ABSTRACT
Over the past decade, but increasingly since 9/11, the United States military has relied heavily on advertising campaigns to try to convince America’s youth to join its ranks. Television commercials broadcasting the values associated with the different branches of the US military have left the American public with images and slogans as popular and famous as those found in ads for Coca Cola, Nike, or McDonald’s. Just as American youths have been told to “just do it” (Nike) or been reassured by means of a catchy jingle that there will “always” be “Coca Cola,” so have these same 16-to 24-year-old Americans repeatedly learned about the life-forming merits of joining the US Marines (“the few, the proud, the Marines”) or been assured that they too can “be an Army of one,” just like the many other multicultural, multiracial, and non-gender specific US youths who have already joined and are profiled in these ads.
