Happy 4th of July!
You know how “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel?”
These movies may seem patriotic, but have darker messages.
Well, you get the idea.
Still, for filmmakers patriotism has always been an easy card to play, and a sure-fire crowd pleaser.
People sure do love to wave little American flags and chant U-S-A!
when given the chance.
you’re free to probably guess the rest.
Little did he know Stallone was keeping that one in reserve for sequels down the road… Take D.W. Griffiths 1915 epic about the post-Civil War Reconstruction,Birth of a Nation.
He reallymeantwell, though.
Warner Brothers pulled the film out of circulation for the next 70 years.
We soon learn their paths would diverge wildly after their return to the States.
Its a fairly standard opening, and doesnt promise much.
Who is the greatest Italiano in all the world?
he asks them, to which they shout back merrily, Mussolini!
Well, that was unexpected.
When the shopkeeper refuses to pay the mob for protection, his shop is blown up in retaliation.
He get ridda all the crooks.
He make the big crooks catch the little crooks!
Its not a bad idea, the D.A.
His reasoning again is hes protecting the good citizens of these United States by murdering the bad ones wholesale.
There is nothing subtle about it.
My line may notve been according to Hoyle, he says, But it worked.
The Mafia either went underground or fled the country entirely.
Point is, it worked.
Then the war came along and we all wised up.
One has to wonder, though, how deeply those historical lessons have taken hold.
Audiences nowadays might react to a name, but what about the message of the film itself?
They still want a Mussolinibut, yknow, with a different name.
But even war movies can (and often do) confuse patriotism with cold-eyed jingoism.
After all those war films and cowboy movies?
Cmon, The Duke was as American as American can get!
I also rememberedThe Green Berets.
He hates them all, because nobody ever gets it right.
So lets just say it aint exactlyPlatoon,Apocalypse Now, or the middle third ofThe Deer Hunter.
No, they toed the company line pretty closely.
The answer is really, really simple.
Thats no doubt what Wayne believed, and wanted to pass this understanding along to the American public.
Was John Wayne High Noons Biggest Villain?
Unfortunately, 1968 wasnt exactly the year to try and do that.
Not helping matters was the films weird and wiggly tone.
Given Waynes uncomplicated worldview, even the use of Vietnam-specific terminology (charlie, Da Nang, etc.
), its essentially a WWII movie plopped down into Southeast Asia.
Too bad that whole history thing had to come into play again.
He does this by kicking the shit out of anyone who disagrees with him.
Its perhaps best expressed in the last Billy Jack film, 1977sBilly Jack Goes to Washington.
And dammit, if thats not the American way, I dont know what is!
So there you go.
Whatever side the conspiracies fall on, they tend to be equally fantastical and self-serving.
The JFK assassination has offered plenty of fodder to prove me right.
Why, theyre a greater threat to the country than communism!
Theyll kill us all to get their way, and its our patriotic duty to stop them!
Why, Kennedy is a bigger threat to the country than communism!
Foremost among them was John Milius 1984 Soviet invasion fantasy extravaganza,Red Dawn.
Fucking traitor got what he deserved!
I was somehow not surprised.
At films end theres no indication whether or not the newly-instituted martial law will be lifted.
After all, who really needs freedom so long as you have security?
But at least there are lots of explosions and precious little dialogue to fog the issue.
And thats worth a lot.
Suddenly we were without any tangible, large-scale threats to the American Way of Life.
So what the hell were filmmakers supposed to do?
Yeah, historys a funny thing.
In the 20s and 30s we were after anarchists and communists (which boiled down to Italians).
In the 40s it was the Germans and the Japanese and the Italians.
In the 50s it was the North Koreans and the Russians.
In the 60s it was the Viet Cong and the Russians.
In the 70s and 80s it was just the Russians.
Now its Islamic extremists.
Not too many other people around town liked Sam, especially his wife and sister.
He was a drunk, a wife beater, a bully, and an all-around asshole.
There are few things in this world quite so annoying as a self-righteous 9-year-old.
Leave it to Larry Cohen to write a slasher/zombie/revenge satire about patriotism gone mad.
Or celebration of American values, however you care to look at it.
Lesson here being that good ol Sam Johnson was right again.
Maybe thats an extreme and crazy interpretation, but thats what the movies seem to be telling me.
Ah, sweet land of liberty.
So just be careful where you toss those M-80s.
