I was talking about it with my dad and he mentioned that the only Army ads he sees is when the parent is involved. How the son is convincing the parents how awesome the army is and blah blah blah. Advertising aims to it’s audience and, I guess if it works cool.

I am a firm supporter of our troops, even when the causes seem to be… not in their best favor. I agree with the quote, “If you don’t stay behind them, feel free to stand in front of them.” I think very highly of them and very highly of anyone who joins. But it’s strange how a lot of people don’t see it that way anymore. Or they do, just not enough to join. I admit that I wanted to go into the Marines (b/c ARMY just stands for Aren’t Ready for Marines Yet) but once we actually got into a war, I was scared off. There was fear of the draft before but if people are drawn to the military from their brilliant commercials, is there really another choice?

Nice post. I’ll probably be keeping up with your blog to see what other rants I can’t join in on.

Now that I am older (and hopefully wiser), I realize what a dangerous concept this is. How many teenage boys will go and watch this new Rambo movie and suddenly develop an interest in joining the Army? Not to say that serving in the Armed Forces isn’t a respectable path, but I’m a little concerned with the message these movies and recruitment commercials are sending.

On the topic of music, while it can be a powerful tool for instilling patriotism, it can also be used for the opposite effect. Anti-war songs are nothing new. Bob Dylan’s Masters of War, Bad Religion’s All Good Soldiers and Anti-Flag’s A New Kind of Army are just a few examples. Green Day’s song Holiday broke into the mainstream, receiving frequent airplay even with such lines as “Sieg Heil to the President…” Music plays a large part in the lives of recruitment-age kids, and there seems to be a large amount of influence coming from both sides of the philosophy of war.

While both audio and visual play the main role in recruitment ads for the military, I think that music serves such a subconscious purpose to the viewer that the visual could just be the anaphoric text going across the screen and you would still have the same effect, although not as drastic as Abercrombie and Fitch models with crew cuts crossing a set of monkey bars in military fatigues.

We seem to know the text so well that the Marines don’t even feel the need to say “The Marines” at the end, and instead just use their symbol to convey the message. But the orchestra blaring with trumpet and drum solos make your fingertips start to tingle and your gut sink a couple extra inches because of the raw patriotic power of the commercials.

And who wouldn’t want to be like Rambo anyways? I’ve always wished to run into a terrorist camp with an unimaginably endless clip of ammo muttering incoherent one line slogans while I kill 300 terrorists standing in open ground, being prone to any attack, but not having a single bullet hit me. Because that’s what I’d be like after I went through basic boot camp!

As for the recruitment videos, I DREAM of the day when they make just ONE realistic video. One guy standing guard in a tower. Camera doesn’t move at all for 60 seconds while he yawns and sighs and stares at nothing.

Strength For Now. Strength For Later.

Crock of shit if you ask me. And contrary to the commercials, the army doesn’t make anyone cool. Glad to see you’re looking past the horseshit commercials and advertisements though.