Unclear and Present Danger - Dead Presidents

Episode Date: August 18, 2023

For this week’s episode, we watched the 1995 coming-of-age tale slash Vietnam War movie slash crime thriller “Dead Presidents,” produced and directed by Albert and Allen Hughes. It stars Larenz Tate, Keith David, Chris Tucker, N’Bushe Wright, Freddy Rodriguez and Bokeem Woodbine.“Dead Presidents” is the story of Anthony Curtis, a soon-to-be high school graduate from the Bronx who chooses to join the Marines in search of his own destiny. The year is 1969 and he is sent to Vietnam, leaving his family, his girlfriend Juanita and his friends behind. He experiences the worst of the war and returns home, angry and alienated, to his old girlfriend and his daughter. His friends, who also went to war, have also had their own trials. Each desperate for meaning and for money, they devise a plan to rob an armored car. As you might expect, things get quickly out of hand.In the course of the episode, Jamelle and John discuss the experience of Black veterans in America’s wars, the role of Vietnam in American national memory and the way race shapes our understanding of crime.The tagline for “Dead Presidents” is “The only color that counts is green.” You can find the move for rent on iTunes and Amazon.Episodes come out every two weeks, so we will see you then with an episode on the first James Bond film of the 1990s, “Goldeneye.”Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck.Contact us!Follow us on Twitter!John GanzJamelle BouieUnclearPodAnd join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War, and much, much more. Our latest Patreon episode is on the 1975 German political thriller, “The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum.”

Hey Kip, you want to take a little run with me? Yeah, I'll take a little run with you. You're almost as good a getaway drive as me. I'm about getting my pimp thing on started. Are you always talking about this pimp stuff, man? What's happening? Man, I ain't afraid of no war. I just want to do something that's different. different. Yeah, well, getting your head blown off here is different.

Ha ha ha ha! So you ain't gonna marry me when you get back? You ain't got somebody else? I don't want nobody else. To the Bronx. Now you're gonna play this Marine War hero. What you got when you get back here, huh? Huh, up, uh, oh, oh.

What's going on, man? Girl, come here. It's daddy. Say hi. Hi. I'm gonna get myself a good job. Don't you know if I had anything to offer you how to give it to you in the moment you walk through that door? 6.15 a.m., the truck pulls out of the post office. Now it makes one stop before it goes to D.C. at first federal loan and savings.

You pull it off and you'll have money hands over fist. I think we need another man on the street. We might we'll put an ad in a paper name. We're gonna get everybody. I'm qualified to handle a 45 and M-16 and AK-47. Ah! Ah! And war in private Lorenz Tate, Keith David,

Chris Tucker, Nabouchet Wright. From the directors of Menace to Society, Dead Presidents, a Hughes Brothers film. Well, that's Uncle Sam for you, baby. Money to burn. Welcome. Welcome to Unclear and Present Danger. of the 1990s and what they say about the politics of that decade.

I'm Jamel Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. I'm John Gans. I write the substack newsletter on popular front. And I wrote, like a news past tense, a book about American politics in the early 1990s. It's now being copy edited. And I will give you guys a release date as soon. as I possibly can, but I'm done. I have a little copy editing, accepting to do or whatever, but I'm done, which is great. Anyway, yeah, that's what I do. All right. A bookseller near you. We're going to have to, as the release date approach it, John, we're going to really have to do a thing where we encourage listeners to, if they want to read the book, put in a pre-order at their

local book shop to do, to get those pre-orders up, get those numbers up. I want, please, please, please everybody buy my book as soon as it's possible. Okay. For this week's episode, we watched the 1995 coming-of-age tale slash Vietnam War movie slash crime thriller, dead presidents, produced and directed by Albert and Alan Hughes, the Hughes brothers. You might know them from their previous picture before this. Menace to Society, which I just read recently. I didn't realize they were this young. They directed that when they were 20 years old. Wow. It was incredibly young. Good for them. Yeah. Dead presidents stars

Lorenz Tate, Keith David, Chris Tucker, in Bushy Wright, Freddie Rodriguez, and Bocheme Woodbine, who is a personal favorite actor of mine. He always plays unhinged people. And that's definitely the case in this movie. Dead presidents is the story of Anthony Curtis, a soon-to-be high school graduate from the Bronx, who chooses to join the Marines in search of its own destiny the year's 1969. And he is sent inevitably to Vietnam, leaving his family, his girlfriend, Juanita, and his friends behind. He pretty much experiences the worst of the war and returns home, pretty angry and alienated. and his friends who also went to war have had their own trials. Each of them desperate for meaning and money.

They devise a plan to rob an armored car, and as you might expect, things get pretty quickly out of hand. The tagline for Dead Presidents is the only color that counts is green, which is a good tagline. I like that tagline. Dead Presidents is available to buy our rent on iTunes and Amazon Prime. It's a good movie. I think.

I think it's very much the work of young filmmakers. I'll say that. There are parts where it's rough. But I think on the main, it is a good movie about a subject that doesn't really get hasted out much in movies. I can think of maybe one other film. Spike Leads to Five Bloods. Who that kind of covers similar territory. So that's all to say you should check it out before you listen to our conversation.

And like I said, it's available to buy a rent on iTunes and Amazon. Dead Presidents was released on October 4th, 1995. So let's check out the New York Times for that day. Well, October 4th, 1995 happened to be the day that jury clears Simpson and double murder. Spellbound Nation divides on verdict. After 474 days as a prisoner, he is free. Ornethal James Simpson, a man who overcame the Spanish. spinly legs left by child the case of rickets to run to fame and fortune, surmounted a very

different sort of obstacle today, when a jury of 10 women and two men cleared him of charges that he murdered his former wife and one of her friends, the verdict coming 16 months after Nicole Brown, Simpson, and Ronald and L. Goldman were slashed to death in the front yard of Mrs. Simpson's condominium, and after nine months of what seemed like, interminable testimony sidebars and high-price legal bickering was reached in the end with break-taking speed. When it was read, much of the nation, President Clinton stopped work to listen to it. So the O.J. Simpson trial was such a sensation. It's really difficult to kind of communicate it. And it was a deeply divisive issue on race.

One way to think about the O.J. Simpson trial, you have to kind of put in context of the Rodney King trial, that basically the verdict of the Rodney King trial was felt to be so unfair and so egregiously unjust that in a sense, a lot of people looked at the, at the acquitted. of O.J. Simpson is almost a kind of evening of the scales. Of course, this is not the way justice is supposed to work. There's very little doubt. I mean, there's literally no doubt that O.J. Simpson was guilty. However, I don't know, John, the guy says he's looking for the killer. He's looking for the real killer. He wrote a book, if I did it. Is that suspicious? Well, you know, he. Not to derail you. I just got to say, writing, getting acquitted for murder and then writing a book. called If I Did It is the most insane thing. Yeah. Anyone's ever done. It is pretty crazy. I mean, he is, he's disturbed. He's a deeply disturbed individual.

He had a very complicated and strange life. There's been a terrific documentary made about the role race played. His life was extremely complicated. He was, you know, a high profile black athlete, but who kind of, I don't know if it's really my place to say this. His relationship to his blackness was definitely, shall we say, complicated. I'm not black emoji. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

So he, he, he was a, he was a complicated person. He was, he was, there was a lot going on there. And he was almost certainly, I mean, he was, he was certainly guilty in retrospect. His acquittal was partially because of the racism of the LAPD, which modeled up the case, his terrific team of extremely high-profile defense attorneys that saw the strategy in opening. And, you know, it was an extremely, I just remember this happening and the verdict coming down. And, you know, it really divided the country. I think, you know, a lot of white people expected him to be, expected and wanted him to be convicted.

And a lot of black people wanted him to be acquitted. I mean, and, you know, I don't know if it was a majority. but there was definitely a racial divide about the opinions about the O.J. Simpson trial. But it was a real cultural sensation. And now, you know, in retrospect, you know, these things sort of become politicized. There's lots of passions that grow up around them. And then retrospect, you know, we become more clear-sighted about what was actually going on, which was just that he murdered his wife, his ex-wife, and this guy.

guy. Yeah, and here's the article. It says racial split at the start at the end as at the start. The seven workers at the Pasqua Coffee Bar in Lower Manhattan like to joke around with each other trade stories about family and regular customers and to help one another out in jams. But until the astonishingly abrupt culmination of the O.J. Simpson murder trial yesterday, they never seemed to get around discussing what for much of America has been a prickly and divisive topic. Then the voice of the court, clerk, intoning not guilty, came over the restaurant's radio. Charmonde Savage, a black man who works in the kitchen, jumped up, punched the air and with both fists exclaimed, yes, yes, yes.

Jelden Phoney, the restaurant manager who was white lowered her head and disgust. I thought he should have wrought it in hell, she said. So, yeah, there was a great degree of division in the country, which was basically overdetermined by the racial injustices of the 1980s and early 1990s, the Rodney King trial. which was a travesty and basically, you know, the racialization of the criminal justice system up into that point. So, yeah, big cultural sensation, which, you know, the movie that we're talking about deals with race. So we will, I'm sure, you know, something to keep in mind.

Amy says plan would drive many doctors out of Medicare. After months of public silence, the American Medical Association expressed deep concerns about Republican proposals to redesign Medicare, saying that new limits on payments would make the program unattracted for many doctors. See, Republicans are always trying to fuck around with the great society programs and the New Deal programs. The Pope is coming to visit. This was a very big deal. I remember this happening as a child.

What else is here? Yeah, most of the news is about the O.J. Simpson trial on the front page, other than the Pope. Is there anything else you see here? Any remarks that? I don't really see anything. No political or foreign policy news as such. Yeah. Yeah, I don't really see anything else.

Me, O.J. Simpson, I mean, it is the big news event. I think you're right to say that if there's not really any kind of analog. I mean, as we're recording this, the former president has just been indicted again by a grand jury down in Georgia. And I guess the president getting indicted is like the closest thing, which is like, I feel like a testament to sort of like the fracturing of like popular culture that like, you know, back OJ Simpson used to be was like part of the monoculture, like one of the most famous people in the country and so famous that his murder trial was like kind of like a national political event. It was like the most important thing that was going, I mean, to a lot of people. It was sensationalized and tabloid covered. But if you believe the media, their coverage of it, it was like the most important thing in the world for a little while. Yeah.

Yeah. And now he's still around on social media being a weird guy, strange guy. And, yeah, OJ Simpson. So there's nothing really else I see on the paper. So let's move on to dead president, that movie. So, like I said, this is a Hughes Brothers production. The Hughes Brothers were a pair of filmmakers, both Black, who work together. They had a pretty successful 1990s for the most part.

I mentioned that their debut film, Menace to Society, was like a huge hit, a huge splash, received a ton of acclaim, helped pretty much supercharged the careers of Lorenz Tate and Jada Pinkett. You may know it's Jada Pinkett Smith. Just a massive movie that also catapulted them into the stratosphere. We've talked about this before, but part of the, I think the Hollywood context for the Hughes brothers and kind of this period is the Hollywood. kind of remembering that black people can direct movies and basically the doors open a little bit to a whole host of black directors uh john singleton is the biggest name boys in the hood was his debut film and was absolutely massive uh but there were also a number of other directors who are

maybe a little less um familiar there's darnel martin who directed a film in 94 called i like that It was the first studio-produced film to be directed by a black woman, and she was basically blacklisted afterwards for being critical in the industry's racism. Julie Dash, who directed Daughters of the Dust, Leslie Harris, just another girl in the IRT, which is a great movie. Ernst Dickerson, who was Spike Leeds DP, directed photography, and directed Juice, which is one of my favorite movies of this period. It's a crazy movie Kind of shot like a horror film And Dickerson would go on to do a lot of horror And has a phenomenal performance from Tupac

This is like my aside real quick But everyone talks about what we lost with Tupac's music I think we lost culturally Tupac as an actor He was a terrific actor And Juice is like a great example of his Of his skill And then theater of Witcher

Director of Love Jones and there are others So this is like kind of a big period for black filmmaking. The door kind of closes very quickly by the end of the 90s. But there was like this period, five-year period where there was, Hollywood had a little more space, black directors. And Hughes Brothers walked right through that door. They followed up Menace to Society with Dead Presidents, the film we're doing. They did a documentary in 99 called American Pimp about the Pimp subculture. You can tell they're a little, you can tell.

and dead presidents that they have a little bit of fascination with it, there is a pimp character. They followed it up with a kind of middling sci-fi movie, From Hell, which you'll appreciate this. Some listeners will too. Screenplay by Terry Hayes and Raphael Iglesias, the father, I believe, of one Matthew Iglesias. You are right, sir. Yep. From Hell is perfectly fine. kind of a

the kind of movie they don't actually make very much but you know whatever and then the book of Eli in 2010 a movie I really like I wouldn't call it good but I really like it. It's like an interesting post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie starring Denzo Washington

and that that's kind of they haven't worked together since the book of Eli they've done a couple things Alan Hughes directed the Defiant One which is a pretty good documentary about

Johnny Irvine, Irvine, Jimmy Oveen Ivan and Dr. Dre and basically kind of like how they ended up making a billion dollars. And Albert Hughes directed an episode of the Good Lord Bird which was the

John Brown miniseries starring Ethan Hawk. So that's where they are these days. You know, in the language of the podcast, blank check, you can think of menace to society as being their blank check and dead presidents as being their big swing. And to a certain extent, a miss. Critics were mixed on it. They didn't do great at the box office. But it's a very ambitious film. It's a tremendously ambitious film.

And it is very much a commentary on Vietnam War. which the mid-90s is sort of like U.S. is normalizing relations with Vietnam. I think John McCain makes this trip to Vietnam around this time. There is also World War II commemoration. We can talk a little about this later. But part of all of this conversation was sort of like the missing place

of black and Latino service members and veterans and the narratives of both of these wars. And so this movie is very much a commentary carry on. But the struggles faced by black and Latino veterans, but also sort of like their relative invisibility from our cultural narratives of not just these, not just the Vietnam War, but sort of previous wars as well. John, what did you think of the movie? I mean, I think that it, it doesn't quite deliver on all of its ambitions. I think this movie is trying to do something that, you know, is kind of a venerable genre, which mixes crime, film, and noirish sort of

themes, but it has a sort of social conscience and is trying to make you aware of a context. I think it did bring attention to that stuff, and it is interesting, and it shows with a lot of pretty vicious and gritty realism, the difficulties of these people's lives. I think it has some terrific performances, especially really like Keith David as an actor. And I think that, you know, him playing the kind of like small time crook mobster of this neighborhood, he did an amazing job. But for some reason, I think it kind of like gets to what wrapped up in its, in its the violence of the robbery.

And I think that's, again, maybe something to do with the age of the filmmakers. And perhaps with the pressure that Hollywood put on them to make more of a crime film than a movie that has a social conscience. I do think it's not a bad movie. I think it is, as you said, extremely, extremely ambitious. And perhaps, for a number of reasons, doesn't quite live up to its ambitions, but is still, like, you know, a good watch and not a bad film by any, you know, by any means. I think, like, obviously, like, you know, one thing to mention about Black Vietnam veterans is there was a disproportionate amount of, you know, front line serving. infantry men who were black, you know, that was only, I think they, I think they were up to

almost a third of, of, of those who served and not proportion of either, you know, black population or the army. So there was a disproportionate amount of black veterans who both, you know, were put in the most dangerous and violent positions in the war and, you know, experience as a result PTSD and all of the, you know, I think there's a character in the movie who has after effects of Agent Orange, all of the things that came with the war. And yeah, and I think also returning to a society that didn't value them. I think there was a lot, you know, this character in this movie definitely, you know, sees joining the Marine Corps, both as a kind of, you know, I don't, you know, as a way to prove his masculinity, but also as a way to serve the country

and then returns to a country that really doesn't care. And actually, the situation in his neighborhood is declining. And the country is worse off than when he left. So it's a very alienating and disturbing world to return into. And, you know, I think it's also just like puts crime, it puts urban, decay into its proper context, which is an economic downturn. And also the fact that, you know, I was thinking about Deer Hunter or white ethnics, right? You know, you could easily imagine the same movie. They're kind of middle class, lower middle class guys. They have some

kind of a butt criminal, some criminals in the neighborhood. They're, you know, like, there's sort of, there is that life, but there are also other people living. respectable lives. You can imagine this characters in this movie being Italian. You can imagine these characters in this movie being, you know, Eastern European descent, like in Deer Hunter. And I think it's just like the life of, of, and the American experience of, you know, of black people is not all that different from other ethnic groups, with the exception that they are, you know, kind of made exceptional. And there's, there's like an extra level of pathology. But they have the same. you know, experience. They're living in the Bronx. They live in, you know, a kind of a neighborhood

that's struggling, but has people who are still kind of upwardly mobile. And they have a similar experience except when they return from the war. I mean, everybody had a horrible experience with the war. The way they're treated, their opportunities, the pathologies that are, you know, within the neighborhood as a result of the economic difficulties and racism, are more acute. So it's interesting. You kind of see the special pressure that was put on, you know, black families who were kind of trying to enter the middle class during this period and how you could easily fall out of the middle class through, you know, going to war, you know, or, you know, and that sort of thing. And this same stories happen in white ethnic communities too. But, you know, we don't think about. about the way crime is treated, even in the level of cinema, you know, mobster movies, everybody has a kind of a soft spot for mobsters. We know they're bad, but we find them funny.

And, you know, black crime is not, you know, is not treated with the same kind of, what's the word, indulgence that white ethnic crime is. But this movie is very interesting because it shows the worlds as being quite similar. You know, I was just thinking about this movie. I was like, this is a little bit like a mafia movie, like this guy, his buddy, who he sort of falls in with the wrong crowd. He's a local hood, you know? He could be, if you change the skin colors and the accents, you know, you could imagine these people as Italian or Polish or Irish writing. Which is sort of what I find so interesting about this movie because it is on the level of sort of movie making.

I would be shocked if these were not self-conscious choices, right? It's a choice to portray this community and these characters as like not dissimilar to characters you might find in a Scorsese movie, right? In an early Scorsese movie, like not, not at all dissimilar from right down to sort of like the texture of the neighborhood, which is, as you mentioned, a little rough around the edges. is, but like a basic sense of community and a basic sense of, you know, solidarity between people within the neighborhood. And you have up, some upward mobility. You know, there's a, there's college attendance beginning and so on and so forth. Yeah.

Right. Right. I think. So I should say, one of the things that sort of is framing the movie for me is I just read, a book by a scholar Matt Desmond. I think it's his last name. It's not Matthew Desmond, but it's Desmond, I believe. But the book is called Half American,

and it is a study of the Black experience of the Second World War. And it deals with the discrimination, Delmont, sorry, Matthew Delmont. It deals with the discrimination faced by black service members and also black veterans, and not just the familiar discrimination, which is sort of exclusion from the GI Bill, which to me, one interesting thing to think about is that Norence Tate's characters, Tony's father, is a Korean War veteran who thus would have been eligible for the GI Bill.

And you could imagine the Italian-American version of this character. would have used the GI Bill to get an FHA loan to move out to the suburbs. But this family cannot do that. They have to be in the Bronx. There's not really the option of moving out to a suburban neighborhood isn't really available to them, which ends up structuring their children's lives in an important way, is one of the big ones being that the kids do have this proximity to downward mobility and to crime that they might not otherwise have had.

But that's an aside. But the book deals also with sort of discrimination within the military, the fact that, you know, large swaths of jobs were just, like, not available to black Americans, that most black Americans who serve, served basically in the supply corps. And the book makes a very strong case that this should be considered on par in terms of, like, importance to the war effort with actual frontline soldiers. like the soldiers, war is a game of supply and logistics, and the soldiers could not fight without, you know, brave and dedicated supply troops. But it is a fact that the blacks were basically segregated to this part of the military. On the home front, there was a struggle to even get blacks access to war jobs, which were also pathways for upward mobility, war jobs paid well, good wages, were often unionized.

and it was a tremendous struggle on part of workers and their advocates like A. Philip Randolph to get them access to more jobs. And then there's the kind of post-war, kind of really horrific violence against black veterans. So the book is just all about this. It's very, I highly recommend it. It's very good. It's pretty easy read to kind of breeze it by. But I had all of it in my head while watching this because I really think that,

that this movie is both trying to provide a lens and glimpse into the alienation and the anger and experiences of black veterans of the Vietnam War. But it's also trying to provide a comment on Black Life in the 90s. It's important that these two guys, the Hughes brothers, did Menace the Society, a film, about sort of like the nihilistic alienation of black youth and in a film that tries to explain maybe some of the pathological behavior of black youth in urban centers as a product of kind of just like a despair and hopelessness for which there is no, there's no resolution. And to me, what that president seems to suggest is that you have to, that those kids are the children

of people like Anthony. That's a great point. And that you can't understand their nihilism without looking back at their parents and seeing how their parents who may have thought that they had some new claim on the country. And it may have been gone on to serve the country expecting to be rewarded for that,

come home and are not, and fall into a kind of despair, and are witnessing in their neighborhoods and their homes deteriorate because of these larger, I mean, this is the thing we've talked about, especially on the Patreon, these larger economic forces, the deindustrialization of American cities, which kind of begins in the 1970s really, and hits places like the Bronx first, hits, you know, eventually it sweeps across the entire industrial belt in the United States. But as many people have remarked upon, kind of the heart, the initial brunt and the hardest hit often often was black Americans in these urban centers. So they're kind of like these communities are in a bad place to start with.

and then don't really get a hand or a ladder to help out. And I think in the narrative of the Hughes Brothers, between these two movies, it's like the clear argument being made to me is that this is, this explains what's happening now in the 90s as much as any cultural explanation about something wrong with black people, which was very much, I think that was what everybody wanted to go. Right. 95 was when the bell curve came out, I think. Yeah, it was either that or just the year before. But yeah. Yeah, some kind of genetic or cultural explanations about black pathology and so on and so forth. Yeah, it's just like never put anything into historical context, which this movie does. It provides a whole generation earlier. I think that's a really great point. I also think what's interesting about this generation of black filmmakers when we've talked about is that their politics are lack thereof. We've discussed in the past how Singleton and

Spike Lee kind of have hints of black nationalist politics in their in their movies. And we talked about kind of situating that a certain kind of black middle class experience. What's interesting is this movie has a hint of and is not particularly sympathetic to or shows as being successful of black leftism. You know, it shows a, it shows a kind of Black Panthers type organization, a character who joins robbery as part of a kind of Black Panthers Association. The other characters are not particularly interested or something. sympathetic in this project, you know. But it's part of the, it's part of everything that sort of

goes wrong. I mean, this, this person's killed. The movie is not idealistic at all about the existence of this group or what they're able to accomplish. It just kind of notes their existence as one of the currents of where this energy was going at the time. I think I guess, you know, it's featured in the movie. They're sort of attracted to the aesthetics of a, I don't think that they are particularly sympathetic to the politics it portrays. That doesn't come across in the movie. The movie is more about, you know, it's hopelessness, which again, as you mentioned, was sort of the sense that people had at the time. In my book, I typify the entire period as a as a period of politics of national despair, which we're still in in certain

ways. And that represents itself in different ways, in different communities and demographics, but certainly the way the politics of national despair gets represented, you know, in black cultures through a sense that, you know, political, political solutions are not really available or successful. They're too easily reversed. Cannot trust institutions. You know, a certain amount of communal self-reliance is the only, you know, reliable, you know, a strong patriarchical family, so on and so forth. These are the only reliable barriers to the attacks of a racist society. Again, we've discussed this in the past as we people stereotype black politics is being left wing because their association with Democratic Party, but, you know, it's more

complicated than that. I didn't see a lot of black nationalism in this film as such. I didn't get that they were sort of entering those notes in the way Singleton or Spike Lee sometimes, too. Did you? No, I didn't. I didn't. I think you're right to see that the Hughes brothers have a kind of, not just skepticism, the almost of you, the kind of radicalism, I've expressed by one of his sister as a character. Yeah, it's kind of silly.

It's silly and almost like nihilistic. Like, sort of what do you, what are you going to actually accomplish here other than getting yourself killed. Right. As being a hopeless kind of idea, yeah, a nihilistic, idealistic nihilism, if that makes any sense. But yeah, which I think is a critique of all of new left, white and black, you know, they were going up against stuff they just had, with the tactics they wanted to use, just had absolutely no hope of, of, of, of, of taking on, you know, and the system, the system that the people in this movie throw themselves against is, you know, the armor, I mean, as a metaphor, the armored car, the dead presidents, you know,

the whole structure of capitalism, if you will, and the whole historical substance of the, of the country, you know, built on white supremacy, you know, they can violently assault it and blow it up, but only at the cost of so many of their own number and, and their own lives, and they get in prison. It's basically like, it's kind of they can do this pre-political outburst, attempt to grab for themselves something and fight the system, but they're going to be punished much more severely than others for even doing that. And that comes to the end of the movie where Martin Sheens, the judge, is throwing the book at him and says, you know, you've disgraced yourself as a Marine. And he says, you know, after everything I've done for this country,

He could get, you know, Anthony, the main character says he throws a chair at the judge and says everything I've done for this country and this is how I get treated. So, yeah, there is a sense of hopelessness. There's a sense of that even that crime obviously is not a solution. Politics is not a solution. What solution is there? Well, I don't know. The closest thing they may offer is just the example of Anthony's brother played by Isaiah Washington. being like, you know, middle class mobility, you know, get educated and get out of there.

It's funny because it offers an alternative only by quiet contrast. It's like it's not like we get, it's not like there's a subplot involving the brothers. It's just like, oh, he's going to college. So there are two characters in the film that are veterans of the Korean War. I'll take this by. There are three characters in the film who are veterans of previous wars. Two are veterans to the Korean War. One is a veteran of the Second World War.

And the two veterans of the Korean War are Anthony's father, played by an actor I didn't quite recognize. And then Keith David's character, who lost his leg in the war. And they, Keith David's character ends up going into crime. He's a, you know, as you mentioned, he's a petty criminal, kind of runs the numbers racket for the neighborhood, which isn't a path to upward mobility for him. kind of stuck where he is. No, he's like one of these crooks and mean streets or or Goodfellas, well, less even than Goodfellas. Yeah, he's just, he's just a local crook. Right. And then Anthony's father is able to build something like a lower middle class life, but his horizons sort of like end at that. Like maybe his kids will be able to rise above that. But that's, that's where he is. And then

the other character who is a previous war veteran is Martin Sheen's judge at the end, who is a judge. and he served in the Second World War. He says, when he is chastising Lorenz taped, he says that, you know, I serve in a real war. Right. I don't think someone would actually have said that. But that I found unbelievable, but yeah. Yeah.

But I think, I think in terms of sort of like paths out, the movie is sort of like, it's like reinforcing this idea that for, black service members, for the black vets, their paths are just, like, limited by default. Like, they're, the racism of society makes their paths very limited. I'll say what's interesting about racism in this movie is that it doesn't actually take the form of, like, hostile whites, right? There aren't really any in the movie at all.

you have there's no if they're at the in the in the neighborhood i don't think there's any white characters there's like latino characters one of one of the people who ends up participating in the heist is is porto rican which fits it's the bronx um and at vietnam in vietnam be their company commander is white um but he's not portrayed as being bigoted or anything he's like another soldier Michael Imperioly plays another white soldier, Italian-American, not portrayed as any kind of bigot or anything. Like, there's no perhaps unrealistic. I'm sorry. We might have to cut that.

Don't keep saying it. That's funny. I didn't say it. So, you know. Sure. I can say it, right? Yeah, you can say it. Yeah.

None of the characters are really bigots. Even Martin Sheen's character, there might be some hint of racial contempt, but it's like, it's not, it's not really there. It's northern racism. Right. The racism in the, in the, in the, in the movie is very much like it's structural. It's sort of portrayed in terms of the conditions in which people live and the horizons, what they may have for their lives and the in the ceiling or lack thereof for for them. But even then, you know, are. Puerto Rican character, he dies in the

heist, the two white soldiers, they die. Like, even then the movie is almost maybe I'm reading too much into it, but precisely because there is no explicit individualized personal racism. The movie is almost saying that, like, listen,

you're, you know, for a select few, their race might afford them truly great opportunities. But like for most of the people here, it's all going to end the same way. And I think that's interesting. I think that's the thing that you don't really see in these kinds of movies

and speaks to something like a little more sophisticated than what you might expect. But does sort of fit in with the, I think, the general message of the film, that message, but the sort of theme of the film, which is that there are, The forces that are shaping black life and maybe producing the kind of crisis that people perceive in the present of 1995 or 94 when this was shot cannot be reduced to the individuals themselves. Yeah, it's not like someone, yeah, there's no slurs in the movie really. Right. And just in terms of like the trajectory of the of the of the of the friends like Lorenz Tate, he comes back from the war and he does get a job. He gets a job. But there's just no mobility. It's like it's like it's like a blue collar job and there's no more. There's no ability. It's dead in. Chris Tucker ends up a drug addict. But it's sort of like it's not it's the movie isn't like he's a drug addict because of some, you know, cultural pathology. He's drug addict because he got to take the drugs in Vietnam, like which happened to many veterans. It's like it's rough on all. all the characters like no one really has a happy ending in this no um but it it's very sympathetic to all of them it doesn't it doesn't view them as like themselves as being problems um but as

people who are kind of responding as anyone would to the kind of environment and circumstances in which they've been placed yeah i think that's right it's almost like the colorblind racism you see of the criminal justice system you kind of see at the end where it's right the judge Well, is not probably some prejudice lurks behind his inability to grant, you know, this veteran any consideration for what they experienced in Vietnam, which he says was not a real war. I don't think a Marine veteran would say that to another Marine veteran. And I think a conservative judge at this time would not, I mean, he might say you disgrace the uniform. That's totally believable. I don't think he would denigrate the ongoing conflict. you know yeah um it kind of just shows that that certain favors and privileges are not extended universally and you know this got this judge can go home with a clear conscience saying well this guy was a criminal he disgraced the uniform and you know the movie is trying to do the opposite which is to put everything into a context and to put everything to a historical picture and say

that these lives make sense they're destroyed for reasons these are not exceptionally bad people they're not exceptionally good people. They're ordinary people. They're caught in structures that are difficult and beyond their control. They went to fight a war that was not their choosing. But, you know, they participated in it because they believed in the society in some level. They bought into the society. I guess the danger that the movie shows, and this is not nationalistic so much as become as sort of humbly bourgeois, is just saying, like, be careful.

Don't get swept up in these universal projects because they'll chew you up and spit you out. The country doesn't really have your, just go about, you know, keep your head down, go to college, go to school, follow the rules. You know, neither, you know, get involved in the big projects of the state and the society, like wars, or oppose it, you know, don't get involved in these violent things, you know, like stay humble, stay with. in one's possibilities and circumstances. In a way, criminality and wanting to serve

one's country are sort of perverse opposites, right? They are both, one of them is the kind of denied recognition version of the other. One of it's like, well, you know, I will risk my life. I will participate, do violence.

but it's in a sanctioned role and then my society will gratefully recognize that that was a participation. I become a member of this society. The other is a rejection of the society that rejects its recognition and instead says the rules of this society

don't mean anything to me. I'm willing to hazard my life. I'm willing to go on my own And to prove, you know, I'm a man or a subject or a human being who doesn't require, you know, the recognition or institutions of society. I'm sort of get it for myself in a certain way. He's jailed and then he receives no recognition for his military service, you know. I think it's a universal experience of soldiers black and white after Vietnam was the sense that, and I think it was obviously especially acute for black soldiers. the sense that the traditional celebration of veterans didn't happen, right, that they did not receive the accolades of returning veterans.

The society was embarrassed of them because the war was a catastrophe, a moral catastrophe, a military catastrophe, and it was embarrassed of the soldiers. And, you know, anti-war people became blamed for this. the bureaucrats in Washington. It's created some very deep wounds in the American psyche, which sadly, I have to say, have only really kind of been healed by the passing away of Vietnam veterans. I think some with this Vietnam movie that came out and with the memorial, there has been some kind of national healing about it. But I think that the trauma of Vietnam, I mean, for Americans who serve there, has never really been coping.

with. The senselessness of it, the futility of it, the horrors that they experienced and perpetrated, one has to be frank. And then came back to a nation they felt was ungrateful and refused to look at them and let them, hang them out to dry. And I think, you know, especially, you know, when you lay a racism on top of that, you know, it starts to become an unbearable burden. The image we have of a World War II veteran or Korean veteran is a strapping man who comes home in his uniform looking clean, gets a job, you know. The image we have of Vietnam veterans is a broken man, you know, a homeless, a drug addict,

maybe a criminal, you know, at the edge of society. Truly, that's like the, it's not a kind image. And, you know, it's almost become a stock character, even a joke, you know, often, you know, with disabilities, you know, we sort of let our veterans down, or there's a sense we let our veterans down in that war. And I think, you know, it goes doubly for black veterans, obviously. I just think it's very sad to reflect on, you know, and it's a horrible situation because there's, no, it's very difficult to redeem the conflict. It was not fought for, for good reason or good cause. In retrospect, it was senseless. It was very destructive of the nation it was waged against. There were horrible atrocities committed to it. The nation sort of had to face all that and that fell on the backs of very young men. I mean, you would forget how young these guys were when

they went there. And their form of experiences, when we, you know, you think about young people going to college or hanging out with their friends or, you know, just kind of becoming people and realizing who they are. And their form of experience 17, 18, 19 years old is this horrible violence, experiencing this horrible violence. It's terrible. And we destroyed so many young people's lives, not to mention, I mean, it has to be mentioned that millions of Vietnamese died or killed in the war. So it is just, I think just reflecting on the period in general and what the country did to its veterans or didn't do

is kind of, it's kind of hard to face. And I just remember it being, especially in the middle, in the 90s it was more of an issue. And I think the P.O.WMIA movement sort of is trying to do that in a kind of perverse way. the missing in action people and the people are our home we're homeless veterans and it was like they just ignore them and think about these kind of mythological people we left behind these valiant people you know ignore the actual broken people but i think it's sadly enough you know the the generation that fought in vietnam is getting old and they're a little forgotten

i mean vietnam when i think we were young the presence it had an american culture was extremely strong. There were many movies about it. It had a whole vibe. You know, there were certain, you know, you couldn't hear Rolling Stones paint it black without thinking about a Vietnam movie or something like that. All along the watchtower. Yeah, exactly. You know, every, Vietnam had a kind of cultural presence in represented in films like this one. You know, like what? And we were trying to chew on the meaning of the Vietnam War. Platoon, you had apocalypse now, full metal jacket. And, you know, all of this great. that was kind of dedicated to trying to taxi driver to a certain degree. This movie has certain commonalities with taxi driver, you know, trying to understand what the experience of Vietnam was for the country and the trauma of Vietnam for the country. And in certain ways, the work wasn't fully done. And now it's just getting, it's just fading. And it's strange to me, like I grew up in a world where Vietnam was something, you know,

he talked about, he thought about. What happened in Vietnam, you know? Who went? Who didn't go? What did you do during those years? Did you oppose the war? Did you support the war? Like the question of Vietnam was a huge part of cultural consciousness.

You know, it was our parents' generation, our grandpa, or maybe our grandparents' generation, but definitely my parents' generation. And the war had a meaning for them. And I just see with younger people, I don't want to get into our old, we're getting old thing, but I just don't see them having really a much of a consciousness of Vietnam. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's sad. Like, I wonder, just to speculate on why that is, right?

Because, I mean, on some of it, there's no reason why we would have had any particular consciousness of Vietnam. But the reason we did is because of, as you said, the cultural products of the Vietnam War, Which by the time we hit the 90s, so, you know, Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, well, Full Metal Jackets is the 90s is the 90s. 80s or full men? I don't remember when it came out. The late 80s really, it's like, it's around that time. So Apocalypse Now, which is the 70s, right?

Yeah. You mentioned the deer hunter. There is born on the 4th of July. There is prisoners of war. full metal jacket Forrest Gump, which is the biggest movie of this year, right? Yeah, good point.

And Forrest Gump is a movie that turns on the Vietnam War. That's like the pivot point of the film. Right. And that movie is trying to kind of reimagine the what, that movie, not reactionary, I don't know, it sort of tries to reimagine Vietnam in certain ways than the films to that point had done.

Right. I mean, it still shows it in its bad lights, but you know what I mean. Yeah. I mean, it shows it in sped lights. It has the trope of the disabled veteran. That's Carrie's niece's character. I mean,

it's very much. In a kind of condescending and mocking way, almost. He's shown as sort of a joke. Yeah, that movie is, if you've ever... That's fucked up. I have no appetite for watching that movie again, but if you haven't seen it recently, I think it's actually worth the rewatch if you haven't seen it since you were a kid.

Because if you watch it now, especially sort of like an adult with politics, you'll be like this is a weird fucking movie because it's like it's it does this thing again and again and having seen all of Zemeckis's films he's a much more sort of like acid and arch person than you might think and so this movie does all these things for example it begins when we're introduced to forest we get this quick like half second shot of like Tom Hanks's face superimposed on a Klansman and it's like super fucking weird He's named after Nathan Bedford Forrest.

He's named after Nathan Bedford Forrest. And the movie is sort of like, it's like, hey, that's, you know, boom. And then you move, you move on. And then it gets really saccharine and as you probably recall from the movie. But it switches between this sort of like almost like intense cynicism and then this sort of like boomer sentimentality back and forth, back and forth. And it's, it's very, it's weird. It's a weird movie to watch. I find it like an inexplicable film.

It's weird to me that it became such a huge hit in such like a landmark film for the careers of everyone involved. But yeah, but yeah, I'll just say that like all this was in kind of cultural memory. And part of if people in the 20s today don't have any particular like, you know, a view of opinion of relationship to the Vietnam War might just be because of like the decline. basically of sort of like shared culture or just like the decline of the cultural dominance of that generation of Americans, which is like, you know, which is like largely faded. You know, it was, it was people who were teenagers and young adults in the 60s and 70s who were producing and making the films of the 90s. Yeah.

Yeah. And so we've just kind of just we've moved we've moved past that. The other thing I just like to add to all of this in thinking about the cultural context and thinking about the year in which that Protestant was actually made is that I am of the view that you can't really ignore World War II commemoration as like this thing that really swept through American culture, swept through American culture, right? at the same time as the end of the Cold War. So you have this one-two punch of we beat the Soviets. And now let's remember the time, you know, that we beat the Nazis and we beat the Japanese. So it's a very triumphant and triumphalist period. Lots of greatest generation stuff.

This is what helps as an aside. And, you know, Bob Dole, who is a veteran, we're too veteran. And this kind of helps him win the nomination. But not the presidency. Not the presidency, but women nomination in the 96th election. And the intended contrast is very much Bob Dole, who served its country in the war against Bill Clinton, who didn't. Who dodged the draft. Right.

And they tried that with Bush, who was a war hero in the Second World War and it failed. I don't know why they tried it again. But they thought it might work a second time around. But just the relationship of like black Americans to the World War II commemoration going back sort of the stuff I talked about earlier. And the extent of which like the black experience of the war just like wasn't the part of the conversation whatsoever was almost invisible. And so there's the other movie that I think should be thought of as like, except for the Tuskegee HBO movie, which was actually quite good. The other movie that I think should be considered in dialogue with dead precedence is John Suckelton's. it's Rosewood, which is about an early, like it takes place in their 1920s, but an earlier

generation of Americans, but I very much think is in dialogue with the commemoration of and then kind of greatest generation worship of those years. Rosewood being a movie saying essentially sort of like, well, you know, the parents of the greatest generation, you know, some of them are monsters, and what does that say about the country itself. Anyway, yeah, I think there's culturally a lot going on here, and a lot of it is, I think, for these younger black filmmakers. People, you know, Singleton, also quite young. But these are people whose parents, whose fathers would have served in Vietnam. Yeah, whose grandfathers would have served in Korea or the Civil War. Absolutely.

So they are very much commenting and observing kind of how a country treated their parents and grandparents and trying to bring that into the conversation. I think actually, you know, for better or worse, our image of a World War II veteran is obviously a white man, unfortunately. That's like the overriding cultural image is a white person. I think actually our image of Vietnam veterans is more diverse, but part of that is because of the social marginality and, you know, the Vietnam veterans often being in terrible straits and living on the streets and so on and so forth like that. I think we know black Vietnam veterans are cultural

trope. This film talks about them. Another films talk about them, but they're, you know, something people are conscious of much more than black, um, black World War II veterans. Unfortunately, it's also because of the extreme deprivation and the traumatic post-war experience being visited on black veterans and black veterans kind of being a black Vietnam veteran being a kind of icon of, of, of that, of that, uh, of that experience, you know, of, I think it's like, like the blackness adds to the to the pathos of like, you know, and the difficulty we associate with Vietnam veterans. Yeah.

I have no larger point here, but it's just an observation. And I think we can move on to wrap up. But the other thing that I'm thinking of is that this is obviously not true for all black veterans of the Second World War, but for many black veterans of the Second World War, And this goes back to Black Americans. Black Americans understood that war very much as a war against fascism abroad and racism at home. They saw them as part of the same struggle. And they say this book, this Delam book is great because it quotes a lot of the black press in the 1930s. And you have, you know, black journalists writing on the eve of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia being like, listen, this is the first shot. in a war that is going to touch all of us. You have black Americans joining the Lincoln Brigades and fighting in the Spanish Civil War, sort of under the, you know, the explicit belief that like the war against fascism in Spain

is necessarily part of a war against racism at home. And then when the United States joins the Second World War, it's lots of talk about Hitlerism abroad and Hitlerism at home is the language. And so after the war, you know, this is the double V, the Black Double B campaign, sort of well, we've defeated fascism and Hitlerism and imperialism abroad. And so now we take the fight home to defeat to the Southern Front, which many people referred to. It's kind of crazy how explicit the language is.

It's like no one's beating you around the Bush. It's like people are just saying, this is the Southern Front of the war, and it's against Jim Crow. And so you have black veterans of the war who, even if the country isn't necessarily recognizing their sacrifices, can still draw meaning from the struggle against racism at home. They can see as part of the same fight. And black Vietnam veterans don't have that. No, and in fact, it's sort of the reverse because I think a lot, not the enthusiasm, but the willingness, I mean, a lot of it was the draft. But just like white Americans, a lot of black Vietnam veterans, like, you know, arguably the characters in movies felt kind of a buy-in, especially with the America of the Post-New Deal and the Great Society.

It was just like, look, you know, this country is starting to come around. There is the civil rights acts, the voting rights acts, you know, LBJ seems to, you know, to get it. You know, the civil rights movement is making headway. And I think there was a sense and then a crushed sense and a disappointed sense that actually, all right, well, I am going to serve the country because the country is beginning to represent my interests and my community and so on and so forth in the same way that, you know, I think a lot of white Americans felt the same way where they're like, well, we fought the war. America gave us so much, land of opportunity, we fought the last war, we got to continue to fight for our country, right? So I just think like the disappointment, and especially through the 70s and the 80s with the kind of reverses and failures and frustrations of the civil rights movement. But you have to understand, I mean, some of those things had already started

to happen. There was assassinations of Martin Luther King and then, you know, of Malcolm X. And, you know, there was other way around. But the, you know, the civil rights movement started to see reverses in quickly. But there was still a sense, you know, like America, many, many black people did then and still do, felt highly patriotic and bought into the, the projects of American. not imperialism, if you want to call it, the project of American foreign policy, and we're happy to serve or proud to serve. Yeah. It's not just that they were thrown in there out of no options.

You know, this was a, this was a project taken up willingly and with a sense that it would help further the inclusion of black citizens. Right. Which is, which is a part of the, the, part of the, the, part of the, the, the, the, the, the the experience of black Americans and America's wars consistently has been these ways for us to further our inclusion in society and in some ways yes and in some ways no some ways make things worse and some it's always kind of dialectical but yeah all right that is dead presidents like I said and I think we both agree it's a movie worth watching

it's a movie worth watching great performances i agree with you john keith david keith david one of my favorite actors of all time he's super cool he's such a great he gives such a great performance in this movie uh but everyone's very good Lorenz tate's good um his boyishness really works for the role yeah uh Chris Tucker is in it and I think he's good I think I think he's going to sort of like this tragic figure his neurotic energy is really good he's not Chris Tucker is an actor who I feel like it's only in the past decade, but he's gotten cast and sort of like more serious roles again, which he does a very good job. Yeah. I think his, because of his voice and his energy, it's sort of easy to write him up as kind of a clown.

And obviously the rush hour movies were huge. But the last thing I saw him in was Air about the creation of the Air Jordan. And he plays just sort of like a down-in-us-luck executive. And he's like really good at it. this sort of melancholy like a guy with a lot of energy but it's kind of been beaten out of him by life that's like his energy these days

and he's he's good so anyway Chris Tucker's great the movie is not great the movie has a lot of problems but he's good but he's good and the same goes for this the president's not I would not call it

a great movie but it is a movie worth watching very much that is our show if you're not a subscriber please subscribe We're available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher Radio, and Google Podcasts, and wherever else podcasts are found. If you subscribe, please leave a rating and a review. People find the show that way. And you can also reach out to us on social media if you want to.

The podcast is at UnclearPod. You can reach out to us over email at Unclear and Present Feedback at Fastmail.com. And for this week in feedback, we have an email from Peter titled Fatherland. What is the lifespan of a devil? And when I got this in the inbox, I was like, this is very enigmatic. What is this going to be about? Which is good email. Born in 1974, I grew up in an extended family with apparently infinite appetite for

mass market paperbook mysteries. As you recall, the book designers came up with nearly infinite permutations of the American British Soviet flags, the hammer and the sickle and the swastika, and lots of eagles, so many eagles. John's description of being disturbed by the potentially pornographic nature of World War II fiction and Nazi-era fiction really resonated with for me, especially in the context of Demel's description of the time in American history and Confederate symbols were considered to have less of a political variance. Clearly, the passage of time is part of the function of the fading horror at these authoritarian's, but some of them retain their special horror, at least partially because we require them to retain their ideological potency. since they serve in our political imagination as the literal devil, our ideological opposite. Hitler specifically retains his centrality, not just because of the enormity of its crimes,

but because he embodies the demonic other side of the coin of our liberal era. The American Confederate rehabilitation of the late 19th and early 20th century served a strong ideological function, but has faded not solely because we somehow differently recognized they're also horrific crimes, but because they became less necessary from a national unification standpoint, since opposition to the Huns, the fascists, and then the Soviets, serve that unifying mythic function for the United States until more recently. Given his expertise in the French culture of the 19th century, I'd be interested in hearing John describe how the idealization of Napoleon

developed so many various political implications through the 19th century in both France and the Anglosphere. I see so many different possible idealization of Napoleon, its regime and its opponents, that sometimes, when I'm reading fiction of that era, it's hard for me to even know what keeping a cameo or bust of Napoleon might mean to that character. That's such an interesting question. Although it must have been intensely ideological at one point, it seems that as time went on, it devolved to free-floating great man worship, as with Augustus, one of the original

European innovators in authoritarianism, for Augustus cemented an ideological and religious transformation unequaled in both its totality and longevity. So long and thanks for all the pods. This is an interesting question. That is such an interesting question. Okay. I mean, that's very true. I mean, Napoleon became admired or worshipped or something or other by people, you know, of all kinds of political persuasions. I mean, obviously, you know, during the Napoleonic wars, if you were, if you were a supporter of one of the old, old regimes of Europe and an aristocrat, you know, Napoleon was a devil. And if you were sort of a more liberal sort, you may have become disappointed with him because

of his tyrannical tendencies, or you may have stayed a supporter of him. There were kind of, as many, you know, writers and artists did, you know, stayed loyal to Napoleon as the kind of avatar of the revolution. I think what Napoleon successfully did and still successfully does now, is his political genius was that he reforged a nation that had undergone a revolution and had he managed to synthesize its old monarchical tradition, which was very ancient, and its new revolutionary moment. And that's what kind of made him this character and this figure which so many things can be projected on.

and you can we still look at Napoleon today and a right winger can look at Napoleon and see you know this charismatic man of destiny a left winger could see this hero who defended the accomplishments of the French Revolution and he did both that was his political genius and the extent of his legend and the extent of his political genius continues in the way that he still has this reputation. I think when I was growing up, there was still a little bit more of Napoleon as tyrant. But in my lifetime, there's been, and I'm sure this happens every so often, you know, with these historical figures who become reconsidered and rethought, there's been a real regrowth of interest in Napoleon as a positive figure, at least a figure worth

admiring and studying, not a total villain. And that's certainly the way I look at him for all his flaws. I'm fascinated with Napoleon and I think he's wonderful. And I, you know, it's interesting Churchill, even though he made one implicit comparison between Napoleon and Hitler during one speech, he forbade his people, his cabinet and soldiers from comparing Hitler and Napoleon. Even though Napoleon was this implacable foe of the English, there was a certain dignity to him that he could not grant to Hitler. And I think that's absolutely right. You know, Napoleon was not a mass murder. I mean, a lot of people died in those wars. He was not a mass murder and tyrant and totalitarian on that scale. The fascination with him is, yeah, he represented an entire

century. He represented the culmination of the previous century and the century to come. There's a reason why Hegel said he was the world spirit on a horse. He really was. He's an entire era in all of its in all of its good and bad. So you could understand seeing this man and wanting to and wanting to look at his bust and kind of reflect on the on human potential because he was just a fantastic warrior and a person also kind of of culture and sensitivity at the same time, you know, he was he was the man of his era. And I think that that's wonderful still. And I look at when I'm interested in Napoleonic era stuff, there is a certain humanity to those characters, which was really beaten out of the world in the 20th century. The wars were not chivalrous, not to say we should idealize the horrible things happen in Napoleonic wars, including, you know, their concurrent, you know, with wars of the slavery revolt in Haiti.

they're you know they lived in the world which which slavery still exists you know it's not that there weren't horrible things going on in the world but with the least people represented was something that was at least complex and ambivalent ambiguous and and and and could have multiple valances yeah yeah no it's it's i i think i see what you're saying that like the Napoleonic era i mean Napoleon because he represents, in a lot of ways, a spirit of revolution, there is something romantic about that. There's something very romantic about the era.

These decades of revolution on both sides of the Atlantic, of sweeping change, of at least the aspiration for... like a more humane world among many of the participants that had that retains retains a great deal of attraction he is romantic in many senses he has the romanticism of the french revolution but he has the poetry of a kind of you know of a king and a warrior and an emperor you know he managed to combine it all that was his genius that he synthesized the entire era in all of its aspirations and all of its desires. And that's what made him a brilliant politician.

His own was the first person who came up with triangulating, you know. He was a centrist, but a brilliant one in that he reconciled a country that was divided between these monarchists and between this Jacobins. He had been a Jacobin when he was young, you know, quite a radical one. And then he becomes a monarch. And he realizes the need for the country to have the traditions of the marker. He thought so. You know, I should not, as a good, small, our Republican myself, I must say, no, we shouldn't do that sort of thing.

But, I mean, it worked. It worked. His politics works. Let's just say that. He was a brilliant guy. You know, agree or not, he had an incredible. I mean, no, it's, it's, there's a reason he's remained an object of fascination. Yeah, it's just one of the most interesting people ever, basically.

Yeah, yeah, just like, just, yeah, period. Yeah. Yeah. So I love that question. I think that was super interesting. Yes, thank you, Peter, for the, for the email. This is a really great question. And we'll have to do when the, when the, when the, uh, when the, uh,

Ridley Scott, Napoleon movie comes out this fall in November. We should do something around that. We should do like a, we should do a thing. I'm a little nervous about it, but we'll see. I mean, Ridley Scott is a very hit or miss director, which was like best encapsulated in 2021 when there was the last duel, which is a great movie, and House of Gucci, which feels like a hate crime. Yeah, that movie is not good.

Uh, okay. Episodes come out every two weeks. Uh, so we will see you then with an episode on GoldenEye, the first James Bond movie of the 1990s starring Pierce Brosnan. I don't feel like I need to do any intro for golden. I feel like for people, for the people who listen to this podcast, you, you know what golden eye is. One would hope.

Yeah, I feel like I feel like it's very much I mean, for nothing else, for nothing else, everyone played a Nintendo 64 game. And that is, that is part of our cultural heritage. But if you've not seen Golden Eye,

here's a very brief plot synopsis. When a powerful satellite system falls into the hands of Alec Trevelyan, aka Agent Oste, 006, a former ally turned enemy, only James Bond can save the world from an awesome, awesome space weapon that in one short pulse

could destroy the earth. As Bond squares off against its former compatriot, he also battles Trevelyan's stunning ally, Zinia Onotop, an assassin who uses her pleasure as the ultimate weapon, directed by Martin Campbell, produced by Barbara Broccoli of the Broccoli family, which owns the film rights to James Bond.

You can find a golden eye to watch or rent on Apple, on iTunes, rather, or Amazon. And we will have a guest for that episode. Our guest will be Isaac Chotner of the New Yorker. Oh, awesome. So we'll talk with Isaac about Goldman. He doesn't like this movie very much.

He's a big, done guy, but does not like this movie. I'm okay with it. I haven't seen it in a minute. What is he going to do? He's going to interview us. He's going to ask us. Tough questions. We're going to do that back to him.

We're all going to cancel each other. All right. have to leave public life. So that's in two weeks. Join us then. Until then, you can subscribe to our Patreon, patreon.com slash unclear pod, where we just did an episode on the lost honor of Katerina Bloom,

a great movie and a great novel, which it's based, and you should check out of that episode. It's just $5 a month to subscribe to the Patreon, and there is a lot of great stuff there. We did other recent episodes including the Day of the Jackal, the Battle of Algiers,

a bunch of Costa Gavras, lots of good stuff. So $5 a month, and that's two episodes a month of extra movie talk. So please sign up for the Patreon. For John Gant, I'm Jamal Bowie, and this is unclear and present danger.

We'll see you next time. You know, I'm going to be able to be.