How Top Gun Made America Love War

 Warning: This article is bias, non-scholarly and completely based on opinion.

Sirota's article was one that I could not help voicing my own opinion on. I feel as though his analysis of Hollywood's collaboration with the United States government is just another way to downplay the military and show how the United States uses sneaky methods to trick people into loving war and supporting violence.

Sirota's first argument is to introduce the fact that the Army worked hand in hand with the producers of X-Men to promote potential recruits. It offered recruits the notion that they could "live out superhero fantasies on real-life battlefields". Well, the Army is pretty damn smart if you ask me; what better way to promote recruitment then pairing it with an action packed film that has a huge male following. Now, I see the arguement that could be made as to how it is trickery, or false advertisement, but come on, the military has been around since the dawn of time, any average, even below average person knows joining the Army won't give him Wolverine-like powers. It is just like when you see an advertisement for McDonalds, the burgers in the commercial look incredibly tantalizing, but you know when you get there, its going to be a haphazardly slapped together stack of decent tasting low quality food.

 Men will always have a fascination with fighting and the mental picture of the "Army" being presented as a    buff, camo covered hero that goes into the most fire fight ridden battle, save a whole village, save the girl, and come out with only one bullet wound to the shoulder. If the government wants to promote military ratings in a time where Iraq and Afghanistan have pretty much lost support and Congress is being criticized for the military budget, then they are rather smart in using the one outlet that can target the most Americans without making the general public feel like they are watching an "Uncle Sam" type promotion.  Top Gun, albeit a rather extreme movie, did highlight some real facts, but it is still a Hollywood movie that was specifically made to bring back support for the military in a time where the public seemed to hate Vietnam and every Marine was suddenly a "baby killer". Interestingly enough, it absolutely appealed to the general public and boost military support.

Regardless of his negative outlook on Hollywood beautifying the military, he seems to be downplaying the intellgience of Americans; We love war because its romantacized in the movies so we must not know what it is actually like. Stating that any movie with a military based success story is government subsidized propaganda is a bit intense in my opinoin, it would have been made with or without the help of the government in most cases. At the end of the article he raises a few questions... Why does the government grant and deny access to that hardware based on a filmakers willingness to let the Pentagon influence their script? Well, with the issue of the Osama Bin Laden movie, the government will obviously want a role in the script because it is a recent and potentially sensitive world event directly involving the role of government. Why would the producer team up with the Pentagon  and assume that of course the Pentagon will have to review anything made for the public eye without having a good look at it first. If a produced did not want to be abridged of free speech, they have the option of NOT teaming up with the Pentagon, not having access to government equipment and filming the movie independently from government influence. So boycott the movies for being propaganda if you want, but we all know X-men and Top Gun are great action movies.