{"id":509,"date":"2008-03-10T04:39:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-10T09:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2008\/03\/10\/which-military-would-you-join\/"},"modified":"2011-04-13T17:20:37","modified_gmt":"2011-04-13T22:20:37","slug":"which-military-would-you-join","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2008\/03\/10\/which-military-would-you-join\/","title":{"rendered":"Which Military Would You Join?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This quick video presents an American and a Swedish military recruitment commercial back-to-back.<\/p>\n<p><object width=\"540\" height=\"390\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/zWqT8Rljt_8&amp;hl=en_US&amp;feature=player_embedded&amp;version=3\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><param name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"always\"><\/param><\/object><\/p>\n<p>Our member blogger, Wendy, who is writing her dissertation on the military, had this to say:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The most striking difference between these ads to me is what these commercials choose to show and what they don\u2019t show to recruit new members.<\/p>\n<p>The Marines\u2019 commercial focuses on the duty, bravery, glory, honor aspects of service. And this is entirely focused inward\u2013 toward the Marines and the country\u2019s goals (and in that order\u2013 Marines\u2019 loyalties are to \u201cunit, Corps, God and country\u201d in that order). Where is the \u201cother\u201d in this commercial (that is such a part of the Sweden commercial)? Who is the \u201cfor honor\u201d for? Who is the \u201cfor courage\u201d for? It seems implicitly to be to the corps.<\/p>\n<p>This is right in line with most Marine discourse. All of their recruitment info is the same\u2013 the focus is on the corps, and on the highly specialized ways Marines serve. As a popular Marine slogan says \u201cThe USMC: When it absolutely, positively must be destroyed overnight.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And the Swedish commercial is even more fascinating. There is no focus on the actual members of the Nordic Battlegroup. Instead it is all about everyday people\u2013 both in Sweden and in countries experiencing conflict. The focus is on the privilege of living in a country not at war (\u201deverybody\u2019s everyday is not like ours\u201d).<\/p>\n<p>The images of war in this commercial are disturbing\u2013 hectic, scary and out of control. This is the exact opposite of the Marine commercial where everything is ordered and organized and machines (helicopters, guns) are shown as extension of this order and control\u2013 instead of in a context of chaos. There\u2019s a HUGE disconnect between the weapons shown and what they actually DO during war.<\/p>\n<p>War in all its chaos is present in the Swedish commercial, and absent from the Marines commercial. That in and of itself is interesting.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spikedhumor.com\/articles\/134460\/American-Vs-Swedish-Recruitment-Ads.html\">Spiked Humor<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Thanks to Julie C. for this tip!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This quick video presents an American and a Swedish military recruitment commercial back-to-back. Our member blogger, Wendy, who is writing her dissertation on the military, had this to say: The most striking difference between these ads to me is what these commercials choose to show and what they don\u2019t show to recruit new members. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23703,1804,309],"class_list":["post-509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-marketing","tag-nation-sweden","tag-warmilitary"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35240,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509\/revisions\/35240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}