Operation Hollywood: The American influence

            The Constitution of the United States of America begins with those three words We the People. In America today, there is a general belief that each and every individual is unique and should have equal access to the American Dream of life, liberty and pursuit of Happiness (Griffin, 2009). Hollywood, since its creation, has never forgotten to show those principles through their productions. The strength and tenacity of such internalized ideologies within an efficiently working hegemonic system allow people to consider their society open and free, since it appears that no one is forcing anyone else to live a certain way, or keeping them from reaching their highest possible levels of achievement.

Today, the greatest power of Hollywood is the mass media. Newspapers, magazines, television, radio, film and internet. Hollywood is in charge of their own production. But the rest of those medias have the job to interpret them as much as they want and in every meaning of the term. Those cultural ideas presented by Hollywood appear to the public, and first, here in America. The media has more influence on cultural ideas and ideologies than do school, religion or families. Hollywood films dominate American theaters so much that US citizens have a relatively little access to other types of films- international films or films that express a different idea than Hollywood want to express. Hollywood shows America at its best. And because Hollywood’s business have dominated both American and global cinema, their motion picture is often considered to be the standards, correct way to make fictional films (Lyden, 2003).            

                                                                     

              Let’s take for example the movie Air Force One. One of the multiple movies were Hollywood had to work closely with the US army. Would you be surprised to know that the government is often reading Hollywood’s scripts before studios start shooting a scene or a movie where the US forces are represented?  Not only Hollywood want to show America and the rest of the world that the US army is good and powerful, but the American government stay smart and keep a close eye on what directors want to show on the screen. Well, before shooting the movie Air Force One, movie which starred Harrison Ford as the President of the US engaged in hand to hand combat with terrorist who have hijacked the president’s jet, the US Air Force general carefully read the script and immediately noticed some adjustments to make. For example, Hollywood was talking about a lot of coded messages, using real army terms like “Delta Force”- the army’s highly classified Special Forces commandos. The general refused to let Hollywood’s director to use those kind of specification in the movie. He also insisted to cut the Marines and the other branches of the army out of the picture altogether (they were represented as “show stoppers” in the script), and order to only show the Air Force on screen.  Why is that so? Well simply because when a producer want to include the US army in a movie, the result gives the same effect as an advertising. Showing ONLY the Air Force was a good idea to only promote that section of the army. Hollywood knows that a lot of teenagers and young adults watch their productions. Showing the air force branches would provide all public relations and recruiting values coming out of the film.  In the end, most of the script changes were made. The Pentagon was happy and the producers too. However, the public never knew that the “show stoppers”, the other branches of the Army, had been deleted from the film (Robb, 2004).