Shock and Awe - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

Following the United States' invasion of Iraq in 2003, the term shock and awe has been used for commercial purposes. The United States Patent and Trademark Office received at least 29 trademark applications in 2003 for exclusive use of the term. The first came from a fireworks company on the day the United States started bombing Baghdad. Sony registered the trademark the day after the beginning of the operation for use in a video game title, but later withdrew the application and described it as "an exercise of regrettable bad judgment." It is also the name of a level in the video game Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, in which United States Marine Corps forces execute the strategy in an unnamed Middle-Eastern country, before themselves falling victim to a nuclear blast. The term is also used as an achievement in the popularly acclaimed game Starcraft 2, it is obtained when an a certain amount of units die to the tactical strike craft whilst invisible. It is also the name of an achievement in Gears of War 2. Miscellaneous other uses of the term include golf equipment, an insecticide, a set of bowling balls, a racehorse, a shampoo, condoms, and heroin. The phrase was also suggested by the title of the Toby Keith album Shock'n Y'all, the hit from which was the pro-military "American Soldier".

In an interview, Harlan Ullman stated that he believed that using the term to try to sell products was "probably a mistake," and "the marketing value will be somewhere between slim and none."

Max Brooks' 2006 post-apocalyptic horror novel "World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War" contains a pointed criticism of "Shock and Awe" tactics, in the chapter relating the defeat of the US military by a zombie horde numbering in the millions at the cataclysmic Battle of Yonkers. Brooks' criticism is that Shock and Awe tactics are essentially a relic of Cold War strategies for fighting the Soviet Union in the Fulda Gap of West Germany, and are not effective for combating guerrilla fighters in protracted insurgencies. Particularly, Brooks' point is that the entire concept of "Shock and Awe" is rendered moot when facing enemy combatants who by definition have no fear of death: be they zombies, kamikaze pilots, or suicide bombers.

In the 2011 scifi film Battle: Los Angeles, the hostile aliens that are invading Earth are stated during a USMC press conference to be carrying out a "textbook campaign of rapid dominance".