6.23.2004

Culture-jamming war porn: Someone jammed a UK billboard promoting the Royal Air Force's "Air Tattoo," a big military airshow, inserting images of suffering from Vietnam, including "napalm girl," Kim Phuc. The term "war porn" is getting increasing usage, applying either to the titillation of violent war imagery or the near-erotic worship of war machines. Air shows are great entertainment, but if we forget that we're seeing equipment made explicitly to kill--"c'mon kids, let's go see the new electric chair exhibition at the fair!"--we're buying into what Salon calls the "military industrial porn complex."

And: I just got an email update from the excellent magazine, Orion, entitled "Weapons of Mass Illusion." OK, people, Weapons of Mass Deception was a great book (as was Danny Schecter's book of the same name, which came out just weeks after Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber's), but isn't it time we give the "weapons of mass __________" trope a rest?

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