ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 is a published conversation between Matthew Alford and Alan MacLeod and examines the applicability of the propaganda model to Hollywood movies and explores the US military and CIA’s enormous effort to propagandize the public through influencing television, film and computer games, a fact largely unknown to the public. Alford’s careful assessment of over 4,000 pages of documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act finds that US military intelligence have influenced over 1,800 movies and TV shows since 2005 alone, rewriting and approving scripts and exchanging military hardware for positive depictions of the military industrial complex. He provides more new and direct examples of how movie scripts were changed in order to present the military in the best possible light to the public. For example, how lines in James Bond films were removed at the behest of the Department of Defense. Alford argues that Hollywood is hopelessly intertwined with the CIA. Thus, the chapter argues that popular media have become an extension of the national security state and discusses the consequences for society that entails.
