Our curious love affair with the military

Have you detected a growing enthusiasm for all things military? This week the troops were called in to save the Olympics, they're constantly on our TV screens, and our parks are full of bootcamp fitness sessions for puffed civiliansLast week, the MoD admitted that budget cuts would result in fewer boots on the ground, but failed to mention the impact on the documentary makers and TV producers who depend on a ready pool of military "talent". The cultural industry has done very well out of our recent preoccupation with conflict. The public appetite for war stories means guaranteed top billing for shows with military subjects and kudos for the brave soldiers in front of the cameras. No one seems to have noticed how similar these unflinching portrayals of the harsh realities of military life are, but the accolades keep coming. Six of the 18 documentary entries to the Royal Television Society awards this year were about soldiers. Names such as Harry's Arctic Heroes suggest they tended to be glorifying rather than analytical. Even the ostensibly gritty ones had stirring soundtracks and a subtext of noble glory.The military mood music has been playing in the background for while ? an insistent tolling that occasionally breaks through all the jubalympic jazz. You could hear it this week when Tony Blair said he was planning to return to public life, and again during the Globe theatre's recent revival of Henry V. There are dark portents everywhere, and people are panicking. The military build-up in our culture has prompted a large section of the public to put itself on a war footing, with unintentionally comical results. In my locale, high-end housewives are learning the art of making do and mend, while their husbands are squishing themselves into unflattering fatigues on Hampstead Heath for British Military Fitness sessions.Watching Channel 5's Royal Marines: Mission Afghanistan recently, I wasn't inspired to emulate the derring-do of the men on screen, but many viewers are. The civilians signing up for the popular military training courses think they'll return from costly sorties in local parks pluckier, more determined and better able to cope in their hostile domestic and professional environments. The yompers on the heath look like they have bought into their military personae to varying degrees. I feel sorry for them, but can't empathise because I've never fantasised about being given a dressing-down by someone paid to pretend to be offended by my push-up technique.Many politicians nurture military fantasies ? perhaps they dream of dodging IEDs in Helmand while waiting for their turn at the dispatch box. Labour's defence secretary Jim Murphy talks about the "unsurpassed contribution" of the armed forces to our national life. The mission statement of the organisation he helped establish, Labour Friends of the Forces, lovingly recalls the contribution of ex-service people like Jim Callaghan who are a "proud part of our history" and promotes the military perspective, lest it be marginalised.It continues: "We know that there is a wisdom that comes with service that is precious, and it must be an important part of our politics, providing insight and experience to shape important decisions." Like the Hampstead yompers, it seems Murphy believes the military man will always have the edge over his civilian competitor. Theresa May this week had to call in the army to beef up Olympic security following concerns about the civvy company's competence, but why stop there? I can picture Murphy and friends in super-clean vests and combats, happily heading up a military takeover of the House of Commons. Dissenting liberals would be forced to do push-ups on Parliament Square while Murphy penned a triumphant Labour Friends of the Forces post, outlining the benefits of beefing up the legislature. As a pragmatist in the mould of Rommel, he'd be certain that decisive authoritarians would make a better fist of the current crisis than equivocating democrats.A couple of weeks before Armed Forces Day, Murphy urged Labour party members to take the time to say a personal thank-you to a member of the armed forces. Anyone watching the 10 O'Clock News on 30 June would have assumed that Armed Forces Day was an established national fixture, like Remembrance Sunday. You would never have guessed from the newsreader's sonorous descriptions of fly-pasts in front of predictable dignitaries on Plymouth Hoe that this ritual was instituted by the MoD in 2009, following a campaign by the Daily Telegraph.In this climate, Stephen Twigg's suggestion this week that Labour, when it comes to office, should institute military schools in poor areas, makes perfect sense. Military-run institutions would turn out compliant citizens willing to take crappy work-experience placements without complaint, and never flinch when being bawled at by someone paid to pretend to be offended by their shelf-stacking technique.The militarisation of the British psyche in recent years means TV viewers are more likely to envy the trainee officers on BBC4's Sandhurst than pity them. The fashionable belief that the militarised consciousness is superhuman leads them to view the James Blunt clones kowtowing to their superiors as heroic, rather than deluded.I was a teenager when the UK was at war in the Falklands. It felt very different, because the countervailing forces were more vocal than they are today. And more vivid. The Occupy movement is attempting the same poetic enactment of demilitarised consciousness as the Greenham women in the 1980s, but the rest of the left, sadly, can be found waving feebly at Mastiffs passing on the Armed Forces Day parade, instead of blocking their path. Some were militarised themselves by Islamophobia, and others were guilt-tripped into silence by the fear that opposing the war, or even questioning cultural militarisation, equates to telling bereaved service families that their sons died in vain. So no one dares contest the "old lie" that's its sweet to die for our country. They used to accuse pacifists of disrespecting "our boys" in the 80s, but the left didn't take it personally.The rest of us look to the military men for protection as well as strategic advice and inspiration. Those Help for Heroes bangles constantly remind the wearer that "our boys" are looking after them. Visitors entering the atrium of the Imperial War Museum have the same sense of being encircled by a protective cordon of serving members of the military. Rather than display the massive headshots of the narrators of the War Story exhibition alongside their poignant personal effects on the ground floor, the curators have hung them high. The effect is to distance them from the fray; they gaze benevolently down at the tourists buying Keep Calm and Carry On mugs. Murphy would be pleased, but I felt coerced rather than humbled by being forced to look up to them.Help for Heroes says anyone who joins up knowing they might be called upon to sacrifice their lives for their country is a hero ? "it's that simple". It's also easy to see why people get such a kick from the thought that such high-calibre individuals are looking out for them. They say they are humbled, but it actually makes them feel important and potent: a personal action hero is the ultimate status symbol in our militarised age.Many of the fundraising efforts undertaken for Help for Heroes are as demanding and harrowing as military operations. This August, a group of injured servicemen is sailing in the Arctic, while a team of five are aiming to climb Everest.In H4H's magazine, Heroes, we learn of inspirational veterans battling back to health against the odds. In these narratives, the stuttering process of recuperation is glorified as a triumph of will. Post-traumatic stress disorder is mentioned, but its disorientating reality is seldom conveyed.At a Help for Heroes family fun day in a barracks in Grantham earlier this month, I glimpsed how the world might look if the military way of doing things won out. The barracks were spotlessly turned out for the visitors: the catering was nutritionally adequate but uninspiring, and there was a high ratio of hanging around to action. The Help for Heroes-branded flight simulator had closed for business an hour or so before we reached it, so my three-year-old son John never experienced what flying a Typhoon would feel like.The man on the shooting range nearly recruited John: "Do you wanna join up? You get to fire guns." Then put him off by spending too long explaining how the combustion gases in the SA80 rifle are used to operate the self-loading mechanism. We also missed Rock the Barracks the previous night, featuring performances from "X Factor favourites". I'm fascinated by the synergy between the brand values of Help for Heroes and The X Factor. Both have achieved massive popular mobilisations with fascistic undertones.Help for Heroes has raised �100m in just four years and The X Factor also delivers big numbers. You get the same cheery jingoism on Simon Cowell's show as at the H4H family day ? the same belief that might is right. The early rounds of Cowell's shows resemble basic training ? rookies enter the process as individuals with endearing quirks that prevent them from fulfilling their potential. Week by week, their will is broken and they are forced to scrape to their superiors. They learn not to flinch during the ritual dressings-down from someone paid a king's ransom to pretend to be offended by their singing. The idea is that the strong survive, but really it's the conformists who win through.You can't help but feel worried, watching the militarisation of our consciousness, and wonder what it portends. I was more scared watching The X Factor's army of pop drones murder Bowie's Heroes in a H4H fundraising stunt a few years ago than I was watching Royal Marines: Mission Afghanistan.When I was growing up in the 1980s, the left were upset that the wounded Falklands veterans were excluded from the victory parade. I feel just as uncomfortable now about the way the wounded veterans of the "war on terror" are paraded in public as heroic emblems, but this case is much harder to make. Barely a week goes by without Prince Harry being photographed with an amputee.With Help for Heroes seemingly becoming the charity of choice for everyone, it feels as though sympathy for soldiers whose lives have been devastated by war has become indivisible from jingoistic support for our government's military adventures overseas. I remember a time when the opposite was the case ? when the tragic human consequences of war were interpreted as good reasons to avoid unnecessary conflict. The shattered limbs and lives of these youths should challenge our desire to project military might overseas, not reinforce it. But in the growing fervour of support for "our boys", the voices of those who question if we should send young men to be blown up abroad have been silenced ? ensuring more of them will be.MilitaryFalkland IslandsThe X FactorTelevisionFitnessWar reportingCharlotte Ravenguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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