Being quite naive, I believed that Red Dawn would teach conservatives why violently occupying a foreign country would be a stupid idea. Wikipedia.
Initially, the occupiers had tried terror tactics, executing groups of civilians following every Wolverine attack, to intimidate the local population and the Wolverines into halting their attacks. However, this tactic backfires, and civilians lend increasing support to the resistance movement.
This brings to mind the time worn question: if you simplify a message to comic book form, and if you cast a magic spell over the comic book that makes every war-hungry conservative memorize it line by line, can they still miss the point? Let’s consult the same Wikipedia article.
Ironically, the operation to capture former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was named after the movie (Operation Red Dawn), as well as its targets, which were dubbed Wolverine 1 and Wolverine 2. The Army captain who named the mission said that: “Operation Red Dawn was so fitting because it was a patriotic, pro-American movie.”
All signs point to yes.
eric
Let’s us say a few words in remembrance of our dear friend Irony for she is dead.
MikeJ
Red Dawn was pro-American because real Americans know that military occupation of a country that doesn’t want you there is evil.
Erika Froh
Wolverines!!! Have you heard about the remake? The Big Bad is China now, lol.
Zifnab
@MikeJ: Red Dawn was pro-America because the Americans won in the end.
You’ll notice Rambo II: Vietnam We Win! is almost a story shot from the exact opposite perspective. Also a very pro-America movie.
MikeJ
Ooo, all five rifftrax for Patrick Swayze movies for $10 (cheap) instead of the usual $3.99 a pop.
http://www.rifftrax.com/displaythickbox?file=Red_Dawn_Sample2.flv&width=500&height=400
Zifnab
@Erika Froh: Remember when the Big Bad Guy was occupying the better part of Eastern Europe? And now the Big Bad Guy is just a large country with lots of money that sells us refrigerators? Kinda a fall from grace, don’t you think?
eric
Soon we will be hearing about how Birth of a Nation has long been a misunderstood classic which tells the tale of the nascent tea bagger movement.
eric
Erika Froh
@Zifnab
Yeah, but I think the Chinese are almost easier to demonize than the Russians. Russians look “white” – the Chinese have that pesky eye thing going on. And hey, there are just so many Chinese. The empty plains of Wyoming are just a logical target of their evil Red expansionist agenda. Fufufufufufufu….
Sentient Puddle
Wait, they named the targets after the protagonists of the film? Now I’m not even sure if they bothered to watch it.
toujoursdan
Well it’s different when Americans do it. They are stronger and smarter than foreigners and invented and discovered everything!1!11!!
Besides Americans were bringing
social/economic Darwinismfreedom and to Iraq, which we all know they wanted.max
I always took the movie to be ‘any time, any place’ – it could’ve been set in Yugoslavia or Greece or Russia or China or wherever. The fact that virtually the entire group dies (along with tons of civlians), and the group fails to succeed at anything except bothering the occupiers, would’ve underlined that point, I would’ve thought. Hell, the movie ends ambigiously anyways – the flag at the end implies the Americans one, but the movie doesn’t really say that. (I expect that that bit was added by the studio to keep the movie from being a downer.)
It ain’t First Blood another words.
max
[‘Apparently, I live in a different universe than the one these people live in.’]
Sentient Puddle
@max:
Feature, not a bug. If they won, then there’s no more perpetual war.
Erika Froh
Whoops, my bad. That should have been Colorado, not Wyoming.
I wonder if they’ll show the Chinese torturing Americans. On one hand it would make the “torture works!” people happy. OTOH, it might make the prospective audience uncomfortable.
someguy
But it was a very American movie. They killed lots of non-English speak brown people. Brown-ish people. Okay, minor Hollywood bit players with tan-in-a-bottle.
But they were notionally brown people.
Erika Froh
Apparently filming has begun in Michigan already. I guess Detroit was too tempting a set to pass up. :(
lloyd
As others have pointed out, right-wingers take the movie’s message to be, “America! FUCK YEAH!!!1!!”
It’s not cognitive dissonance, here, it’s absence of cognitive processes altogether.
de stijl
I’m surprised that Rumsfeld didn’t rename Operation Iraqi Freedom* as Barbarosa.
(*why in the world did the military go all wobbly and start naming operations after the actual target instead of random but totally cool sounding bullshit like Operation Overlord or Operation A Mouth Full Of Kilt)
MK
@Sentient Puddle:
licensed to kill time
@de stijl:
I have always thought that Operation Enduring Freedom was full of ironic possibilities.
EchoesBunniesRemoteFromWork
What was really needed in Red Dawn was for a Russian General to say at the end of the movie “We would have won, if it not for you meddling kids with AKs and RPGs!”
Jay in Oregon
@de stijl:
Probably for media spin. “Operation Foxtrot Hotel” is so much less snappy than “Operation Iraqi Freedom”.
Remember, part of the war effort is selling it to the American people.
freelancer
@MK:
Wow, can a whiteboy get a link for this?
Sentient Puddle
So I read a bit about the remake. They say they want to scare the bejesus out of people again, but they think they’re going to accomplish that with a Chinese invasion? Seriously? I would think that a wingnut would at least have a finger on the pulse of the people well enough to determine that Arab terrorists hijacking a small town would work a whole helluva lot better at scaring Americans…
de stijl
They say they want to scare the bejesus out of people again, but they think they’re going to accomplish that with a Chinese invasion?
It worked fairly well as the backstory for Fallout 3, but that supposedly happened in 2071 or something.
Evinfuilt
@Erika Froh:
I’m pretty sure thats why they used the Cuban allies in Red Dawn. The brown invasion.
MK
@freelancer:
Unfortunately, the video is classified and will not be coming to a video sharing site anytime soon (unless someone decides it’s fun to be court-martialed).
So you’ll have to be satisfied with hearsay. From the intertoobz, no less. Sorry.
de stijl
“Operation Foxtrot Hotel” is so much less snappy than “Operation Iraqi Freedom”.
I, for one, think the American public is perfectly able to get their war face on for Operation A Mouthful Of Kilt.
Who’s with me? Are you an American or an American’t?
Goddamned Scots.
Victory
Iraq Operation Hotel California: You can check out anytime you like, but, you can never leave.
Calouste
@Sentient Puddle:
I think making a movie about a Chinese invasion is also a very smart move by the movie industry to entice the Chinese government to implement stricter measurements against the piracy of American movies. They are really going to appreciate that.
Sentient Puddle
@de stijl: Well, and the Fallout backstory deviates from history. After World War II, the world got stuck in perpetual cold war, both in terms of international relations and culture (which is why everything is so ’50s). There was never any fall of communism a la Berlin Wall ’89.
Of course, the way conservatives speak of the left these days, I bet they don’t think communism was ever defeated either. So fair point there.
J.W. Hamner
@de stijl:
Personally I would go with Mexican drug cartels in league with the Taliban taking over a school in REAL America… then the protagonists could run to their pickup trucks to grab their rifles… and then the Good Ole’ Boys in league with the ROTC… and perhaps a tough as nails history teacher/ ‘Nam Vet who teaches our heroes True Conservative Principles… would fight back the Brown Menace and everyone would live happily ever after with no taxes. The End.
de stijl
…and perhaps a tough as nails history teacher/ ‘Nam Vet…
There’s a part with Michael Ironside written all over it.
freelancer
@J.W. Hamner:
Didn’t they make this movie already?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103112/
Corner Stone
@Jay in Oregon:
Fixteth.
*trying my 37th variation on how to use strikethrough on this blogmistress forsaken place.
Corner Stone
I have been to the mountaintop! I have seen Salma Hayek ask me for more! I have thrown the game winning TD in Superbowl CXVX!
And I have finally made the beast with one back. The
-strikethrough-, she is working.
J.W. Hamner
@freelancer:
Well… uhm, yes… but mine will have Mexicans! I had forgotten about Toy Soldiers and was trying to weave together TAPS and Red Dawn with OMGWTF911… which is pretty much Toy Soldiers. Who’d have thought Sean Aston prescient when he signed on to that role?
Bobby Thomson
A lot of people don’t realize this, but the John Goodman character from The Big Lebowski is based on the guy who wrote Red Dawn, who tried to join the Marines and was rejected for medical reasons.
The anti-occupation subtext to the movie made sense if you were a militarist in the 1980s, when Reagan was smart enough not to try to occupy any countries. Had the movie been made today, it would have been quite different.
Leelee for Obama
@de stijl: That’s who I saw-Starship Troopers!
Mike in NC
Never seen it, but I’m told “Invasion USA” with Chuck Norris is so bad it’s good…
Right Wing Extreme
@ de stijl
“I, for one, think the American public is perfectly able to get their war face on for Operation A Mouthful Of Kilt.
Who’s with me? Are you an American or an American’t?
Goddamned Scots.”
de stijl,
I may hardly ever agree with you, but on that one, I am definitely with you.
Robertdsc-iphone
Funny, one of the moments that has lasted with me came from Red Dawn. When the brothers are trudging through the snow, one of them near death, they’re caught by the Russian commander. He lets them go & they struggle to the swingset in the park where they eventually die together.
Powers Boothe as the F-15 pilot was great. “It was 5 to 1. I got 4.” Heh.
RSA
@toujoursdan:
Of course. See also spying on one’s citizens, torturing of prisoners, having backward religious beliefs, and… uh… being an ugly American.
Leelee for Obama
@Mike in NC: Nah, it’s really awful. I watched it back when I still liked him, and it was really bad.