Unclear and Present Danger - Demolition man

Episode Date: June 10, 2023

In this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watch the satirical sci-fi action thriller “Demolition Man,” starring Sylvester Stallone as “John Spartan,” a Los Angeles city police officer who is cryogenically frozen as punishment for a failed rescue attempt; Wesley Snipes as “Simon Phoenix,” his primary antagonist; Sandra Bullock as a cop in the sterile, Brave New World-esque future society in which the film takes place; and Nigel Hawthorne as the leader of that future society. In addition to their usual look at the headlines and news of the day, Jamelle and John discuss “Demolition Man” as one of the quintessentially conservative blockbusters of the 1990s, with a critique of liberalism as both permissive — and thus prone to disorder — and highly restrictive, and thus antagonistic to traditional ideas of manhood and masculinity. They also look at what the movie says about the role of violence in society, and try to place the film within the “end of history” context of the immediate post-Cold War period.Episodes come out every two weeks, so we’ll see you then with an episode on “The Net,” starring Sandra Bullock.“The Net” is available to rent on iTunes and Amazon.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. We are currently doing a mini-series on the films of the French-Greek director Costa-Gavras.

At the end of a century, ravaged by violence, a society of perfect order will arise. Criminals will be frozen and reprogrammed in cryogenic prisons. The prisoners are ice-kewed. Their criminal instincts are being reprogrammed as they sleep. Aggression and deviant behavior will be totally eliminated. He's a criminal the likes of which you have never seen. In a bad time, he was the worst.

I'm going to love running this place. But in the year 2032... This morning, Simon Phoenix escaped from this cryopacility. We are, quite frankly, not equipped to deal with the situation. Amidst a world of peace. and calm. We're police officers. We're not trained for this kind of violence.

How is the Fiendish Simon Phoenix apprehended back in the 20th? In the end, it took just one man. John Spartan. You mean the demolition man. The conditions of your parole are full reinstatement into the SAPD an immediate assignment to the apprehension of Simon Phoenix. Two mortal enemies. Just dropped in and say hi.

From another time. Pass is over, John. Time for something new and proved. The new improved! Oh, hell. ...will be unleashed on a future that isn't big enough for the both of them. Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Demolition Man. Welcome to Unclear and Military Thriller's of the 1990s of the 1990s and what they say about the political and military thrillers of the 1990s and what they say about the politics. of that decade. I'm Jemel Bui. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section.

I'm John Gans. I write a substack newsletter called Unpopular Front, and I'm editing the manuscript of my book on American politics in the early 1990s. This week, we watched Demolition Man. So I should say from the outset, often I get requests from people, are you going to cover this movie are going to cover that movie. And the answer is almost always yes. But the thing you have to understand is that we're moving in chronological order. And I think it's important to, I guess I think it's important to remind people of this every so often, especially for new listeners. We're moving in chronological order. So we are kind of in the early to mid 90s, 95, but we actually miss this movie, which came out in 93. So we're going to loop back to 93,

but then continue going. If we skip something in that chronological order, we skip it for a reason, but we will eventually get to it. But generally speaking, we're moving linearly through the 1990s. So if you think of a movie and you're like, this came out in 98, we'll get to it when we're in the year in 1998. Okay. With that said, I just, I suddenly thought about it because getting a lot of requests for a few

specific movies in particular, and I just need to let people know that we will get to them. it'll just take a minute. This week, we watched Demolition Man, one of kind of the quintessential sci-fi action films of the 1990s. I feel like it's one of the movies you think about when you say sci-fi action in the 90s. It was the directorial debut of Marco Brambilla, an Italian-born Canadian contemporary artist whose main thing is kind of the use and manipulation of images in pop culture, which you can kind of see in this movie. Now, when I read that, I was like, okay, some of the visuals of this really do. That really is part of this whole deal.

A demolition man stars Sylvester Stallone as John Spartan, a wonderful movie name. A Los Angeles city police officer who is cryogenically frozen as punishment for a failed rescue attempt. It stars Wesley Snipes as Simon Phoenix, his antagonist, Sandra Bullock as a cop in the future society in which the film takes place. and Nigel Hawthorne as the leader of that future society. Demolition Man also has appearances from Benjamin Bratt, Dennis Leary, and the one kind of bad note of the film. And also Bill Cobbs, Rob Snyder also shows up in an uncredited role, interestingly enough.

He's there, but he doesn't have a credit. Demolition Man was shot by Alex Thompson, who I'm mentioning because he worked previously with Stallone on Cliffhanger, which came out earlier in 93. And it was edited by Stuart Baird, who I've mentioned because in addition to working on the Omen, Superman Lethal Weapon and Die Hard 2 also worked on Tango and Cash, another Stallone film. So I'm not entirely sure how much control over the production Stallone had in this, although

my hunch would be that Stallone had a heavy hand here, but there are some Stallone collaborators in this film. Here is a short plot synopsis. Frozen in 1996, Simon Phoenix, a convicted crime lord, is revived for a parole hearing well into the 21st century. Revised into a society free from crime, Phoenix resumes his murderous rampage and no one can stop him. John Spartan, the police officer who captured Phoenix 96, has also been cryogenically frozen for a crime he did not commit, unable to stop Phoenix with their nonviolent solutions. The police released Spartan to help recapture him. Demolition Man, available to rent on iTunes and Amazon. You can also stream it for free, I think on Amazon Prime, and also on Max, which is HBO Max, you know, the Warner, I refuse it to call it that. Yeah, it's HBO Max to me.

It's HBO Max. So you can watch it on, you can watch it on HBO Max. Demolition Man came out, was released on October 8, 1993. So let's check up the New York Times for that day. A lot of pertinent stuff here. Clinton doubling U.S. force in Somalia vowing troops will come home in six months. Naval force added overall U.S. personnel on land and at sea to increase by 15,000. President Clinton said today, he was doubling the size of the United States ground forces in Somalia

to protect American troops there. And he promised to have all forces out in six months. now on March 31st, he said in a television address the troops would try to lay a foundation for stability in the anarchic country. Based with growing public and congressional concern, Mr. Clinton outlined a narrow mission for the forces and made it plain that the reinforcements were intended to allow United Nations troops to chart a more independent course from the United Nations operation, United States troops, I'm sorry, to chart a more independent course from the United Nations operation, which has been

bogged down in a bloody and futile search for the fugitive faction leader Mohamed Farah Adid. Mr. Clinton said the troops would wind their mission up by March 31st. Let us finish the work we set out to do. Let us demonstrate to the world as generations of Americans have done before us that when Americans take on a challenge, they do the job right. Well, this is a hugely consequential moment in the history of American foreign policy. Somalia had been under the control of a brutal kind of Marxist-Leninist dictatorship and that collapsed leading to a civil war, a state of almost total anarchy in the country, several factions led by essentially warlords, the United States and the United Nations intervene in a peacekeeping mission, one of many that the 90s witnessed. famously this resulted in Black Hawk down, where Adide's forces were able to shoot down

American Black Hawk helicopter, getting into a gun battle with American troops, inflicting not terrible, but to the American public, very bad casualties. I think 19 American soldiers were killed. That sort of made the U.S. a little bit iffy about. interventions in foreign countries, which would have big consequences when it came to Rwanda, not long after it. So, yeah, let's see what else. There's a related article right here, an old Cold War refrain, critics questioned Clinton policy on Somalia, asking about risk to vital interests of the U.S. The phrases resulted through political Washington all week

in an insistent Kissinger-esque echo of an era that supposedly ended. We can't just cut and run, the policymakers said again and again after Sunday's battle in Mogadishu. It would send, oh, this may have been the Blackhawk-down battle. It would send the wrong signal. In his speech today, President Clinton joined the course. If the United States left Somalia now, he said our leadership and world affairs would be undermined at the very time when people are looking for it to America to help promote peace and freedom in the post-Cold War world.

And all in the around the world, aggressors, dugs, and terrorists will conclude the best way to get us to change our policies is to kill our people. The Clinton administration believes that the old verities, however, time-worn, retain their validity in the single superpower age. That is the main reason there will be no pullout from Somalia. But many critics in government and out are profoundly skeptical. What signal they asked, to whom, now that local conflicts no longer threaten to turn into East-West showdowns. Does it matter enough to continue risking American soldiers' lives on a

murkily-defined mission in a region where no one believes the nation's vital interests are at stake? Let me see when the Battle of Mogadishu was. I just watched Blackhawk Down again for some reason. How, you know, I've actually never seen that movie. You would not like it, but you would get a lot out of it. No, Black Hawk Down had just happened. It was third, fourth of October, and this is October the 8th, so that had just happened. Yeah, and a week, yes, and it says in this earlier thing, after a week in which 14 Americans have been killed and scores more wounded, Mr. Clinton warned that it to withdraw now would relegate Somali to the violence and starvation that the Bush administration had bound to avert when it sent troops there 10 months ago. So, yeah, this was a continuity between Bush foreign policy and Clinton foreign policy. Bush initiated the intervention in Somalia. Clinton decided to continue it. Bush's foreign policy.

was highly interventionist, not exactly neocan. It was realists. They believed that the United States kind of had this role of stability protection in the world and that the U.S. military could be sent in to do these sorts of things. And that was the impetus behind the Gulf War, the impetus behind Panama and the other interventions of the Bush administration. So this wasn't, there was a sense imbued of kind of idealism, but as this signals when there's a sense of, this is about American credibility, right? If we get, if we get knocked around by small powers, then anybody will knock us down. So we can't allow that to happen. So yeah, that's a very interesting moment in American foreign policy. I don't know how I, I mean, I don't think our intervention in Somalia really accomplished very much. I don't, I'm not an isolationist.

I believe that there are times when, you know, we need to intervene in foreign countries. I don't think Somalia was something where we had a productive role and I think it hurt our credibility, actually, when we may have actually needed to intervene, like in Rwanda where there was a genocide taking place. And here's another U.S. foreign policy piece of news. Pentagon and State Department at odds over sending soldiers to Haiti. As the Clinton administration struggles to find a way out of Somalia, the Pentagon and State Department are locked in a last minute dispute over the deployment of hundreds of American military trainers and engineers to Haiti during the next two weeks. Senior administration officials said today,

Under a United Nations brokered agreement reached with Haiti's military leaders last summer to restore the exiled president John Bertrand Aristide to power by October 30th, the United States promised to send troops as part of the United Nations force. American-Canadian troops are to retrain Haiti's military while police officers from France, Canada, Madagascar, Tunisia, Algeria, and other French-speaking countries are to help create an independent police force. But the increased violence in Haiti, after the troubled mission, Somalia, senior Pentagon officials have begun to question the wisdom of putting more American troops into potentially dangerous, unpredictable, and hostile environment. In Haiti, for example, plainclosed gunmen aided by a uniform police officers brutally enforced a general strike today and Port-au-Prince, shooting at merchants and halting buses in the capital.

So, yeah, I mean, this is more of the same of the unclear and uncertain. pattern of American foreign policy in the post-world war era. And the lack of kind of clear leadership and goals and vision that everybody, even within the government can set these here, we have the Pentagon and the State Department, you know, at odds. So yeah, this just gives you a real flavor of how confused America's role in the world after the Cold War was how these interventions could be justified. We had the equipment for it. We had the troops. the strength, but why were we doing it? When should we do it? These questions, we haven't quite fully answered. I don't think we're in quite the same situation of intervention as we were in the

90s. Those peacekeeping stuff, we don't do so much anymore. In a way, Afghanistan was our last attempt to kind of do that kind of nation building sort of thing. We have abandoned that project, probably wisely after so many years of it failing. I don't know what the future in Ukraine is going to hold. But yeah, our role in the world is different than it was then, but still one without a clear goal or vision the way it had in the Cold War. Right, right. The 90s was a decade of kind of the humanitarian intervention and then we have kind of the occupations of the Bush year or the 2000s. And kind of Obama marks the transition to what I think we kind of have now, which is the United States, not pulling back necessarily, but basically sort of like

bolstering regional partners who take responsibility for stability. The issue often is that those regional partners are terrible and stability often just means like bombing various tiny countries the hell. So, you know, American support for Saudi Arabia seen as sort of one of these countries that can provide stability also means essentially American support for Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen. No, I mean, we're still involved in Somalia in some fashion or another. I think we still have special forces in the Horn of Africa. We're still assisting fighting Islamic militants there. That wasn't really a huge part of the conflict then.

But, but yeah, I mean, a lot of these engagements haven't really end. They've just adjusted and become more low-key and quiet and kept out of the press because it's very bad when you see 20 American soldiers or so getting killed politically. What's interesting, I mean, it's interesting in a way, just the politics of it that the one, like the current, the most controversial intervention at the moment is American support for Ukraine and its war against Russia, which for the United States is an exceptionally low-cost endeavor, right? Like, we're essentially sending the military surplus, plus, like, a few dollars out of the Pentagon's budget. And in return, we are essentially disabling a major regional rival, you know, but no risk to American soldiers. Again, like, very, I mean, this is the scale of American budgets, you know, so as we were spinning out, we spent $112 billion in Ukraine. It's mostly equipment and then, like, whatever actual dollars. is like a fraction of the Pentagon's annual budget.

So it's like it's kind of a deal in terms of, in geopolitical terms. But that's the one that people are, I was just in Iowa for a couple days doing Republican presidential stuff. And that's the thing that like people were upset about. We got to get out of Ukraine. Interesting. That has a grassroots thing. Right, right. Yeah.

I mean, it was an applause line for at least one of the candidates. Vivek Ramoswamy mentioned it. But American involvement, continued American involvement in the Horn of Africa, support for Pakistan and involvement in the region, support for Saudi Arabia, you know, all that stuff is Or this crazy idea of attacking Mexico, sending troops into Mexico, which is fucking every single right, every single Republican candidate seems to have tried out some version of that. Right. Multiple candidates mentioned it at this event in Iowa, going to sending troops.

directly to Mexico, fighting another Mexican war. So, yeah, it's just, it's just interesting how like this, how some things are completely out of the public consciousness in terms of American interventions abroad and others are not. And in a funny way, the one that is in the, is in the great, most in public consciousness will probably be the least objectionable of the various interventions. Well, in a way, it has the highest stakes because it's our major, major nuclear rival is involved. And they've made some rather threatening comments about what would happen if things went south for them. So, right. And also, I mean, just to say, I'm, you know,

I'm very much on the record in support of Ukraine's right to self-determination and defend themselves. But this war is, first of all, I just want to make a couple comments about Ukraine workers. We haven't talked about this in a while. I think people's attention is really rightly on civilian casualties because, you know, civilian, it's horrible, the massacring of civilians or the killing of civilians to these missile and bomb strikes of Russia. But I don't think people really think about often how many young Ukrainian men are also dying actually just in battle. I mean, we think we see a lot of propaganda of, and Russians for that matter, too. I mean, they're the aggressor, so it's a little bit of a different story. But we see all these, you know,

propaganda of Ukraine doing very well, they've lost an enormous amount of men. And that's, these people are not coming back. They're young men who would have started families, who would have worked, who, you know, maybe had families to support. They're dead. And they're, they're pillars of their communities and just the people of their society. They're dead. And they died, you know, defending their home and it's a noble thing. But like, the, the, the damage of the society is not just the destruction of infrastructure we see. It's not just the, the killing of civilians, which is horrible and pulls on the world's heartstrings. But longer the war goes, just like, and especially when there's an offensive as started now,

there's going to be a lot of just people, young men dying, and it's not, it's horrible. And you say, oh, well, troops die in war. Yes, but those people are never coming back. And second of all, this damn destruction, which I, you know, some people say it's Russian, some say it's Ukraine, is extremely, you know, this is a, I think this is what I've had trouble communicating with people about this war into a certain degree. We're used to conflict. I mean, Iraq was a terribly brutal, not a total war, but a, but, you know, a war on a, on a large scale. But this is war that's fought in a different way than we're accustomed to growing up in,

you know, the 90s and 2000s. This is a real war. Like the destruction of this dam is going to cause major economic, ecological problems for years to come. And it's a real catastrophe. It may have been necessary for either side strategically or tactically decided it was necessary. But this is more of those kind of things you saw in World War II, you know, like this level of destruction. So I just think that, you know, I still support Ukraine. And I hope that this offensive goes well and it creates the conditions for a lasting peace. But I think that the horror of this war is beginning to set it. It should be, should be recalled that it's not just like images on TV. Like there's an enormous amount of real death and destruction. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway.

So I don't know if there's anything else here. I thought it was interesting. Culturally, Tony Morrison is 93 winner of Nobel Prize in Literature. New York polls. sees grim view of life in the city, New York was sort of coming out of its crime wave. 93 actually marks the point at which the kind of the Great American Murder Wave begins to rapidly, yeah, recede. I mean, like, rapidly recede,

sort of year over year declines in homicides that by the time you get to the end of the decade, it's sort of where you're approaching, you're at historic lows, but like you're approaching. historic lows right yeah yeah that's um and juliani wins against dinkins based on backlash to crime so on and so forth anyway i think that's it for the paper okay anything else yeah oh no nothing else let's um let's move on to a little background for demolition man uh this is based on an original script is a real script by guy named peter lankov who um it was the first script he actually sold it was

inspired by the weapon, inspired by a few other things. And the initial script had this frozen cop idea. A frozen cop who was like a kind of a super cop who has to battle the world's deadliest criminal in the future where there is no crime. So that's sort of, that's like the original script and it's more or less the bones of the movie. Daniel Waters, who wrote Heather's, did a rewrite of the script. And in the rewrite, he adds sort of the comedic elements It adds a lot of the, adds a lot of the aesthetic of the future, which is this kind of high-lead, sanitized, almost like outdoor shopping mall vision of the future. And he added a lot of the politics, which, you know, reading his interviews about this,

he wasn't intending it to be like particularly political. But as we've discussed from this show before, writers often can absorb the zeitgeist of the era, even if they aren't necessarily trying to channel it. And so here, right, the politics of the film are kind of like a poking fun at political correctness, poking fun at kind of like liberal cultural obsessions. And that is, that's Waters' contribution to the film. He says that the conclusion of the film where the society will need to find balance and compromise represents his own position in the political middle, which also feels very 1990s. There were additional rewrites on the script, and the big additional rewrite on the water's version of the script was the addition of this opening sequence in the movie, this 96 prologue where you actually see Spartan, Phoenix, kind of duke it out in their natural environment. environment. And you see them battle and fight. And then that kind of provides a contrast for the future that you see. Now, Brambilla, the director of Marco Brambilla, his background was

in shooting TV commercials, which you can also kind of see in this. Directors who move from commercials are very distinctive. I believe Tony Scott was a commercial guy for a minute. That makes a lot a sense. And I love Tony Scott. Yeah. But you can very much, you can very much, yeah, he, he began directing commercials. And that's very apparent. And so you can, you can see some of that here. He was actually, it's reading here, Brambilla was actually working to make it the Ritchie Rich movie that he kind of left the project to do this instead, which is funny. I remember the rich rich movie starring McClea Colkin.

Actors originally attached. You'll like this, John. The original choice was Stephen Seagall. Oh, yeah. Which would have been, this is like perfect kind of, this is peak Seagall. Yeah.

John Claude Van Dam have been offered the part of the villain, which I like this movie a lot. I would have enjoyed watching the version with Seagal versus Van Dam. That sounds fun to me, but. But they didn't go in that direction.

They went to Stallone. Stallone had actually passed on the project. More fun than Wesley Snipes? I didn't say that, but I didn't think it was fun. Stallone had initially passed on the project and they came back around to him and they really pestered him about it. And eventually he took it deciding he wanted to trust him. You knew which was science fiction.

Stolen had not really done science fiction before. He wanted Jackie Chan for Simon Phoenix, but Jackie Chan did not want to play a villain. And they went to Wesley Snipes, who also turned on the role of Simon Phoenix a couple times before they just went to the set of Rising Sun, Joel Silver, the producer, and Brambilla, to convince him to take the role. And by all accounts, Snipes and Stallone got along very well on set and, like, were very professional. And it was like a very, it was a good shoot. For the role of Huxley, which is the cop played by Sandra Bullock, they had originally cast Lori Petty from Tank Girl. Yeah. But she, she, there are creative differences.

And really, Petty didn't like Stallone very much and Stallone didn't like her, which I can, I can actually very easily imagine. And they got Bullock instead. And she was got you. Okay. So I mentioned earlier that Dennis Larry is in. this movie and he his part his his his one big scene is kind of unsufferable and it's basically dennis leary delivering like a dennis leary monologue like a five minute set and it turns out that leary was specifically hired for this comedic rant and he actually wrote this himself

and uh and then they they shot it so this this literally is like uh leary's um uh tight five oh god so it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's It's the most tiresome show that you love it here, which I think is it actually a nice way to make our way into thinking, talking about the politics of this movie, for listeners who have not seen Demolition Man, and as always, you should watch the movie before you listen to us, because we don't do much of a plot rundown. But for listeners who haven't seen it, kind of the whole conceit is that in Los Angeles in 1996, it's a crime-ridden hellhole, pretty much projecting out kind of the crime of

the early 90s, a couple years further. And it's like, if it's bad now, then by 96, and this is post-L.A. riots, right? Right. During production, at the very least. So they're imagining it's going to be even worse. And in this future, war, apparently crime warlords have taken over entire, you know,

section of the city. And so Simon Phoenix is one of these warlords who has South Central L.A. He controls it. And you see in the beginning, John Spartan trying to go stop. him. I'd rescue some hostages. Turns out the hostages are all dead. Phoenix says that Spartan ignored them and caused their deaths. And so they both go to a cryogenic prison. No explanation for how this exists, but I actually appreciate you. I don't need anything or whatever. It's a movie. It's the future. And they're frozen for decades before Snipes or Simon Phoenix is unfrozen during a

parole hearing and then escapes and goes on a murderous rampage. They decide they're going to unfreeze Spartan to try to catch him. And this future is a, how do you describe it, John, like a sedate kind of, it's somewhere between a utopia and a dystopia. It's both, right? Right. You know, it's like, it's a little bit like Brave New World has been a comparison where it's like that it's ostensibly utopian, but it's actually kind of horrible. because they've just destroyed everything that's enjoyable in life and kind of made everything sanitized. So it's not clear if it's utopian.

It's sort of disutopian. So, yeah, and I think it's meant to be, I think I just want to back up one second, though, to the beginning of the movie, because first of all, you're absolutely right to compare that. The images from the beginning of movie are straight out of the L.A. riots, right? So it was like the idea of the LA riots as being like society is about to collapse. This is what the future is going to be like.

And the police are going to have to be even more militarized. The beginning of the movie is fucking Blackhawk down, which is happening at the same time. There's an anarchic place and this militarized police force is the U.S., the policemen of the world. This was always the question at the time goes in. The special forces have to try to capture this warlord. who happens to be black. And like he also, yeah, so it's very much the same stuff that was going on US foreign policy.

It's amazing that it came out with these images of the helicopter. The helicopter doesn't get shot down, but this helicopter fighting in this dystopian city burning anarchic cityscape. These are the images of the intervention in Somalia happening almost at the same time as the film. These things just kind of happen sometimes where the zeitgeist, as you say, just aligns in this weird way. This vision of a dystopian L.A., I mean, the first shots called to mind, you know, Blade Runner, of course, you know, the cityscape and Blade Runner, the Hollywood sign is burning.

But yeah, this was an image of fear that was very much in the national consciousness because of the L.A. riots, which I think they're not forgotten. Obviously, everybody knows the L.A. rights. But I don't think people have a real, they were the worst riots in American history or the worst civil disorders. American history since the draft riots and the civil war. Nothing has come close. It was an extremely serious urban disorder brought about by a lot of different factors. Economic police, obviously the Rodney King beating and the longtime brutality of the LAPD. But the LAPD, this sort of movie gives the vision of the LAPD hat of itself. We're an elite military force. We arrive in helicopter, so and so forth, we deal with the worst bad guys in the world. So in that way, it was just totally in keeping with the LAPD's image of itself.

And John Spartan is a kind of LAPD swap cop, right? The other thing that brought to mine is, yeah, yeah, so there was that. In terms of the future society, it's amazing. The pendulum has swung away from the fears of, these are the two anxieties of the 1990s, right? There is the dystopian crime scape, and then there's the PC, sanitized PC, corporate, commercial, shopping mall, sterile utopia future, right? So that was a big fear was, oh, no, men and women, there's not going to be any kind of sexuality anymore because there won't be sexual harassment will destroy flirting. political correctness will make all jokes impossible. We will get, there will be no smoking, no good food.

It'll all be health food, but there also would just be fast food restaurants. All of these kind of like silly but concerns about, you know, what would happen if the liberal elites got their way. And then obviously the other thing is this is a highly emasculated society. Right. Right. And then you have these two different sides of masculinity. You have the kind of psychotic, uncastrated masculinity of Simon Phoenix as Wesley Snipes. And you have Stallone, who has that kind of enough toughness. It's like, what is the right amount of masculine energy was always the right amount of toxic masculinity that a society needs to actually function and reproduce and literally reproduce? produce and and also just to, you know, not be totally boring and devoid of enjoyment, right? I mean, you know, and that's still a big question in our society of the thing that conservatives

are very worried about, that certain liberals are very worried about. And in a way, you know, we worry about when we do bemoan, you know, overly sanitized movie pictures. I mean, we share some of the same concerns. So the movie is like, has all of these binaries that the 90s are really worried about. On the one hand, total anarchy, crime. And on the other hand, a society where there was no possibility of enjoyment.

No possibility of anything that was transgressive in any way. And like as the movie is just like trying to seek out, there's going to be the right amount of transgression. It has to be contained within certain boundaries and parameters. And that's, but basically what the movie is saying is like the 90s.

It's weirdly that they're frozen and taught. Like it's weird that he's frozen in time. It's basically saying, like, we need to freeze the 90s. And, like, this is what a lot of, we've argued in the past, like, a lot of conservatives today or liberals today, older liberals today, basically believe they're just like, we need to freeze Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes. We need to freeze the 90s in time because they got it right on some level.

They got the right balance between, you know, political correctness and equality and those and also, you know, like we can still have a good time and, you know, there's a room for tough guys and stuff like that. And yeah, it's interesting that the binary is in this movie. Yeah. This kind of main binary of a of a chaotic and violent past and a sterile and sedate future are themselves sort of like the two critiques of liberalism, right? It's not, it's not, it's not, it's the binaries like.

When I was watching this, my thought was, my actual thought was like, if this movie were to come out today, and it could be clearly recognized, it's actually quite a conservative film, like ideologically conservative film. It wouldn't have the chud energy of the S. Craig Zaller films, like Drag Me Across Concrete or Bone, Tomahawk, brawl and cell block, whatever, which all aren't just conservative, but like very, very. very like maga chutty. But it's just like clearly a conservative film, kind of like a limb ball conservative film. Yeah, exactly. It's like, oh, these fucking liberal. Yeah.

And it's that the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the product of liberalism, right? Sort of, like, of codling criminals such that you have to have the LAPD come in and, like, be this paramilitary force. And then a future. where it's the worst instincts of paternalistic liberalism has created this therapeutic society where there is no there is no you know there's no there's no there's no there's no there's literally they don't have sex literally they have like a virtual sex yeah yeah yeah those

I think you're I think you're right to identify that is kind of like one of the big cultural anxieties of the 1990s, and it's interesting, I mean, it's interesting that liberalism occupies the role of like the ideological force to produce either the present or the past of the film or the future. Because today, like right now, the, you know, the conservative right-wing reactionary critique of liberalism is essentially that it's like perverse, right? It's sort of like it's overturning, you know, the proper hierarchies. It is encouraging kind of identities like, you know, like transness or LGBT identities that are, have no place in a traditional society that it's like turning everything topsy-turvy. But in the 90s, and particularly this point in the 90s, right, the sort of the prominent liberals.

in the country, prominent Democrats at the very least, are, you know, people like Alan Tipper Gore, Tipper Gore being, you know, kind of infamous for leading this crusade against obscenity in music. We've talked previously about the V-chip, about the effort to put something in televisions that would kind of like enable parents, families to block material that's violent or sexual in nature from actually broadcasting on the television. Like, in the moment, it seems liberals very much did have this, like, reputation for wanting to, to maybe, like, sanitize popular culture, sand down these rough edges.

And this is what the movie is very much plugged into. And, you know, I'll say, as for the movie, it's like, I mean, kind of, it is kind of funny. I mean, this is sort of why this is like kind of a conservative, a conservative action would be done right. And it's not, it's not like particularly ideological. It's not like it's beating you over the head with anything. It's like, you can watch this. And I swear, I swear I can remember watching this with my dad and be like, yeah, that's what they would do. Right.

Like that's the whole, that it gets at something that's recognizable and then just like turns it up. Right. It gets at the most annoying parts. Like, it's the joke of the movie. It's a series of jokes in a way because, like, it's a lot of gags. Like, that's the way it works is like, even though it's, yeah, it has a, it definitely has a comedic part of it. It's like a lot of a comedian's act about political correctness.

Like, oh, in the future, they're going to make it so you can't even have set. You know, it's like a little, like, there's like all that shit or like, and like, yeah, they pick on the, the most annoying parts of the contemporary society and just accentuate them or the most frightening parts that accentuate them. What's interesting to me is that this, what this society of the future, which seems to have caused all the problems. And I think here's, here's what I'm going to say that there are some actually, not exactly, um, I think it's a conservative movie, but there's some real critique here in the sense that

this society of the future hasn't dealt, hasn't really gotten rid of class conflict, right? I was just, I was, yeah, it was like, we were going to get that. It was in my next thing. Please continue. So, again, it hasn't really gotten class conflict. There's this underground of these sort of, of these people led by Dennis Leary, the white working class hero, who, who, you know, are still on the outs of the society, right? It had, so it's not completely devoid of antagonism, but it's interesting that this boss, this doctor figure cocto who's played by a famous actor what's an actress name it's a he's a

he's a famous british actor yeah this is um this this is nijal hawthor nigel hawthorne yeah so he um he he he requires the services of the sociopathic simon phoenix he has to bring him in as a mercenary he cannot he cannot actually therapeutically deal with all the problems in the society, right? It requires repress. Even the society he's tried to set up, it requires repression and violence. And so he brings him this kind of secret agent of repression and violence. But once he opens the door, once he opens a door to that, you know, they bring in this other agent of violence who's, you know, the good guy. So in a way, it's a Western because, you know, he comes into town.

He's like the one comp, you know, like in a Western, there's all these, like, there's like a very bad, bad guy. And then there's all these cowardly townspeople who don't know what to do. And then there's one, there's one man who knows how to use violence, the right way. Stallone is sort of the man with no name in that. Yeah, exactly. And he comes in, they're like, okay, we need it. We need a cowboy, essentially.

So he comes in and he reasserts order among people who are too cowardly or unable to use violence in the correct way against someone who does. deserves it, and you need to apply violence to it. Yeah, so I think that that's, the fact that the society cannot totally get rid of social problems and needs to, the movie says basically they're, you're always going to need a violent person because they're going to need, you're always going to need a violent person to maintain order, either in the evil way of assassinating this political leader of this kind of underground, you know, proletarians or bumping proletarians, or as the cop, or a real cop,

who knows that you need to sometimes kick ass, you know? I mean, Sean Tribulik literally says this in the conclusion. She says, I've learned that sometimes we need to use violence. I mean, but that's basically, you know, I just rewrote my chapter about the LAPD for my book, and I reread all of Chief Parker. Chief Parker was the person who created the modern LAPD, who professionalized it, who kind of insulated it as a civil service organization away from political control, who kind of created all these moderate administrative methods who kind of created the modern police in a way. You know, obviously he was a horrible

racist. But beyond that, he had this vision of the world. He basically said, look, human beings are fucked up. They're intrinsically flawed. They're intrinsically bad. There's nothing we can do to say the cops are not here to be social workers. There's nothing we can do to say it. The only thing we can do is to maintain order. The cops are there to maintain order. And, you know, they can't be questioned in that because he invented this idea of a thin blue line. And the cops need to be absolutely unquestioned or else that line will be break down and in this movie and the cops in order to do that they need to be able to fucking beat people that's what it comes down to it's like if if human beings are bad and they can't be reformed the only thing maintaining order is

is the nightstick and the gun and that's essentially you know on view and this is one of the more reactionary parts of the movie. Stallone, you know, is like, yeah, you know, you're going to need a real cop and a real cop. The movie doesn't show real cops as being corrupt, but it definitely shows real cops as being willing to be violent, right? And even then, I mean, so it shows them as being willing to be violent in the case of trying to apprehend someone like Simon Phoenix, the movie is saying, you know, sometimes you're going to have a human being who's so transgressive, be so contemptuous of order, that's the only way to suppress them is through lethal violence, even. But, like, even before we get to Stallone, just when we get the glimpses of the society,

when we get our glimpses of this future society, even though the cops aren't using necessarily violence in the kind of direct with it. So when Stallone is the threat of state sanction is everywhere. The entire society is built on the threat of state sanction for every, for every deviation from the, the order established in the film. So you curse, which is against the law. Yeah, yeah. You get a fine. And we see, right, if you do this stuff sufficiently, you will be arrested and presumably

sent to a cryogenic prison. So it's like, even without the violence of a Stallone, the society of the film is a police state, like effectively. Right. And the only kind of, the only government. organization we actually see in the film is the San Angeles Police Department, which is this high-tech, highly professionalized, you know, surveillance agency that can basically track everyone anywhere. Everyone has like a little implant in their hand or something, which I'll say, as a real

quick parenthetical, as someone who grew up in the church, the implant in the hand thing is also very 90s fundamentalist Christian nightmare of fuel. Right. The belief that the quote unquote mark of the beast will be some sort of like, you know, biometric implant. Yeah, which is definitely came out again with the vaccine stuff. Right. Yes.

A big fear during. Yeah, that was a huge fear. Yeah. Yes. I think that's, you know, I don't want to psychoanalyze that too much. But obviously, you know, going into a technological society, there's lots. of anxieties that produce. I think one funny thing about the movie, which sort of pre, which I think is both there's

a truth to it and it also kind of presages the kind of conservative complaint about world capitalism. Is it like Taco Bell is the only restaurant that exists anymore? And like they've like just defeated all their corporate rivals. So every restaurant on every level is a Taco Bell. I think that like, yeah, the movie. shows that the future, it doesn't show a communist society, it shows like, yeah, there'll be like a corporate, uh, it'll be a corporate society, um, but it would be like

everything is a shopping mall, as you said earlier. Right. Their clothes are also interesting to me in this movie because they, the cops still have a uniform, but the people walk around in these kind of like culturally non-specific clothes that are not for that mix like Japanese and African costumes. So they're like kind of world the world music of clothing, this kind of cosmopolitan mixture of cultures. And they're emasculating. They're kind of scurdy and, you know, they're not they're not really pants. The men don't really wear pants anymore. And, you know, a lot of the characters, to put in old terms, act a little

fruity they they definitely code the the villains as a little bit queer as which is an old tendency in in Hollywood movies as opposed to you know Stallone who's a who's a real man's man and it complains about the destruction of of sex and so and so forth and yeah I just think it's like basically the worry I think it's the same thing like in this weird worry of all these movies and I think this is the weird worry about the trans panic today

is like somehow sexual difference itself is in danger you know like that's like and then once we lose that we sort of lose the it's two things are in danger it's enjoyment the very possibility of enjoyment

is going it's like it's not even that this world to some degree like this world is worse than the world portrayed in the dystopia at the beginning because there's no enjoyment or no or the enjoyment is so thin like they have no real music they listen to commercial jingles the sex is virtual the food sucks there's no enjoyment and there's no longer any kind of meaningful difference between the sexes like men are not men are emasculated there's no macho people their women are, you know, it's not so much against women being self-assertive because kind of Sandra Bullock is the one who kind of gets it in the end and is able to sort of behave

the way a cop is in a way, should be in a way. But it's like, yeah, the things that are under threat are sincere enjoyment of life and sexual difference. And it's almost like if you get rid of violence and if you get rid of danger, those things completely. or the threat of violence and the threat of danger, those things are gone, right? If we live in an overly safe society, will we be able to enjoy anything anymore? I don't know. I mean, maybe this is my own reactionary politics coming out. But in a certain way, I share that, you know, and I think I don't want to put words in your

mouth and you can answer to this, but I think in our, you share that too. I mean, sometimes we feel as if the types of films being created by corporate by Hollywood or what's left of Hollywood are sort of devoid of anything that makes them interesting because they are, first of all, doing all these things

to make so many different markets happy and they're being sort of written, trying to make everybody happy at all times and not offend anybody with the same idea in mind. So I'm maybe just more of a creature of the 90s than I want to admit, but I certainly kind of share some of the,

not the politics of the movie in respect to police, But politics of the movie in respect to the world becoming a little too sanitized in certain ways. No, I think I do as well. The world being sort of shorn of conflict between people and trying to smooth out conflict as much as possible, right? Sort of the conflict is what makes things turn. Conflict doesn't necessarily have to mean like physical conflict, but sort of like clashing between people is kind of what makes things turn. If there was any great insight, right, that the founders of this country had, James Madison, particularly, it was the insight, right, that you can't actually create a political system that eliminates conflict.

All you can do is create one that harnesses it and manages it in a constructive way. Yeah. And that's, I think that's, I think that's, that's basically right. What's interesting, there's a couple thoughts I've had here. The first is this frame of looking at Demolition Man makes it very much an end of history, anxiety kind of movie the fear that in the absence of great power conflict the united states will become this kind of um you know placid commercial society um uh you know with the with people kind of going through the motions with whatever like therapeutic belief system may happen

to have um in anxiety you very very much see as the decade progresses and which makes its way, I mean, certainly makes its way into politics. So much of the right-wing critique of Clinton was all about the sense that this guy was like feminized. Right. Right. It sort of like was Hillary was really in charge wearing the pants in the relationship. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. But then also in the late later in the decade in the last decade, especially the years immediately proceeding 9-11, this is when the neoconservatives start getting going as far as like an organized political movement within the Republican Party. This is where you see much more talk of something like a, you know, national service, right?

It's a sort of like mandatory service for young Americans. Around this time, we have kind of like greatest generation commemoration and kind of like looking back at the World War II generation. saying, well, that we need some kind of conflict like that to give meaning to the country. I think Chris Hayes has a great essay about this in relation to the war on terror. Well, that's the whole neocon project, in a sense, was that America peaked with World War II, and we've not come up with the moral equivalent of war that would discipline the society and create the kinds of extraordinary or just ordinary people that the war did. Right, exactly.

Yeah, exactly. So all of that, I mean, all of that makes this, all that all of this is rolling around and is very much its expression of the film I do, I think makes this kind of, in a funny way, like a very, a very on the nose end of history, movie. But as for, as for the, you know, how I put this? so the movie doesn't really have a class politics we see that there are there are people who resist the order the above ground order they're kind of like the more is the morlocks from the time machine yeah um so these mulks yeah hg wells yeah so you have they but the morlocks are that they're like they're like kind of genetic devolution of people these are just people who don't want to participate in this society.

Yeah. And that's why they're deprived. Right. But they aren't like they aren't produced by the society if that makes me a sense. Like they aren't like a natural consequence of that society. They aren't like they aren't surplus. They just are, I have chosen not to participate. And the extent of which they are not surplus, I think kind of like makes the kind of

of sands down whatever kind of like class critique you could find. you could find in the movie. I don't know where I'm going with that. No, I think I like that observation. I agree with you, but I would say this, that it does kind of suggest, I mean,

you know, just the long of the movie is obviously coated kind of blue collar. And it's like, oh, we need this like white working class. We see this in so many 90s movies in the fucking diehard movies. Like you need this down.

earth, white collar, I mean, blue collar guy that can kick ass and has common sense and doesn't put up with shit and can tell these, you know, liberal, you know what's, where to stick it. And, you know, and that's like, I think the sort of reactionary class politics of it, which is like liberal elites are going to be big so-and-so's. And we need a real man to tell them what to do. So there's that. We need to bring back a white working class

guy into the future. We need to freeze this kind of, what they call him a Neanderthal and they call him this and that, which is interesting because this is kind of how the police function in LA, which was a, they wanted to freeze the 50s in time. They were like, there's the rest of the world. It's getting

diverse. It's getting different. The LAPD is going to be insulated from the rest of the world. it's going to be perpetual 1950s in there. Nothing's going to change. People outside are long hair get hippies, not the cops, not the LAPD. They get, the world is getting more diverse, not the cops, going to be white, or at least white people are going to be in charge.

So there's like the idea that like you need to have an institution in society that kind of freezes the past, you know, cryo, cryo freezes the past, is very much a police ideology. and the fact that it's going to be this kind of like rough working class guy who's able to dispense violence and then there's you know Simon Phoenix character I think the racial dynamic is interesting

yeah we haven't really touched the number now we haven't talked about the Simon Phoenix character at all so let's let's let's go there so yeah go ahead it's interesting okay so I mean the the the totally obscenely

masculine has no limit does not observe any social norms is the black guy who's, I think, the only black person in the movie? I mean, so there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's another black character, another black speaking character, right? That is, um, oh, an older cop played by great Bill Cobbs. Yes. Bill Cobbs, you will recognize from New Jack City.

Mm-hmm. He is a wonderful actor. He's, I, I, I love him. I believe he's in New Jack City Yeah Let me just double check that I definitely recognize him Yeah

He is the old man who kills Nino Brown at the end So he's actually been in a film With Snipes before New York City A couple years earlier And he has the only other Speaking role as a black character The other black characters in the movie

Are part of Simon Phoenix's criminal game Right So there's that But there is like Okay Obviously you know Wesley Snipes is a huge masculine icon, a sex symbol. But as we've noted many times every time we dealt with him,

a slightly threatening one, right? One of a masculinity that's threatening that may lose control. That is, you know, and famously Stallone is Rocky. He's the white working class hero. Who's the last great white hope who can beat up a black. guy you know like and and but but still you know it's not really a racist he's a good guy but but there is you have to admit that that making making phoenix simon phoenix as this font of all evil as the black character is pretty remarkable i don't think they would even dare do it at the time i mean

look it's a lot of fun snipes is obviously having a blast with the role it does an incredible job and plays the role with an enormous amount of a palm and it's just like he played this this role was like era defining like kids repeat the lines in this movie we acted out i didn't wasn't allowed to watch it but they acted out scenes from demolition man as a villain he became sort of iconic in this movie not exactly on the level of the joker today but close right i mean like i was gonna i was gonna say yeah i first i think this is one of snipes's like great roles great kind of blockbuster roles the 90s he's obviously had a lot of great dramatic roles right this this stands is like you know this is what you bring wesley snipes in a movie like this for for this kind of high octane

energy that is very that that is very reminiscent of how actors portray the joker these days right um in a funny way and it's an anarchic force right right and that's i think i think because i think you're right to note um first the fact that you have this this hyper-masculine actor and this hyper-masculine character against Stallone, noting the kind of the racial subtext there. Really the meta-text. We know that Stallone is Rocky. We know that Rocky's first two opponents in those films were hyper-masculine black men.

Apollo Creed and then, or the first three films, Apollo Creed and Clever Lang, clever laying played by mr t um so we bring that meta text to this depiction i mean then also within the context of the film um phoenix represents exactly the kind of crime that destroyed the previous l a so this sort of like you know extremely dangerous black crime he's doing cocaine in the first scene yeah he's doing cocaine in the first scene yeah uh uh and so there's all of that but What's interesting is that it's precisely because Snipes takes what could be a bundle of kind of problematic cliches and like puts this extremely personal stamp on it. Like Simon Phoenix is a particular guy. Yeah.

Wesley Snipes. Even if that's not written, Wesley Snipes brings that to the character. For me, at least watching it, like that stuff doesn't come to the four in the same way. It's there, but it's not like it's not, it's not on the surface. purpose in the performance. To Snipes's great credit, he does not, like, do any kind of minstrelsy in the role at all. Like, he plays him as a very strange psychopathic criminal whose race as the way Snipes plays

him seems to be almost besides the boy. I mean, it's impossible to avoid, you know, the South Central L.A. context and the fact that he's black and so on and so forth. But he doesn't do any kind of, like, you know, use of African American vernacular English in offensive ways. Like, he's just like, he's just like, yeah, he's Wesley Snipes. great fun actor playing this great fun role. So he doesn't, you know, another actor, another director could, this could have gone a very

bad way. But like, I think that he, he manages to disarm that part of it. But it's a little bit difficult to completely ignore. The other thing is, I think it's like, who is the demolition? This is my last thought, maybe. It's like, who is the, who is the demolition man? Is it really, is it, they call, they call, what's his name, the demolition man, uh, Stallone? But he's not the demolition man.

Snipes is the demolition man. He's the guy who comes in and starts to fuck everything up. And in a way, he rescues this society by creating the conflict and the necessity for things to kind of have a sense of enjoyment and meaning again. And that's what you get out of. Snipes brings all the fun and the enjoyment to the movie. He's the person having the most fun the entire time, right? Yes. And just being destructive, he's like pure id, right?

And he doesn't even have any motivation. He's kind of being brainwashed and focused towards this assassination he has to do. But he just enjoys being destructive. He's in. And like, you know, the, Stallone is super ego insofar as it had or the ego and, you know, insofar as it can still you call upon enjoyment to do what it needs to do. And the best society is just like, yeah, there's no enjoyment. It's completely sterile.

The demolition man comes in and destroys everything. And it's just interesting to think about, like, what role does, like, our adulation of criminality and violence function as an ideological prop in more than one way? It justifies the police, the continued existence of the police. It justifies the worldview that there has to be force applied. And it also prevents us from feeling emasculated, feeling we live in a sense. society without enjoyment, you know, yeah. I think what it also does is it, our enjoyment of that, of that idea, which is everywhere

in our popular culture, right? Right. What it also does is it kind of emphasizes the idea that, like, these are qualities that just exist in some people. And even though we do not want crime, we need some sort of outlet for that to be expressed in the society. And the way we express that, our outlet for that is kind of market society, it's business. You know, we may, we, we, we both hail criminals, celebrate them in some way.

We also celebrate, like, massive entrepreneurs. We celebrate people who have, like, kind of that kind of instinct, except applied to what we frame as more socially useful ways. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think this movie has a ton of, I mean, I think we could go on for a lot longer. There's a lot of mind out of it. We kind of just, we've like, we begin to, again, the scratching from a Freudian reading of the movie.

For sure. There's definitely there. There's a political reading and a Freudian reading that are kind of interrelated. Yeah. But we'll have to leave it at. We'll leave it at that. Because we're running, running close one time. Go ahead.

I had a dream last night where I came up with an idea for a TV series. It's Wesley Snipes. He's an attorney. except he is just kicking a shit out of everybody. I had this dream where it was a TV show and Wesley Snipes was an attorney and he comes into the office, but then he's just like karate kicking people through play glass windows. I mean, I would, I would watch a movie where or a TV show where Wesley Snipes. It'd be better if he was like on the Supreme Court bar.

And so just like he, you know, he gets a question from like John Roberts and then like, Just kicks them out of the, kicks them through the window, kicks them out off and throws them off of the, yeah. That would be pretty great. Snipes has done a couple things lately. He's kind of been not super prominent, but he was in this, what is, 2021 film. My name is Dolomite. Dolomite is my name. I like that movie a lot.

Yeah, a great, a terrific movie with a great Eddie Murphy performance as well. but Snipes is in the movie as the director of Dolomite, and he is terrific. So if you've not seen that, check out that. I think we've said that before. I think Wesley Snipes is just a great actor, and it really was too bad that he got caught up in sovereign citizen nonsense. Really is shame. Okay. That is our show.

If you're not a subscriber, please subscribe. We're available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher Radio, and Google Podcast, and wherever else podcast. and wherever else podcast are found. If you subscribe, please leave a rating and a review. It does help people find the show. And you can reach out to us on social media if you'd like to. We're both on Twitter for the most part. And there's also the Unclear Pod Twitter feed.

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 Richard titled a couple comments about the Judge Dread episode. Hi, I recently started listening to the podcast. It's great. I just listened to the Judge Shredd episode and had a couple points. First, about the Unabomber. One of you wondered whether either paper published his manifesto as he demanded that they do in the headlines who read. They did, but not right away. I remember there was some agonizing over it within the papers, but eventually they did at the suggestion of law enforcement. And law enforcement was right. Ted Kaczynski's brother recognized his writing style and that's what led to him being caught. It's very funny. It's very funny. to me. And it's very funny, you'd be like, is this, is this Ted? And then, and then having the call the cap. He got caught for being too good of a writer. If only it could happen to all of us. Criminally arrested for being too good. Criminally stylish. I remember once it was published, there was immediate discussion from some people tentatively and almost nervously asking, is the Unabomber kind of right? You're right about this manifesto not really following on either end of the

political spectrum, but he does spend a great deal of it complaining about the left as a movement that failed to meet its initial goals and was converted into something else. Also about Ted Kaczynski, his mind was fried in the MK Ultra program, so his whole deal is another crime you can hang on the CIA. That's interesting. That's fucking interesting, man. Does he say anything more about that? MK Ultra, let's see.

Did they do experiment on him? They gave him asset or something like that? Um, there's, there, there's a couple things here. Uh, okay. I'm, on my, my quick search, uh, search, uh, search here. And it's unclear whether or not this is the case. Um, let's, uh, let's see if I can find anything. I'm going to, I'm going to bracket this one and say, I'm not sure this is actually the case, but MK Ultra was a real thing. Yes. was an illegal human experimentation program designed and undertaken by the CIA intended to develop procedures and identify drugs that could be used during interrogations to weaken people and force confessions. So, yeah, I mean, the CIA being horrible. The CIA being horrible, but the thing we've discussed before in really stupid ways. This is stupid.

This is dumb. Yeah. Well, they do all kinds of silly things. Like, their ideas are usually pretty bad. This is dumb as hell. So, you know, that's the thing. Okay, back to the email. Second, about police nationalism.

The thing that really supercharged that you didn't mention was the use by police of excess military equipment, which was started by H.W. Bush with the 1033 program. So, yeah, 90s origin story. It used to may have been expanded as a reaction to the North Hollywood shootout, and he asked if you've done heat yet. If you haven't done heat, you likely will not. It doesn't really fit the show.

But he famously has a very intense and very long gunfight in the middle of the film. I really am angry at this letter because I realize I have to write, I have to write that into my book now. Oh, God. I thought I was done with this chapter. All right. Thank you. Anyway, go ahead. Thank you, Richard.

Thank you, Richard. He said it's also interesting to look at Copeland, which we've mentioned as a count. counterpoint to judge shred in terms of thinking about the police yeah um thanks for interesting discussion thank you richard thank you richard also for ruining john's day thank you among many things you know just adam get in line uh episodes come out every two week so we will see you then with an episode on the net here is a brief plot synopsis uh angela bennett is a freelance software engineer who lives in the world of computer technology and a cyber friend asked Bennett to debug a new game.

She inadvertently becomes involved in the conspiracy that will soon turn her life upside down and make her the target of an assassination. The net stars Sandra Bullock. It is a classic of 90s hacker cinema. I love that movie. We'll watch it. We'll have a guest for this episode. So I got to confirm with her that she'll be available, but she should.

We'll have a guest. The net is available to rent on iTunes and Amazon. So check it out before you listen to the episode. Let me remind you about our Patreon show, Unclear and Present Patreon, our most recent episode, which is up, is on the Costa Gavras film State of Siege about American involvement in Latin America. It's part of a little mini series we're doing on Costa Gavras, who is a Greek-French director of political dramas. That's up for $5 a month. You get access to two Patreon episodes. on the films of the Cold War and things related to the Cold War.

So again, we were on this Custagabras kick. Our next film after this will be missing in 1983, 84 Custagabras film. And then we'll kind of loop back and do some other stuff. The Patreon, not chronological, kind of just whatever we feel like doing. And, yeah, so $5, Cold War films, and lots of even more esoteric discussion. That's, and that's your thing. Our producer is Connor Lynch, and our artwork is by Rachel Eck. For John Gans, I'm Jamal Bowie, and this is unclear and present danger.

We'll see you next time. You know, Thank you.