#which you can pry from my cold dead theater kid hands btw

[theliterateape]

They Learned it from the Wolverines

by Don Hall

In his book From Sun Tzu to Xbox, Ed Halter wrote "The technologies that shape our culture have always been pushed forward by war".

I'd add to that popular culture pushes the same way.

In poll after poll of those tattered souls who still want desperately to believe that Donald Trump is still the president, a sizable chunk are from my generation: Gen X (1965-1980). Much like my surprise that Brett Kavanaugh and I are the same age and watched the same movies but only one of us is a rapist (that'd be him, btw), it is a shock to see so many of the latchkey kids of my youth turn to bizarre conspiracy theories about Democrats drinking the blood of children.

As I look around, while my generation is almost 20% of the population (which, despite contrary perspectives, is in-line with the rest of the batch), we are the generation most likely to embrace libertarian ideals as well as look to militia-esque ideology. We trust the military but despise the government. We are the least likely to buy-in to the mainstream media narratives and the most likely to embrace social distancing.

We also wholly believe that we are JukeBox Heroes and Triumphant Underdogs all while adopting a "Go Fuck Yourself" attitude to almost everyone else.

Where did we learn this? From the Wolverines.

I hadn't viewed 1984's Red Dawn, directed by ridiculously pro-military/anti-government shill John Milius, since, well, 1984 when I graduated high school. I decided to take another look these thirty-seven years later to see how that film may have cemented that Unabomber Paranoia into the Gen X mindset.

The movie starts out simply with a score that sounds suspiciously like Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man and shows us an idyllic small Colorado town. It pans to a statue of Theodore Roosevelt and sits on the plaque for a moment. It reads:

"The Rough Rider" Far better it is to dare mighty things than to take rank with those poor, timid spirits who know neither victory nor defeat.

Truth be told, it's a better movie than I thought it would be but the lessons contained sum up every QAnon, Trump-supporting, quasi-patriot I can name:

Bumper sticker "They Can have my gun when they pry from my cold dead fingers" followed by a Cuban pulling the pistol from the owner's dead hand

Survivalists survive the camps by hunting and fishing and shooting a bow and arrow as well as guns.

US is attacked by Cubans and Nicaraguans = Spanish = South of the Fucking Border

C. Thomas Howell wearing a Star Wars ballcap, drinks deer's blood, and later does a movie entirely in blackface. He also becomes this film's Private Pyle.

Red Dawn really was the very first movie to get the PG-13 rating—a rating designed to make sure kids younger than eighteen can watch. Yet, this same film was unlike any R-rated movie in that it showed 134 acts of violence per hour. Indeed, at the time of its release, Red Dawn was the most violent motion picture that had ever been run in theaters, according to the National Coalition on Television Violence.

This is fucking NRA dream

Of course, we get Amanda Jones and pre-nose job Baby

Completely untrained kids beating Cuban/Russian paramilitary troops? Where do they get all the grenades and RPGs?

Powers Booth as a pilot shot down explains the invasion as "the two toughest kids in the playground eventually have to fight." He also explains that Europe is sitting this one out except for England. Our forces held them in the Heartland (Rockies to Mississippi) meaning the MidWest saved the hippies to the west and the liberal elites to the east.

One black person in the entire movie, the teacher who gets shot in the first reel.

Not one kid dies until five months in and then it's the quiet brown kid and Powers Booth. 

Somehow, Milius paints a picture that the most powerful military force in history is the underdog. Extraordinary that, in this scenario, the Russians and Cubans are the United States to Patrick Swayze's Viet Cong. This time we root for the Gooks?

The politician and his son are the turncoats.

Swayze watches Baby die in this one without even a dance. He does blow her up with a grenade. I think Jerry Orbach might've had issue with that.

It's a fucking video game, a libertarian fantasy. With a lot of mascara on the dudes. I mean, the makeup artist loved mascara on the dudes.

We Gen Xers grew up watching the rogue agents solve the problems that the government couldn't: Maverick, Martin Riggs, John Rambo, John McClane, Jack Burton, Frank Dux, and anyone portayed by Chuck Norris. 

We also were left mostly to our own devices ("I don't care where you go, just be back before it gets dark out.") and thus, lived our own versions of The Lord of the Flies every day. War was put into our heads by movies sponsored by the Pentagon and Milius was granted access to former Reagan Secretary of State Alexander Haig who advised on the script.

Once I rewatched the movie, I think I understand a little better the odd old dudes with misspelled signs and home-made body armor. They all think they're Patrick Swayze fighting an invading horde in the mountains outside of a tiny, All-American town in Colorado with exactly one black person.

Of course they're morons. I just wish they weren't GenX morons, you know?

#Red Dawn (1984)