{"id":338687,"date":"2017-12-09T20:40:42","date_gmt":"2017-12-09T19:40:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/how-hollywood-the-pentagon-combine-to-sell-new-axis-of-evil-video-rt-us-news\/"},"modified":"2017-12-09T20:40:42","modified_gmt":"2017-12-09T19:40:42","slug":"how-hollywood-the-pentagon-combine-to-sell-new-axis-of-evil-video-rt-us-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/how-hollywood-the-pentagon-combine-to-sell-new-axis-of-evil-video-rt-us-news\/","title":{"rendered":"How Hollywood &#038; the Pentagon combine to sell new \u2018axis of evil\u2019 (VIDEO) \u2014 RT US News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdni.rt.com\/files\/2017.12\/thumbnail\/5a2bdeddfc7e9338538b4567.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>        America\u2019s greatest enemies have been lined up for the latest add-on to Grand Theft Auto Online \u2013 perpetuating the old trope of an imminent global threat that only the US can meet.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Within seconds of the opening of the trailer for the popular game\u2019s \u2018Doomsday Heist\u2019 add-on, all the usual suspects are named as possible culprits behind a bid to start a war against the US. <em>\u201cIt has to be the Russians&#8230; or the North Koreans&#8230; or the Chinese&#8230; or the Iranians,\u201d<\/em> a billionaire tech mogul tells his crew of true US patriots assembled to save the fictional city of San Andreas from total annihilation.<\/p>\n<p>While the tone of the trailer may be somewhat tongue in cheek, it continues a global trend of presenting whoever happens to be the bogeymen of US foreign policy as the perennial bad guys. And in the eyes of the western entertainment industry, the new axis of evil of Russia, North Korea and Iran, is ripe for picking.<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"854\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/oCZgVGFwKo0\" frameborder=\"0\" gesture=\"media\" allow=\"encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Some of the most successful US TV series\u2019 of recent years were plotted on the concept of the foreign enemy. In the Netflix series \u2018House of Cards,\u2019 fictional Russian president Viktor Petrov shares striking similarities to the western media\u2019s characterization of Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"media__youtube-frame\" width=\"100%\" height=\"300px\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/sU9QTLXYCCc\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Similarly, \u2018Homeland\u2019 has plots that often run parallel to political goings on while also pushing Islamophobic stereotypes. Meanwhile, \u2018The Americans\u2019 bolsters Russian paranoia by \u00a0reminding the audience that even your next door neighbour could be a KGB officer.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=UB4NcYp7-uo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>READ MORE: \u2018Google\u2019s plan to isolate Russian media is an act of information warfare\u2019<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Dr Matthew Alford, a Teaching Fellow in Politics at the University of Bath, whose research focus is on the relationship between screen entertainment and political power in Western democracies, told RT.com that <em>\u201cpopular culture provides mood music for political culture.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cCollectively our mainstream entertainment provides considerable support for the national security state,\u201d<\/em> he added.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this year, Alford co-authored the book \u2018National Security Cinema,\u2019 an in-depth analysis of the relationship between the US government and Hollywood. Based on thousands of pages of US military and intelligence <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@tomsecker\/national-security-cinema-the-source-documents-e8afa403552e\">documents<\/a> acquired through the Freedom of Information Act, the book reveals the power of the Pentagon to stop a film from being made by refusing or withdrawing support.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/usa\/395399-us-military-hollywood-propaganda\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">READ MORE: US military rewrites Hollywood blockbusters to save reputation, research reveals<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>One such film is \u2018The Recruit\u2019, the 2003 film starring Colin Farrell as a CIA agent in the making. Documents reveal the movie, which also featured Al Pacino as Farrell\u2019s mentor, was heavily influenced by the CIA\u2019s long-serving entertainment liaison officer, Chase Brandon.<\/p>\n<p>The blockbuster includes lines about the new threats of the post-Soviet world along with rebuttals of the idea that the CIA failed to prevent 9\/11.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cThe level of military manipulation on film scripts has been fairly comparable since the early years of Hollywood. Over the last twenty years though, there has been a real spike in the military&#8217;s involvement in TV and the CIA has gotten much more pro-active,\u201d<\/em> Alford said.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"media__youtube-frame\" width=\"100%\" height=\"300px\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-aqecRSJo3o\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The clich\u00e9 of the Russian baddy has been around so long that it\u2019s perhaps no surprise that recent political allegations against the nation have been so easy to swallow. Is there really a need for concrete evidence of Russian interference in US elections when audiences have been digesting negative propaganda about the country and its people since the height of the Cold War.<\/p>\n<p>However, it\u2019s not just the Russians that get the stereotypical arch-villain treatment. Any one\u2019s game as long as it doesn\u2019t affect box office dollars. The 2012 remake of Red Dawn (originally about a Soviet invasion of the US) intended to pit the Americans against an invading Chinese army, but later the antagonists were changed to North Koreans in order to maintain access to China\u2019s profitable box office.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"media__youtube-frame\" width=\"100%\" height=\"300px\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nGoe7BdGdlg\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cThe potential influence on the public of military-backed record-breaking blockbusters like Avatar should ring alarm bells in a democracy. This story of censorship has been routinely suppressed and soft-pedaled for decades,\u201d<\/em> Alford said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/usa\/412575-russia-hollywood-pentagon-movies-propaganda\/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=RSS\">RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\">RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>America\u2019s greatest enemies have been lined up for the latest add-on to Grand Theft Auto Online \u2013 perpetuating the old trope of an imminent global threat that only the US can meet. Within seconds of the opening of the trailer for the popular game\u2019s \u2018Doomsday Heist\u2019 add-on, all the usual suspects are named as possible [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":338688,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-338687","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}