The series that angered Donald Trump's Pentagon

BarcelonaIn the United States, where the Department of Defense has been renamed the Department of War, anything that could be considered an offense to the military could ignite the fuse of Donald Trump's administration. The latest victim of the US administration's snubs has been a Netflix series that tells the story of a young gay man who enlists in the 1990s. marinas looking for a way out of a life marked by the bullying he suffered at school. Recruits It is an LGBT story that focuses on the birth of diverse friendships in the most adverse conditions – the ultraviolent training camp of the marinas–, but the result has not pleased the Pentagon at all, which has already rushed to criticize it.

"Under the mandate of President Trump and Secretary [Pete] Hegseth, the United States military is restoring the warrior spirit. Our standards in the corps are elite, uniform and gender neutral, because the weight of a backpack or a human being" said in a statement the press secretary of the Pentagon, Kingsley Wilson, in response to a question posed by the magazine Entertainment WeeklyWilson continues his attack on Netflix, accusing it of "producing garbage" woke with which it feeds its audiences and children." "Unlike Netflix, we don't compromise our standards to satisfy an ideological agenda," he emphasizes. homophobes. In June, he ordered the name of Harvey Milk, the gay rights activist and formermarine who was assassinated in 1978. A few months earlier, he tried to have transgender officers in the military relieved of their positions of responsibility. Finally, according to the Associated Press, in September, at a meeting in Virginia with some of the military's top officials, he stated that he wanted to end "the culture woke" to the armed forces and proposed guidelines for fitness "gender neutral" or "male-level".

Based on a true story

Recruits It is based on a true story, that of Greg Cope White, who in the book The pink marine He collected his experiences as a young homosexual in the marinas of the 70s. When it came to bringing the story to the screen, some changes were made with respect to Cope White's story: the series follows Cameron Cope (Miles Heizer), a young homosexual who enlists in the marinas in the 90s following his straight best friend. Propaganda leaflets portray the boot camps as summer camp, but the reality is quite different: the young aspiring marinas They suffer physically and mentally, and in Cameron's case, the young man is forced to hide his homosexuality, which in the 1990s was still illegal in the military. In fact, the change in time compared to the original book is facilitated by narrative reasons: in 1993, the policy was established Don't ask, don't tell (Don't Ask, Don't Tell) law that allowed gay, lesbian, and bisexual people to serve in the military as long as they did not disclose their sexual orientation. This rule remained in place until 2011.

The creator and co-showrunner From the series, Andy Parker, who as a gay teenager in the 90s was also tempted to enlist, says that Recruits highlights issues that are still relevant today. "Without wanting to be controversial, I think what we're trying to do is highlight the personal cost of these policies. We can see what they do psychologically, spiritually, and emotionally to people who must distort, lie, or isolate themselves, or who are rejected from an organization they love and a country they want to serve," Parker explains. New York Times.