PROPOGANDA

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*Shrugs* Maybe it's just nice to have a black and white enemy for a change. In the movies, the bad guy is obvious. His actions are blatantly bad or his look is blatantly scary. In real life, things are not so cut and dried. In real life, you can trust someone, give that person your whole heart, only to find out that it was always that person's plan to betray you. In real life, the muslim down the street that always seems grouchy when he sees me could be the guy that lays down his life to save mine and, my best friend, the girl that I've known since the third grade, could secretly aspire to steal my husband. In the movies, we see the hard blows coming. In real life, we get blindsided. It sucks.

The movie was propaganda, yes, but it wasn't American propaganda. It was more like Ronald Reagan propaganda. Either that, or a USAF recruitment film. It was just after the bombing of Libya, and the Arab nation in this movie, although unnamed, was obviously supposed to be Libya. Reagan got a lot of criticism over his bombing of Libya (from other Americans, of course).

Red Dawn is another example which was brought up in this thread, and the invasion scenario in that movie was almost exactly the one outlined in a genuine piece of propaganda put out by the American Conservative Union, which focused on Nicaragua and why it was so desperately important to stop the communist regime of that country, applying the Domino Theory to Central America. The fear was that if Nicaraguan communism was left unchecked, the rest of Central America, and then, Mexico, would turn communist and be used as a Soviet staging area to attack the United States. As it turned out, the Reagan Robots were more afraid of Nicaraguan communism than they were of Middle Eastern terrorism, since they traded arms for hostages and used the proceeds from the weapons sales to fund the Nicaraguan Contras.

It always sort of baffled me how much of a pass Iran was given by the Reagan Administration. They did absolutely nothing to punish Iran for their seizure of our Embassy, and later on, they traded arms for hostages. They let Iran get away with what they did (and even rewarded them), while maintaining this irrational obsession over Nicaragua, even though the Nicaraguans didn't do anything to us.

The reason why I would hesitate to call this American propaganda is because the film was clearly directed towards American audiences. It was political propaganda dealing with issues which are more internal to America, somewhat a continuation of the "Hawks vs. Doves" debate which went back to the 1960s and the Vietnam era.

Iron Eagle was pretty much down on anyone who might favor negotiations and diplomacy over direct military action. They were called "wimps" and "pussies" in the movie. But you can tell how specifically directed the propaganda was in the movie, as a point was made early on in the film when Doug Masters was trying to convince Chappie that a rescue mission was possible. Chappie asked him, "What do you think they should do? Launch missiles? Go to war over him?" The script was crafted in such a way as to make that seem like it was not even an option. Limited warfare was the policy at the time, and the film was careful to go along with that philosophy.

That struck me as significant, since there were quite a few Americans who would have favored going to war under such circumstances.

And yet no lefty ever whines about movies like Green Zone & Rendition as propaganda. There are far more anti-American hit pieces being churned out of hollyweird every year and no cries of propaganda which means any film defending the U.S is propaganda while "America is the rich, evil, great satan" movies are Cannes film festival winners and are considered "truth telling".

Ok, now I get it. :/

In many languages propaganda and advertising are the same word.