The military invades the platforms

The most commercially successful platforms have increased their productions focused on elite military units and have normalized an aesthetic of order, strength, and discipline. One of the latest examples is the documentary series Pelayo: Beyond the Limit on Prime Video. The protagonist is Pelayo Gayol, a veteran inspector with the Spanish National Police's GEO special operations unit who joins real anti-drug trafficking missions in Colombia. We already met the character in another documentary series, GEO: Beyond the Limitwhere he trained and selected the Special Operations Group, pushing agents to their limits to transform them into superhumans. Pelayo fosters a testosterone-fueled emotional immersion in military discipline. He plunges us into a context of violence and tension while constructing a cheap, pseudo-intellectual discourse about his work.

In the last two years, Netflix has released similar documentary content focusing on US elite forces. Marinas It is an immersive portrait of the training and formation of recruits; Thunderbirds He has privileged access to the elite aerobatic team of the U.S. Air Force; Relentless Hunt: Osama Bin Laden It's a reconstruction (a very interesting one, by the way) of the special forces' mission to capture the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks; How we survived the fall of the Black Hawks US soldiers explain how they survived the Battle of Mogadishu and The most powerful elite forces in the world Compare different elite military units from various countries.

In all these productions, there is a cult of violence as a guarantee for restoring world order. The focus is on the bodies of the male protagonists, who represent a powerful masculinity in service of a higher moral good: saving the world. Hyper-muscular bodies, tight t-shirts, camouflage uniforms, and many weapons. A return to a hierarchical, harsh, and silent masculinity. Under the pretext of informing us and revealing the singularities of this universe, a symbolic narrative exists. They create an image of morally unassailable institutional force. Authority, institutions, and military operations are never questioned. Violence seems depoliticized, and elite units are presented as having no cracks. A perfect community thanks to values such as discipline, obedience, hierarchy, and suffering. A culture that does not question war because it is inevitable and even necessary.

We live in a time of great uncertainty. These documentaries offer a false sense of security, a fantasy of order essential for society. This retro-masculinity they glorify is a reaction to the rise of feminism and a cultural context that has challenged traditional masculinity patterns. Words are relegated to the background because action is what matters. It is no coincidence that in the midst of a global crisis in which democracy is being questioned, these documentaries become emotional propaganda for militarism.