In Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network (2001) James Der Derian argues that, at least since the first Gulf War in 1990-1, the US Department of Defense has invested heavily in the mediation of war as a clinical and virtuous exercise with minimum civilian casualties. Unlike during the much criticised Vietnam War, media is kept outside the zones of battle as much as possible and depend on the DoD’s own media outlets for information. In addition to controlling news media’s reports from war zones, the DoD also seeks to actively produce the way that the entertainment industry – in particular Hollywood cinema, television shows, and computer games – represent the armed forces. As David L Robb describes in Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies (2004), the DoD regularly funds block buster film. In exchange for extras, advisors, guns, helicopters and other tools of war, the DoD has been allowed to edit and censor film scripts. As Der Derian shows, the DoD has demanded that directors keep US military operations “virtuous” and movie directors thus incise, in particular, civilian carnage, producing an image of war as the surgical obliteration of enemy forces. Movies that have asked for DoD funding but refused to toe this line have not been given this funding. Thus, Ford Francis Coppola did not receive funding for Apocalypse Now (19XX), while Jerry Bruckheimer’s Top Gun (1986) were made with considerable aid from the DoD.

However, this formula begins to change with the film Black Hawk Down (2001), a film that shows extensive bloodletting, and civilian death but still received funding.  In recent years, DoD funded films such as Zero Dark Thirty (2014) and American Sniper (2016) show American soldiers and military personnel torturing civilians and shooting children. This paper explores this dramatic shift in the censorship of the visual representation of violence and considers what is still untold by DoD funded cinema.

Der Derian, James. Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network. Boulder: Westview Press, 2001

Robb, David L. Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies. New York: Prometheus Books, 2004