The Militarization of Movies and Television
FEATURED RESEARCH PAPER, 14 Apr 2025
Tanner Mirrlees | Costs of War/Brown University – TRANSCEND Media Service
Consuming War – Looking at the Militarization of Pop Culture
25 Feb 2025 – Costs of War’s Consuming War research series showcases how, every day, Americans are inundated with cultural products promoting militarism. From movies and video games to sporting events, our attention is often captured by messages that glorify combat while obscuring the deadly realities of war. The entertainment we consume obscures the costs of war. It often normalizes the military’s central purpose — war-making — by framing it as a shared value, preventing reflection about the choices behind the use of the U.S. military, the treatment of military personnel, and the consequences of U.S. militarism. This project examines how the Pentagon influences cultural creations to promote an ever-growing war machine.
When we are aware of how we are consuming cultural messages, we are better able to resist their effects and ask critical questions about how the U.S. engages in the world. Over the coming months, look for Consuming War reports on the militarization of video games, social media, fashion, music, toys, and sports.
Popular entertainment, whether made for the big screen or to be digitally streamed through our television sets and devices, often invites us to escape from the toils and tribulations of the real world. Yet within the fantastical action sequences and dazzling special effects of many entertainment products are military stories scripted and war images made not only by movie and TV screenwriters but also shaped by the Pentagon’s own public affairs officers.
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Tanner Mirrlees is Associate Professor of Communication and Digital Media Studies, Ontario Tech University. Email: tanner.mirrlees@ontariotechu.ca
David Vine, Stephanie Savell, and Mimi Healy are editors of the Consuming War research series.
FEATURED RESEARCH PAPER STAYS POSTED FOR 2 WEEKS BEFORE BEING ARCHIVED
Tags: Cultural violence, Culture of War, Demilitarization, Military Industrial Media Complex, Structural violence
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Thanks. Tanner Mirrlees, for all your research and information.
I hope you’ll join me in reversing this criminal and ominous trend.
We have to understand that the Pentagon, the entire US government, are NOT responsible for this situation. The public is. Gullible humanity is. Why on earth do the vast majority of people still accept Militarism? how is it possible that. in 2025 there are still so many people who think the Armed Forces and the war industry are necessary to ensure Peace? that the Armed Forces provide Security?
The education the Pentagon wants to impose on the young is the same in the UK, France, Italy, Russia, China, Israel and practically the entire planet is of utmost importance to the Merchants of Death that also work for the Pentagon, ensuring the United States of America remains the major threat to the world, with its 800 military bases littering the planet, on top of the 450 to 500 military bases within its own borders.
Education Ministers duty is to ensure the creation of children and young people “educated” to become future cannon fodder. Cinema, TV, video games, have to produce violent people, who love fighting, torturing, killing, destroying buildings, etc.
I understood this 75 years ago, when as a, 7-year old child my parents took me to the cinema to watch films of war, cowboys, psychotic murderers, etc. But, if they wanted to watch a romantic film, they had to ask my aunt to baby sit me, so that they could go to the cinema. A child could watch people killing each other, but not kissing.
Only the day we Abolish militarism from the planet, will things change. If they don’t change, humanity is doomed.