Shame Clint Shame: Cultural Imperialism, Hollywood Hides US War Crimes

Cultural Imperialism and Perception Management: How Hollywood Hides US War Crimes

"The US government began to increasingly manipulate the contents of Hollywood movie script and to glamorize and lionize the US military and its campaigns. The Pentagon and US government will not assist movie or television productions that reveal the true malevolent role of US wars. Financial and material assistance is only given to wars that make wars and US foreign policy look like a heroic and noble solution. The author of the book Operation Hollywood, Dave Robb, does an excellent job of documenting this. For example, the Pentagon had the entire plot and script changed in the 1961 episode of Lassie named «Timmy and the Martians». The episode was originally supposed to be about the protagonist dog Lassie howling to alert Timmy of a plane crash. The producers originally wanted to do a show where a US airplane crashed because it had a design fault that Lassie could sense due to a high pitch noise and thus identify. The US military, however, would not accept any script that would even remotely suggest that US military hardware could have a design fault. This was because the US government and Pentagon did not want children to think that US military equipment could be faulty, because it would hurt future recruitment for the US military. So the circumstances of the airplane’s crash had to be rewritten for the show to get Pentagon support."