David Plotz of Slate ponders Red Dawn and its upcoming remake.
Red Dawn embodies conservative nutterdom in a way few films not made by Mel Gibson have ever managed. If Ann Coulter made a movie, it would look like Red Dawn. This is thanks to director John Milius. Apocalypse Now screenwriter, Conan the Barbarian auteur, and former NRA board member, Milius is a military zealot, infatuated with the warrior code.
It gets better. Those guys fighting the Soviets, for you know, killing every body they knew – they were actually fascists!
In my memory, Red Dawn celebrated America and its virtues. But its guiding ideology is actually fascism. The only politician in Red Dawn, the mayor of Calumet, is a quisling who rats out his neighbors for execution. His son, the student-body president, turns out to be the traitorous Wolverine, seeking immediate capitulation to the invaders and eventually leading the Soviets right to the band’s hideout. Swayze takes command of the Wolverines by force, forbids a vote about whether to surrender, and demands that his fellow guerillas obey him without question. The warrior code of Red Dawn is nihilistic: Glory and death are the same; there is no higher aim than to fight. It never imagines an America that is worth saving: We have corrupt institutions and cowardly politicians.
Remember, strong military types are actually the fascists. You think you should have the same right to self protection that George Clooney and Barack Obama enjoy? You’re a fascist. You don’t want the government deciding who and when you should be operated on by a doctor? Fascist. Don’t believe the government should decide who you listen to on talk radio? Fascist.
Just remember to those days shortly after Sept. 11, when everyone was scared and living in fear. The biggest liberals I knew all of a sudden became the most bloodthirsty. Why? Because they were scared. When they need you, all of a sudden you are not much of a fascist anymore. If you want evidence of that, ask Red Dawn creator John Milius. When the L.A. riots happened, many of his liberal Hollywood buddies, called begging for guns and ammunition.
Ponder that while taking in Plotz’s final point:
Red Dawn is not an exact parallel to our situation, of course. The Iraq we invaded was no functioning democracy; our Army does not execute civilians; many Iraqis favor the American occupation. But Red Dawn certainly didn’t stir the mad, patriotic fervor I felt when I heard Howell shout, “Wolverines” 24 years ago. MGM is so far tight-lipped about the plot of its Red Dawn remake, but I wonder: Will the new Wolverines be us—or fighting us?
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Have I mentioned recently how glad I am to have left the Democrat party (and modern liberalism) in my rearview?
From my Red Dawn DVD review last year:
[H]ow do I know Red Dawn still works as Milius’ vehicle for showing how Americans value their freedom and will defend their homeland when need be? One of my left-leaning and Michael Moore-addicted friends had this to say about a recent viewing, which he stopped watching after about ten minutes: “It’s all a bunch of right-wing military propaganda.”
Yeah, so what?
http://www.modernconservative.com/metablog_single.php?p=701
OK, If there is one thing I LOATHE, it is fools who insist on tossing the word “Fascism” around like a spit ball. Fascism is a VERY SPECIFIC brand of scum. While its origins are disputable (I personally subsribe to the Nationalist+ Socialism theory), it is safe to say that not every tyrant or dictator is Fascist.
What MAKES them Fascist is their ideology, programs, and rhetoric. To this date, NOBODY, not even the Much-Lionized Jonah Golderberg (whose theory that WWI America was a Fascist country can only be made by ignoring several factors, most prominant amongst them the fact that THE LAWS WERE EXPLICITLY PLANNED TO BE REPEALED ONCE THE KAISERREICH WAS DEFEATED!) has come up witha 100% accurate definition of Fascism. And that includes me.
However, While I vehemently disagree with several theories, at least people like Mr. Goldberg TRY to create a consistant definition and stick with it. Everyone else seems to like tossing it out whenever it is convenient and accuracy be damned.
Oh yes, and does this fool even realize what Red Dawn was largely based off of? THAT’S RIGHT! THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AND WAR OF 1812! Only in the case of Red Dawn, the Communists are shown to be vastly more brutal and the Americans as less brutal than the British and Continentals were (respectively). However, given the Red Army’s track records (Civil War 1917-1924, Caucausus/Central Asia Campaigns 1919-1930, Spanish Civil War 1936-1939, Poland 1939, Finland 1939-1944, Central Europe 1943-1945, Polish Ukraine 1945-1948,Hungary 1956,and the list goes on and on), and American track records in the 20th century, that seems rather fair.
If this man ever won so much as a preschool trophy regarding history, it needs to be rescinded. Yesterday.
Oh yes, and another thing: Those “Stirring against the American Occupation” in Iraq and mostly NOT Iraqis. They are foreign fighters from the four corners of the globe brought in by various sects to fight the Infidel under the banner of the Jihad.
So, Mr. Idiot thinks that the Wolverines are Fascists, and yet compares his beloved “insurgents” to them?
Does he not realize he is tripping headfirst over his own narrative?
I love Red Dawn precisely because it drives morons like David Plotz around the bend.
[...] you find horror stories of speech codes and other First Amendment restraint you would expect in a remake of Red Dawn. A friend of mine was suspended from an East Coast college for the crime of putting a popular [...]