"You are being sold ideas. And you are in turn for sale. Your thoughts, opinions, worldviews, and subconscious mind is all for sale—and it is being sold for a high price." -- Joaquin Montes de Oca, 8th Grade
Have you ever seen a Marvel movie? Or watched a football game? You probably know the feeling. Sitting either in a theater, at home or in a stadium, snacks in hand, on the edge of your seat to see if the Avengers or your favorite football team is going to win the day. To many, if not most Americans, this is a common and much enjoyed practice.
What you may not have known however, is that while you watched that Marvel movie or that football game, you were being targeted. And I’m not referring to the regular commercials that you know about. You are being sold ideas. And you are in turn for sale. Your thoughts, opinions, worldviews, and subconscious mind is all for sale—and it is being sold for a high price.
The US Department of Defense (DOD) has donated some 10 million dollars in military advertising to the NFL. But why? The answer is something called Paid Patriotism. If you’ve ever been to or seen an NFL game, you know that before the game starts, players will stand to the national anthem. That might not seem weird to some people. It might just feel like that’s the way things are and have always been. It might seem totally normal that this wildly popular sport, not even made in America, but labelled as “The American Pastime” funnels so much money into broadcasting the idea of patriotism.
I want to be clear, there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with being patriotic. The issue is taking something not inherently political, controversial, or related to patriotism at all and making it all of those things. People who like football and watch it frequently start to identify with the teams that they support and form very personal ties to them. So when they see someone who opposes something not particularly related to football, but that has been tied very deeply to it, like the national anthem for example, they get very upset. This proved itself with Colin Kaepernick. Patriotism has become so ingrained in our daily lives that we don’t even question it and we assume that opposition to it is bringing politics into an otherwise unpolitical setting.
The DOD’s dealings with Marvel and the entertainment industry in general have been a little bit more discrete. There’s no clear amount of money that was given nor is there an official public list of movies that have been funded, however we know that the FBI has reviewed as many as 700 requests in one year. The issue became more prevalent after the release of Captain Marvel, which to many felt like a two hour ad for the air force.
The usual arrangement for the military’s interactions with Hollywood is if they want funding or military equipment to use in the film, they will provide that as long as the director and writers follow a strict set of guidelines as to how the military can be shown and what can be said about them.
This is true not just for Marvel but for movies like Zero Dark Thirty, Top Gun, Black Hawk Down, Independence Day: Resurgence (the first one was rejected for mentioning area 51) and the Transformers series. Walt Disney was allowed access to FBI headquarters for filming in exchange for turning in alleged communists.
It’s a very common thing for countries to speak highly of themselves and their military and to want the people in that country to be supportive and hold similar beliefs about that country. That part is normal. The issue lies in three different aspects of the whole situation: censoring, embellishing, and secrecy. A movie about a superhero working together with the military to take out the space bad guys is a regular pro-military film. A movie about a rich innovative genius who goes to Afghanistan to test out his missiles with the military only to be bombed and kidnapped by an obscure group of Arabic militants who torture him is a propaganda film(*cough* Iron Man *cough*).
The fact that our military is willing to pour money into controlling what the public knows about them and what they know about other countries is certainly a contributor to the widely held xenophobic ideas that many Americans hold today. Perhaps there should be stricter rules around how the military can interact with entertainment industries or, golly gee, I don’t know, maybe there are better ways we can spend at least some of the massive amounts of money that we give the military? Just a thought.
What you may not have known however, is that while you watched that Marvel movie or that football game, you were being targeted. And I’m not referring to the regular commercials that you know about. You are being sold ideas. And you are in turn for sale. Your thoughts, opinions, worldviews, and subconscious mind is all for sale—and it is being sold for a high price.
The US Department of Defense (DOD) has donated some 10 million dollars in military advertising to the NFL. But why? The answer is something called Paid Patriotism. If you’ve ever been to or seen an NFL game, you know that before the game starts, players will stand to the national anthem. That might not seem weird to some people. It might just feel like that’s the way things are and have always been. It might seem totally normal that this wildly popular sport, not even made in America, but labelled as “The American Pastime” funnels so much money into broadcasting the idea of patriotism.
I want to be clear, there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with being patriotic. The issue is taking something not inherently political, controversial, or related to patriotism at all and making it all of those things. People who like football and watch it frequently start to identify with the teams that they support and form very personal ties to them. So when they see someone who opposes something not particularly related to football, but that has been tied very deeply to it, like the national anthem for example, they get very upset. This proved itself with Colin Kaepernick. Patriotism has become so ingrained in our daily lives that we don’t even question it and we assume that opposition to it is bringing politics into an otherwise unpolitical setting.
The DOD’s dealings with Marvel and the entertainment industry in general have been a little bit more discrete. There’s no clear amount of money that was given nor is there an official public list of movies that have been funded, however we know that the FBI has reviewed as many as 700 requests in one year. The issue became more prevalent after the release of Captain Marvel, which to many felt like a two hour ad for the air force.
The usual arrangement for the military’s interactions with Hollywood is if they want funding or military equipment to use in the film, they will provide that as long as the director and writers follow a strict set of guidelines as to how the military can be shown and what can be said about them.
This is true not just for Marvel but for movies like Zero Dark Thirty, Top Gun, Black Hawk Down, Independence Day: Resurgence (the first one was rejected for mentioning area 51) and the Transformers series. Walt Disney was allowed access to FBI headquarters for filming in exchange for turning in alleged communists.
It’s a very common thing for countries to speak highly of themselves and their military and to want the people in that country to be supportive and hold similar beliefs about that country. That part is normal. The issue lies in three different aspects of the whole situation: censoring, embellishing, and secrecy. A movie about a superhero working together with the military to take out the space bad guys is a regular pro-military film. A movie about a rich innovative genius who goes to Afghanistan to test out his missiles with the military only to be bombed and kidnapped by an obscure group of Arabic militants who torture him is a propaganda film(*cough* Iron Man *cough*).
The fact that our military is willing to pour money into controlling what the public knows about them and what they know about other countries is certainly a contributor to the widely held xenophobic ideas that many Americans hold today. Perhaps there should be stricter rules around how the military can interact with entertainment industries or, golly gee, I don’t know, maybe there are better ways we can spend at least some of the massive amounts of money that we give the military? Just a thought.
