This Atlantic (9/15/19) essay’s main complaint about Chinese propaganda seems to be that Beijing is better at it than Washington.
The Atlantic (9/15/19) published a curious plea for more propaganda in Hollywood movies. The essay, by Boston College’s Martha Bayles, is ostensibly a warning about the growing power of China over the US film industry:
Simultaneously the world’s most profitable and censorious market, China has led Hollywood down the path of submission to a state censorship apparatus whose standards are as murky and unpredictable as those of most democratic countries are clear and consistent.
This may be a legitimate concern—absent the “clear and consistent” bit—but Bayles doesn’t offer much in the way of specific examples; the closest she comes is a complaint that
the trailer for the forthcoming Top Gun: Maverick—a sequel financed in part by the Chinese firm Tencent—omitted the Japanese and Taiwanese flag from Tom Cruise’s jacket.
Instead, her chief worry about propaganda seems to be that Beijing is better at it than Washington:
Beijing has a very clear idea of how a film industry should operate—namely, as an essential part of the effort to bring public opinion in alignment with the party’s ideological worldview.
The “Chinese propaganda machine,” Bayles writes, produces
bloody, ultra-violent action flicks, in which heroic, righteous Chinese soldiers kick some serious ass, including cowardly, decadent American ass, in exotic foreign places that are clearly in need of Xi Jinping Thought.
The prime example is Wolf Warrior 2 (2017), a nonstop tsunami of gun battles, massive explosions, wrenching hand-to-hand combat, and a spectacular tank chase, which hammers away at a single message: China is bringing security, prosperity and modern healthcare to Africa, while the United States is bringing only misery.
The Atlantic‘s writer complains that Hollywood doesn’t make movies like Wolf Warrior 2—even though it does.
Bayles’ claim, and complaint, is that the United States doesn’t make films like this—or at least doesn’t anymore. She explicitly pines for the days when Washington and Hollywood worked arm in arm to promote the American dream:
Over the years, the US government has often praised and defended Hollywood films as a key component of American soft power—that is, as a storytelling medium that can, without engaging in blatant propaganda, convey American ideals, including free expression itself, to foreign populations around the world. But Hollywood has long since abandoned that role. Indeed, not since the end of World War II have the studios cooperated with Washington in furthering the nation’s ideals.
The government helps the film industry fight “piracy” and pushes other countries to accept US entertainment products, Bayles notes:
But even while providing that help, Washington refrains from asking Hollywood to temper its more negative portrayals of American life, politics and global intentions.
After all those FBI warnings on all those DVDs, the film studios can’t even suppress criticism of the US government?
It is quite strange that an essay appearing under the banner of “Free Expression” is openly asking for the movie business to “cooperate with Washington” and censor content in the name of “soft power.” But equally strange is the suggestion by someone whose job involves studying the relationship between government and the culture industry that this kind of cooperation and censorship does not in fact go on routinely.
There is, in fact, a parenthetical admission in the piece that undermines its whole thesis: “(The exception is the Department of Defense, which insists on approving the script of every film produced with its assistance.)” Oh, just the Department of Defense? I guess that does leave a lot of potential Housing and Urban Development–themed blockbusters going unfilmed.
If unvarnished military propaganda is what you want, Hollywood is happy to provide.
The Pentagon’s support for Hollywood is not a minor sidelight: Based on a FOIA request by Matthew Alford (Conversation, 7/26/17), who studies propaganda at the University of Bath, the DoD has helped produce 800 feature films between 1911 and 2017—including major franchises like Transformers, Terminator and Iron Man. It’s been even more involved with television, aiding series like 24, Homeland and NCIS.
Bayles is well aware of this practice; in the quote above about script approval, she links to a piece in Business Insider (3/5/14) in which the military official who decides which projects get the Pentagon’s help boasts that through such government-subsidized entertainments, “the image and message of the American armed forces gets projected before a global audience.” The article notes that in return for military assistance, which can shave tens of millions off a film’s production costs, Hollywood accepts strict censorship:
Films are denied Pentagon support…if they show the military in a negative light, such as scenes that include drug use, murder, or torture without subsequent punishment.
The Pentagon, in fact, supports exactly the kind of cheerleading, nationalistic entertainment that Bayles says China makes and the US (regrettably) doesn’t: Movies like Lone Survivor, 12 Strong, The 15:17 to Paris and Captain Phillips, and TV shows like NBC’s The Brave, CBS’s SEAL Team and CW’s Valor, are in every way the equal of China’s Wolf Warrior 2 in combining action thrills with a didactic message of the superiority of their country’s values and warfighting ability alike. Bayles buried this premise-destroying admission in a parenthetical—but at least she admitted it.
That’s not true of the other glaring contradiction to her article’s thesis, which goes entirely unmentioned: The CIA’s active and highly effective program to insert its messages in Hollywood product. The covert agency hasn’t been involved in as many projects as the Pentagon—60 since 1947, by Alford’s count—but arguably it’s had more cultural impact: The CIA-aggrandizing Argo won an Oscar for Best Picture, beating out the torture-apologetic Zero Dark Thirty (FAIR.org, 4/8/16). The CIA’s input into TV shows like 24 and Homeland (which were also aided by the Pentagon) helped to crucially shape the public narrative of the “war on terror” (Extra!, 4/14).
Why does Bayles ignore these clear examples of what her article is calling for, namely Hollywood cooperation with Washington to incorporate sophisticated messaging into entertainment products? And why didn’t anyone at the Atlantic notice the obvious omission, particularly when the website published an excerpt (7/14/16) just three years ago from Nicholas Schou’s book on the very topic, Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood?
Just to venture a guess: Maybe it’s because when Hollywood cooperates with Washington, the “American ideals” it ends up promoting are not “free expression” but militarism, xenophobia and the efficacy of torture. Ignoring this sorry record makes for very poor journalism—but excellent propaganda, so perhaps according to Bayles’ own value system, she’s doing the right thing.
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Featured image: Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty.
about a month or two ago I watched a program, a family kind of show on Television and I watched it because something caught my attention. The program was very much teaching people how to respond to Trump being impeached. I wish I could recall the program, but from what I viewed it was aimed to cultivate a mindset, while pretentiously sweet in some demeanor and speaking violence the next.
Oorah, Hooah and Hooyah for Hollywood
One word, _interpellation_. And Ms Bayles, doubtless, is up to her neck in it.
That said, some time back someone wrote something to the effect that whereas most governments have an “official” Ministry of Information the U.S. has pretty much privatized it: Hollywood, with the occasional overt subsidy to movies that glorify the Military-Industrial complex. And the fly-bys during football games. Well… ‘Nuff said.
Be well.
A few little corrections:
1) The FOIA request you referenced was actually dozens of FOIA requests and they weren’t by Matt Alford, they were by me as part of the research for the book National Security Cinema, which I wrote with Matt.
2) Homeland wasn’t aided by the Pentagon.
3) It isn’t just the CIA and the Pentagon. The FBI, Homeland Security, DEA, NASA, the Secret Service, and the White House have all censored Hollywood scripts or injected their preferred messages into films and TV shows (and still do). While I wholly appreciate what FAIR is saying in this article, it’s far worse than even this article describes.
I’m sure it is, and that leaves out the films that WEREN’T made or suffered indie death due to official opposition. It’s part and parcel of what FAIR has been saying for YEARS about how the MSM has been coerced into being an apologist for imperialism. It wasn’t just the CIA or DoD that clamped down on critical scrutiny of the USA’s motives, but they seem to be the worst actors in this ongoing triumphalist film festival of militaristic deception.
America, the last time many people believed in the military was probably when Superman stood for, ” Truth, Justice and the American Way!” Apparently that was on TV in the 1950s
Ironically, Superman was rejected by the Pentagon because the script was too mocking towards the government. The franchise only became a vehicle for military propaganda with Man of Steel.
I don’t see how you arrived at your criticism of the Atlantic article. After reading the article my impression is that Hollywood needs to act more intelligently in their dealings and competition with China. The author wrote, “With free expression under threat everywhere today, it is a disgrace that China seems to understand the cultural and geopolitical power of film better than the industry that made these great movies and others like them.” As Hollywood has always done they are just concerned with chasing the dollar. They don’t recognize the threat and already compromising their product in dealings with China.
The criticism is about Bayles’ implication that glamorizing and glorifying “good old American values” would enhance American entertainment and our image both at home and abroad. Bayles is advocating that Hollywood use “the cultural and geopolitical power of film” to propagandize the heck out of the American viewer as well as sell that image overseas to promote our way of life. It’s frankly patronizing to intelligent citizens of a free society and something that is only seen under oppressive regimes.
John Wayne and his schtick may have been popular earlier in our democracy, but so were exposes of corruption in government as well. And many folks never did prefer the hyperbolic Wayne approach to entertainment. We always had a choice. It’s not so easy in China. Bayles is using the term “free expression” paradoxically to imply that as oppressive as China may be, they are still smarter than we are when it comes to propagandizing via entertainment media. She overlooks completely the fact that government propaganda via entertainment is an essential tool that helps forge an oppressive society.
I.e., she makes no sense.
It should be no mystery why there are now so many plots in Holywood movies that present China and the Chinese in a favorable light. China is the largest movie market in the world. By making China and Chinese characters look good Holywood producers are simply chasing after the money. If American is made to look, why should Holywood care? There is money to be made by doing so.
Can you name some of these ‘plots in Hollywood movies’?
I too would appreciate some examples of the films that you claim are presenting China in what you imply to be an artificially positive light. Top Gun redux is the only one I can think of and all that was done there was to remove a flag from Tom Cruise’s character’s uniform that was offensive to the Chinese government. I’m not saying that is a good thing to do, but it was also, in fact, very dated and no longer relevant to the present geopolitical situation.
Still, with so many alleged examples, you should probably have named at least 3.
The Atlantic harps on the fact that the Chinese portrays their military the same we do. I watched one of those national Lampoon Christmas movies got all nostalgic because it reminded me of when it was actually okay to make fun of law enforcement once in a while, when you didn’t have to genuflect to anyone in uniform or be branded a traitor.
We can’t laugh at ourselves anymore, it was fun seeing cops trash a house responding to a routine call.
Another runner up in the “my propaganda stinks better” than yours might be the purchased patriotism at NFL Games the thinly disguised ritual combat so important in the American aesthetic… granted they’ve so far eschewed smoke and lasers of the WWF, or the all out, no holds barred combat of CAGE FIGHTING!!! But let the number of eyeballs dip, or post career head trauma (suicides) rise much more… Just watch the “patriots” at the NFL CASH REGISTER, set the LASERS TO STUN!
On that score, I love how the FOX news crowd and hyper-patriots had a melt-down when African-American NFL players knelt, respectfully before the U.S. flag instead of standing but are now in a snit because the NBA won’t endorse a political protest against China over Hong Kong. I loved seeing Brian Kilmeade frown when a rep. said that they want to keep politics out of the sport, the exact argument he made just a year ago.
Hong Kong, I don’t have a dog in the fight but what exactly are we supposed to all be supporting, independence from China via referendum? Okay but then lets support that across the board. They tried to pass an extradition law, it was revoked and now they are calling for the head of the governor. I don’t know, it just looks like protest for the sake of protest at this point.
“China is bringing security, prosperity and modern healthcare to Africa, while the United States is bringing only misery.”
Which of course is true, but that’s completely ignored.