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?
Biography:
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.
