Movies and repressive civilizations

Back when Hollywood was first finding its footing, politics and the economy basically dictated how everything was portrayed on screen here in the States. You see it everywhere—from the way the USSR gets painted as the ultimate Evil empire in those James Bond flicks, to those overly "heroic" American war movies about Vietnam or, more recently, Iraq. It’s all just propaganda wrapped in celluloid. What’s the one cinematic lie or total misrepresentation that actually makes your blood boil?

Propaganda is never going away. It's just going to keep changing its face.

Americans definitely know how to get under my skin. Then again, they do make movies that actually try to grapple with their own mess—stuff like terrorism or the Vietnam War. Of course, they also churn out those incredibly grating pieces of propaganda that belong in the same trash bin as Wayne's infamous flick "Green Beret."
Here’s a recent example: John Milius's "Spy Flight," about pilots launching from an aircraft carrier to scorch everything in sight on the Vietnamese coast. They drop napalm, turning the sky and the earth into a furnace, before heading back to base to bicker with officers or flex their masculinity at one another. They save each other during a mission, and that's basically it. All delivered with a deathly serious directorial touch.

Or like when Mel Gibson says in "When Will I Be a Warrior" that he's gotta head into battle just to stop one from happening🙂