Photo: Illustration: Vikas Thakur Photo: Illustration: Vikas Thakur

The battle is raging, the ‘evil’ forces are about to pull off a win. The soundtrack crescendos. Bloodied and battered, the losing side looks death in the eye. It’s now or never, mates. And then comes the miracle: Americans dressed in military uniform, guns blazing, gimlet-eyed, all pumped up to save the day. Think Act of Valor (dir. Mouse McCoy 2012), think The Outpost (dir. Rod Lurie, 2019). Hollywood has a tried and tested template for onscreen portrayal of the American military. It’s a pretty simple one: no moral conundrums to confuse moviegoers. No references to America’s war machine or its eternal empire-building enterprise. Hollywood dutifully sticks to the template: American forces good, the other side bad. American forces save lives. American forces fight just battles. To keep America safe. To keep the world from falling into the hands of the barbarians at the gates.

Hollywood’s glorification of American forces has a long history. When World WarII broke out and the United States entered the fight, Hollywood was asked to march in step. Soldiers were given clear instructions (win the war) and so was the American movie industry (help your country win the war). The US Office of War Information had a dedicated unit—the Bureau of Motion Pictures—to keep watch on Hollywood. Between 1942-45, the Bureau was hard at work; reviewing 1,652 scripts, deleting or revising any material that showed America in a less than favourable light. Scripts that were not enthusiastic about valourising the US troops or portraying the evil nature of the enemy didn’t make the cut. Elmer Davis, the head of the Office of War Information, famously said, “The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people’s minds is to let it go through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realize they are being propagandized.” Davis was specifically referring to World WarII at the time, but his words still ring loud and clear in Hollywood’s ears.

At the start of World WarII, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration called on Hollywood to boost troop morale overseas and the morale of Americans on the home front. American filmmakers were told: ask yourselves the all-important question—will this film help win the war? They responded by churning out war movies, including combat movies (the crux of the genre), espionage dramas, occupation movies and home-front dramas that depicted the daily lives of Americans during wartime. According to Tomaz Schatz, author of the books The Genius of the System and Hollywood Genres, never before had “the interests of the nation and the movie industry been so closely aligned”.

Hollywood dutifully sticks to the template: American forces good, the other side bad. American forces fight just battles. To keep America safe. To Keep the world from falling into the hands of the barbarians at the gates.

World War II is history now. But America has fought many wars since. In fact, America is always at war. And so, Hollywood carries on too, churning out movies to explain America’s wars to audiences across the globe, obscuring context, obliterating history. These movies provide palatable reasons for American incursions; humanise coldblooded military moves; cover up American blunders that have cost lives in countries across the globe. Hollywood has stuck to its template over the years: America saves lives, America fights to keep the world safe. According to Tanner Mirrlees, author of Hearts and Mines: The US Empire’s Culture Industry, no other country produces and disseminates so many images of itself as the military hero. The list of Hollywood movies that perform this function is long. A sampling: The Green Berets, American Sniper, Black Hawk Down, the seemingly endless Top Gun franchise, the Rambo series, Saving Private Ryan, The Widowmaker, Tigerland, Pearl Harbor, Flags of Our Fathers.

Hollywood movies devote time, technical expertise and big bucks to valourise the US military and to market it—to both Americans and global audiences. The United States is the world’s biggest military spender and it reportedly spent over $916 billion on its army in 2023. According to Military.com, in 2023, the US Army’s advertising budget was a whopping $104 million. Advertising is the ‘heart and soul’ of the military’s recruitment efforts. It relies on Hollywood movies to drive home the message, rake in recruits, stay in the fight.

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The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) dictated terms to Hollywood filmmakers in the Cold War years. Hollywood was enlisted by the US government agency as an ally in the fight against the erstwhile Soviet Union. In an ironic Orwellian twist, the CIA demanded changes in the film adaptations of George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949) to make sure that both films would work as vehicles of anti-Communist propaganda. In the ‘50s and the ‘60s, the CIA’s covert propaganda via Hollywood was at its peak. In the early ‘90s, with the Cold War ending and the enemy (the Soviet Union) disbanded, the Agency’s shine dimmed. Dissatisfied with being relegated to the wings, the CIA set up an Entertainment Liaison Office in Hollywood in 1996, headed by CIA officer Chase Brandon. Brandon was the ‘CIA’s man’ in Hollywood, working on over a dozen films and big-budget TV shows, ensuring that these glorified the CIA and moulded public perception of its activities.

The films Chase was involved in include The Recruit, Sum of All Fears, Enemy of the State, Bad Company, In the Company of Spies, The Good Shepherd, Charlie Wilson’s War, Spy Game and The Interpreter. The CIA’s mandate was to ensure filmmakers made the Agency seem cool (to boost recruitment), rewrote history and glossed over facts (to sanitise the Agency’s dubious playbook), and in a few instances, to admit to moviegoers that war is a dirty business and it costs lives, but thank God the CIA is around to look out for the good guys and keep the world safe.

The CIA-Hollywood tango continued—and still does—after Brandon’s stint got over. The CIA’s PR unit was involved in the production of Ben Affleck’s Argo (2012), a feature film based on the real-life CIA rescue mission of six Americans diplomats in Tehran during the 1979 hostage crisis. Questions were raised about the film’s historical accuracy. Questions were also raised about the film’s attempt to minimise the role of the Canadians in the rescue effort and about letting the CIA and America hog the limelight on screen. The film went on to win three Academy Awards, including one for Best Picture.

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It is common knowledge now that Zero Dark Thirty (dir. Catherine Bigelow, 2012), which revolves around the CIA’s hunt for Osama bin Laden and the Navy SEAL operation that took him out, was made with the CIA’s blessings. Oscar winner Bigelow and the film’s screenwriter Mark Boal were given access to privileged information by the Agency. The CIA also had suggestions to offer on the film’s script. Earlier, in 2008, when Bigelow’s Iraq war film Hurt Locker was released, it was hailed as a triumph by the American military and intelligence establishment. At a ceremony organised to felicitate her, former CIA director Michael Hayden praised her work, calling her films “highlights of American culture”.

Apart from a handful of exceptions like Coming Home (dir. Hal Ashby, 1978) and The Deer Hunter (dir. Michael Cimino, 1978)—tales of troubled Vietnam war veterans; Full Metal Jacket (dir. Stanley Kubricksolare, 1987) and The Thin Red Line (dir. Terrence Malick, 1998), which honestly chronicle the human cost of war, Hollywood continues to be gung-ho about America’s penchant for waging wars across the globe.