Media Representations of Militarism: From the Old to the New Cold War

This paper seeks to understand how the US mass media fulfills its role as an ideologicalstate apparatus, per Louis Althusser’s definition, to manufacture consent for military spending. I focus on two periods of time, the 1980s and the present moment, to show how media representations naturalize high levels of military spending. I chose these two periods of time because the US was/is not formally at war and yet military spending rose exorbitantly nonetheless with little to no public pushback. To explain this, I draw from Marxist theories of ideology, psychoanalysis, and poststructuralist theories. I have focused on three main ways themes. The first is ideology and ideological critique. The second is the way in which the American political imaginary became foreclosed at the end of the Cold War. And third, I illustrate how we are stuck in a hyperreal simulation where any feedback we give is illusory.