Muscles, fire, guns, the new frontier and inner city savages!

"We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene!"
Colonel Walter E. Kurtz - Apocalypse Now

I just read that despite previous rumors that Chuck Norris' involvement with Expendables 2 meant that the film was going to a PG 13 film, it is in fact R-rated - with swearing and all. Chuck Norris is of course famously a christian conservative right wing twat, and doesn't like cussing. Murder and war is fine, cussing is not.

I grew up mostly in the eighties, a decade most of you think of as the decadent days of shoulder pads, mullets, horrible synthesizer music and pink over sized knit sweaters. This is of course true, but the eighties were also the last decade of cold war anxiety and all the implications that came with that.

A significant feature of this decade was the fact that a former movie actor turned Republican politician held office from 1981 to 1989. Fittingly his values are embedded in quite a few of the mega movies of the decade, and certainly in the meme "action film". Chuck Norris' involvement with right wing politics is not unique, to say the least.

Let's take a look at the action films of the eighties, to which Expendables plays loving tribute. We're talking Sylvester Stallone, Charles Bronson, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Chuck Norris of course - and a million clones. In many ways however the meme was born some years earlier with Clint Eastwood and his brilliant interpretation of the role "Dirty" Harry Callahan in 1971 - a movie that spawned a handful of sequels and changed the face of action films forever.

Dirty Harry was set in the inner city in the dying throes of the hippie era, post Manson and towards the end of the Vietnam War. Social upheaval, the early clashes of the culture wars and drug culture had a severe impact on American culture, and the result of course was fear. Fear of course breeds fantasies of escaping fear, and Dirty Harry showed us that one of the most potent images was the head strong, authoritarian white cop who could look past politics and turmoil and create order with his .44 magnum revolver. The revolver is of course a unique symbol of the American frontier, and in Callahan's hands it transforms modern America into a new frontier where savages fear its powers. Dirty Harry postulates a potent urban myth wherein politicians are weak and corrupt and the law itself gets in the way of justice and order. (Incidentally: Dirty Harry's script was co-written by a certain John Milius. Hang on to that name for now, we'll return to him later.)

Several years later the film's myth would be invoked again in a whole bunch of films, but two of the most memorable are Death Wish (1974) and Cobra (1986) starring Charles Bronson and Sylvester Stallone respectively. The two films take different approaches to the myth however, and both are interesting:

Death Wish presents us with the common man turned spirit of vengeance, who takes the law into his own hands because the lawmen are too civilized to exert authority. He becomes judge, jury and executioner, to use a cliché, and turns his revolver on street punks and modern savages. Chaos and turmoil surrounds the common man, but with the right tools he can turn the frontier back into a home for good men.
Cobra's take is different. In Cobra the law is no longer just flaccid or corrupt, it is irrelevant. Gangs have taken over the inner city and are enforcing their own rule, with no respect for the laws or the police. They have zero qualms about open war with the police. Into this situation Marion Cobretti is injected as a self proclaimed cure. His revolver is replaced with a modern 9mm gun, and the frontier is gone. This is the normal state of our decadent civilization. Cobretti is seen as a necessary evil and the only way to take on the worst of the lawless elements. He succedes, but the viewer is warned not to follow his path - unlike the path of Paul Kersey in Death Wish. Kersey was a common man turned vigilante, Cobretti is "nietzschean" superhuman bred for war - a true child of the Vietnam War.

- The court is civilized, isn't it pig?
- But I'm not. This is where the law stops and I start - sucker!
Cobretti converses a criminal scum bag in Cobra

Stallone of course is probably best know for his portrayal of another child of the Vietnam War, and a film that spawned a whole genre of its own. I am of course talking about Rambo and the film First Blood from 1982. First Blood is also the first film that taps into the rich tapestry of the war that was lost because the civilized liberals back home didn't believe in the war goals - and even more potently that the troops were betrayed by the society for which they fought and sometimes died. (There is of course some truth to this, but I'm concerned with myth, so I'm not gonna debate that issue.) John Rambo is a veteran on his way home, out of work after the war ended and more or less a bum - despite being a highly decorated and well trained special forces combat soldier. Walking along the road he is arrested by the local sheriff, and after being subjected to ridicule and torturous treatment he flips. A small war ensues in which Rambo uses his experience from Vietnam to outwit the cops. After a climactic battle with the local constabulary he is arrested by his former C.O. Colonel Trautman. The gist of the story is that the civilized postwar society has no need of its combat damaged troops, and would easily turn its back on the people who fought in the war. First Blood is probably one of the best action films of the eighties, and deserves a much better reputation that it has. Where Apocalypse Now(John Milius again) was a film about the war and how it burns away humanity First Blood showed how society is unable and unwilling to face the consequences of sending people to war. First Blood isn't Taxi Driver, even though they share a few themes. Where Taxi Driver portrays the veteran as slightly soft in the head, Rambo is in possession of his faculties. Society in the other hand is cruel and has turned its back on its warriors.

First Blood spawned three sequels, out of which the first one (from 1985) is most memorable as it continued to tap into the mythic tapestry of the Vietnam War. This time complete with corrupt politicians and CIA operatives willing to sell out the vets in favor of appeasement. Where First Blood was ambiguous the sequel is a homage to the veterans and their sacrifice and the fiery crucible of war. Rambo is no longer a mentally damaged veteran, but a soldier in the name of justice and political irredentism. The Reagen era came of age with this film, and its muscular hero was suddenly a role model for others: Schwarzenegger's Commando (1985) and Raw Deal (1987), as well as the Missing in Action films with Chuck Norris were basically Rambo knock offs, with the same theme and the same type of action - and the same message: brutality is sometimes necessary to uphold justice and righteousness - and civilized society is unable to defend its citizens in the face of corruption and rising crime. In the words of so many others: we need a new man, a strong man, to lead us in these new times.

Apart from First Blood II the film that showcased this ideology more than anything is probably Predator (1987). A team of elite soldiers on a clandestine mission in South America is tricked by CIA, and encounters an invisible enemy which picks them off one by one. Only by casting off all the traits of the modern civilized world is Schwarzenegger's character able to defeat the technology enhanced monster. He takes a jungian dive into a lake of mud to cover his body heat, discards the modern weaponry and encounters the monster naked and armed with wood and fire. He prevails not because of his advanced weaponry and training, but in spite of it. A more obvious anti modernist tribute to raw masculine destructive force is hard to imagine. Predator is of course a brilliant film, and worth watching not just for its story but because two of its actors wound up as active politicians: Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger - serving as Governors of Minnesota for the right wing Reform Party of America and California for the Republicans respectively. Worth mentioning is of course that Clint Eastwood has served as mayor for the Republican party, and that Bruce Willis is also an ardent Republican, along with Chuck Norris. There's a lot to be said here, and not enough time. Follow the links instead.

As it is with Beetlejuice John Milius has a tendency to pop up when you mention his name a few times, and his contribution to eighties action is probably the most well formulated of all, while not as potent as Rambo or Predator in its mythic superstructure. Red Dawn (1984) is another Reagen era film full of anti communism, tributes to war and strength and paranoid anti-politician messages. It concerns a band of teenagers who fight back against a joint Cuban-Soviet invasion and consequent occupation of the American midwest. The film shows them as they progress from survivalism, through partisan sabotage and guerrilla warfare to heroes. It seamlessly blends frontier revivalism with anticommunist paranoia and criticism of politicians who didn't see the coming storm. I've said it before, but this film is fantastic - both in terms of realistic portrayal and overt political propaganda. (Where most communists in American films used Chinese copies of the iconic AK-47 this is one of the very few films where the Soviet troops actually use Soviet weapons. The level of detail in this film is amazing.) John Milius is of course a self declared fascist and "zenarchist" with a fascination for militarism, weapons and ancient roman values as well as bushido. Milius more than anyone sums up the traits of the great American action film: anti civilization, pro military, anti modernism, anti socialism, pro guns and pro might. If in doubt see his other films: Apocalypse Now, Farewell to the King, or Conan the Barbarian (not Conan the Hawaiian).

- What do you want.
- Freedom, to be like we are.
- Anything else?
- Guns. So they can't take the freedom away.
Characters in Farewell to the King sum up what Milius is all about.

Which of course leads me to the conclusion. In the post Vietnam War decades that led to the end of the Cold War American saw the rise of a unique form of pseudo-fascism. This pseudo-fascism was unique in the sense that it had almost no political significance but worked instead to form the myths of the once so liberal nation through films. A potent mix of vigilante justice, anti government sentiments, pro death penalty and anti civilization messages became common for these block busters, and the films that copied them. The question is of course: how much of current American culture can we say results from this myth complex?

I'll leave you with a trailer for Cobra. Probably the film that sums it all up better than any other film. Might makes right!