"Join the Army," They Said: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

[[File:Bob and Mary-Go to war they said 5944.jpg|frame|Now that's just mean.]]

 

{{quote|''We joined the Navy''

 

See also [[Wartime Cartoon]], [[Recruiters Always Lie]].

{{examples}}

** They now have their own trope: [[Uncle Sam Wants You]].

* The [[Semper Fi|United States Marine Corps]] is famous for its "The Few, the Proud, the Marines" ad campaign. One such ad featured a Marine slaying a ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDZ2fMHTvwk CGI demon with a sword]''.

** ''[[The Simpsons]]'' satirized this ad, in a sequence where the knight then turns into a helicopter that shoots at Nazis, Communists, Hippies and ''a Hurricane'' in a video-game like sequence, then lands in front of a screaming audience and unloads a rock & roll band. The closing tag? "The Army - it's ''everything you like''."

** The "We do more before nine a.m. than most people do all day," was supposed to sound really cool, but made the Army sound like slave labor, which may be truth in advertising, but might not have been the best recruitment tool.

* The US National Guard and Army Reserve used to advertise along the lines of "Only one weekend a month, but you will have all the benefits of serving your country." This was ''before'' the Iraq war had gone into its second year.

* The US Air Force has recently advertised that it is on the forefront of fighting cyberwarfare. The appeal of this to sufficiently intelligent recruits should be clear. (And keep in mind, you never know who may be reading this.)

** Air Force ads tend to be very big on the [[Technology Porn]]. Oddly enough, their current recruiting slogan is [[Hypocritical Humor|"It's not science fiction. It's what we do every day."]]

* Several years back there was a slew of "combined armed forces" recruitment ads for the US military, with the slogan "Army, Navy, Airforce, Marines, what a great place to start!". The message of which was apparently, "We don't care which service you join, just join one." In these commercials, the soldiers were seen driving tanks and shooting rifles and running through the woods, the airmen were seen flying (or repairing) jets, the sailors were working with electronics onboard ships, and the marines... were standing in formation, looking pretty in their full dress blues, including sabres, and basically doing a whole lot of nothing. Many active duty service members in the Army, Airforce, and Navy found this ''hilarious''.

 

* This trope is parodied in the classic [[Marx Brothers]] film, ''[[Duck Soup]]'', where Chico notes that Harpo's working in a new military recruitment drive; which consists solely on him banging a drum while wearing a sandwich sign saying, "Join the Army and see the Navy!". While walking around ''on the battlefield.''

* ''[[Private Benjamin]]'' has Judy Benjamin joining the Army thinking it is all travel and fun, like the adverts (an image reinforced by an unscrupulous recruiter).

'''Both''': Do-ho-ho-ho-hoh! }}

 

* ''[[A Separate Peace]]'' addresses this trope. All you need to know is that it ends [[Death by Newbery Medal|badly]].

* In [[Larry Niven|Niven]] and Pournelle's ''The Mote in God's Eye'', right after a particularly dangerous mission, a naval rating quips "My brother wanted me to help him with his wet-ranch on Aphrodite and I thought it was too dangerous. So I joined the flipping Navy." The {{SPACE Navy]] that is!

** In a perfect example of Niven's Law (Anything worth writing is worth selling repeatedly.) he used an almost identical sentence in the dialog of a Star Trek comic strip he wrote, just replacing 'Aphrodite' with 'Mizar'.

* [[Inverted Trope|Weirdly inverted]] in the book ''[[Starship Troopers (novel)|Starship Troopers]]'', where recruiters try to ''discourage'' people from signing up. Since only veterans can vote, the constitution says everyone who volunteers must be allowed to join, even if they are useless incompetents. The military wastes a lot of money trying to train and support the low-quality recruits.

* In [[Sandy Mitchell]]'s [[Warhammer 40,000]] novel ''Scourge The Heretic'', two new Imperial Guardsmen are introduced on guard and grumbling, "Join the Guard and see the galaxy."

* [[Hand of Thrawn|Shada Du'kal]], high-quality bodyguard and commando (the two go hand-in-hand in Star Wars), while climbing a filthy wall to get in position to cover her employer for a transaction with someone.

And this granite pedestal }}

 

* ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]'' has a sketch featuring a soldier who has seen too many of the glamourised ads. "I joined the army for the water skiing and the travel, Colonel. Not for the killing."

** "This is obviously making fun of our slogan, 'it's a dog's life -- man's life in the Army!"

* The [[Victim of the Week]] in one episode of ''[[NCIS]]'' was an unscrupulous Marine recruiter who made promises that would never be met, such as promising one recruit that he would be trained as a medic. As Gibbs points out, the Marine Corps doesn't have medics; they use Navy corpsmen.

 

* Almost too obvious to mention, but : "I joined the navy/to see the world!/And what did I see?/I saw the sea".

** Apparently shortly after the song first hit the charts, some higher-up in the U.S. Navy wanted to use it in recruitment ads, until someone filled him in on the subtext he'd clearly missed.

** Actually, Status Quo's "In The Army Now" might be even more famous worldwide.

* "Twa Recruitin' Sergeants", a traditional Scottish song popularised by Jeannie Robertson, takes a different tack. Maybe being a soldier isn't glamorous or fun, but it's got to be better than spending your entire life as a farm labourer.

* The Pogues do a verion of "The Recruiting Sergeant" that is pretty much definitive from an Irish viewpoint.

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* The NEG in ''[[Cthulhu Tech]]''.

 

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* ''[[Killzone]] 2'''s [http://www.gametrailers.com/player/45960.html Making Of: Enemy Territory] trailer has the narrator use this in full [[Sarcasm Mode]];

{{quote|In and out, they said. A show of force, they said. The Helghast war machine was destroyed on Vekta, and you guys just need to sweep it up, ''they said''.}}

* ''[[Mechwarrior]] 3: Pirate's Moon'' produced this sarcastic quip from lancemate Dominic Paine after a particularly tough mission: "Join the army, see the galaxy, what the hell was I thinking?!"

* ''[[Mass Effect]]'': If you speak to the surviving marines on Nepmos after helping them [[Hold the Line]], they'll say, "'Join the marines, see the galaxy.' Hell."

{{quote|''""Join the Legion! See the world!" Freeze your arse..."''}}

* ''[[Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas]]'' had '''Join The Military''' radio ads which by its very nature, a spoof of recruitment ads. see them [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSFQHtKGaE4 here].

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* Various recruitment techniques are parodied on ''[[Homestar Runner]]'' in the Strong Bad Email [http://homestarrunner.com/sbemail172.html more armies].

* The [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20000612.html first] ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]''. Appropriate really.

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* In an episode of ''[[Ned's Newt]]'', an army recruitment message looks more like a travel bureau ad, so much that the enthusiastic Newton ends up enlisting Ned into it without his knowledge.

 

* Parodied in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBWWwvxutM0 this video], in which the Navy bases its entire recruitment spiel upon being everything the Army is not in a manner most awesome.

* The U.S. Army recruitment slogan "Be all that you can be" has become something of a cultural [[Catch Phrase]], as well as the subject of a number of spoofs.

** "Join the Navy, see the world... just remember, 70% of the world is water."

** "Join the Navy, where you decide who you are... before we tell that you're wrong."

* A Code Pink group protested outside a Marines recruitment office in Berkeley. One of their signs had the "Travel the world, meet interesting people... and kill them" phrase on it. Inside, behind the recruit on the chin-up bar, you could see a poster with the exact same phrase. ''Brilliant.''

** The Marine Corps' attitude is that anyone who could be deterred by a Code Pink picket line wouldn't have the willpower to survive boot camp anyway. They're probably right.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Basic Commercial Types]]

[[Category:Military and Warfare Tropes]]