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Distributed for University of British Columbia Press

Hearts and Mines

The US Empire’s Culture Industry

The US security state is everywhere in cultural products: in army-supported news stories, TV shows, and video games; in CIA-influenced blockbusters and comics; and in State Department ads, broadcasts, and websites. Hearts and Mines examines the rise and reach of the US Empire’s culture industry – a nexus between the US’s security state and media firms and the source of cultural products that promote American strategic interests around the world. Building on Herbert I. Schiller’s classic study of US Empire and communications, Tanner Mirrlees interrogates the symbiotic geopolitical and economic relationships between the US state and media firms that drive the production of imperial culture.

336 pages | © 2016


Table of Contents

Preface: The Personal is Geopolitical

Introduction: The US Empire’s Culture Industry, circa 2012

1 The US Empire and the Culture Industry

2 Public Diplomacy and Selling the American Way to the World

3 The US Culture Industry: Still Number One

4 The DOD–News Media Complex

5 The DOD–Hollywood Complex

6 The DOD–Digital Games Complex

Conclusion: US Empire, Cultural Imperialism, and Cultural Policy, at Large

References; Index

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