Loganthinks

There’s this movie called Red Dawn on TV. Patrick Swayze is in it, and he plays a high school jock who helps organize suburban teenagers into a guerilla resistance movement. They do this in order to fight the invading Cubans and Russians. This story exists in a fictional near-future, an extension of Regan's America. 1984.

Swayze is a tough-love helmet of hair in stonewashed jeans and a puffy vest, and he is convincing. He has to be. He has to watch over his fellow highschoolers, who have all escaped the invasion in a pickup truck with big yellow KC lights. Early on, while camped in the mountains where communists can’t find them, there is some in-fighting in Swayze’s group as to whether they should surrender and re-join their families. There’s the requisite whiny kid, who misses his parents and argues that the group can’t survive in the wilderness because they “need stuff”. Others agree, hoping for the possibility of an end to the conflict. They are bordering on mutiny when Swayze shouts: “Listen! It is World War III out there, and people are dying! You think you’re so damn smart, but you’re just a bunch of scared kids”, to which one of the defectors replies: “so what does that make you?”

Swayze hangs his head, kicks the campfire with his foot, and says: “that makes me alone.” The music conspicuously drops out. There are a few moments of silence, and then one of the kids walks gingerly over to Swayze and gives him an awkward hug. They hold each other, and someone else comes into the picture. More hugging. I hit the remote control in an automatic spasm, but whatever’s on the last channel is now on a vaguely-worded commercial for a prescription pill called FLOMAX. For guys that want to take longer drives, with fewer stops. Men with silver hair and perfect teeth sitting a little too close to each other in a convertible, laughing. I count to 5, and hit the remote again.

When I switch back, the scene is fading out with some hugging. Swayze has conquered the internal dissent by holding a strong “with me or against me” stance, and with it a powerful aura of martyrdom and determination. For the moment, hidden in the desert mountains, they are at-large and unified in their mission. They are a committed band of insurgents. Freedom fighters.

Martyrdom isn’t a topic that dominates the agenda of most American movies. Sacrifice shows up here and there, but always in some western context that is re-tooled to fit our cultural perspective. For example, somebody sacrifices their career in the fashion industry to spend more time with their children. In war movies, sacrifice is everywhere, but martyrdom is somehow out of place, somehow less efficient.
I would guess that this is because most movies, especially war movies, don’t present their icon for “evil” as something cartoonishly grotesque without also empowering the icon for “good” by releasing it from its obligations to conventional morality. That is, the good guy can (and must) kick ass. In these films, the hero doesn’t sacrifice himself exactly (since he must ultimately win the war), but he usually has his family, or his pet goat, or something precious to him sacrificed by the writers in the name providing motive... and narrative convenience.

But this movie is weird. Like that Rambo sequel where Stallone helps the Taliban fight the Russians with that annoying pro-western Arab kid and the souped-up communist super-helicopter that shows up at the end. It's not weird because Rambo doesn't kick ass and take names, because he does. Swayze does this in Red Dawn too. It’s because Stallone is helping Afghanis fire rocket propelled grenades at a tank convoy. And because Patrick Swayze leads a millitia of junior varsity football players and student council members in an ambush on a truck full of Cuban guards. It’s because the old man in a hunting jacket who plays Swayze’s dad screams “Avenge Me!” from behind the wire fence of a political re-education camp, where he is being shown, against his will, the potential benefits of switching cultural and political systems. It’s because the kids are making IEDs and sniping soldiers from distance. It’s because they have the wrong guns.

“Evil” in Red Dawn has two faces. One face is that of the communist military. They are sadistic, cantankerous, and rarely in the mood for anything other than drinking, raping, and killing the captive civilians of Colorado. The other face is of the sympathizers who facilitate the communist takeover. These are the politicians, who are shown as hyperboles, cutting deals in back rooms and watching group executions from the sidelines in trench coats while smoking cigars. Cuban cigars. And none of them are very good looking.
The violence pops in and out of the story, and it is usually full of Clint Eastwood-style poetic justice. A local teenager who has joined the commies is shot by Swayze while trying to radio Soviet troops from a car. Bleeding all over himself and sweating with panic, he fumbles with the radio as Swayze appears by the passenger door and levels a pistol to his head. We get a close-up on the turncoat’s face, and then the camera cuts away to the wide green forest before we hear a gunshot. I actually have muted the TV at this point because I am playing the guitar, but as the picture cuts away from the car to the pine trees, “Gunshot” appears in little black and white caption letters at the bottom of the screen. It is a big moment, and I strum loudly.
Swayze and his rebel band tour the countryside in their KC truck, dodging patrols and witnessing atrocities committed by the communists. Public beatings. Mass killings while singing the national anthem. The Russians have a flair for the dramatic and the macabre. The drama then picks up with a montage, and we, the viewers, warm up to the idea that our motley crew of teenagers has now grown into a platoon of adults in the harsh gauntlet of war. Kill or be killed. The trial-by-fire coming-of-age drama that guarantees watchability because it is a story of continued violence. Our children have become soldiers. My hand is twitching on the remote, and I am beginning to think about other things than the killing going on in my television.

What time do I need to be at the bus stop tomorrow? Did I need to do laundry? What’s going on in the news?

My thumb is now tapping the “last channel” button in rhythm. Swayze’s hair, then Sportscenter. Dialogue with someone shouting, then Sportscenter. A commercial for eyedrops in which a fat man in a swimming pool tries to talk to some ladies, only to be scowled at because the chlorine has made his eyes red. Some kind of a chase scene, with a helicopter. There’s a Visene for that. Russian troops on the run. A commercial for the NASA foam mattress where a woman says “oh my god I’m going to fall asleep right here in the store.” Soldiers surrounding the rebel teenagers – close ups on everyone's faces. Clips from a cable news show hosted by someone named Glen Beck, announced over heavy synthesizer drums to be cable news’ “most provocative and hard-hitting new anchor personality”. A glitch in my cable, where everything turns to squares and pixels and people’s faces look like false-color radar.

And then bright light, the flashing of pyrotechnic powder from the muzzle of a Kalishnikov rifle, shuddering in slow motion as it bucks the pale frame of a white teenage boy, a child actor, perhaps a veteran of B-movie casting already, living somewhere in West Hollywood or Santa Monica, or perhaps even a newcomer to the big screen, living with his family in the San Fernando Valley, commuting to the set and even to school when he gets the time off, keeping in shape and keeping his spiky hair cut to just the right length so that his character looks the same; this boy with war paint on his cheeks and a drop of rubber blood on his eyebrow, squinting at the pulsing sparks with his his cheeks pulled taut, his mouth twisting between grin and grimace. Copper bullet jackets skip by, out of focus in the foreground, and the teenage boy from California, or Iowa, or Utica New York is screaming with some ineffable regurgitation of his own anger, his sixteen years of fear and angst, the weight of the news and the world and all the evil he's seen and imagined, and the director's voice is on a bullhorn in his ears telling him you are fighting for your way of life, let me see it! Kill! Kill! Kill!

I turn the TV off, and in the moment that the picture pinches into a bright static pop, I am aware that his teeth are perfectly white.