies can violate every aspect of our privacy– of the most intimate parts of our lives. By making movies and TV series that celebrate these cancerous extensions of the police state Hollywood and the big studios are normalizing the ideas they present us with– lying to the public, routinely creating fraudulent stories as covers for what’s really going on.

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I was hoping that Zero Dark Thirty would come up without any awards. I was hoping that at least such blatant propaganda promoting the lie that torture works would be repudiated by the Golden Globes. That didn’t happen.

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The truth is we do live in a time when the police have been massively militarized. We don’t need movies or TV shows that celebrate that militarization. We don’t need entertainment that normalizes the obscene violations of our privacy that the intelligence state is inflicting upon us. We need stories that celebrate people who stand up to this seemingly irrepressible tide that is washing away our freedoms, sucking up all our resources and erasing the last bastions of privacy.

David Walsh notes that the real winner of the 2013 Academy Awards is the CIA:

Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow’s quasi-fascistic glorification of the role played by the CIA in the so-called “war on terror” … was tapped for five awards.

Of course,there is plenty of other war-o-tainment. being peddled by Hollywood.

The military has long had a direct influence on Hollywood. For example, a book published by the University of Texas points out:

The Central Intelligence Agency has been actively engaged in shaping the content of film and television, especially since it established an entertainment industry liaison program in the mid-1990s.

The book laments:

The significant influence that the CIA now wields in Hollywood

Gizmodo reports:

The CIA has a pile of script ideas lying around.

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The Department of Defense and just about every branch of the military has an entertainment industry liaison similar to the CIA’s.

If you want to make a war film and need a fleet of F-22s, a crowd of Marines, or a Navy aircraft carrier, just call up the Department of Defense’s entertainment media office and they’ll tell you if the Army can spare that M1A1 Abrams tank you’ve always wanted for a day or two of filming.

“The scripts we get are only the writer’s idea of how the Department of Defense operates,” Vince Ogilvie, deputy director of the Defense Department’s entertainment liaison office, told Danger Room. “We make sure the Department and facilities and people are portrayed in the most accurate and positive light possible.”

Hollywood has been working with government organizations to make more credible films for years (for instance, Jerry Bruckheimer and Paramount Pictures worked closely with the Pentagon when filming the 1986 blockbuster “Top Gun”). But the phenomenon is under newfound scrutiny. There was a bit of a kerfuffle recently when some in the press and in Congress speculated about whether the government will give Sony Pictures any pointers while they make a film about the killing of Osama bin Laden.

In a letter to the Defense Department and CIA last month, Rep. Peter King expressed outrage at the Pentagon’s relationship with the film’s director, Kathyrn Bigelow. King claimed that she had already been made privy to sensitive information that could put American lives at risk.

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Standard procedure is to review the script, make notes on what the Defense Department would like changed, and kick it back to the producer. If the changes are made, the military will provide whatever help they can – declassified information, equipment, personnel, etc. – for a price.

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Why has the Defense Department recently partnered with 20th Century Fox to make an X-Men/U.S. Army ad or with explosion-enthusiast Michael Bay to make all three Transformers movies? In The Washington Post, David Sirota suggests entertainment like this is “government-subsidized propaganda.”

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January 18, 2013

George Washington blogs at Washington's Blog.

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