Militainment

Militainment

From destructive world wars, to brutal wars on terror, the US will defend its actions with every tool available (Anderson & Mirrlees, 2014). This is exactly what militainment means; it is the usage of various tools, such as tv shows, movies, video games, newspapers, digital media, etc. to defend and even promote its military action and recruitment (Anderson & Mirrlees, 2014). A couple of instances exemplifying this concept go as followed: first, as mentioned in the article, Call of Duty: Black Ops II was a game that advertised and promoted “the soldier in us all” (Anderson & Mirrlees, 2014). The worst problem with it being that it provided a completely unrealistic view of war, and especially death. When people play the game, especially kids (who are perfect recruitment material by the way), they get the notion that killing the enemy is such a heroic act (Anderson & Mirrlees, 2014) and dying isn’t such a big deal because one would simply “respawn”. Second, an interesting example of militainment that may seem unconventional at first is the movie Hacksaw Ridge. In this movie, the depiction of war appears to be relatively accurate and even shocking. However, this movie may be considered as the worst case of militainment because even though it shows the brutality of war, it also enforces the othering of the Japanese people (Anderson & Mirrlees, 2014), while capitalizing on the heroism of the main character regardless of his pacifism, which attracts an even wider evidence.

Reference

Anderson, R., & Mirrlees, T. (2014). Introduction: Media, Technology, and the Culture of Militarism: Watching, Playing and Resisting the War Society. Democratic Communiqué.