Hollywood and airpower: Myths and realities

Abstract

Narratives on state and power are constructed and propagated through events such as the Platinum Jubilee, with all its grandeur, pomp and glory, and its stories of British military superiority, as well as the popular fictions of Hollywood films, the latest of which builds on the usual war narratives of heroism, risk and sacrifice, while concealing realities of weakness, decline and risk-free wars. The rise of high-tech assassins in drone warfare, which are heavily used by the UK and the US in the War on Terror, has eliminated combat and instead has turned killing into an unfeeling, amoral exercise of power, safely conducted from a distance.