Re: [Marxism] Sci Fi/Pulp and Recruitment

["cleon42@xxxxxxxxx" <cleon42@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- Myles Sullivan <mylessullivan81@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Dear Marxmailers,
>
> Has anyone else noticed the militarization of pop-culture, pulp, and
> sci-fi
> that is typically consumed by young males?  I know it has always been
> fairly
> high, but now it seems worse than  ever.  Perhaps this is due to the
> US
> Department of Defense becoming more of a presence in these cultural
> areas.
>
> For example I've heard of recruiters being at comic book, video game,
> and
> Star Trek conventions.

Speaking as someone who's been to his share of "geek" conventions,
including DragonCon, the largest in North America, I can honestly say
I've never seen recruiters there. I *have*, however, seen "Fuck Bush"
t-shirts, hammer-and-sickle shirts, people dressed as Soviet military,
and last year I saw my personal favorite:

"Cthulhu conservatives for Bush-Kerry. Making the world a better
appetizer, one nation at a time."

It's a mishmash, politically. I'd say that the majority of people I
meet at these things are anti-war, probably mainstream Democrat, with
some libertarians in there too. You also have a lot of people who, for
one reason or another, identify with Marxism; primarily, this is in the
hacker crowd, and more out of contrariness than actually having a
Marxist analysis.

As for pseudo-military stuff, well, the game industry is one thing. The
US military has made no secret of the fact that they work with game
manufacturers to give a "positive" image of the US military and war in
general--which is why you have games like Medal of Honor (a WWII
first-person shooter).

The hard-core gaming crowd is not exactly ripe for recruitment, so I
don't see that as being a major payoff for the military. Besides them,
the only "militarization" I've seen is the relative popularity of the
Stargate shows (SG-1 and Atlantis), which feature Air Force officers as
protagonists. Beyond that, the only "militarization" that I know of is
the usual far-future military fare--Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek,
Farscape Peacekeepers, Star Wars stormtroopers, that sort of thing.

Adam


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