War Films, Hollywood and Popular Culture

Michael Medved
Radio Host and Author, Right Turns: Unconventional Lessons from a Controversial Life

Michael Medved is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host, best-selling author and film critic. He graduated with honors from Yale and attended Yale Law School. After working as a screenwriter in Hollywood, he reviewed films for CNN and later worked as chief film critic for the New York Post. He also served for twelve years as co-host of Sneak Previews on PBS. His daily three-hour radio program is heard in over 170 markets and his columns on media and society appear regularly in USA Today, where he serves as a member of the Board of Contributors. Mr. Medved is the author of ten books, including Hollywood vs. America, Saving Childhood: Protecting Our Children from the National Assault on Innocence (with Diane Medved) and, most recently, Right Turns: Unconventional Lessons from a Controversial Life.

The following is adapted from a lecture delivered on March 9, 2005, on the Hillsdale College campus, during a five-day seminar on the topic “War on Film,” sponsored by the Center for Constructive Alternatives.

On my radio show today, I addressed the topic of military “counter-recruiters.” You know what military recruiters are—the people who go to high schools and colleges and tell young people about their opportunities to serve their country in the military. Well, now there are also “counter-recruiters” who go to these schools and tell young people why they shouldn’t serve their country in the military. I had one of them on my show today and put one of your Hillsdale freshmen on with him, and she asked him the crucial question he couldn’t answer intelligently: “What would the world be like without the American military?” He said that the world would be a “beautiful place.” But of course this would only be true if a world enslaved under Nazism or communismor Islamo-fascism could be called beautiful. Without the U.S. military in the last century, it would be one of these.

These “counter-recruiters,” by the way, have received such strong support from teachers unions in the Los Angeles Unified School District that it has been mandated that they be given equal access with military recruiters in Los Angeles high schools. How have we come to such a pass? One of the important underlying factors, it seems to me, is that the popular culture has changed fundamentally in the way that it portrays the military and its mission.

Consider two movies that were released last Friday. One is called The Jacket and stars Adrien Brody, Keira Knightly, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Kris Kristofferson. It begins by showing American troops committing atrocities during the first Persian Gulf War and goes from there. But what’s fascinating is that it’s one of the very few films that have referred to that war at all. And remember: When we fought the first Persian Gulf War, it was not controversial like the recent war in Iraq. There was a huge worldwide coalition and the American public supported it more than any conflict since World War II, according to pollsters. Nevertheless, I can count on the fingers of one hand the movies that have made any reference to it at all. Besides The Jacket, there was last summer’s The Manchurian Candidate, in which there’s an evil conspiracy involving brainwashing and torturing on the part of American businessmen; before that there was Courage Under Fire with Meg Ryan and Denzel Washington, which was about a friendly-fire incident, military cover-ups and the mistreatment of a brave young female officer; and then there was Three Kings, starring George Clooney, which is also about the corruption of the U.S. military and our betrayal of our allies. So here’s an incredibly popular war and Hollywood hardly touches it. And it never treats it in any sort of favorable light. Why not?

The other relevant film released last Friday is called The Pacifier, and stars Vin Diesel. The plot of this one revolves around a Navy SEAL who is assigned to rescue a top-secret government scientist from terrorists. It is pretty silly. But here’s the interesting thing about it: At the conclusion of the opening sequence, which is quite thrilling, it turns out that the terrorists who have kidnapped this government scientist are…Serbian!! How many Americans do you know who go to sleep at night worried about an attack on our homeland from Serbian terrorists?

Here we are with our country engaged in what Norman Podhoretz has rightly called World War IV (World War III being the Cold War), with Americans serving not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, but all over the world, trying to keep us safe here in the U.S. And our enemies do, after all, have a name and address: They are Islamic and fascist and they aim at our annihilation. Yet Hollywood, if it notices the war on terrorism at all, gives us Serbian terrorists. This bizarre behavior, by the way, extends back before September 11. Do you remember Sum of All Fears, a film based on a Tom Clancy novel? In the novel, there are Islamic terrorists and it’s largely realistic. In the movie version, the Islamic terrorists have been transformed into German neo-Nazis and it’s completely unrealistic.

What is going on here? Wouldn’t you think, given the universal American concern about the monstrous and evil people who attacked this country on September 11, that this is an issue with which Hollywood would grapple? During WWII, there were tons of movies dealing with that war—and no, the German Nazis were not portrayed as Uruguayans or Fiji Islanders. The truth of the matter is that war movies have changed in a fundamental way, and, I would submit to you, a dangerous way for the health of our culture and for the strength of our republic.