We Deserve Better Propaganda Than This
The other night I went to the movies. Before the show started, they screened an ad for the National Guard, which they have been doing, at this theater, for years now. Some of them have been pretty good. Emotionally affecting. Putting a human face on the people in uniform, and all that.
But this one was different, an absurd stew of some of the clumsiest propaganda to hit the screen since the 1950s. Kid Rock screams a song about being a hero. Dale Earnhardt Jr. races for the finish line. And a Guardsman in the Middle East kicks a soccer ball back to a little boy instead of running him over with a tank.
I think Ronald Reagan scripted that last bit from whatever puffy cloud he’s perched on right now.
Tags: National Guard, propaganda
-- Filed by Sarah Goodyear
September 5th, 2008 at 11:33 am
“Here’s six phrases. Work them into a song.” That was truly lame. I’m also wondering about holding up as some sort of ideal a man whose primary skill is turning left.
More than anything else, however, what bothers me is why do people still go to the movies? They’re cold, smelly, noisy, expensive, full of distractions and ads, and for all that you get to have six more movies spoiled in advance. I do not understand the attraction.
September 5th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
The advantages of going to the movies, in the best of cases: large screen with larger-than-life projected image, fantastic sound system. But I understand the negatives as well. My all-time favorite movie experience was seeing a writer’s-guild-screening of the first Lord of the Rings movie at, of all places, Dolby Laboratories. The worst was seeing one of the Tim Burton Batman movies, with the sound cranked up to the point of clipping/distortion, an audible vacuum cleaner in the next theater and surly crowd.
As to the National Guard recruiting - it’s a commercial for a certain demographic. I’m trying to imagine what an effective National Guard recruiting ad for my demographic would be - for late-30’s NPR listener, college educated egghead type. Dale Earnhardt Jr. is wildly popular in some demographics, so it totally makes sense. (There’s James Blunt, but he’s with a different army!) For me, it would be more like a US Army commercial featuring Jon Stewart or Salman Rushdie.
Ever since I came of age politically in the 80’s, I’ve always felt that it was not a good thing to have the US Armed Forces be separated from the citizen populace - sure, part of this is propelled by socio-economics - but even was I was graduating high school, I remember chatting with the recruiter, and maybe because I was college bound, he basically said that I probably wouldn’t be interested. And at Berkeley, ROTC rhymed with Nazi, which I think is horribly unfair to the ROTC, really. I wish this “blood tax” of military were distributed equally across our citizenry, because even though I think our foreign policy has gone horribly astray, I believe we do owe a huge debt to our citizen soldiers - I just hope that they continue to represent all of us, the citizenry.
September 5th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Dave,
I’m just a big sucker for curling up in the dark with some popcorn and a bunch of strangers and entering the fantasy. It helps that my local movie theater is family-run operation–and they charge just $6.50 on Tuesday and Thursday nights. Not too loud, either, although the ads are irritating.
KenY,
I don’t object to ads for the National Guard per se, and I have to say that previous ones I’ve seen at this theater “got” me–and I’m in essentially the same demo as you.
First of all, it was weird to be screening this ad in perhaps the most liberal neighborhood in the USA, where there might even be people who don’t know who Dale Earnhardt Jr. is.
But what bothered me the most about the ad was its ham-handedness. The bit with the soccer ball is a case in point. And equating driving a race car with going into war, which is just what the editing does…wouldn’t even an Earnhardt fan potentially be skeptical of that?
I want better entertainment value from my government!
September 5th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
One of my favorite, not-so-recent movie theater experiences was the last movie I saw in my (working-class) neighborhood one-movie theater before they turned in into 7 little theaters.
Went to see Todo sobre mi madre (Almodovar) just when it came out. The movie theater was (surprisingly) packed solid, and sometimes the community laughter made you miss the next two sentences of dialogue. Nothing like belly-laughing along with 250 other people. Can’t get that at home!
The ad and the boy with the soccer ball? I just saw In the Valley of Elah on DVD. Need I say more?
September 5th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Back in my day they made feature-length military advertisements like _Top Gun_.
KenY and Sarah,
I’m glad to know there are enthusiastic theater goers in the world. I have a feeling that without you guys the sort of movies available for me to rent would be dramatically different. Probably fewer movies like _Iron Man_ and _The Bourne Supremacy_ and more movies like _The Princess and the Warrior_, _The Book of Life_, and _Funny, Ha, Ha_. Now that I think about it, however, this might not be so bad. Now that I think about it even harder, I wonder how many of my favorite movies have ever been to a movie theater in this country other than in a blink-or-you-miss it way? Without the IMDB and the rest of the internet I doubt I’d know who Tom Tykwer, Hal Hartley, and Andrew Bujalski are let alone be able watch all their films. I sure liked _Batman Begins_, though, so thanks again guys.
September 6th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
I’m actually curious about the financial relationship between Earnhardt and the National Guard (and, for that matter, Kid Rock)…. a big part of featuring Earnhardt is that the Guard is sponsoring him, and “Junior” is driving the official National Guard vehicle.
I did a cursory inspection of Kid Rock and Junior’s bios, and didn’t see anything about previous service. Even though the closest I’ve been to the military is Army funding of some grad school basic research (DARPA project on GaAs epitaxy on Si) and friends, cousins and neighbors who went into the US armed forces or ROTC, I have to admit, that I’m a little disappointed in us as a country that we don’t have an Elvis for this generation - a big name celebrity who has served in the military. Maybe I’m wrong and just not aware of someone. But if that’s the case, it makes me a little uneasy. (I guess that’s why I find the James Blunt story compelling - veteran AND a rock star). Again, I’m totally not military material - so maybe I’m just talking out of my ass! I’m glad I was never drafted, but I suppose I would have found out more about the citizen soldier thing had I been.
Yeah, Sarah - that does sound like interesting marketplace segmentation. ugh! I’m using random sales/marketing terms I’ve absorbed over the years to describe military recruiting strategy. I wonder how the recruiters plan their recruiting campaigns, what they use, and where.
September 6th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Actually, now that I think about it, it makes me sick, how the military dealt with Pat Tillman’s death. Completely unnecessary.