Gaming takes up the bulk of the argument in The Military-Entertainment Complex, but Lenoir and Caldwell also highlight the ways in which the legacy media of TV and film have likewise buttressed the Pentagon’s propaganda aims in post-9/11 America. They develop an illuminating analysis, for example, of the Bush-era terror-porn franchise 24, which “gives voice to the many predictions of RMA theorists and advances the technologies of the RMA as solutions to the rampant threat of terrorism.” The show is another example of the bowdlerized aesthetic of “epic realism,” far more concerned to traffic in brutal sensory affect than in anything resembling narrative honesty or moral complexity. 24 never pauses in its breathless and sensational hyping of the terrorist threat to give viewers an opportunity to reflect on or debate anti-terror policy, nor (to understate things exponentially) does it deepen anyone’s understanding of the complexities of global geopolitics. Instead, “24 made several formal innovations designed to produce a specific affective response in viewers: a frenetic experience of tension, anxiety, and intense, fast-paced action.”

it describes the everyday experiences of people far from areas traditionally associated with America’s Long Wars—thereby implicating our own anodyne lives in the steady militarization of our common world