Pop Culture Goes to War: Enlisting and Resisting Militarism in the War on Terror. Geoff Martin and Erin Steuter. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010. 249 pp.
The cover art of Pop Culture Goes to War: Enlisting and Resisting Militarism in the War on Terror might lead the reader to believe that the book will examine American pop culture for military influences. Instead, the book offers a subjective look into U.S. domestic and foreign policy and the motivation behind America’s wars.
Authors Geoff Martin and Erin Steuter are both professors at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Canada. Together, they argue that the persistent influence of militarism in the United States is related to decades of popular culture that reinforces domestic and foreign policy. Having staked out their argument in the introduction, you would expect next to read example after example of pop culture mimicking militarism. Oddly, the initial chapter focuses on the costs and benefits of war and how the warchests of many in Congress are filled by industries from outside of their districts. Pop culture takes a back seat to discussions of U.S. foreign policy that chooses military solutions over political solutions to solve the world’s problems.
In chapter 2, “The Call to Arms: Propaganda Persuades the Public to Go to War,” the authors state that average Americans are reluctant to go to war. They go on to argue that the government uses persuasion to win public support for aggressive foreign policy. Journalists are portrayed as often too caught up in the frenzy of the run-up to war to render objective reporting. Taking a page out of history, the authors write, “The Spanish-American War of 1898 was famously the war that made William Randolph Hearst’s active promotion of war in his newspapers the subject of critique and mockery from a generation of ‘muck-raking’ journalists.”
Readers must wait to page 52 for the first real evidence and discussion of pop culture’s relationship to war, as the authors cite instances of pop culture supporting World War I and World War II and modern conflicts. For example, in World War I, more than 200 children’s books were published on the topic of youths helping to defeat the Central Powers. During World War II, the Office of War Information, created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, helped explain and promote government efforts to win the war through everything from disseminating information to the public to outright propaganda.
Martin and Steuter point out that pop culture was enlisted to help fight the Cold War as well, and that Hollywood was conspicuously complicit. Tinseltown produced a long list of war movies such as I Married a Communist (1949), Big Jim McClain (1952), The Green Berets (1968), and many more, the latter two films starring that icon of American patriotism John Wayne. According to the authors, early anti-Communist films were produced with haste as Hollywood caved in to pressure from government leaders such as Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
But every movement has a counter-movement, and the backlash against pro-war films came in the form of movies such as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). Later, in reaction to Vietnam, anti-war films such as The Deer Hunter (1978), Apocalypse Now (1979), and Platoon (1986) drew critical acclaim and won at the box office. Full Metal Jacket (1987), directed by Stanley Kubrick, “all but abandoned the ‘good war’ script and instead explored the dark consequences of war on the perpetrators and their enemies,” according to Martin and Steuter.
Chapter 3, titled, “Toying with War,” delves into the toy industry’s promotion of militarism from plastic molded cowboys and Indians to BB guns. Even Barbie® was called to duty, as the Pentagon collaborated with the Mattel Corporation to ensure that women in the military were properly represented on store shelves.
Even the Women in Military Service for America Memorial Foundation, which oversees the memorial for servicewomen at Arlington National Cemetery, endorsed combat Barbie® on its website: “Criticized for excessive emphasis on clothing, exaggerated physical attributes, and empty-headedness, Barbie® has, nonetheless, served as a leader in career paths for young women…. In 1989, Barbie® joined the Army; in 1990, the Air Force. A year later, she joined the Navy and then, in 1992, the Marines.”
Unfortunately, Pop Culture Goes to War only briefly touches on the influence of militarism on music, television, video games, fashion, and even bumper stickers. From the perspective of these Canadian authors, it would appear that militarism now permeates the American lifestyle. But all is not lost, say Martin and Steuter. The resistance movement has creative tools at its disposal in the form of culture jammers and counter-propaganda that are effective counterweights to militarism. That said, Pop Culture Goes to War is more about U.S. domestic and foreign policy than what the title of the book implies.
NAPOLEON BYARS
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill