Militainment, Inc.: War, Media, and Popular Culture

Title: Mil­i­tain­ment, Inc.: War, Media, and Pop­u­lar Cul­ture
Author: Roger Stahl
Pub­lish­er: Rout­ledge. New York.

This book gives an inter­est­ing account of the pre­sen­ta­tion of war as enter­tain­ment in con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can pop­u­lar cul­ture, and how the Amer­i­can media indus­try col­lab­o­rates with the mil­i­tary to present war on our screens. Stahl has labeled this trend ‘mil­i­tain­ment’, and argues that this inter­ac­tive pre­sen­ta­tion of war is turn­ing peo­ple into cit­i­zen sol­diers. The writer traces the ori­gin of the term ‘mil­i­tain­ment’ back to 2003 when it first entered pub­lic dis­course. Soon after its intro­duc­tion, Word­Net online dic­tio­nary doc­u­ment­ed the term. The dic­tio­nary defined the term as “enter­tain­ment with mil­i­tary themes in which the Depart­ment of Defense is cel­e­brat­ed”.

The depic­tion of war in an enter­tain­ment for­mat makes it far eas­i­er to con­sume. War films, embed­ded jour­nal­is­tic accounts of bat­tle­fields and video games present war in a sim­plis­tic man­ner and hide the sociopo­lit­i­cal, geopo­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic com­plex­i­ties of these con­flicts from the audi­ence. The genus of ‘mil­i­tain­ment’ is that it does not present the point of view of the ‘oth­er’ but sim­ply moulds pub­lic opin­ion in favour of war. Stahl argues “the dom­i­nant per­spec­tive has been to regard the pre­sen­ta­tion of war in terms of the ‘spec­ta­cle’ that it is, to argue that these dis­cours­es tend to func­tion to con­trol pub­lic opin­ion by dis­tanc­ing, dis­tract­ing, and dis­en­gag­ing cit­i­zens from the real­i­ties of war.”

Besides the film indus­try, the book also dis­cuss­es oth­er media that are turn­ing war into enter­tain­ment. The video game indus­try has a multi­bil­lion dol­lar invest­ment in war games. The vir­tu­al real­i­ty of these video games turns the play­er into an active sol­dier in the bat­tle­field who enjoys killing ene­my com­bat­ants. Thus, these games have con­vert­ed peo­ple into active par­tic­i­pants of war rather than pas­sive view­ers.

Stahl is an Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Speech and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia. In 2007 he pro­duced a doc­u­men­tary on this top­ic under the same title. He has also pub­lished a num­ber of arti­cles on the same theme. The book pro­vides cru­cial inside infor­ma­tion to its read­ers about the rela­tion­ship between Hol­ly­wood and the US mil­i­tary. After the 9/11 attacks, Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney and Bush advi­sor Karl Rove held a meet­ing with Hol­ly­wood king­pins to explore the use of the indus­try to mobi­lize peo­ple for the ‘War on Ter­ror’.

Dur­ing the Iraq inva­sion in 2003, embed­ded jour­nal­ism saw a new rise. Reporters and cam­era­men cov­ered only a “polit­i­cal bat­tle ground” rather than an actu­al bat­tle ground. Embed­ded report­ing, as many com­men­ta­tors not­ed, resem­bled a “real­i­ty TV extreme sports chal­lenge of sort”. This style of report­ing makes the sol­dier a focal point.

‘Mil­i­tain­ment’ is a pow­er­ful tool in the hands of big mil­i­tary com­plex­es, which con­trol pub­lic opin­ion and are able to gen­er­ate war hys­te­ria among peo­ple. This 21st cen­tu­ry phe­nom­e­non gives birth to more com­plex­i­ties regard­ing democ­ra­cy and world peace.

The book is a valu­able research doc­u­ment for schol­ars who are inter­est­ed in the rela­tion­ship between media and the mil­i­tary. It also pro­vides a use­ful frame­work to study the increas­ing trends of mil­i­tary con­trol on enter­tain­ment and news media in places like Pak­istan. The Pak­istani ISPR — pub­lic rela­tions wing of the Pak­istan mil­i­tary — is not only pump­ing mil­lions of rupees in the pro­duc­tion of tele-films (‘Faseel e Jan Say Agay’) and TV seri­als (‘Khu­da Zameen Say Gaya Nahi Hai’), but also songs for pop­u­lar con­sump­tion. The ISPR also arranges cov­er­age and broad­cast of war-torn areas; embed­ded jour­nal­ism saw a new rise on Pak­istani TV screens espe­cial­ly after oper­a­tion Zarb e Azab. All these mul­ti­me­dia plat­forms have been used to build a pow­er­ful image of the mil­i­tary in the pub­lic sphere.