False Witness

Karen Hall's paper False Witness: Combat Entertainment and Citizen Training in the United States brings up a lot of good points. For one, I always wondered at what point did toy companies use television and advertising companies to sell to young children. As she points out, during WWII Mattel manufactured the "Burp Gun" and spent half a million dollars for television spots advertising the gun to children. These war toys flew off the shelf and every young boy had to have one because they were "so real" and authentic. I can believe her point on combat entertainment being responsible for "training" our culture in how we should feel about war because in previous wars before television, it doesn't seem like there was a big war/military culture in our country. I just watched the movie Platoon and watched the scene she talks about on pages two and three and can know understand when she talks about revenge killing as a moral justification for the deaths of their deceased platoon members. It also makes me think why a film as gory and sad as Platoon would make anybody want to jump right up and join the army?! One of my good friends from home enlisted into the marines and when I asked him why he said, " because I want to kill some [arabs]" I wonder why he would say that because it's not like he has been in battle before over in the Middle East and feels like he needs some revenge? I think it must come from him growing up in our militarized culture with constant bombardment of ads, movies, tv shows and video games and him buying into combat entertainment. It just makes me sad.