Unclear and Present Danger - On Deadly Ground

Episode Date: December 10, 2022

In this week’s episode, Jamelle and John scrape the bottom of the cinematic barrel with the 1994 environmentalist action flick, “On Deadly Ground,” directed by and starring Steven Seagall. It’s not a good movie, but they had a good conversation covering Seagall’s political trajectory, right-wing misogyny, and the psychological origins of authoritarian politics.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.Links from the episode!New York Times front-page for February 18, 1994A Variety review of “On Deadly Ground”Siskel and Ebert review “On Deadly Ground”Next week, Jamelle and John will be joined by The New Yorker’s Clare Malone to discuss “Blown Away” with Jeff Bridges and Tommy Lee Jones.

In this land of frozen beauty, where a proud people make their home, Aegis oil is making a killing. The people here want to talk about the poisons in their environment. If Ages 1 is not online and operational in 13 days, then the oil rights will revert back to the Meskimos, and that is not going to happen. We're back then. But there is hard. Hope. And now he's here.

Steven Seagal is on deadly ground. You're an oil man. But I put out the fires. I stop spills. We are being lied to by some of the most sophisticated people on earth. I know we've had our disagreements. How much money is enough? I don't need that kind of problem right now. Get rid of the problem.

You mean mercenaries? Now this land has a friend In you, I've seen a great spirit These people have a warrior Did you beat up on this little native man And this corporation Find me a buddy or find me the man Has a big problem

You know they're gonna reach out and touch somebody here On deadly ground Welcome to Unclear and Pratern's about the political and military thrillers 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. My name is John Gans. I write a substack newsletter called Unpopular Front, and I'm working on a book about American politics in the early 1990s. Today we are talking about the 1994 environmental action film On Deadly Ground, directed by Stephen Seagall in his directorial debut, and starring, of course, Seagall. I don't think he'd be capable of directing a movie that he didn't star in, as well as Michael Kagan. Kane with this bizarre die job, Joan Chen, John C. McGinley as the least convincing tough guy

ever, and R. Lee Irmy as like a special force, it's mercenary type. It also has a minor appearance from a young Billy Bob Thornton who shows up towards the end. That's fun. Here is a short plot synopsis. Forest Taft is an environmental agent who works for the Aegeus Oil company. AGS Oil's corrupt CEO is the kind of person who doesn't care whether or not oil spills into the ocean or onto the land, just as long as it's making money for him. The tagline, which is pretty pedestrian, his battle to save the Alaskan wilderness and protect its people can only be one. Before we get started, you should watch the movie. I always say that you should watch the movie. I actually kind of enjoy this movie. It's direct, but I kind of enjoyed it. If you want to watch the movie. This is one of the worst fucking movies I've ever seen my entire life, Shemel. I'm kind of pissed off that you made me watch it. I watched it on a plane next to an old man who kept looking over at every, like, person getting their head blown off. So that was fun.

If you would like to watch the movie, it is available to buy our rent on iTunes and Amazon. Before we get to the conversation, of course, we're going to look at the New York Times page. for the day this was released, which was February 18th, 1994. Okay, so some interesting, relevant to our podcast, well, maybe not this movie, headlines. UN reports Serbs are pulling back around Sarajevo. Yeltsin intervenes. Spotter say artillery is retreating NATO's ultimatum stance. Convoys of Serbian artillery are reported to be pulling back from positions around Sarajevo tonight.

After the Bosnian Serbs leader promised to Russia that his forces with withdrawal, United Nations official said, Russia suddenly interposed itself in the standoff today to give the nationalist Serbs of seizing the capital a way to comply with the NATO ultimatum without losing face. NATO has started to bob the Serbs gun positions if their heavy weapons are not moved outside the city kilometer, so the 20 kilometer radius of the city, about 12 miles or turned over the United Nations by Monday morning. So we're in the midst of the NATO intervention in the Yugoslav War and the post-Yugoslav

Wars. This has to do with the Siege of Sarajevo, which was very long and terrible. Let's see what else we got here. Russia said it would send some 800 troops of Syria over for unspecified peacekeeping duties. 450 million fraud by bill collectors charged by U.S. likened to Ponzi scheme. Stephen Hoffenberg surrenders. Thousands of investors were reportedly built. Stephen Hofferberg, the brash Manhattan bill collector, whose financial empire collapsed a year ago, was charged yesterday with the securities fraud and obstruction of justice. The federal complaints said he defrauded thousands of investors across the country of 450 million peanuts these days between 19, between 19, I'm sorry, 1987 and 1993. The scope of the swindle

charged by the government makes the case against Mr. Hoffenberg, 48 of Manhattan. One of the largest securities fraud cases ever filed. The accusation came after a long inquiry by federal prosecutors aided by investigators to the Securities and Exchange Committee. Well, nothing changes. There's always these scams going on and there always will be so long as the economy works this way. I had never heard of this particular scam before, probably because there's just been so many

since then. I think this is just like not even a big one anymore. This is also relevant to recent British offering abortions. abortion drug to U.S. women, and a move prompted as much by pressure politics as by practical concerns, a British clinic will begin offering the abortion pill, U-486, to American women, but only if they're willing to journey to England and pay $500, which terminated the presidency, pregnancy, not their presidency. Funny. And then there is something interesting in terms of the economy. There's a, there's a, an article, um,

An economic evolution from making to thinking. The long evolving shape of the regional economy, and this is about New York region, the long evolving shape of the regional economy is now clearly etched. Mass production, whether in our automobiles, chemicals, or beer, has mostly disappeared from New York City and its environs. Only one in 16 of the 7.3 million people employed in the region still labors on a factory floor. At the same time, residents of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut earned nearly 25% above the

national average. The weight of the region has diminished to where it accounts for less than 8% of the United States output. Okay, and then I'm going to skip this paragraph because this is important, another important part. Now, the New York region is becoming something new under the sun. Most economic centers ship goods elsewhere and consume their services locally. But contrast, the manufacturing that remains in New York region is heavily devoted to the local market while it's cutting edge services, finance, law, communications, popular culture, and medicine are increasingly in demand through the global economy. So, yeah, I mean, we all know that over the past 50 years, the economy in the United States has changed a great deal. And manufacturing has gradually been replaced by services.

You know, New York was always a financial center. But New York was a very industrial town and also a major poor. It still is. But, you know, it had an extraordinarily strong union presence. And, like, there's a, there's a theory among, it's not, it's more than a theory. It's, it's, it's a well-established idea among historians that, like, New York was, like, a social democratic, like, citadel. And even as the rest of the United States kind of moved away from, you know, started to move

towards neoliberalism, and then, you know, it all got screwed up because of deindustrialation, but also the fiscal crisis and so on and so forth. Yeah. I don't, I think there must be less manufacturing than there even was then. So, um, just an, just an important background of our entire podcast is this shift to services away from manufacturing. Anything else here that you see, Jamel, that looks interesting. Um, let's see here. Not so much. Okay. The, um, I mean, just just real quick for the, the, the, the security's fraud. You know, part of the reason this is just kind of, it's funny that this isn't in

newspaper for this episode is that we are still unraveling the, um, the massive securities fraud, uh, on part of what's the same Sam Bankman Fried. Yeah, saying Banking Fried at FTX. Yes, uh, the crypto exchange, uh, who he was apparently just running a straightforward Ponzi scheme, although crypto just always seemed like a Ponzi scheme. Um, it's a, but, uh, yeah, there's, It's just, yeah, it seemed to me always fraudulent, but, you know. Right. But that's ongoing right now. And he's, I mean, he's on the hook for billions, um, as opposed to a mere $450 million.

Uh, I can't, yeah, there's nothing else. There's nothing else here that, uh, seems interesting. I mean, there's here in the corner here as prosperity rises past shackles India. Two years of government reform have brought economic growth that has mostly benefited the 120 million people of India's educated middle class, but despite widespread economic and political change, more than 70% of the country's people continue to live in villages where sharp divisions and caste in economic status have persisted for centuries. The fact that prosperity has alluded to many people with set off sectarian prejudice, weakened India's long claim to

secularism and kept it behind many of its Asian neighbors. I mean, one of the stories of the past decade right has been the rise of hindu nationalism in india and the rise of this um of of uh prime minister modi um who himself is a hindu nationalist in this sort of conception of india away from india as a secular state which was sort of the conception with which it was born as a modern state and towards india as a primarily hindu state um with real hostility towards non hindu religious minorities. And India continues to suffer from this very stark inequality and division and, you know, legacy of the caste system and all these sorts of things. So another headline that's very much kind of, you know, this was 30 years ago just about, but these things are

ongoing and very much still a part of the challenges facing, modern India. India is like geopolitical position. It's always very interesting to me as this very large ostensibly democratic country who for you know for regional reasons geographic reasons has maintained you know like fairly close relationships to China to Russia and so and so forth but also to the United States. And so American presidents going you know Obama Trump now Biden have not said much about the changing political climate in India, but it is one of those things. But it is like, you know, it's like a meaningful change.

And ever so often you'll see a story about how those changes are filtering through the India diaspora in the United States. Yeah, I mean, there are very disturbing stories that come out of India because of Hindutva, the Hindu nationalist ideology. of the ruling party. Courage is sectarian violence, pogroms, essentially, which break out from time to time.

And there's a lot of fear that, like many other places in the world, maybe Indian democracy is not long for this world. It is not yet the end of history. No. The theme of the podcast. Okay, so on deadly ground, we've already talked about Stephen Seagull

quite a bit on part of having done under siege a couple months ago. But we can talk about him some more. This, as I said, is his directorial debut. This is, I think, is his only directorial effort. He may have one other one, but he's not one who spent that much time in the director's chair. Thank God. And this movie, you know, this was, it's funny, he was, this is sort of the point, the movie that really marks the transition for Segal from relatively mainstream action star like Under Siege is a mainstream movie.

Andrew Davis is a mainstream Hollywood director. It has a big star and Tommy Lee Jones and Gary has a modest stars in Gary Busey and several other characters. That is the actors, rather, that is a movie that is well within the Hollywood mainstream. And I think Segal envisioned that this was his like this follow up to Under Siege. It'd be his effort in establishing himself as sort of a mainstream Hollywood director. But unlike Underseas, which is relatively well reviewed and well-like and did quite well at the box office, on deadly ground was just a big disaster. It was, I think it may be too strong to call it a flop.

I mean, let me look up. No, it did well. It did well. It made a profit. It just, critics hated it. It was expensive. Yeah. $50 million is not in, that is, that is, that is, that is.

is not a small amount of money. And it did, it made its budget back, domestic and international. You're right. But critics really hated it. They thought this movie was absolutely terrible. I watched a Siskel and Ebert review of it. Ebert said, this is a movie that is limited to two basic qualities. It's violence and its sanctimony, which is really harsh. Cohn from Ebert. general reviews really really hit on those two points some critics may be appreciated the violence as someone who likes violent movies this movie is much more violent than I was anticipating lots of squib work lots of your bullets to the head knives to the head pulls to the head people getting like shotgun chunks playing out of them it's it's pretty intense as far as the

violence goes. And it is also incredibly sanctimonious Stephen Segal, very clearly think to himself as a great environmental crusader. And critics just, we're done with it. We're done with him. He in the preceding years had had some incidents that really impressed upon people that he was kind of a big jerk, most notably an appearance on Saturday Night Live, which is still kind of legendary for being maybe one of the single worst guest appearances on that show in its history. And until what over 40 year history at this point. You can find clips of it on YouTube. It's very painful. He's just sort of like stiff and awkward and unfunny. He's got no sense of humor. Right. He's a totally humorless person. He apparently was insulting the writers on the set.

So, um, yeah. So Segal not really well liked. Um, I haven't, I didn't find any stories about his behavior on set for this film, but it would not surprise me if he was sort of impurious and condescending all the time, which kind of is his whole vibe. So it's after this movie that Seagal, you know, really, it's like a straight, you know, straight down to into the worst of the direct-to-video stuff. I mean, this is for a lot of these guys, like John Claude Van Damme was a couple years away from this as well. But like Van Dam, well, by his own admission was kind of a co-cattle maniac in the 90s, hasn't had enough, like, charm to be able to bounce back from all of that as he got older. not Seagal. Seagal has continued to, you know, to be terrible. And if you've ever even caught a glimpse of a recent Seagal movie, it is almost comical in how. Dude, they're so bad. And how bad they

are. And how much he is unable to let go of any of his considerable vanity. For what it's worth, Seagal considers this film on Deadly Ground as one of the most important and relevant moments in his career. And he did do a second environmental film that was shot on his ranch. We will not watch that, of course. I think this might be it for Seagall. I'm tempted to do Underseats 2, Underseats 2, which is a fine movie. It has a great character actor as the villain whose name I suddenly forget. But it deals with technology and that kind of stuff. So maybe that, but I think we'll encounter Seagal at least one more time with executive decision, which is more of a Kurt Russell film in which Seagal has sort of a minor part. But we're like either, I think

one more Segal appear into two more and then we're done with this guy. He's kind of, he's kind of tiresome. As for the movie, the plot is very straightforward. As I said at the top, Seagal plays this environmental agent. He helps put out fires on oil rigs. When we meet him in the film he puts out a fire in what is a kind of hilariously self-aggrandizing set of scenes including where he sets off the explosives to kill the fire and the explosion is the entire frame behind him and he's like staring directly into the camera it's um it's just it's just like it is the work of someone with like i mean you john you recently wrote about Kanye and sort of a Kanye level ego, right? Someone and I think I think I think I think as we

discuss Segal getting to the way his ego has as played a part in his association with you know, far right and authoritarian figures is going to be part of that. But that's but that's how he meets Segal. The main antagonist in the film is Michael Kane. He plays an oil executive. He plays. He actually has my favorite performance in the film, kind of an insane. He's a good actor. Yeah. He's like one of the only in the movie. So like he delivers a decent performance. But yeah. And it's a performance where he's really just playing up being kind of a piece of shit, constantly yelling and screaming and insulting people, that kind of thing. And so he plays this, you know, pretty pretty monomaniacal oil executive who wants to get. drilling as quickly as possible because if he doesn't, the releases on the land will revert back to the Eskimo tribe, the native tribe nearby. One of the technicians, one of the managing

technicians on the project is like, you know, he's cutting corners, tries the report. And so Michael Kane's character and his security advisor, played by Johnson McGinley, whom I love is a great actor, but it's not intimidating whatsoever. They have him killed and they try to have Seagall killed. Segal, who at this point we've learned, you know, he can fight. There's a bar fight where he beats the shit out of an old man and it's sort of like a heroic, especially heroic moment, but it's like, no, you just like broke an old man's leg for no reason. Yeah. Segal, they try to kill him too. He's recovered by the natives. He has a spiritual experience. It's basically revealed that he's like this chosen person meant to save the natives. And then the last 30 minutes or so, it's just. just like, you know, killing everyone who stands in his way. He's described by, you know, Michael Cain's character as being this, like, this unstoppable operator killing machine. Kind of like, I mean, kind of the way, the way his character is in this movie is like a seven-year-old describing their dad. Yes.

You know, like my dad is the strongest person and he can kill everyone and he builds bombs in his free time and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. that is Seagall in this movie. And so, for my part, just to put a final point on this quick overview of the movie here, I was able to sort of just like appreciate it for being this insane vanity project on part of Seagal, despite it having really no redeeming qualities beyond that. Because it really is quite, I mean, it really is a monument to this guy's, ego um and uh it's like remarkable in that regard uh john what do what do you you said that you thought this was one one of the worst we've seen what with one of the worst movies i've seen

that was not like a like a zero budget like see movie that's like on mystery science zero 3,000 or something right right right not like a plan nine from outer space or yeah exactly not like an headwood movie. Yeah. Yes, exactly. Not like, this is like one of the worst like Hollywood movies I've ever seen. And, um, I've seen some bad ones. I think that like, I see what you're saying about. Steven Seagall's vibe, his persona, his affect, his form of macho that he embodies. To me, is so unbelievably annoying and stupid. Like, I like, like most American guys. Like, I can get to tough guy characters in movies. Like, I have no problem with it. But for, I like Clint Eastwood movies and stuff like that. But for some reason, the particular type of machismo that he represents, like, really bugs me because it's just so dumb.

He's like his, and it's, it's this combination of, in the Orientalism shit of it, like, there's, like, the movie begins with, like, this Asian-sounding music. And, like, his whole, like, Ikedo, I'm a black belt, like, the, wisdom of the eat have this like condescending like oh I'm into the wisdom of the east the total lack of humor um like his total inability to deliver a line in an interesting way like his acting being being being terrible like it just really bugs the absolute shit out of me like I just cannot stand him like there's I like and I just it just made me appreciate I was like man like compared to this guy like fucking Arnold Schwarzenegger is a genius like you know like as an actor and like

is so much more fun to watch, like, as an action hero. But I think that, like, and, okay, the politics and the movie, it's interesting because, like, you know, environmentalism, as our listeners probably know, was very big in the 90s. It sort of became a mass political thing. It was very culturally relevant. There was a lot of discussion about it. It was a hip thing to be an environmentalist. It was also kind of a hip thing to make fun of environmentalists. Um, and, you know, this, this movie would have, you know, fit very well.

It was, wouldn't, it's politics or its, it's, it's message it has about environmentalism or it's not an outlier like this. These, these types of things were going around. Um, the Exxon Valdives disaster, uh, where a tanker had a spill and was a horrible disaster was only, it was in 1989 and that kind of raised consciousness about, uh, oil being, you know, oil spills being, you know, really huge problems and something that needs to be dealt with. So it very much fits in that. And there is something kind of, well, it's environmentalist.

I wouldn't say it was left wing. It's left wing and it's kind of anti-corporate politics. But there's something like also we have to know, like, it's treatment of Inuit people is probably at this point just like embarrassingly. condescending and like what is orientalism towards native americans there's like there is something about that it's like it's not appropriation exactly but it's like it's like oh we admire the wisdom of the indians and but it's like extremely like simplifying condescending like not treating them as like real people but as like oh they they're just expressions of the earth and like natural spirit and i was like no these are people like you know um it's funny like there's no

Like, there's no romance between him. Well, thank God, because it would fucking make me puke. But, like, there's no romance between him and Joan Chan in the movie, who is a Chinese American, I believe, not an Inuit. It plays an Inuit, because what's the fucking difference, right? So, like, they, they, yeah. So this was before there was a lot of consciousness about, you know, who should get role.

There are, there are innuets in the movie, but. secondary characters of who should get a of who should get roles wasn't really you know that that whole conversation of representation wasn't that much i don't know if there was demonstrations about this movie but there was a lot of interest in the 1990s also with native culture i remember i mean well you had dances with wolves which was huge a huge film and and i think there was an approach. And I think that movie had mixed reception among Native Americans. But there was some cultural fascination. It kind of went hand in him with the western of 90s Western revival. There was a big cultural fascination with Native Americans in the 90s, which went hand

in hand, also with the environmentalism of this movie. And with a kind of, there was a sort of consumerist hippieism in the 90s, which, which like, man, It manifested itself in a lot of interest in, like, alternative medicine, Eastern medicine, and interest in Native American cultures and practices in ways that today would be looked at as probably pretty tasteless, if not downright offensive, was, there was a lot of that percolating. This movie is replete with that, those attitudes, and he, he's the, he's a friend of the Indian and, and, and a kind of, white savior figure in the movie. Yeah, and the movie doesn't have, like, except for that stupid, I don't know what the word is, like, it's almost like Noble Savage ideology, kind of, I would say, yeah.

It doesn't have overtly reactionary themes, like, that would come out as later politics, like being buddies with Putin and stuff like that. it's pretty it's pretty lefty about it's it's like it's like pretty anti-business and he he gives the speech at the end being like we need to like stop corporations the takeaway of corporations for doing it and impose massive changes in production so they don't create things that pollute the earth you know um so so an environmentalist that the environmentalism that liberals and leftists could kind of cheer for in this movie movie, I guess. What doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense to me is that when they

blow up the fucking oil rig, I mean, that's probably caused a giant disaster. They're like trying to like save. They kind of gesture at, he's like, this implosion will make sure the oil doesn't spill, but like, you're still, you're still blowing up a, um, an oil refinery, which just doesn't seem like it be good for, you know, the environment. You know what? You know what's really annoys me about Steven Seagull's machismo and like what's so stupid, like fundamentally dumb about it is like he doesn't demonstrate. He's, as you were pointing out, like he and, and this is kind of like on US and Trump

to a certain degree, even though Trump, I think not to give him too much credit, like has some level of self-awareness and sense of humor about himself, it expresses itself randomly sometimes like an inability to to to think of yourself as vulnerable or like not a god on earth you know what I mean like right yeah can't lose a fight he can't lose a fight the only time he gets hurt is because like he gets tricked and they blow him up like he can't just like encounter something he can't encounter anybody in the movie who is smarter or stronger than him and it's just like so boring and it's like such a

dumb narcissistic attitude you're just like like you just I could just imagine having a conversation with him and just being like oh my god this is like the most fucking tiresome shit because I've met I mean we've all met people like this who like just

will confabulate and make up things and enhance their abilities to like superhuman levels because they just can't they don't have enough of sense of humor themselves or self-awareness of themselves to be like um you know like oh yeah you know sometimes I'm I can be a loser sometimes you know like just just like a normal human being has like a sense of themselves and it's just like complete absence of that it's just so unattractive in every way and I think that that there is a connection between that nuts sort of way of being and

his policy what so he became friends with vladimir putt and and putton has also has this kind of like macho reactionary environmentalism like there's all those pictures of him and like with the fucking you know in siberia on the horse and all that kind of stuff um they have like a similar like i can see why they why they why they vibe together but like yeah this this is sort of like authoritarian politics is like the inability it's like authoritarian politics on the level of personality. And we see that now also with Kanye's attraction to Hitler and stuff like that. It's like the inability to ever like be like, yeah, you know what? Maybe I'm wrong. I don't want to boil authoritarian politics down to psychology. But there's something that like you,

it needs people like this. Like this is the kind of person who just like can never admit that they're wrong, lives in a world of delusion. And like is willing to like alter the world. to keep their self-image intact. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. So I think that there's a connection between that, the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

he's terrible personality and his terrible politics. No, I think, I think there is, I mean, I think you can see, um, I mean,

in the way this film was constructed to present him as basically superhuman. You mentioned he was harmed by an explosion. And what's funny about that is later in the film, there's a comparable explosion that takes out of a helicopter, right? Like, a shed blows up and kind of the outer rim of the explosion hit the helicopter and the helicopter

explodes. Stephen's a goal more or less is consumed by a much larger explosion earlier in the movie and like comes away basically unscathed. And it sort of, it's like, it was funny to me to see. But also it's a great example in the film of how, as you mentioned, he cannot be, he has to be the master of his environment. Nothing can touch him. Nothing can harm him. nothing can, uh, uh, render him vulnerable. And I think, I mean, to, to broaden it from Saga a little bit, I think if you look at kind of the, um, the growth of reactionary movement in the United States since I'd say 2015. And you look at how the, you know, most of the major players in them are men, not that women aren't a part of these things, uh, in spades, but kind of the,

the figures that stand out are men, you know, recently Elon Musk is his turn to pretty explicitly reactionary politics. You're a prominent man, Trump, obviously, Kanye, all these people. And there does seem, there does appear to be a real connection between, you know, this resistance to any form of vulnerability whatsoever, whether it be physical or emotional or whatever, political, right? Also, like a deep-seated misogyny and hatred of women. And then sort of a turn towards reactionary politics. Like when I think about the people in the last few years who have made this turn towards reactionary politics, I think the actual signal thing that that that seems to connect them all is like a deep contempt for women,

for femininity, for vulnerability. And that seems to be like the pathway by which you find your way to authoritarian reactionary politics, which satisfy this emotional desire to be free of that kind of influence. And so Seagal is like a particularly cartoonish version of it because he's a cartoonish human being. But it does very much seem to be something that you can kind of, you can like make a general claim about looking at various prominent figures. Again, not to reduce all of this purely to psychology. But people's psychology, people's psychology is a part of how they end up in one political formation or another or justice. that part of like American cultural life which is in a while you know for as much as you'll find

you know people complain about like the feminizing of the American man and blah blah blah there's like quite a bit of deep-seated misogyny in American society and uh in its you can see how like maybe in its like pathological forms it leads um it helps helps glide the path to a particular political destination. I wanted to quickly kind of like make note about the environmentalism in this movie and kind of environmentalism in the 90s because, you know, in the 60s and 70s for when the environmental movement really takes off in the United States, there is a really distinct you know, sort of like anti-capitalism within that environmentalist movement, almost to the point

kind of like a deep growth right like you have books like the population bomb which is sort of like you know the earth's carrying there's a carrying capacity for the earth we're reaching it we won't be able to support enough people there's a lot of popular fiction written at this point that's envisioning like a post carrying capacity earth where the um human race is exhausted all the resource of the planet i think on the patreon we will eventually do soylent green maybe on the occasion of whenever there's like a re-release, a physical media re-release. But sort of green, the planet of the apes, like these are movies that are very much like a tune to sort of like this vibe in American culture in the 60s and 70s. What's interesting to me about the

environmentalism of the 90s. And in the environmentalism, I think you can kind of see in this movie and that is exemplified within the movie by Steven Seagull's speech at the end, his sort of sounds like he's running for office speech at the end of that movie at the end of this movie is how it's sort of like I mean this I think this this this this gets to something we were talking we may have been talking about in a Patreon episode that you you've written about which is that the issue for Segal and this is exemplified in the in Michael Keynes villain right it isn't it is oil production right but also like if If the capitalists, if the people in charge of global energy production were more responsible, then we wouldn't have these problems.

And so the issue was like a lack of responsibility on part of the people leading industry, not so much the very. Right. It's not like, oh, well, if you pull this stuff out of the earth, like you're going to have accidents. And it's like it's intrinsically dangerous and polluting. Like, that's not a part of the movie. A part of the movie is like, there's a bad guy, and he's doing it, and he's doing it wrong. And, you know, but he points out of the speech at the end, he's like, well, as long as, like, profits can be made, then this sort of thing will happen. But I see what you're saying for sure.

The rest of the film, if Michael Cain's guy had just been, like, 15% less insane and a little more responsible, then there wouldn't be a movie. But just, like, 90s environmentalism, I think, can attesting to it. its popularity and its large cultural footprint was just like it was it was a reduced for use recycle right environmentalism sort of like your individual choices are the things that will help improve the environment I remember being a kid and sort of like urging my kids my parents to recycle our cans and bottles and such right yeah of course the rainforests you got to worry about the rain for yeah i think 94 is when ferngully comes out which is a film all about sort of like you know how how our our individual behavior as consumers is harming the environment

but like asking the larger question which is sort of like is the you know the modern capitalist consumer economy even compatible with environmental preservation like are there actually better choices we can make or do we need like a systemic change like that's not really in the conversation um in the environmental pictures of of this decade and in the environmental discourse of this decade yeah i yeah there was a lots of environmental consumerism which you know which still exists but that was huge in the 90s it was a it was a new thing um you had the rainforest cafe of course um yes yes you had you had you had um you had um the body shop that that that um cosmetic store which was built based on cruelty free and

natural ingredients was in a lot of malls i think it turned out that they were like not of doing they were uh breaking a lot of their own rules but not a huge surprise yeah but there was a lot of that going on and i guess this movie is very much in that vein um and yeah and it was related to these other, you know, cultural phenomenon of, of Americans being fascinated with Eastern cultures and Native American cultures is somehow

being more aligned with the forces of nature. And he was a, I think he's a self-described Tibetan Buddhist and friends with the Dalai Lama, Segal. And he, that was also, I mean, Support for Tibet, Tibetan autonomy and independence within China was very big in the 90s. Interest in Tibetan Buddhism was huge in the 90s.

As a, you know, part of what's, it's not exactly the same, but part of like what's called the New Age, which was a lot of interest in trying to like, you know, find a more. It comes out of the 1960s hippie, but hippieism a little bit, but it's a little different. Trying to find, you know, like more integrated and non-harmful ways of like existing with the planet. And, you know, as we can see, there's nothing intrinsically progressive about those urges because the kind of right-wing hippie that, you know, perhaps, well, he's not really a hippie. The kind of, you know, I guess it's, yeah, these sort of like new age right wingers have become like their own cultural phenomenon. And like it used to be that people who were interested in alternative medicine, who are perhaps skeptical of vaccines, who are environmentalists, were pretty much, you know, considered to be on the left of the United States political spectrum of liberals. That's changed a lot.

You have more and more people who, you know, liberals generally and left-wingers generally kind of trust, you know, the regulatory state for better or worse. They trust science, the medical establishment, such that it is. And the distrust of that was sort of a liberal and leftist thing kind of coming out of the new left, anti-bureaucratic. bang in the 90s and has now really just been totally totally is a right thing right wing thing now and people who were considered liberals or consider themselves liberals and had leftist politics because of those issues have become increasingly self-identified as right wing or identified by others as right wing this is interesting like so wait I read I read something funny just now. Spade and Meadows cited Seagull's humorlessness, his ill-treatment of the cast and writers

his refusal to do a Hans and Franz sketch because the skits title characters had previously said they could beat up Steven Seagal. How much of a fucking baby do you have to be? Like, what kind of a person is this? And then, yeah, so anyway, it's not surprising that he turned into this weird Putin worshiper. He wrote a book in 2007, and this is like his politics in a nutshell. The way of the shadow wolves, the deep state, and the hijacking of America, a Tahano, which is a native nation, shadow wolf tracker working for the U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement Agency, foils a plot by Mexican drug cartels and the deep state to smuggle in Islamist territory for the U.S.-Mexico border. So, like, he's always like interested in native cultures.

but also like there's something racist right there's both something racist about it and it's also a way to like launder paranoid and racist feelings about other groups being like well it's a native tracker but he's like but the islamists are sneaking or the mexican drug cartels are slinking the islamas over the border um yeah anyway i don't have as you can see as you might have been able to tell by this far i don't have that many nice things to say about stevenzacal um yeah i i i'm trying to put my finger on it though like they're He, he, he, he, he does represent what you're saying is this, this, this, I mean, he has a number of sexual, um, assault and harassment cases, you know, and that certainly makes sense that he, he was just photographed with that awful. What's that guy's name? The fucking, that guy who was like a big influence on the internet, he's like super misogynistic, Nat Tate or some Andrew Tate or something like that. Oh, Andrew Tate. Yeah, I'm sorry, Nat Tate if you're a person, I've just slandered you. But, yeah, so, yeah, that guy, he was photographed with him, I think, in Russia. And, you know, obviously, like, there's an enormous amount of misogyny in Russian society

and in Putin's politics. And, yeah, the type of machismo that he represents, there's some kind of, these things are all of a piece. I don't exactly know what is the key to bring it all together offhand right now. It is a kind of narcissism. it is kind of similar to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to what with Connie O.S. But Cony West, I think this is much more manic, like, much more, um, outrageous personality to begin with. And, and, and, and, and, like, his success comes from

expressing himself, um, and expressing himself and saying things that others, he was like, well, it's always been, I've always just been able to say whatever. And, like, that's worked for me. Like, that's what people love. Like, I say, I say crazy shit and people love. it. But yeah, I don't know what else to say about this. It's not a vibe that I like. And I'm not even particularly like, you know, I guess there's a term I don't really like because I think it's like way too overused and also psychologizes politics too much. There's like toxic masculinity. The fact of the matter is, is like there are, and I'm not, I don't even mind talk, like what some people would call toxic masculinity in films among characters. I'm like,

I'm sorry, that could be that person has serious defects of character, but they're an interesting and compelling character in this movie and there's, there's no way around it. This to me is like, it's not even, it's like just totally vapid. You know what I mean? Like, I think that that's, that's the difference. Like, there's like, and when I, when I, when I like, when I, when I, see this like I react really strongly against it like I don't and that's like what bugs it's like stupidity bugs me like it's it's not about and I think like everyone the reaction of people who hold this is like oh you're so you're you're overly woke and I'm like no you're just an idiot like I can tolerate yeah I can tolerate a certain degree I mean like I think everyone can tolerate like

masculinity being expressed with certain problematic features like it's just part of our culture, for better or worse, we celebrate it. But then there's this other form of utter idiot macho, which is just like, to me, like, the worst thing in the world. And, like, and, and, and, and just, like, just I cannot, I cannot with it. But, but, but, um, and that's what I was thinking about. Some of these, some of the politics of these people in, like, their incapacity to handle ambiguity on any level, right? Yeah. Like that, it makes them freak out, you know?

Like, and like, they can't just be like, oh, yeah, well, I don't know. I might not know. It might be in principle, impossible to know or control things. And human beings are fundamentally flawed. I'm fundamentally flawed. You know, no. And that's where the whole wisdom of the East comes from because the pretension His pretension there is like, oh, I can do karate and become an Aikido master.

And then I'm like, suddenly, like, have a way of negotiating the world that makes me invincible, which is idiotic. Right. Like, yeah. I think that's, yeah. And in a way, I think it's the interest. That's the connection between this interest in the East and Native Americans is like trying to go for traditions, find traditions that provide. a wholesome world without and like get rid of the possibility of the complexities of and anxieties of modern society which you know has a lot you know it's just like it's just like

this like this fake Buddhism is about like not just like being present in the world that we live in so one thing I wanted to that you touched on earlier that I just wanted to loop back to um was just I mean just for this connection between the environmentalism and the authoritarian politics. And although this, as far as I can tell, wasn't really a thing in the 90s, you're starting to, you know, it's starting to. You can see now a sort of synthesis of like far right politics and kind of environmentalism. Often under the guise of basically we have to exterminate this group of people to preserve, preserve the planet. And I'll say it's not as if this stuff was necessarily, this is kind of always been a subtext

to some mainstream environmentalism, especially of the overpopulation sort, right? Because whenever there was concern about overpopulation, no one was thinking about the United States and Europe, right? It was always sort of like in the developing world, there would be too many people in China and India and Africa. There'll be too many people. And so to the extent that there is now a new synthesis of environmentalism and fire art politics, it really is just taking that subtext and making a text. And there have been, you know, some of the recent in the present, some of the recent attacks, the Buffalo, I think was the Buffalo attack last year,

the supermarket attack. But there have been a few in which the perpetrators and their manifestos or whatever have basically like voice something to this effect that right like the only way we're going to be able to preserve the environment is by eliminating yeah um so i'm not saying that segal isn't eco-fascist uh it's much dumber than that right it's much it's much it's it's sort of like he's he's in a way like too stupid to to kind of get to that point but um that I just wanted to make the point that there's, like, there's, there's, there's, there's nothing about concern with an environment that is, like, incompatible with a far-right politics. It can be adapted to it quite easily. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And really from the beginning, because a lot of, a lot, there was a lot of, like, esoteric nature worship in, you know, German vulkish movement that, you know, was before Hitler and so on and so forth. Hitler was a vegetarian. I love to point out to people. So does, this was a, this was a famous, famous, infamous part in a book liberal fascism way back way. Right. There's, there's, uh, Hitler's a vegetarian, therefore, therefore watch it, Libs.

If you're a vegetarian, you are, you are Hitler. Um, okay, you know what's another interesting? Oh, so I'm going to talk about this. Steven Seagall is Jewish. Like, he, his father. Because he really. Yeah. His father is a Russian Jew.

And he now lives in Russia and he talks about his Russian origins, but he doesn't talk about being Jewish. He kind of has made up. I don't know if I'm, this might be to the point of being unfair, but I highly suspect he's made up. He visited, he visited Siberia. And he claims that he did a DNA. test and he had this is not uncommon and russia was multi-ethnic empire there's lots of you know of of intermarriage and and and that happened and so it's not totally crazy but he claims to have um you know the he the blood as he puts it of siberian um of siberian you know ethnic people um

and, you know, I think that that's interesting to me because, like, he really, really wishes he was not, there's something about him, like, with his, with his cultural appropriations and his, like, the martial arts thing, like, there's something about it. He just, like, really doesn't want to be who he is. Like, he doesn't want to just be, like, a white Jewish guy, Russian Jewish guy. Like, he really is attracted to the. these peoples that he believes have like a more, I don't know, integrated relationship with nature and the world and so on and so forth.

And they're idealized, you know, noble savageized or whatever. And I think that that's maybe a big part of his psychology and so far that he has one. I do think, I mean, that's not to say that it's not possible that he's, you know, as I said, many people in Russia have, you know, many different ethnic origins. So it's, I'm not, I'm not just going to be like, he's lying. But it's interesting that he, he, he, he, he emphasizes that and it's something that he wants to advance. And when he's asked by Russian TV to talk about his, to talk about his Russianist, he's not like, oh, I'm a Jew, my family were Jews from St. Peter. He's like, no, I'm a, you know, like a Boryat or a Yakut, you know, tribes person, not, you know. So that's interesting to me.

And I'm not saying that this is all internalized anti-semitism on, on Stephen Seagall's part. But it, but, but, but maybe perhaps another psychoanalytic angle we can take on this. I, I have no insight into that whatsoever. Um, uh, uh, although, yeah, I mean, that, that, that would go some, some ways to explaining why this dude's just so weird. Um, yeah. But I, I think it's, it's, we're coming on time to wrap up. So, um, any, any last thoughts on the movie. This is the worst fucking movie I have ever seen. And I hope we never watch anything as bad as this again, because it was a chore.

it was fun to talk about, I will give it that. Do not watch this movie. Don't waste your time unless you have a high tolerance for this. Yeah, unless you're me, unless you just love to gobble up trash like I do. Don't always get something out of it. Yeah. Don't watch this movie. It's, it's really bottom of the barrel seagal, which is kind of just bottom of the barrel cinema to begin with. It's trash. Yeah. Okay, that's our show. If you're not a subscriber, please subscribe. Are 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 have been doing that. It's been great. I think we're almost up to like 300 reviews. And 90% of them are very

positive. 10% of them are not. But, you know, if you have a bad review too, just I won't show it to John. I'll just read it and internalize it. Why? Because it makes me angry? Yes, because it makes you angry. There really have been very few negative reviews. I look at them too. I look at them too. And sometimes I do get angry at them.

And sometimes I even tweet about them because I'm like, I don't want to encourage people who don't like the show to think that they're getting under my skin by doing this. But sometimes I do get pissed by your bad reviews. But the vast majority of their views are quite positive. Very nice. And so please keep leaving and we really appreciate it. You can reach out to both of us on Twitter while that. I mean, I think Twitter is going to exist for a while. It's just going to become an awful cesspool of terrible people.

But we'll be on there. I'm at Jay Bowie. John, you are. I'm at Lionel underscore trolling. And the podcast Twitter handle is at Unifle. unclear pod where I kind of just tweet about the movies for the podcast, tweet about stuff related to it, and respond to you and your questions. So please utilize the Twitter feed as a resource. If you have Twitter, and I want to bring this up because people are frequently

asking if we're going to do X movie or Y movie on the Twitter feed. I post a link and I post it every so often to a letterbox list that has more or less everything we plan to cover on this podcast, kind of up through the end of the post-Cold War movie. We'll likely continue the podcast after that, but for now I just haven't ended basically. I think the last movie on there is like the last movie of the genre produced before 9-11, released after, but produced before, which then I cut off there. But you'll find everything. So people asking if we're going to do the siege, we're going to, I mean, of course we're

going to do the siege. It's sort of like it is one of the movies. had in mind when John and I first talked about during this podcast. Are we going to do Arlington Road? Yes, we're going to do Arlington Road. I mean, it's all there. So I would highly encourage you to seek that out. I'll post it again so you can find it very easily, but it has everything there. And Patreon subscribers can also get access to the list of all the movies we intend to do for the Patreon, which we add to on the regular because there are a lot of movies to potentially do for the Patreon.

You can reach out to us over email and unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com. For this week in feedback, we have an email from PD. It's titled, The One Time Someone Tried to Pelican Brief a Supreme Court justice, kind of. Can I just say real quick that I'm really trying to make Pelican brief a verb for political violence. So please keep using it that way. I really encourage you to do it. I think it's funny. Hi, Jamel and John. Really enjoyed this week's podcast about the Pelican brief this previous episode. Just wanted to pass along an interesting bit of historical trivia. It's not really an example of someone trying to Pelican brief a Supreme Court justice, but it is the most notorious

example and perhaps the only example of an attempted assassination of a Supreme Court justice. The justice, Stephen Field, was formerly a justice in the Supreme Court of California. Another former California jurist, David Terry, who lost his judicial office after he killed a senator in a duel, there you go, had developed a grudge against Field after Terry's return to private practice. Field had ruled against him in divorce proceedings in other cases. The two ran into each other on a train in Lathrop, California, and Terry started beating Field. The U.S. Marshal accompanying the justice and shot and killed Terry. After the marshal was imprisoned by California authorities, he petitioned for a writ.

of habeas corpus, and the case went up to the Supreme Court, field still justice, recused himself from hearing the case. The court decided that Nagel, oh, who's the marshal, could not be prosecuted by state officials since he was acting under federal authority. Fans of presidential power loved this case since Nagel, a member of the executive branch, didn't have clear statutory authority to kill civilians, but the Supreme Court inferred that he needed to take reasonable measures to protect federal officials. More than 100 years later, John Yu,

but Sight and Nagel as a key precedent in the memos used to justify torture under the George W. Bush administration, Christ Almighty. John U, real, real, real piece of shit. It's not really an instance of someone trying to kill his Supreme Court justice to guarantee certain judicial outcomes, but it's fascinating nonetheless. In that respect, it bears much greater. resemblance to suspect. A pretty bizarre film about a Supreme Court justice who's complicated past drives him to suicide featuring Cher as a public defender. Dennis Quaid is a sleazy

lobbyist who ends up as a juror in one of Cher's cases. Liam Neeson as a mute homeless man and Cher's client, John Mahoney of Frazier as the judge, and Fred Melamed, who people will know as Cy Abelman from a serious man, as Cher's colleague. Great movie, one of my favorites. That's a Very strange-sounding movie. Looking forward to the next episode, Petey. Thank you, Petey. That's very interesting history there. Just for the sake of listeners, just we can...

This sounds very 19th century, but I'm actually not sure. So I'm just going to check real quick. Yeah, so this was all happening in the late 19th century. That's right, Stephen Field, Supreme Court Justice from 1863 to 1897. So, yeah. I mean, the fact that this is like the closest we have to someone trying to kill Supreme Court justice, it's just to make this point again, an illustration of just how very, how very insulated the court has been from this sort of stuff despite being so politically significant for so long.

It's just, it's just an interesting thing that. Well, Woody Harrelson's dad killed a judge. Yeah, Woody Harrelson's dad. That wasn't political. That was like a criminal thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's like in this case, it's just sort of like people were beefing. And in the 19th century, it just happened to be the case that, like, if you beefed, if you beefed with a, if you were two, you know, judges, politicians ever, and you had a beef, there's like a non-trivial chance at one of you will try to kill the other. Yes. But explicitly political violence against Supreme Court justice, still, it's just very in common. Okay. Episodes come out every other Friday.

So we will see you in two weeks with a little movie called Blown a Wall. way. We're kind of back to our IRA films. Oh, hell yeah. Blowed away is a personal favorite of mine. This movie is so buck wild. I have a big grin on my face. I really like this movie a lot. I'm just not going to spoil anything, but there's a scene where the antagonist Tommy Lee Jones blows up an old man. And after he does it, he has like a smile on his face. And it's so, it's so fucking funny. So this movie is great. We'll have a guest for this movie. A good friend of mine, Claire Malone of The New Yorker, will be joining us for this episode. I did not ask her to do this because she is Irish, asked her to do it because she really

likes Tommy Lee Jones. Okay. I just want to make that clear. We're not ethnically profiling her. Here's a quick plot synopsis. Blown away tells the story of Jimmy Dove, who works for the Boston Bomb Squad, shortly after Dove leaves the Force, his partners killed by a bomb

that Dove thinks may have been made by someone he knows. It's available for rent on Amazon and iTunes. Highly recommend it. It's a really fun movie. Really worth checking out. For John Gant, I'm Jamal Bowie, and this is unclear and present danger.

We'll see you next time. I don't know.