Two decades ago today it got a lot harder to make action movies. On November 9th, 1989 the Berlin Wall came crumbling down in essence marking the ends of Communism in Europe and the Cold War. While this may not seem like that big of a deal to many of us that were too young to remember the Cold War at the height of its fervor, if you know anything about history what-so-ever you know 20 years ago today marked one of the most significant events of the modern age. And I in no way want to lessen the cultural impact these events had on the entire world. I’m sure one could argue whether or not these events made for a better world or not and in any other venue I’d love to do so but this blog is about movies and I’m sure many of you might be wondering why I would bring up such a momentous, yet seemingly unrelated event here. Well, I bring it up because just like the events of 9/11, the fall of Communism and the Berlin Wall changed the way we made movies.
As soon as the cold war ended we lost the second best villains in the history of cinema (The first being the Nazis obviously). Once we started being all buddy buddy with our formerly Pinko-Commie enemies THE mother of all fall-back villains went right out the window. Since the end of WWII and especially during the height of Ronald Regan’s presidency if you wanted your all-American good guy to fight some sort of dastardly evil but you couldn’t come up with anything too original or unique you just threw a bunch of Russian terrorists at him. Like Nazis no one would do anything but cheer as Arnold, Sly or Bruce mowed their way through legions of hammer and sickle saluting slime! It was perfect because especially towards the end of the Cold War no one in America was really frightened by any of the fascist fiends they were just kind of annoyed by them. They could watch with moral indifference as these rotten Ruskies were treated like cockroaches. They thrilled to watching them get squashed and never had to give a second thought to anything but the satisfyingly gory end they met.
Obviously all that has changed. With the rise of pot smoking, tree hugging, hemp wearing, peace loving, anti-animal testing, politically correct, Hippy-Liberalism we’re supposed to feel bad about our heroes killing anyone but drug lords or racially indefinable terrorists. We’re being attacked left and right by the Muslim world but if Jason Bourne or James Bond so much as throws someone in a turban a sideways glance the ACLU, NAACP and a bunch of other acronyms all jump out of the woodwork screaming bloody murder because by killing one genocidal extremists you’re declaring open war on the beliefs of every non-WASP (White Angle Saxon Protestant) in the world.
One could argue that the times have changed and have perhaps gotten better with said changes. I’m not going to weigh in on that, but one can’t help but admit things aren’t nearly as simple as they used to be. I long for the days when writers like myself could stereotype and murderously judge anything with an accent. Sadly though those days are gone and my only hope for that good old red, white and blue retribution is a WWII movie… or something directed by Michael Bay.
As soon as the cold war ended we lost the second best villains in the history of cinema (The first being the Nazis obviously). Once we started being all buddy buddy with our formerly Pinko-Commie enemies THE mother of all fall-back villains went right out the window. Since the end of WWII and especially during the height of Ronald Regan’s presidency if you wanted your all-American good guy to fight some sort of dastardly evil but you couldn’t come up with anything too original or unique you just threw a bunch of Russian terrorists at him. Like Nazis no one would do anything but cheer as Arnold, Sly or Bruce mowed their way through legions of hammer and sickle saluting slime! It was perfect because especially towards the end of the Cold War no one in America was really frightened by any of the fascist fiends they were just kind of annoyed by them. They could watch with moral indifference as these rotten Ruskies were treated like cockroaches. They thrilled to watching them get squashed and never had to give a second thought to anything but the satisfyingly gory end they met.
Obviously all that has changed. With the rise of pot smoking, tree hugging, hemp wearing, peace loving, anti-animal testing, politically correct, Hippy-Liberalism we’re supposed to feel bad about our heroes killing anyone but drug lords or racially indefinable terrorists. We’re being attacked left and right by the Muslim world but if Jason Bourne or James Bond so much as throws someone in a turban a sideways glance the ACLU, NAACP and a bunch of other acronyms all jump out of the woodwork screaming bloody murder because by killing one genocidal extremists you’re declaring open war on the beliefs of every non-WASP (White Angle Saxon Protestant) in the world.
One could argue that the times have changed and have perhaps gotten better with said changes. I’m not going to weigh in on that, but one can’t help but admit things aren’t nearly as simple as they used to be. I long for the days when writers like myself could stereotype and murderously judge anything with an accent. Sadly though those days are gone and my only hope for that good old red, white and blue retribution is a WWII movie… or something directed by Michael Bay.
2 comments:
"With the rise of pot smoking, tree hugging, hemp wearing, peace loving, anti-animal testing, politically correct, Hippy-Liberalism we’re supposed to feel bad about our heroes killing anyone but drug lords or racially indefinable terrorists."
Calm down, Bessie. I thought you were going to stick to talking about the movies. I don't consider myself a liberal (or a conservative, for that matter), but even I found the series of adjectives that you used to describe liberalism to be aggressively provocative.
Rocky IV's one of the most underrated sequels ever! My favorite in the series next to the original, they should have ended it there.
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