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The Pentagon has slammed Netflix for making “woke garbage” after the release of the hit gay military drama Boots.
The show, based on Greg Cope White’s 2015 memoir The Pink Marine, tells the story of a closeted teenager who enlists in the United States Marine Corps in the 1990s.
In a statement originally shared with Entertainment Weekly, the Pentagon press secretary, Kingsley Wilson, said: “Under president Trump and secretary [Pete] Hegseth, the US military is getting back to restoring the warrior ethos. Our standards across the board are elite, uniform, and sex neutral because the weight of a rucksack or a human being doesn’t care if you’re a man, a woman, gay, or straight.”
He added: “We will not compromise our standards to satisfy an ideological agenda, unlike Netflix whose leadership consistently produces and feeds woke garbage to their audience and children.”
The Guardian’s Stuart Heritage called the show, which is currently the sixth-most-watched show globally on the platform, “incredibly powerful”. The Hollywood Reporter said the show was “critical of the military’s 1990s-era anti-gay policies” yet “also respectful of the military in many ways and is rather positive about the brotherhood aspects of enlisted life”.
Miles Heizer, a gay actor who plays the lead role, recently spoke about the show’s relevance. “When the show started filming [in 2023], I don’t think we intended to have this message that’s so relevant to serving today,” Heizer said. “But then of course as we’re making it, all these things started happening. It’s very interesting that Boots shines a light on what’s actually happening now, even though the show is set in 1990. It’s upsetting.”
The reaction comes as many on the right have been criticising Netflix for its diverse content. Earlier this month, Elon Musk led an attempt to get users to cancel their subscriptions over a resurfaced clip showing a transgender character in the animated series Dead End: Paranormal Park. Musk, who has a transgender daughter, called on his 227 million X followers to cancel for the “health of your kids”.
Zach Barack, the trans voice actor for the character, responded by writing: “you can fear monger all you want, but kids & parents have told me it saved their lives!!”
Netflix remains the overwhelming market leader in streaming, with 301.6 million paid users in more than 190 countries.
In June, former Fox News pundit Hegseth, now the US secretary of defence, ordered the US navy to remove the name of gay activist Harvey Milk from one of their ships. The decision was due to Hegseth “re-establishing the warrior culture” of the military.
Sean Penn, who led the Oscar-winning biopic Milk, and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black both criticised the move. “These guys are idiots,” Black told the Hollywood Reporter. “Pete Hegseth does not seem like a smart man, a wise man, a knowledgeable man. He seems small and petty. I would love to introduce him to some LGBTQ folks who are warriors who have had to be warriors our entire life just to live our lives openly as who we are.”
The news also comes as the Pentagon is under fire for insisting reporters sign a new set of policies that would limit the quality and trustworthiness of their work. In response, many leading news organisations handed in their badges.
