INTERVIEWER: When you think of Western or frontier movies, what comes to mind?

MAN-on-the-Street: Oh, fond childhood memories and good guys winning over the bad guys.

INTERVIEWER: Do you like John Wayne movies?

MAN-on-the-Street: Yeah. Yeah.

INTERVIEWER: Why do you like them?

Same MAN-on-the-Street: Well, it just reminds me of the Old West. I think the Western frontier was nice.

INTERVIEWER: Why do you like to be reminded of that?

Same MAN-on-the-Street: Why? I don't know. I guess it's just something, you know, that you see that, you know, is not really around anymore, at least not here in D.C.

NARRATOR: Americans love movies and television, especially the shoot 'em up frontier Western and the modern war film. They're exciting and entertaining. But they also can present us with a false image of our history and our values.

Today, America's Defense Monitor looks at how American popular culture portrays war and military-style solutions as the American way of progress.

Admiral Gene La Rocque: Welcome once again to America's Defense Monitor.

In the past 200 years, we in America have engaged in a major war every 20 years. In other words, a war for every new generation. But everyone who's ever fought in a war knows that it is a cruel, vicious, brutish affair and comes away from the war never wanting to go to war again. So how is it that we fight a war every generation?

Well, there are those people who say that the patriotic films, the propaganda in our movies create an atmosphere favor-able and conducive to war. Our program's on that subject today. I think you'll find it interesting.

Then-Senator JOHN F. KENNEDY (D-MA), (Summer 1960, in speech accepting nomination for president at Democratic Party Convention, Los Angeles CA):

"We stand today on the edge of a new frontier, the frontier of the 1960s, the frontier of unknown opportunities and perils, the frontier of unfilled hopes and unfilled threats."

NARRATOR: To 20th Century Americans, "the frontier" is magical, whether it be the Old West, Kennedy's "New Frontier," Ronald Reagan's "High Frontier," or the fictional final frontier of "Star Trek." The tremendous attraction of the frontier stems in large part from its fictional portrayal by the American mass media and film industry.

Dr. Frank J. Wetta is co-author of Celluloid Wars and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Daytona Beach Commu-nity College.

Dr. FRANK J. WETTA: I think that films really are our folk tales, in a sense. I think that films deal with the concept of myth-making, and the West is essential to our experience, our values as a people, our view of what we want our history to be. I think that it's not so much important in history sometimes what happened but what people think happened, and films deal with what we think happened.

NARRATOR: Continuing the theme of popular American history, movies and television tied the idea of progress -- economic, social, political -- to the expansion of the frontier across the continent and beyond.

NARRATOR: "...Americans, fighting for their country while half a world away from it. Fighting for their country and for more than their country, fighting for an idea. The idea bigger than the country. Without the idea, the country might have remained only a wilderness. Without the country, the idea might have remained only a dream."

NARRATOR: But contained within this optimistic viewpoint is a darker side -- exploitation, violence and wholesale slaughter -- that was either played down or justified as the price of progress.

Dr. Richard Slotkin, Olin Professor of English at Wesleyan University and author of Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in 20th Century America, has traced this idea of violence as progress.

Dr. RICHARD SLOTKIN: The special history of the United States has given us a very unique mythology of violence. We tend to regard certain forms of violence -- violence that pits advanced against primitive peoples, whites against non-whites -- as violence that produces good things, produces progress, produces moral advancement, produces civilization.

NARRATOR: War is a staple of many Westerns and, of course, of the huge number of combat films produced by Hollywood since the 1940s.

Dr. WETTA: Since World War II, we've made over 280 films about World War II, 60 films about Korea, 50 films about Vietnam -- almost 450 films about war just since the end of World War II.

NARRATOR: From our earliest fiction, war has been celebrated as central to our national development. But until the post-World War II era, after each war ended most Americans called up to fight returned to civilian pursuits. But the Cold War and the new expansionist enemy, communism, changed this pattern.

Because this new struggle involved the threat of using nuclear weapons, it was, like World War II, presented as a fight to the finish. To get this point across, political leaders needed powerful images that would move Americans. The myth of the frontier and the West held these images.

Dr. SLOTKIN: The way the myth works is to restrict the actors' sense of available options. "A man's got to do what a man's got to do." That's what the myth says to you. It says that there's only two choices, kill or be killed. If you approach a situation of conflict in those terms, you've already eliminated the possibility of negotiations you've eliminated the possibility of compromise.

NARRATOR: For many Americans growing up in the mid-20th Century, this favorable portrayal of war, particularly the wars of the Western frontier, was a common cultural experience.

Dr. David Considine is a professor of Media Studies at Appalachian State University. A leader in the media literacy movement, he has written extensively on the relationship between motion picture content and social values, attitudes, and public institutions.

Dr. DAVID CONSIDINE: If we start to look at what the key elements of that military mythology might be, I suppose you might say there seems to be a notion that there's no such thing as a bad war, that the military experience creates a baptism of fire, a rites of passage, a breeding ground in which men become men.

NARRATOR: "Out of the native oak and pine, they built a house, a church, a watchtower. They cleared a field and there grew up a colony of free citizens. They carved new states out of the blue rivers."

Dr. CONSIDINE: One element of the military myth is the notion that there's no such thing as a bad war and that somehow in the American case, God is always on our side. Part of this, of course, extends back to manifest destiny and to the notion that somehow it was inevitable that the white European Christian would move westward across the United States, trampling the frontier and the original settlers in his path.

NARRATOR: Of course, what the public wants, Hollywood produces. But the process is interactive. We are influenced by what we see and by the pronouncements of our political leaders.

Dr. WETTA: Films can give us an idea of what needs to be done. The "Rambo" films speak to the frustrations of Vietnam.

Rambo: "Do we get to win this time?"

Officer: "This time it's up to you."

Dr. WETTA: "Do we get to win it this time?" "Let's go back and do it the way it should have been done." So, we know that films deal with public policy, they comment on public policy, and have some influence.

NARRATOR: The underlying attraction of Western and combat films lies in their focus on struggle. Whether a film is labeled pro-war, like "Rambo," or antiwar, like "Platoon," the public focusses on the violence in the film because of our historic legacy.

Dr. WETTA: Our nation was born, sustained and expanded in warfare. In 200 years, we've had at least 12 major wars; on the average, a war every 16 years. I think that war is not an aberra-tion in American history. I think it is something essential in American history; that is, a kind of defining element. To study American history, in many ways, is a study of warfare.

NARRATOR: Many people are attracted to the excitement and pageantry of war, especially if they have never been in combat. Parades and uniforms stir the soul. Equipment is shown like toys for men and children to explore.

Dr. WETTA: We think we know something about war and the experience of combat because we have seen movies about war and the experience of combat. Over and over again, you can see in memoirs of soldiers the references to war. "This is just like a movie," they would say. We know that lieutenant colonels in Vietnam often modeled their behavior on John Wayne, because this was the reference they had.

NARRATOR: Dr. Considine notes that mass media presentations can easily overwhelm a more mature appraisal of war.

Dr. CONSIDINE: The mass media mediate. They construct visions of reality. We are much more likely to believe a media message when we have nothing else to compare it to, when we have no other source of information on that subject, and when the message is repeated.

NARRATOR: The result of this largely one-sided presentation of war for the post-World War II generation was that Westerns and war films became part of their self-image.

Lieutenant William Calley, the platoon leader whose unit committed the My Lai massacre, observed: "We thought we would go to Vietnam, kick in the door, kill. We were just playing games here. 'Cowboys,' the Vietnamese called us."

Dr. SLOTKIN: We tend to regard certain kinds of responses as valid or heroic responses. And the movie image of the hero picking up the six-gun or the machine gun and just blazing away and shooting everything that moves has so often been presented to us as a valid tactic for dealing with a movie situation that it's not surprising that something like that would influence the behavior of soldiers in combat.

NARRATOR: Images of gunfights on Main Street or the O.K. Corral, reinforced by accounts of modern shootouts in our cities, suggest that the only way a man can live is by the gun. The fictional western hero is transported to the battlefields of Vietnam, Panama, the Gulf, and to city streets, where urban residents become the new "Indians" on a new "frontier."

Dr. SLOTKIN: You find in discussions of the Vietnam War descriptions of the Viet Cong as "savages," descriptions of Vietnam as "Indian country." And today, in dealing with gang warfare in the cities, you find gangs being described as "tribes" and "savages." And once again, that historical myth is being -- has acquired force for defining the moment that we're in.

NARRATOR: But movies are not the only source of visual violence in our society. Most of us bring portrayals of violence, real and imaginary, into our homes on a nightly basis on the television.

Over a decade ago, the National Institute for Mental Health concluded that, "Watching violence on television leads to aggressive behavior and the effects often last into adolescence and beyond."

More recent data documents that by age 18, the average person has spent 18,000 hours in front of the television, more than is spent in a classroom, and has witnessed about 17,000 murders. A 1991 survey by the National Institute of Justice found that 22 percent of inner city high school students owned guns and 15 percent owned three or more guns. The most common reason for such firepower mirrored the message from the frontier: self-protection.

The easy resort to violence by film heros suggested another, more dangerous attitude: That men with guns are free to ignore the rules of society.

Dr. SLOTKIN: As you get into the Cold War, there's a change in our attitude towards the use of power and there's a change, a corresponding change in the depiction of heroism. In a western like "High Noon," the sheriff acts against the villain despite the fact that the townspeople in a democratic meeting have voted that he should not do so.

NARRATOR: When only violence will save civilization, the cold warrior will substitute his judgment and "do what a man's got to do," including fighting society "to save it from itself."

Significantly, the frontier is usually portrayed as a man's world. Civilizing influences represented by the farm and factory are brushed over, replaced by the military fort, the scout, the cavalryman. The mythic military and its values become the central focus, rather than the civilian world it is supposed to serve and protect.

Dr. CONSIDINE: A lot of that myth is evident in the John Ford films.

Voiceover from "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" (RKO, 1949): "One man, one captain fated to wield the sword of destiny."

Dr. CONSIDINE: It's the introduction to the John Wayne character Nathan Brittles in "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" made in 1949 and all of the elements of the myth work together. The bugle sounds, the Stars and Stripes goes up the flagpole, and the voiceover, rather like the voice of God, refers to "one man fated to wield the sword of destiny."

NARRATOR: There is, of course, a Vietnam and post-Vietnam counter-war film culture.

Dr. CONSIDINE: By 1971, 1972, about the same time as the My Lai massacre and the court martial of Lieutenant William Calley, "Soldier Blue" was released. "Soldier Blue" was a strikingly different image of the American cavalry. In fact, in this film, the cavalry were the barbarians, the cavalry were the "savages" and the "Indians" were the victims.

Woman: "Good, brave lads, coming out here to kill themselves a real, life 'Injun.' Putting up their forts in a country they've got no claim to."

NARRATOR: Dr. Wetta believes, however, that the audience often does not get the antiwar message of the filmmakers.

Dr. WETTA: I think there is something that has been referred to as the "secret attractions of war" -- the scene, the experience of combat, experience of war, the comradeship that is developed during wartime among those experiencing a battle, and the urge to destroy. Men who have seen war films will behave in ways that they have learned. They will imitate the behavior of celluloid soldiers, because they have no other reference.

NARRATOR: Nor were soldiers the only ones who confused film heros with the reality of war. There is evidence that films provided high level policymakers with role models for their decisions.

Patton: "Americans traditionally love to fight."

Dr. WETTA: We know that Richard Nixon loved the film "Patton," that he viewed it over and over again, showed his advisors the film before he directed the bombing of Cambodia. We know that Ronald Reagan is reputed to have said that, "Boy, I saw 'Rambo' last night and I'll know what to do next time."

NARRATOR: Americans accept that an actor like John Wayne can become so identified with a character that to name the actor is to name the role. But politicians?

INTERVIEWER: Do you think that American political leaders sometimes see themselves or depict themselves as heros "to save the nation from disaster?"

MAN-on-the-Street: Absolutely.

INTERVIEWER: Can you name a few?

Same MAN-on-the-Street: I think our current president, every president, most members of Congress are trying to say that without them, we would be helpless. I actually don't think that without them we would be all that helpless.

INTERVIEWER: So, you don't think that the Alamo will fall, in other words?

Same MAN-on-the Street: I don't think so, and I hope not.

Dr. SLOTKIN: The heroic myths that we receive through media have certainly shaped the kind of behavior and style that we expect of our political leaders.

What I think is different about more recent leadership is because we've drawn our models of heroism not from an experi-ence of war, let's say, or an experience of social struggle, but from movies about war, movies about social struggle, the heros -- the presidents have been content to talk like heros. They talk the talk; they don't necessarily walk the walk.

NARRATOR: And this Americanized myth of the hero tends to constrain the public's will to question decisions by politicians, especially on military-based national security issues. Coupled with Cold War secrecy, many important issues are simply put beyond the range of public debate and public scrutiny.

Dr. SLOTKIN: I think what you see here is the Cold War emphasis on the necessity for clandestine operations, for official secrecy, for covert operations outside the framework of law and outside the mechanisms through which we obtain public consent for warlike measures. The movies are not inventing that attitude; they really are reflecting that attitude, celebrating it.

NARRATOR: And in the real world, such attitudes have real, not fictional, results.

Dr. SLOTKIN: And what's dangerous is that they create a climate in which that kind of activity becomes generally accept-able. I think you see the consequences of that in the public response to something like Oliver North selling guns to the contras, where a direct and flagrant violation of Congress and a circumvention of the Constitution is regarded as being a heroic activity. That's extraordinarily dangerous to a democracy.

NARRATOR: From Vietnam, to Beirut, to the Gulf, many see America still on the frontier, where the hero constantly patrols, guns ready if not blazing, prepared to rescue the world from everything and anything.

NARRATOR: "Just what was it made us change our way of living overnight? What turned our resources, our machines, our whole nation into one vast arsenal, producing more and more weapons of war instead of the old materials of peace?

"What put us into uniform ready to engage the enemy on every continent and every ocean?"

NARRATOR: The 1980s creation of "Rambo"-style heros who embody the idea that "a man's got to do what a man's got to do" change our perceptions. Oliver North, for example, despite his "hang tough" defiance of Congress, has enough support to run for the US Senate as a super-patriot.

Dr. SLOTKIN: The one really significant structural change that I see happening in the last 50 years is the development of what used to be called the anti-hero, but which might better be called the amoral hero, the hero who acts from cynical motives, mercenary motives, who doesn't really care what his methods are or her methods are, as long as he or she gets the job done. That hero has become far more prominent in our culture than used to be the case.

NARRATOR: The Gulf War has introduced another subtle change in our image of war. In considering nuclear war, we became used to thinking about "push-button" wars. Somehow this wasn't real war. Death from high technology would be different from being shot by a gun or cut down by a sword.

But on the evening news, the Gulf War that Americans saw was an equally neat, precise, high-tech war.

Dr. WETTA: We saw a war movie on television, that it was so carefully managed and it went so well on the screen. I don't know if they're going to make films about the Gulf War. But it was such a technological war, if they do, it's going to be a movie probably more about computers than it's going to be about men under the strains of combat, because there was actually very little of what we call traditional combat experience.

NARRATOR: If wars and weapons become reduced in the public's mind to slick, harmless images of violence, just like the movies, our perceptions of war and the policies based on these perceptions will move further and further from reality and the final futile destruction that war entails.

Dr. CONSIDINE: One of the things that the Media Literacy Movement teaches us is that it's not just a question of what we see, but what we don't see; what we are told, but what we are not told. It's a question of whose stories are told and who's doing the telling, but it's also a question of what stories are not told. Clearly, what stories are told and what stories are left out really can shape our perceptions and then, as a result of that, public policy.

NARRATOR: To forget the lessons of war is to invite the next war.

Dr. SLOTKIN: Every society has got to have myths to sustain it, but we have to understand that myths are stories which we sell and we're responsible for the stories that we tell. One of the tasks of a responsible myth-maker is to look at what is, look at what the history has been, look at what the mythology has been and to use that to imagine some new alternatives, some new ways of looking at the past and, therefore, new ways of looking at the future.

Dr. WETTA: The important thing is that war films speak to something essential about the American experience. I think they will continue to make war films as long as that remains part of our existence as a people.

Admiral LaROCQUE: Well, I don't know about you, but I am somewhat convinced that the large number of romantic movies that are made about war do condition people's willingness to fight in war. In my lifetime alone, there have been five major wars, all of them cruel, vicious affairs, and still the American public is ready to go to war. Anytime the bugle sounds, the flag goes up and the bands begin to play, people support the president's efforts at using military force to accomplish our goals in the world.

How much of this willingness of Americans to wage war is influenced by the movies I really don't know, but I think it's probably a significant factor. Whether or not we continue these films or not remains to be seen, but I think we'll see more films on war and the glory of war.

Until next time, for America's Defense Monitor, I'm Gene La Rocque.