Events

San Francisco Chronicle

Since the taxpayer-supported “Wings” won the first Academy Award in 1927, the U.S. government has worked closely with Hollywood to promote, glorify and celebrate the armed forces. In the 1980s, this partnership became a highly political Military-Entertainment Complex, which today grants and denies filmmakers access to military hardware on the basis of filmmakers’ ideology and message.

The result is that many pro-war films are supported by huge public subsidies that underwrite studios’ use of military planes, boats and hardware – as long as those studios promise to produce a film that Pentagon spinmeisters approve of. Antimilitarist filmmakers, by contrast, are often barred by the government from even photographing the same hardware.