Militainment

"Militainment" is a portmanteau first coined by president Richard Nixon,Fact|date=April 2008 that consists of "Military" and "entertainment". It is defined as either entertainment featuring and celebrating the military, or controlled by the military.

The U.S. military in particular excels in the authorship of militainment, although the Russian military also has plans to produce their own TV channel.

Typical examples consist of a broad array of media, from television and movies, to reality shows and video games. It also involves the manufacture of pop culture icons with military like characteristics that people, typically young men, can look up to.

Militainment serves a number of purposes. From recruiting to public relations and revisionist history of events depicted in news and history books. The military, through public affairs departments, maintains close ties to the entertainment industry as a way of enlisting their help in creating and distributing these forms of media and adding high production value and legitimacy.

Video games

The game "America's Army" is a compelling example of militainment because the game fits both definitions of militainment: it features and celebrates the U.S. Army, and is controlled by the U.S. Army as well. "KumaWar" is distributed for free over the web by Kuma Reality Games. The ' series is very closely linked to the Navy SEALs. United States Navy recruitment videos are some of the videos the player can view in the game, and Zipper Interactive has also had competitions for SOCOM players to attempt to pass real boot camp for prizes as promotion for the game series. Also a momentary note here in that the United States Marine Corp also features a video game for themselves called ' where there are two versions. The civilian version and the military version the latter used for the purpose of training individual Marines in handling drug addiction and battle fatigue in their squad.

Other military-inspired video games are "Operation Flashpoint" and its sequel, "" and its sequel, "DARWARS Ambush!" and "Full Spectrum Warrior". All these games were inspired by military training simulators. "Operation Flashpoint 1/2" and "ArmA" were inspired by the VBS1, while "Full Spectrum Warrior" was inspired by a simulator game made by Pandemic Studios.

ee also

*Military science fiction
*Serious games

External links

* [http://www.carolinebrooks.com/videogamesmanipulationmilitary-cbrooks.doc/ "Video Games, Manipulation and the U.S. Military: A Comparative Analysis of America's Army and SOCOM II: US Navy SEALs"] academic analysis of "America's Army" and "SOCOM II: US Navy SEALs" in terms of "Visual Discourse" by Caroline S. Brooks a PhD candidate at East Carolina University.
*Navy Office of Information West, http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navinfo/navinfowest.html
* [http://www.fair.org/extra/0305/militainment.html "That's Militainment! The Pentagon's media-friendly "reality" war"] by the director of peace and justice studies at Fordham University
* [http://www.stanford.edu/class/sts145/Library/Lenoir-Lowood_TheatersOfWar.pdf "Theatre of war: The military entertainment complex"] analysis (42 pages) by two professors from Stanford University
* [http://www.utpjournals.com/jour.ihtml?lp=simile/issue16/leonardfulltext.html "Unsettling the military entertainment complex: Video games and a pedagogy of peace and Struse"] by a Washington State University professor
* [http://www.mediaed.org/videos/CommercialismPoliticsAndMedia/MilitainmentInc "Militainment, Inc."] Documentary by University of Georgia professor, Roger Stahl. Preview available on [http://www.freewebs.com/apocalicious/militainmentinc.htm his site] . Distributed by the [http://mediaed.org Media Education Foundation] .
* [http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/08/12/news_6104371.html "Spot On: Games get political - Using both propaganda and education, games are making ripples in the political world."] by Tom Leupold.