You know how it goes: you wait years for a movie that reframes the war in Afghanistan as a Saving Private Ryan-style rescue story, and two come along at once. Today, we look at a pair of ugly twins featuring white saviours rescuing Afghan interpreters to make us all feel better about the longest, most pointless war in American history. We examine the government support to both productions and how they seek not only to rebrand a failed war, but to suggest it can still be won.
Having discussed things with a copyright lawyer I've decided to make Theaters of War available online for free. MEF are doing a terrible job of promoting it, Roger Stahl is a thief and a plagiarist and so there is no legal impediment to me making it available to everyone here. I'm also uploading the 'commercial cut' to youtube but this is the original version. If you've seen it already, thank you and maybe consider a rewatch. If you haven't seen it yet, enjoy!
How are government employees portrayed in popular movies? In this episode we review Civil Servants on the Silver Screen, an academic study and analysis of this very question. We look at the flawed methodology of the book and the underlying assumptions and biases of the author, including the absence of any reference to government entertainment liaison offices. I ask whether films examined in this book, such as The Fugitive, are ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ depictions of government officials, and present some counter-examples to the conclusions the book offers.
In 1982 an anti-anarchist pro-SAS movie supported by the real SAS and based on the Iranian embassy siege was released, sparking protests and controversy. In this episode we explore the story of The Final Option, also known as Who Dares Wins. From its unique production history, the backgrounds of the film’s makers, the political and public reaction to The Final Option’s place in movie history, this is a one of a kind tale of a one of a kind film. We round off with a look at the philosophical and psychological origins of authority-worship, and how that spilled over during the production of the movie.
Over the last decade, data has become the new resource or commodity underpinning the failing global economy. In this episode we explore how Big Data is a con, especially when it is applied to football and wider entertainment culture. We look at the philosophical and methodological problems with how these statistics are gathered, analysed and presented, and how this approach is degrading creativity.
Hi everyone - I'm Tom Secker, the guy behind Spy Culture (.com) and this is my community on Locals. I used to do Patreon but I got sick of it so now I'm uploading early-access episodes of my ClandesTime podcast and the monthly Subscribercast here, and as I figure out the other functions I'll be trying them out. There may be polls on future episode topics, I might even start trying out livestreams, though I am camera-shy so there's no guarantees on that score.
Sign up if you want to get access to the subscriber-only content, but you can also follow me here, get in touch, argue with things I say and petition me for a redress of grievances where necessary.
I trust and hope you enjoy the content because if you don't then I've no idea why you're reading these words that I'm typing right now. Finally, a big thank you for taking the time to engage with my work and give a damn about it. It means a lot to me, and encourages me to try to stay independent and keep creating media.
I recently spoke with Malcolm Critcher of This Is Propaganda for his podcast DoubleThink, about Hollywood and the Pentagon. I'll be posting this to my site soon enough but I thought I'd share it here too. Enjoy!
https://thisispropaganda.substack.com/p/hollywood-and-the-pentagon-with-tom
The next ClandesTime (ep 274) is on the US Military and Reality TV. A topic we've briefly visited some years back, this is the full enchilada. I've attached a handful of snapshots from the documents I went through as I drafted the episode, which not only demonstrate the often weird relationship between the Pentagon and the reality genre, but also how scripted, prepped and manipulated reality TV truly is. Episode will be uploaded this week, so I hope you enjoy it.
