Theaters of War

Synopsis

If you’ve seen Top Gun or Transformers, you may have wondered: Does all of that military machinery on screen come with strings attached? Does the military actually get a crack at the script? Theaters of War digs deep into a vast new trove of recently released internal government documents to bring the answers to these questions into sharp focus. Traveling across America, filmmaker and media scholar Roger Stahl engages an array of other researchers, bewildered veterans, PR insiders, and industry producers willing to talk. In unsettling and riveting detail, he discovers how the military and CIA have pushed official narratives while systematically scrubbing scripts of war crimes, corruption, racism, sexual assault, coups, assassinations, and torture. From The Longest Day to Lone Survivor, Iron Man to Iron Chef, and James Bond to Jack Ryan, Theaters of War uncovers an alternative “cinematic universe” that stands as one of the great Pentagon PR coups of our time. As these activities gain new public scrutiny, new questions arise: How have they managed to fly under the radar for so long? And where do we go from here?

Release Date:2022

Duration:87 min

ISBN:978-1-893521-07-0

Subtitles:English

Trailers

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Filmmaker Credits

Director, Editor and Narrator

Roger Stahl

Co-Producers

Matthew Alford, Tom Secker, Sebastian Kaempf

Interviewees in Order of Appearance

Matthew Alford, Tom Secker, Tricia Jenkins, Oliver Stone, Tanner Mirrlees, Sebastian Kaempf, Robin Andersen, Philip Strub, Duncan Koebrich, Travis Walker, George Lewis, David Evans

Videography by

Gavin Brennan, Karla Cote, Karsten Krause, Andrew Hart, Matt Peterson, Roger Stahl, and William Westaway

Animation by

Roger Stahl

Filmmaker Biographies

Roger Stahl

Director, Editor and Narrator

Roger Stahl is a professor of Communication Studies at the University of Georgia who studies rhetoric, media, and culture. His work has focused on understanding propaganda and public relations as they relate to state violence, conflict, and security. His most recent book, Through the Crosshairs: War, Visual Culture, and the Weaponized Gaze (Rutgers UP, 2018), traces the history of the gun-camera and examines the ways that the public has been increasingly invited to picture war through the weapon’s eye. His previous book, Militainment, Inc. (Routledge, 2010) maps the military-entertainment complex. In a more public capacity, he has produced documentary films, including Theaters of War (2022), Through the Crosshairs (2018), Returning Fire (2011), and Militainment, Inc. (2007), all of which are currently distributed by the Media Education Foundation. He and his work have been featured in such venues as NPR’s All Things Considered, The Guardian, and Al Jazeera.

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Praise

"By taking all this recently acquired knowledge from the highly specialized field of propaganda research and putting it in cinematic format, Roger Stahl and his production team have created a documentary with an outstanding potential for reaching the same masses of people targeted by the Pentagon’s marriage of convenience with Hollywood, an educational achievement for Professor Stahl and his crew."

Daniel Espinosa, "Propaganda in Focus"

"Theaters of War is a powerful and well-researched expose of the government forces at work behind thousands of otherwise innocuous entertainment productions. Highly recommend."

Educational Media Reviews Online (EMRO)

"Like all of Stahl’s work, Theaters of War provides a devastating account of the deep entanglements of American entertainment media with the projects and perspectives of the U.S. military. That a long-time investigator like Stahl is himself stunned by the depth, reach, and intimacy of this relationship is testament to the profound significance of the material uncovered here. Like a bloodhound on the trail, the film tracks toward one riveting revelation after another, managing to shock even as it confirms what we imagined we knew about the role and reach of military propaganda. An essential contribution to understanding how the military shapes the popular image and story of war, Theaters of War should be required viewing for media scholars, concerned citizens, and casual media consumers alike."

Jonna Eagle
Associate Professor, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa
Author of War Games

"For years, Roger Stahl has been the leading scholarly voice about the reach and influence of military entertainment. In this riveting documentary, Stahl takes the audience on an adventure to uncover how the Pentagon shapes films and TV shows in both obvious and in hidden ways. Theaters of War is a must-see film."

Matthew Payne
Co-author of Joystick Soldiers: The Politics of Play in Military Video Games

"You could call it cultural warfare, “disinfotainment” or just plain propaganda – but whatever the label, the pernicious teamwork of Hollywood and the Pentagon has finally been exposed by Theaters of War. This is a high-impact documentary that the USA’s most powerful filmmakers and warmakers don’t want you to see. Director Roger Stahl gives us dramatic smoking-gun evidence of methodical and deadly manipulation; his film confronts head-on the hugely deceptive images that help to promote one horrific war after another."

Norman Solomon
Author, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death
Executive Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy

“A critical debate on the US military apparatus.”

Público

"Theaters of War exposes the entertainment landscape of Hollywood as the monopolistic propaganda arm for what is, by far, the world's single most militaristic purveyor of cruel and wanton destruction, and the most dangerous institution on the planet."

Oliver Boyd-Barrett
Professor Emeritus of Media & Communication at Bowling Green State University

“Revelatory. Roger Stahl shows once again the promise of documentary film in combining entertainment with hard-earned insight. This is the future of public scholarship, and audiences will never see the military on screen the same way again.”

Jessy Ohl
Associate Professor of Communications at The University of Alabama

“Theaters of War convincingly argues [that] the Pentagon’s covert influence over popular culture can have a decisive role in raising support for divisive wars.”

Jonathan Cook
Middle East Eye

"Stahl, through research of his own and interviews with experts like director Oliver Stone and journalists Tom Secker and Matt Alford (co-authors of National Security Cinema), offers a cohesive and well-researched deep dive into the problem of military influence in the film industry and Hollywood’s self-censorship. While the U.S. military’s influence on Hollywood productions is not a secret by any means, this educational documentary sheds a light on just how widespread that involvement can be in the filmmaking process–and the lengths that have been taken to cover it up. Recommended.★★★"

Video Librarian

"Theaters of War clearly and compellingly unmasks the multiple and wide-ranging ways in which the CIA and U.S. military have brought considerable influence to bear on a huge number of cinematic productions and narrations. Drawing on a raft of newly available internal documents and insights from an impressive line-up of industry insiders and academic experts, it critically illuminates the military-entertainment complex as never before. It’s a must see and the crucial questions it raises on where we go from here merit much further debate and discussion."

Marcus Powers
Professor of Geography at Durham University

"Given Hollywood's crucial role in influencing millions of people's views of war, militarism, and U.S. foreign policy, it is troubling how little we know about the film industry's relationship with the Pentagon and American intelligence. Theaters of War provides a much-needed investigation, showing how the military and the CIA dangle access to the stuff viewers expect to see — expensive hardware, realistic bases, and skilled personnel — to ensure consistency with the ideological needs of the state. This is essential viewing for anyone who consumes Hollywood's thousands of entertainment products — that is, for all of us."

Dr. Scott Laderman
Professor of History at the University of Minnesota Duluth

"Theater of War is a gripping, well-researched, and clearly presented a look at the role the US military plays in American popular culture. Mixing archival research, insider interviews, and astute analysis, it offers a deep dive into just how much power the Armed Forces have in making or breaking a Hollywood project. You'll never watch an action movie, war epic, or superhero blockbuster the same way again."

Matt Sienkiewicz
Associate Professor of Communication and International Studies, Boston College and author of The Other Air Force

"This documentary sheds brilliant, heavily researched cinematic light on a dark, ugly reality of American life: the way the Pentagon and the CIA manipulate our minds through our entertainment. Using documents that they acquired through the Freedom of Information Act, the producers show government interference with thousands of TV shows and movies that deal with the nation’s war-making and foreign policy. It’s a Faustian deal for filmmakers: If you want to use military toys, like fighter jets and tanks, you have to let the government that owns those toys tinker with your scripts, to erase anything that reveals the many flaws of soldiers and spies. By showing exactly how this cynical, heavyhanded censorship works, Theaters of War performs a vital public service. It deserves the widest possible audience."

Bob Keeler, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for Newsday, retired

"The Pentagon’s influence on Hollywood goes far beyond obvious propaganda films like Top Gun, all the way to seemingly innocuous movies from Godzilla to Transformers. This is the story of how the Defense Department courted the motion picture industry to create a cinematic universe in service to the military industrial complex. A tight, compelling, and straightforward documentary that is sure to grab audiences from the living room to the college classroom."

Douglas Rushkoff
Professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics at CUNY/Queens

"This powerful documentary hits us with overwhelming evidence that every film made with DOD or CIA cooperation is a picture made with major input from that agency, including pervasive censorship and rewriting. It forced me to wonder: How many hours of my lifetime have I spent staring at movie screens and TV screens unknowingly absorbing DOD and CIA propaganda? Is this part of a military-industrial-entertainment complex? Theaters of War is a terrific teaching experience. It should also inspire a host of follow-up articles and a dissertation or two."

H. Bruce Franklin
American cultural historian and author of Crash Course: From the Good War to the Forever War

“An impressively documented examination of the U.S. security state’s role in promoting militarism via popular media. Think propaganda’s the wrong word? Think again!”

Stacy Takacs
Professor of English & American Studies at Oklahoma State University

"Theaters of War blows the lid off one of the Pentagon's biggest open secrets: that the DoD works hand in hand with Hollywood to steer public opinion about the American military and its overseas adventures. Want to know more about the Pentagon’s history of censorship, script rewrites, and film suppression? Theaters of War is an essential investigation into how the “invisible hand” of the U.S. military shapes what we see at the movies."

Joshua Reeves
Associate Professor, School of Communication, Oregon State University and co-author of Killer Apps: War, Media, Machine

"Lively, engaging, and meticulously researched, Theaters of War documents the myriad ways that US military and intelligence agencies shape film and television. Stahl’s research reveals that the Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency intervene in productions in ways that are direct and heavy-handed, even as they also actively court partnerships with directors and studios to advance their agendas. While DoD and CIA officials typically appear in the credits only as “consultants” or go entirely unnamed, Theaters of War demonstrates that they actually operate as screenwriters, editors, and producers, and may determine whether a television show or film gets made at all. Often, the approval of a production hinges on the erasure of the Pentagon’s so-called “showstoppers,” like torture, sexual assault, structural racism, friendly fire, and civilian casualties of US military action. Not coincidentally, these are the elements of contemporary American militarism most urgently in need of public deliberation. Theaters of War makes visible the mechanisms by which those phenomena are systematically rendered invisible to American audiences."

Rebecca A. Adelman
Associate Professor of Media & Communication Studies at University of Maryland Baltimore County and co-editor of Remote Warfare: New Cultures of Violence

"Theaters of War is Roger Stahl’s latest, and most ambitious work in his nearly two-decade study of military propaganda. Stahl’s expansive knowledge of visual media shines as he documents and exposes the long reach of military PR offices in the making of film and TV. This enormous domain of pop culture, he concludes, is little more than vehicle for military advertising, but audiences are rarely aware of their influence because the military is not required to acknowledge it. Stahl’s Theaters of War is a fast-paced, consciousness-raising work. Its call for transparency is a modest and concrete goal every American should rally behind."

Paul Achter
Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Communications Studies at University of Richmond

Theaters of War

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