The Return of the Seventies

Blogging will be light for the duration of the Triduum. If you're starved for reading material, the latest issue of the Atlantic is now online; it's thick with good stuff as usual, and it even includes an essay by yours truly, on pop culture in the shadow of the Iraq War.

And if reading the piece isn't exciting enough, you can watch me talk about it here:

Comments

I think your analysis is right - that is, Hollywood has generally not constructed action / thrillers within an existential conflict between the US and "Islamic terrorism."

During the Cold War, action / thrillers were indeed constructed within an existential conflict between the US and the Soviet Union.

I would suggest that this is because people don't think there's an existential conflict. People haven't been treated as if they need to change their lives for this conflict - no draft, no initiatives for national science or industry, a tax policy which never suggests any sacrifice needs to be made, etc. So they're going to reach to a film that suggests there is an existential conflict not by immediately understanding it, as they did in the Cold War, but by finding it somewhat silly and overheated.

Sure, you could get some hard-right audiences, but that'll just be the mirror image of Lions for Lambs, hardly the stuff of blockbusters.

I would suggest, further, that there is no existential conflict, and so Hollywood is right not to act as if there is. American action in the world does not happen necessarily within the scope of the battle with al Qaida - that is a police action against a relatively small force that is nowhere near acquiring control over a state or any particularly good revenue- and power-generating source.

Since the Iraq War isn't about any kind of existential battle with "Islamic terrorism", and since the American people generally don't think it is, Hollywood doesn't and shouldn't make movies that presume we are engaged in such a conflict.

Posted by DivGuy | March 21, 2008 1:48 PM

On the day commemorating the death of Jesus Christ by torture, do you think, Ross, that you could man up, act on the Christian faith that you profess, and condemn torture?

We'll all be waiting.

Posted by RICKM | March 21, 2008 2:32 PM

Who. The. Hell. chose Bittersweet Symphony as your backing music? I hate that freaking song.

Posted by Sam | March 21, 2008 3:06 PM

Shorter Ross:

Hollywood isn't helping the right with their propaganda campaign to scare people into thinking a handfull of terrorists hiding in caves are an existential threat to America on the order of the USSR.

Of course the fact that the USSR was never the existential threat to America that the right claimed they were and that kind of thinking led us into the disaster of Vietnam and decades of wasted spending on the Military Industrial Complex goes right over his head as well.

The reality is the propagandistic movies of the 80s were crap. Also, Reagan had next to nothing to do with the fall of Communism.

The fact that the modern right considers a medicore at best president like Reagan their hero rather than Eisenhower (the last good republican president) says most all we need to know about them.

It's posts like this one and the stuff on Obama/Wright that remind us that even the supposedly "level headed, thinking conservatives" are at heart just right wing reactionaries who socialize better with liberals.

Posted by Eric k | March 21, 2008 3:58 PM

Dude, how does Ross find so much time to watch so much TV and Netflix?!?

Posted by nbt | March 21, 2008 5:14 PM

DivGuy has said everything I wanted to say, and said it better than I would have. James Bond's struggles with the Russians were inherently dramatic because the Soviet Union threatened the United States physically in a way that Al Qaeda simply doesn't. I'm really looking forward to a time when the American discourse, even on the popular level, deals with the fact that we have massively overestimated the threat of Islamic fundamentalism to America and Americans. But sadly, I can't see that day coming soon. I would hope though that a guy as bright as Ross would acknowledge that, or acknowledge it more explicitly, then he did in this article.

Posted by Freddie | March 21, 2008 5:31 PM

Freddie since it will probably be the 22nd century before American discourse will recognize that we severely overestimated the threat of the Soviet Union I wouldn't hold my breath...

Posted by eric k | March 21, 2008 7:15 PM

It is an existential conflict; ironically, Hollywood refuses to admit it. Ironic because
they would be nonexistent if they lost. Instead
they give us material like the Bourne series (that suggests that assasination and renditions
occurred before 9/11 and even suggests that the
Trade Centers were a proper military target, as
the covert operations are based out of Manhattan
highrises. Jericho, which suggests the U.S, government, or some faction of same, would nuke
23 cities; and plunge the entire country into
chaos. They've thrown a MacGuffin into the works, suggesting the whistleblower, actually carried out the plan. However, a whole series of anvil like handed allusions to Hessians/Blackwater and
the East India Company/Halliburton are thrown into the mix. The Manchurian Candidate was so ridiculous; with even a predictable ending; Major Marco was the real target, not Senator Shaw. Lions for Lambs, seemed to be the most ridiculous
of them all; as it disowned U.S. participation in Afghanistan. The Moebius loop of jihadi porn that is "Redacted" and "Valley of Elah" which paints
actual and often unrelated crimes as US policy
we won't even go into.

This as they say; is not a bug it's a feature. Even films that portrayed a glimpse of the world
we would see on 9/11 and beyond; like Edward Zwick's "The Siege" ultimately painted an American military official as being responsible
for the attacks; for capturing the Bin Laden type
Iraqi preacher, and carrying out the rounding up of innocent Arab Americans. "Black Hawk Down" about a past American victory over AQ, that had
been characterized into a defeat; and "Tears of
the Sun" about a prospective humanitarian rescue
of missionaries in Nigeria (a likely possibility with the actions of the BEND) are so outside the
realm of todays crop of films, as to appear from a different decade. Even the closest aspirant to
such a level headed view of the enemy; "The Kingdom" collapse in a muddle of moralequivalence between the jihadis and the investigative team.

Posted by narciso | March 22, 2008 1:12 AM

Freddie "nailed it"? How?

The Russians were NEVER the villains of any of the James Bond movies. The books, yes! Ian Fleming's villains were always working for SMERSH, an assassination wing of the KGB.

But in the movies, the bad guys were always either evil corporate executives or members of SPECTRE, a shadowy cartel of evil international bankers and businessmen.

Hollywood spent most of the Cold War pretending that Russia posed no threat of any kind, just as it's now pretending that Islamic terrorism is a figment of George W. Bush's warped imagination.

Posted by astorian | March 22, 2008 1:13 AM

Astorian I can't find anyone on this thread saying I nailed it. As for the Russian comment, I was reacting to what Ross says on the video, where he explains things pretty well. It's true that it's usually SPECTRE or SMERSH who are the actual villains, but its against a backdrop of the Cold War. Which you would know we were talking about if you would just watch the video.

Posted by Freddie | March 22, 2008 11:22 AM

To pose a question to Ross:

You correctly analyze the pop cultural situation. Contemporary action / thrillers have far more in common with "paranoid style" 70s movies borne out of Vietnam than with the Cold War action / thrillers that placed heroes within an existential conflict between the US and the Soviets.

But you, as usual, refrain from offering any normative considerations.

Do you think that this pop cultural situation is reasonable? Do you think that the US really is in an existential battle with "Islamic terrorism", and that as such Hollywood should make movies based on that presumption? Do you think that the Vietnam War really was worth the lives lost and bodies ripped apart, and that Hollywood reacted inappropriately to that war?

This would, of course, require Ross to take a stand on basic issues in contemporary American discourse. Like, say, a paid pundit would.

Posted by DivGuy | March 22, 2008 11:40 AM

If the real enemy are islamic terrorists than the real heros are those fighting them overseas. If the real enemy are a cabal of right wingers in America than the real heroes are the people here in America opposing them, such as actors, producers, and screenwriters.

Posted by sourcreamus | March 22, 2008 2:27 PM

Gee, Hollywood doesn't think Islamic terrorists are an existential threat to our way of life?

That's because they're not. Al-Qaeda and their associated clowns are no more capable of destroying the USA than is Lithuania. Sure, they can kill lots of people (if we're stupid about our security), but destroy us? The fact that you guys blow it so far out of proportion says more about our inflated sense of what a "superpower" ought to be able to do.

The British were never, in the 80's and 90s, nearly as freaked by the IRA terror campaign--which actually could have meant the end of the UK as a political entity--as Americans were after 9-11. Why?

Simple. The Brits never thought they were God-emperors of the earth to whom nothing bad could ever happen. We sorta did, and so it came as a bit of a shock.

Posted by gustav | March 22, 2008 4:40 PM

What DivGuy said (and asked), not that it will matter . . .

Ross eats breakfast 300 yards from 4000 Jihadis who are trained to kill him, so don't think for one second that you can come down here, flash a more realistic geopolitical analysis, and make him nervous.

Posted by southpaw | March 22, 2008 7:07 PM

if can choose between my entertainment industry repeating its mistakes and my defense establishment doing so, I'll take the former.

film criticism, if you want to call this that, does not equal valuable civic engagement during a "threat to our national identity" any more than does me sitting on this couch with my smelly feet on the coffee table watching basketball.

lucky for me I make no claim to civic engagement.

Posted by dgj | March 22, 2008 9:08 PM

As usual, DivGuy's response to this is quite good.

My main question is what, exactly, is paranoid about In the Valley of Elah, or Munich, or Good Night and Good luck...? There's very little sense of conspiracy in such movies - there are nefarious figures aligned with governments, but usually the character of such individuals/organizations is pretty well articulated and confronted. While films like V for Vendetta may prompt us to be suspicious of our government's authoritarian leanings or disposition, the movie itself is not really about a coverup - it's all right on the surface and the main issue is whether "the people" will have the courage to face up to it.

There's a world of difference between suspecting a conspiracy and suspecting a problem. For example, Ross clearly thinks that there is a problem with the current state of the film industry and that this problem stems from the way in which that industry, more or less, looks at the world - but that doesn't mean he thinks there's some sort of conspiracy to use the war as an issue to get democrats elected. That would be a pretty paranoid article, right up there with Manchurian Candidate and Syriana.

Posted by berger | March 23, 2008 2:21 PM

The Americans in Lions for Lambs are NOT Marines, but are U.S. Army soldiers. They wear the distinctive new Army ACU and say "Hooah" repeatedly. Typical upper-class conservative pundit disconnection.

Posted by tequila | March 24, 2008 6:34 AM

What Ross ought to do is simply list the films over, say, the past six years and sort them by total gross revenue from largest to smallest (either in the theatre or theatre plus DVD sales). Perhaps these could be weighted by the share of production funding that came from "Hollywood." This list could then form the basis of his discussion. Based on this, I would note that Ross has no discussion of the series of films that glorify torture and human degradation. Think, for example, of the Saw series. The gross revenue of any one of those films dwarfs many of the films discussed by Ross.

This is hardly surprising because Ross is a distinctly middle-blow right-wing writer. Think a much younger (and fatter) David Brooks.

And Ross, I'm still waiting for the economic model showing that banning gay marriage will raise middle class wages. Call McArdle, perhaps she can help you with the comparative statics.

Posted by SavageView | March 24, 2008 8:44 AM

"That's because they're not. Al-Qaeda and their associated clowns are no more capable of destroying the USA than is Lithuania. Sure, they can kill lots of people (if we're stupid about our security), but destroy us?"

You seem like the type that would disprove of waterboarding and surveillance and whatnot. What do you think is going to happen if al-qaeda manages to repeat 9-11 scale attacks three or four times? Well, my friend, things would begin to get pretty damn nasty. You think America is gonna be just honkey-dorey if al-qaeda succeeds in its goals? I can't imagine living in a country which has to recover from a bio-terror or nuclear attack. That's what I take "existential" to mean, terrorism can transform our world into a nightmare. Sure, terrorism is unlikely to be a true "existential threat" if you define that to only include the total destruction of the United States of America (though bio-terrorism holds this possibility, however slim the probability may be). But that's a rather high bar, no?

Posted by Hans | March 25, 2008 12:31 AM

DivGuy wrote:

"Since the Iraq War isn't about any kind of existential battle with "Islamic terrorism", and since the American people generally don't think it is, Hollywood doesn't and shouldn't make movies that presume we are engaged in such a conflict."

Where is it written that the fight against al-Qaeda has to be an "existential threat" in order for Hollywood to make films that portray jihadists in a (gasp) negative light? Or to portray an American soldier in a (shudder) good light?

I suppose that Hollywood is too busy confronting the existential threats of Texas oilmen, the CIA, and global warming to think seriously about that little bugaboo called jihadism.

Posted by torourke | March 25, 2008 3:18 PM