Posted on 06/22/2023 2:24:04 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Threats from Moscow. Rampant inflation. A deadly disease resisting eradication. Worries about the replacement of American workers. Sly. Ahnold.
Looking at the news of the past several years, we might think we’ve been rocketed back to the 1980s, just with less neon and fewer Rubik’s Cubes. History is repeating itself, and not only through fractured politics and the threat of a new Cold War.
In the ’80s, a parade of one-man armies marched into movie theaters, dispensing justice and obliterating the baddies — and all the real-world anxieties those villains represented. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and the action stars who followed in their slipstream jibed with the national mood.
Forty years ago, anyone afraid and uncertain could seek comfort in the thickly muscled arms of action movie stars, whose characters fulfilled empowerment fantasies by meeting adversity with a wry smile and a loaded machine gun. Stallone’s “Rambo” saga saw a tormented Vietnam vet become so unstoppable that he could head back to the jungle and restore American pride. Other films saw these actors take on drug dealers, serial killers, even — in the case of the bizarre “Cobra” — a cadre of ax-wielding cultists.
As we head into summer, these heroes, as promised, are back. Schwarzenegger and Stallone, both in their 70s, are now mowing down villains in their first TV shows, “FUBAR” and “Tulsa King,” respectively. These shows follow the retro footsteps of last year’s “Top Gun: Maverick,” which blasted to the top of the box office — and landed on Oscar ballots — proving that audiences are ready for testosterone-soaked nostalgia.
In the 1980s, these movies were a chance to cheer on someone who could actually do something about the threats affecting their lives. For more than a decade, studios have delivered a seemingly endless series of heroes who rely on superpowers to save the day in elaborate, computer-generated scenes. Yet we are still drawn to ’80s-style blockbusters that take place in a world that looks like ours. Watching one gives us a guilt-free hit of adrenaline in dark times.
But action-movie highs come at a cost. They tend to offer cartoonishly simple and violent solutions to complex problems — just as strongmen trying to appeal to desperate citizens do. Certainly the first generation of ’80s action films, and some of the recent renaissance, are frequently misogynistic, and often have nasty streaks of racism and xenophobia.
And those faults can’t just be attributed to the movies being products of their times. “Rambo: Last Blood,” the most recent in the franchise, came out in 2019 and saw its hero take on demonically evil Mexicans, as if a Trump campaign speech had been fused with a Hollywood pitch. Extreme right-leaning politicians have also embraced the action stars of this era. Steven Seagal was feted by Russian President Vladimir Putin this year. Jean-Claude Van Damme’s “Bloodsport” is said to be one of former President Donald Trump’s favorite movies, though he apparently skips through much of the dialogue.
These movies’ stark “we’re good, you’re evil” philosophy affected us in ways we may not have recognized when they came out. The feeling of “you’re either with us or against us” that filled the screen permeates current political discourse. The films’ idolization of firearms, with endless Glocks, pump-actions and assault rifles, has surely helped fan the flames of American gun worship. As outrageously entertaining as Schwarzenegger’s “Commando” is, its director ruefully admits that the movie has been used to stir up child soldiers in Africa before they were forced into combat.
So, how should we think about our nostalgia for these heroes? Perhaps the trick is to approach them with the kind of nuance that’s too often missing these days. We can appreciate their can-do spirit and the excitement they generate, while admitting their dangers and considering how their best qualities might fit in the 21st century.
It’s still thrilling to watch two Terminators grapple in a shopping mall, or see John McClane save Christmas, or cheer as Rocky battles Drago. And it’s strangely soothing right now to watch Arnie melt down a rogue cyborg (take that, ChatGPT!) or Sly decimate a Soviet army (in your face, Putin!). In the short term, they ease our minds — and remind us that in real life we shouldn’t wait for someone else to save us.
They’re good.
They’re not woke.
Current movies are so computerized green screen fake I don’t how people can sit through them
Hollywood had Hollyweird in its midst, it wasn’t yet all Hollywierd.
Poppycock!
Ronald Reagan said: They say if we'll only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he'll forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer - not an easy answer but simple: If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based on what we know in our hearts is morally right.
We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings now enslaved behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skins, we're willing to make a deal with your slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Now let's set the record straight. There's no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there's only one guaranteed way you can have peace - and you can have it in the next second - surrender.
Admittedly, there's a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson of history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face, that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight or surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand, the ultimatum. And what then, when Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we're retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the final ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary, because by that time we will have been weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he's heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he'd rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us.
You mean like "we came, we saw, he died!"
Who said that?
Than you. Great response.
In the 80s men were men, women were women, and no one was confused about the two.
Chuck Norris, “Eye For An Eye,” “Missing in Action.” Stallone as Rambo. The Gipper in office.
Sounds like Arnold.
By the way, what do they mean 80’s movies are “back”? For me they are a simple diversion. Lately it has been Charles Bronson movies. Westerns, cops, Death Wish, etc. (The sequels to Death Wish got a bit tiresome).
Hillary Clinton
I can’t watch modern CGI intensive movies...sensory overload can cause migraines for me.
I can’t stand most modern movies or TV shows.
I watch numerous old TV series from the 80s and 90s. The ‘wokeness’ was creeping in even then.
I watch some foreign-English-dubbed TV series. They are about as ‘woke’ as the American TV, except that the leftist politics seems to be less obvious.
I usually record anything I watch or stream so I can fast-forward through the ‘woke’ crap. Some TV shows get reduced to 30 out of 42 minutes by zipping through the crap sections.
What do you mean modern? They didn’t have movies in pre-modern times?
Commando is on YouTube for free now. Watched it a few weeks back. Still a great popcorn flick.
mindless escapism wiout being scolded for 90mins
Rocky 5000...
Say the past 10 years or so.
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