CDA: Graham & Luke (reading for Novemeber)

[杉森 典子]

Dear everyone, 

Our November reading is "Militarising the Body Politic:
Manifestations of neofeudal corporatism in political
language about the war on Iraq." This pre-publication
articles is just one click away at:
http://www.philgraham.net/Graham%20and%20Luke%20-%20Final%20L&P.pdf

>From this title, you may assume that it is about the war
on Iraq, but it is much more than that. For me, this is
the first article that lists more online materials than
materials in print as references. It is easy for you to
find sources you find interesting in this article. I
earnestly recommend this article to everyone, in
particular, to those of you who are interested
discourse-historical approach to CDA. 

In order to argue that the current stystem of political
economic relations in which we live is characterized as
neofeudal corporatism, Graham and Luke traced the history
far back. They found that similar strategies for
militarising bodies politic as recent ones were also used
in the first crusade by Urban II in 1095.

One of many things that I found interesting is the
authors' description of the current censorship of movies
(page 25) as shown below:

The Center for Defense Information (CDI) details almost a
century of direct and consious involvement by the military
in the production of moviews (CDI, 1997)--a practice that
began with Creel.
The CDI documents extensive,  ongoing, and direct
censorship tied to 'hundreds of millions of dollars' worth
of subsidies, and scripting decisions over major
productions designed to impress upon the public the
virtues of military ideal and technologies (CDI, 1997).
According to a US Department of Defence (DOD)
spokesperson, 

"Top Gun" . . . prepared the American people for the Gulf
War. . . "Top Gun" showed that we could shoot down
airplanes, that our aircraft carriers could go anyplace,
and that our pilots were the best. And so, when the Gulf
War comes along, there's no reason for any American
civilian to believe that we can't beat Saddam Hussein.
(Philip Strub, in CDI, 1997)

CDA-DISCUSS members, what do you think of the above
statement? Was "Top Gun" so influential? There are other
war movies whose underlying theme is anti-war, such as
"Platoon."  How can we reconcile this situation?

Until I read this article, I had naively believed that the
tabaco industry was the only one that influenced movie
producers (I had heard that tabaco companies gave movie
producers a lot of money and asked them to include a scene
that characterize smoking in a positive manner). 

Best, 

Noriko