I find your question quite interesting. Just last night, I was eating in a pub, and as in most places theses days (and to my great dismay, I must confess) many tv sets were on. I glanced a few times to look at the many racing car accidents they were showing, and as it turns out, I caught quite a few commercials. The ads were from the ARMY, and let me tell you, I almost felt like joining right after seeing it! (well, not really, but I tried to notice my "emotional" response to the ad). It was quite glamorized. They really try to access one's feelings of belonging, pride, heroism. After the commercial, I almost felt like I could save the world, only if I joined the forces!
Living in Canada, where the presence of the military is quite marginal (in my opinion) this ad (which was aired on a USA channel) was quite impressive. There were close-up images of soldiers' faces, being serious, being heroes... Wow!
Anyhow, it seems like the military is trying to recruit, and they seem to have found the way. I'd be very interested in finding if this kind of strategy actually works... In fact, I've also seen another "new" strategy. The US Military hired a software company to develop a full computer game, America's Army (we're talking state of the art, full-on graphics and all) free to download on the internet, which walks a person through the basic training, as if you were there (see their site: http://www.americasarmy.com ). You are being shout at, explained the rudimentary tactics, and then, after completing the training (which I never had the patience to do) you get to play war online with other trained soldiers. The interesting part is that the training is supposedly quite realistic (virtually speaking of course) and in between training sessions, you have military recruiting ads, which direct you to your local recruiting office... I'd bet anything many psychologists contributed to this massive (or what seems to be massive anyways) campaign. Who ever said the military was old fashioned?
Here's a link to an article that dates 1 year now, but that gives a good idea of the whole campaign... Quite fascinating! http://money.cnn.com/2002/05/31/commentary/game_over/column_gaming/
Cheers!
Jean-Marc
Paul Smith wrote:
Here's a completely unrelated question I was wondering about this morning. It seems to me that the advent of war films has produced something that didn't really exist a hundred years ago: a popular image of "soldier" ("sailor", "airman", etc.) based largely on fictional ideals (pretty uniform depictions, if you'll pardon the pun) rather than on our interactions with the real thing (surely far more varied). I wonder what effect, if any, this has had on the actual behavior and attitudes of those entering the military. I imagine that people come to the military with certain fiction-based ideas about the role they're going to take on. But I could be completely wrong - perhaps the contact with reality overwhelms the fictional ideals immediately, or perhaps people who actually enter the military these days have enough contact with real military before entering that the fictional role is already replaced by a more realistic one.
Paul Smith Alverno College Milwaukee
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