Pentagon Propaganda

By Thomas Neuburger

“I don’t change scripts. What we will do is a ‘correction for the record.´” —Glen Roberts, director of the Pentagon’s Entertainment Media Office

“You could not possibly pack more glorification of the US war machine into a movie if you tried.” —Caitlyn Johnstone on the film Pitch Perfect 3

In a recent larger piece titled "Battle Of The Hollywood Censors," Lever News writer Freddie Brewster discusses movie censorship from two perspectives: Chinese censorship of American films and Pentagon censorship of American films.

Here's just the section on Pentagon censorship of US films.

How America Censors Movies

The Defense Department began working with the film industry in 1927, when it provided soldiers, pilots, planes, and other equipment for the movie Wings. Since then, according to one outside estimate, it has intervened in more than 2,500 entertainment productions.

Currently, all decisions over movies, shows, and video games that request military support are overseen by the Defense Department’s Entertainment Media office, which is housed at the Pentagon. 

Those decisions have enormous consequences for entertainment studios. The fighter jets used in Top Gun: Maverick cost more than $60 million each — but the studio behind the film was able to rent the planes for $11,000 an hour. The Navy actually broke its own flight training rules to make Tom Cruise look badass.

Glen Roberts, director of the Defense Department’s Entertainment Media Office, said his operation works on roughly 140 to 160 projects each year. As part of the process, Roberts says his office reviews the basic descriptions of each film and considers film studios’ requests for access, personnel, and equipment. If a project is approved, the studio will sign a contract with the Defense Department allowing officials to review scripts and make changes. 

“I don’t change scripts. What we will do is a ‘correction for the record.” Roberts said, noting adjustments range from correcting the type of aircrafts characters fly to protecting the identities of service members. “What we look for are four things — security, accuracy, policy and propriety.” 

But Stahl at the University of Georgia says Pentagon script changes go far beyond those four factors. In 2022, Stahl produced a documentary called Theaters of War: How the Pentagon and CIA Took Hollywood that details decades of Defense Department influence in Hollywood films and television shows. After reviewing more than 30,000 documents, Stahl found that the Defense Department routinely censored scenes depicting war crimes, torture, institutional racism, lax control of nuclear weapons, military incompetence, failed U.S. policies, and other topics. 

“You could call it censorship, you can call it propaganda, but really it's just combing through the script and figuring out what plot points they have a problem with,” Stahl said. “There's an informal list of things that will trigger a denial.”

In one instance, Stahl found that the military convinced the studio behind the 2014 U.S. film Godzilla to remove a reference to the Hiroshima nuclear bomb attack, even though Godzilla was originally conceived as a metaphor for the danger of nuclear weapons. 

In another instance, a scene in the 2016 Afghanistan war film Whiskey Tango Foxtrot was modified after Roberts’ office got involved. In the original scene, based on an account in the nonfiction book The Taliban Shuffle, a U.S. military transport vehicle plows into Afghan citizens at an intersection; in the revised version, the vehicle is operated by a non-governmental organization. Roberts said he was not aware of the script changes.

What’s more, Air Force documents obtained by The Lever suggest the military may be pitching Hollywood studios story ideas. The documents, which detail the Air Force Entertainment Liaison Office’s 2019 activities, include sections labeled “Ideas and Pitches” that are almost entirely redacted, save for a couple references to project officers meeting with an Apple TV+ producer and other individuals “to discuss current projects and opportunities for collaboration.”

Roberts, who previously worked in the Air Force Entertainment Liaison Office, said the Defense Department does not pitch story ideas, and said he had no recollection about what is in the redacted sections.

“I think it was one of my colleagues from the Air Force who wrote that pitch deck or whatever, but that’s inaccurate,” Roberts told The Lever. “I don’t know why he did that. I would like to talk to him about it, but to me, it’s not anything that we do. And that’s generally always been our policy.”

This is a massive subject, the propagandization of the American public by the Pentagon and other elements of what can rightly be called the US war machine.

Pitch Perfect 3

Consider, for example, the film Pitch Perfect 3, the second sequel to the (in my view) wonderful musical film Pitch Perfect. Here's Caitlyn Johnstone's telling comment, lifted from her review:

As far as the film in question is concerned, “the way the military is portrayed” could not have been more propagandistic. The heroines were constantly drooling over the handsome, sexy servicemen, there was nonstop saluting, flag-waving and patriotic “thank you for your service” lines, the lead cast did an entire number dressed in camouflage, a lesbian character said she wanted to enlist “now that they let gay people join,” servicemen were portrayed as charming heroes and protectors of women, and life on a military base was portrayed as a fun party where you get to go to awesome concerts and have a great time. You could not possibly pack more glorification of the US war machine into a movie if you tried.

And here's a sequences that includes the aforementioned camouflage number:

These comments relate to films, but in fact the propagandization is nearly ubiquitous. Note the many tributes to military might built into most American football games, either before the games themselves or during halftime, or both.

It's Everywhere

The fan-filmed video above, for example, was shot during an ordinary mid-season game, not one of the Super Bowls. Singing the national anthem is, among other things, an expression of patriotism. But a) note the simultaneous display of American military might, and b) the effect of that testosterone pump on the fans.

I've often said that we're one of the most propagandized populations on the earth. Our military is one of the leading agents, and beneficiaries, of that effort.