New Report From the Cost of War Project
The Costs of War project at Brown University released the first in a series of reports on the normalization of pro-military messaging in American pop culture on February 25, 2025. The series is called Consuming War: How Pop Culture Captures Our Attention and Fuels Forever Wars and the first report is about militarization in TV and movies. This series could not come at a better time, as the Doomsday Clock that tracks the danger of nuclear annihilation was recently advanced another second: we are at 89 seconds to midnight as politicians on both sides of the American uniparty beat the war drum, promising trillions of dollars in further military investment and escalate their belligerent rhetoric against China.
While most US Americans are struggling to pay the rent and have no interest in sacrificing their children for Empire, the consent manufacturing apparatus is humming away in the background, targeting young people with video games, social media, fashion, music, toys, and sports. In order to resist this militaristic grooming, all of us need to get better educated on how to spot this propaganda and recognize just how deep the relationship between media companies and the US military goes.
The Militarization of Movies and Television report documents the history of military movie propaganda, which goes back a lot further than you might think. Many people have probably heard of D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation – lauded for being the first non-serial 12mm film released in the US, but routinely criticized for its disgusting celebration of the KKK. Released in 1915 as US President Woodrow Wilson was rallying public support to get involved in World War 1, Birth of a Nation garneered the technical expertise of Army engineers to stage the film’s Civil War battle scenes.
Hollywood became an “essential war industry” during World War 2 and the relationship has been cozy ever since. Over the last one hundred years, the Pentagon has financed more than 2,500 war-themed movies and TV shows, providing funding, military vehicles, and technical support to projects that glorify US military might. US imperialism becomes sanctified, war crimes become heart-warming stories of brotherhood, and the many millions of lives lost to US military campaigns are rendered as savage terroristic animals deserving of death. Many of the war films you’ve probably seen not only got US military funding, but allowed the Pentagon to change scripts to align with their preferred narrative. I found the case of Godzilla (2014) particularly gross:
“Under Pentagon influence, the script of Godzilla (2014) underwent a striking
transformation—shifting from a critical take on the U.S. military’s use of nuclear weapons
in World War II to a more favorable portrayal. The original script of Godzilla included references to the U.S.’s atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but these were removed by the producers to secure military assistance. One key change involved deleting a Japanese character’s reference to his grandfather surviving Hiroshima—a decision influenced by Pentagon notes stating, “If this is an apology or questioning of the decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that will be a showstopper for us.”15 In the end, the movie portrays nuclear weapons as a heroic force for saving the world, with Godzilla—originally a symbol of the nuclear devastation of Japan—revived by a nuclear blast and fighting alongside the U.S. military against two parasitic monsters.”
Go read the rest of The Militarism of Movies and Television report at the Cost of War’s website and follow them on Instagram and Twitter. To learn more about US militarism in general, check out this YouTube playlist I’ve been slowly adding videos to. To learn more about the connection between war, militarism and climate change, check out this resource library I’ve been building (includes podcasts, videos, reports, academic papers, and organizations fighting on the side of peace and climate justice).
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