Militainment

Part One: War as Entertainment
Militainment is the portraying of "Military" and "Entertainment". It is defined as entertainment featuring and celebrating the military, and controlled by the military some examples consist from television and movies, to reality shows and video games. In Part One: War as Entertainment, I learned how war is staged for consumption. The point of Militainment is to appeal to the audience. There are movies about war for example Behind Enemy Lines, Top Gun and Saving Private Ryan, all movies that are extremely successful, with the same message, to broadcast war. Even Behind Enemy Lines had a recruiting trailer. But what feeds us war the most is not movies or video games, it’s the news. The scary thing about this is that the news knows exactly how to broadcast war to appeal to the audience. It’s called the “Shock and Awe” approach. It gives you details on the worst part. It relates to the viewers, and if you didn’t know about this, you’d fall for it. We are being consumed by everything around us, and the scary thing is, war is something you don’t want to be consumed by. It’s surprising how much it’s actually around us. At the end of this piece a question was asked, that question being “Who does the war movie benefit?” and I am wondering the same thing. I see no positive side in Militainment.

Part Five: Reality T.V.?
The scary part of this piece is how in control the media is. They control everything that is broadcasted, and decided what news is. When they were talking about the “build up to the invasion of Iraq” it showed the support we had. The audience has little knowledge about the topic and what the media feeds us, it usually what we believe because we have background no background knowledge. It surprises me how much militainment is shoved in our faces, without us really knowing. I learnt about the media terms and the media approach to displaying the news.

Part Six: War as Spectator Sport
Part of the definition of militainment is the involving of the manufacture of pop culture icons with military characteristics that typically young men can look up to also serves a number of purposes like recruiting to public relations and when I watched the part of this movie about war being a spectator sport made me think of this and how the portray of the military is usually how we think of the military because we have no other knowledge other than what we see on the news. Its scarey to think that the news targets its audience perfectly. What most people dont know is how the news trys to target its audience. They want to get the awe reaction. I learned that, and it makes me rethink everything i see on the news.

Part Seven: Toys
In Part Seven: Toys, was a series of impacting images of toys, board games and dolls relating to the war or the military. There was monopoly, “Faithfull Fuzzies” and GI Joes. The most scary and shocking thing I noticed in this part was the teddy bear with the t-shirt that said “give us your oil or we will kill you”. We are being swallowed by things like this, unknowingly. Also when they mentioned how 40-60% of toy soldier action figures sold are being bought by teenagers and young adults, it suprise me. I rememember them being for young chilren as the guy version of a barbie, but know its targeting young adults because that the audience needed to recruit and get interested in the military. It was surprising how detailed the toys are and how detailed the sets where. It was surprising how much the toys are based on the actual war. Like how the soldiers had names of actual people in Iraq. It’s almost disturbing. The most startling thing I pulled from this piece was the hostage toy “Cody”. It really made me feel like something was wrong with that and

Part Eight: Video Games
In the video game part of this video, it explains how video games involving the military stared of as ways to train and prep ground soldiers, including real training stimulators then evolved into another thing to market. It was the fight of war in the windows era. It was military to commercial market using it as training and moved into the commercial stream. I learned that war video games started as a military training tool, and then became a “toy”. When they found the marketing and commercial potential, military and war games became a big thing. It scares me how much it’s around us and how caught up we get in the next best thing. And the scariest thing about it is we are still surrounded by it. New games are coming out every month, and I know from having a teenage brother who caught up and involved people can get into the game, and I do believe it promotes violence.