Transforming Transformers into Militainment: Interrogating the DoD‐Hollywood Complex

Abstract

This article examines how the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and Hollywood collaborated to manufacture the blockbuster films Transformers (T) and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (TRF) to sell in global markets and to sell a positive image of DoD personnel, policy, technology, and practice to the world. T and TRF are global militainment films made by the “DoD‐Hollywood complex” to make money in markets and put the U.S. military before the world in a positive light. To show how, the article's first section defines the “DoD‐Hollywood complex,” presents a brief 20th‐century history of its formation, and describes the current DoD institutions, policies, and practices that fuse DoD publicity agencies to Hollywood filmmakers. The second section highlights how DoD assisted T and TRF's production and contemplates why Hollywood solicited DoD support. The third section shows how T and TRF put DoD in a positive light. The conclusion addresses some of the consequences of T and TRF with regard to democratic theory. By showing T and TRF to be global militainment commodities, this article interrogates the nexus of “reel” and “real” U.S. military power and sheds light on how DoD interacts with Hollywood studios to influence how it gets screened by entertainment media and seen by global spectators.

Military Videogames

“…He argues that the military's motivation for so doing centres on ensuring that it is shown with positive, heroic qualities, thus helping to build public support for the military and boosting recruitment. 19 Collaboration between the military and videogames industry are similarly motivated, with this author, for example, showing how the developers of the games Medal of Honor (2010) and Medal of Honor Warfighter (2012) made extensive use of former and active US Special Forces and collaborated with military weapons and equipment manufacturers in order to deliver a 'positive' and 'authentic' experience to the player. 20 These ties are deep-rooted.…”

Imagineering empire: how Hollywood and the US national security state ‘operationalize narrative’

“…During World War II, Hollywood was deemed an ‘Essential War Industry’ by the War Department (Mirrlees, 2017: 410), the Office of War Information forming a Bureau of Motion Pictures. Hollywood’s militarization solidified with the Cold War.…”

“…Hollywood’s militarization solidified with the Cold War. After World War II, ‘the nation was to be permanently prepared’ (Yergin, 1977: 220), and with the 1947 National Security Act, ‘The hitherto exceptional wartime cooperative arrangement between DoD and Hollywood was normalized and made permanent’: in 1948, the DoD’s Public Affairs branch established the Motion Picture Production Office (Mirrlees, 2017: 411). A proliferation of complexes emerged, and with it, the normalization of US empire.…”

“…The Walt Disney Company adopted the term in 1952 to develop its storytelling park experience, an apt depiction of the scope of cinematic productions that combines writing with craft and technical work to visualize stories. Examining the military’s approach to the future of warfare as a form of imagineering helps further untangle the US entertainment industry’s intricate relationship to the state, and its role in the military-industrial-complex (see Burston, 2003; Der Darian, 2001; Hamilton and O’Gorman, 2018; Jenkins, 2012; Miller et al, 2005; Mirrlees, 2017; Wasson and Grieveson, 2018), as conjuring hypotheticals and creating scenarios are the domain of Hollywood filmmaking. My thinking about the state’s potential weaponization of Hollywood storytelling has been inspired by Catherine Lutz’s (2006) resonant claim that ‘Empire is in the details’ (p. 593).…”

“…1 This article examines how the US state appropriates Hollywood creativity for purposes of warfare. There is a lengthy relationship between the state and the entertainment industry; since World War II, Hollywood and the state have formally partnered together on various film productions (Mirrlees, 2017) while US embassies have long apprised the State Department of overseas market opportunities for Hollywood films (Moody, 2017). Yet when I began interning at a film/TV production company and working as an extra in Hollywood in 2003 as part of a larger ethnographic study of media industries, I discovered a less visible facet of the 'military industrial complex': writers, storyboard artists, actors, and camera operators taking short-term jobs on army projects for internal military purposes.…”