Unclear and Present Danger - Passenger 57 (feat. Amanda Smith)

Episode Date: October 3, 2022

In this episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John are joined by Amanda Smith of the Disaster Girls podcast to discuss the Wesley Snipes vehicle “Passenger 57,” which features an extremely charismatic Snipes facing off against an off-band Hannibal Lecter and also, casual racism.Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck.Contact us!Follow us on Twitter!• UnclearPod • John Ganz • Jamelle Bouie • Amanda SmithLinks from the episode!• New York Times front-page for November 6, 1992 • Interview with Stewart Raffill, one of the writers for Passenger 57 • Disaster Girls podcast

They finally captured the world's most dangerous hijacker. Now, they're bringing him back for trial on a plane. Once again, Charles Raine is in control. And how do you like your sirloin, sir? Bloody. But there's just one thing he didn't count on. Passenger 57. I watch his show all the time.

Who's in charge? I am. I'm free! His name's John Carter. His airline security. Tell me you're good at this. I'm the best. They're not working out the way you want it?

Don't flatter yourself, Katta. Can your father ever teach you? Never send a boy to do a man's job. Wesley Snipes. You need the help? No. He's all mine. Passenger 57.

You ever play roulette? On occasion. Let me give you a word of advice. Always bet on black. Welcome to episode 24 of unclear and present danger, a podcast 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 joined by Amanda Smith of the Disaster Girls podcast, on Wonderland.

show. Welcome to the show, Amanda. Thank you guys for having me. Today we are covering, I think, a kind of forgettable, but still mostly fun little thriller from 1992, titled Passenger 57, directed by Kevin Hooks and starring Wesley Snipes, Bruce Payne, Tom Seismore, and Elizabeth Hurley. Here is a brief plot synopsis. An airline security expert must take action when he finds himself trapped on a passenger jet when terrorists sees control of it. Kind of your basic diehard in the sky this time. As always, you should watch the film before listening to the conversation. Passenger 57 is available for rental on iTunes and Amazon, as well as for streaming on Paramount

Plus. I actually own this movie. You do? So you could also go that route, too. Before we get to the movie, let's look at the New York Times page for the day of release, which is November 6th, 1992, the Friday after America, elected Bill Clinton. John, you take it. So, yes, in keeping with the inauguration of the Clinton era,

we're getting into the 90s that everybody fondly remembers, which is not too much headline news. U.S. puts a $200 punitive tax on white wines from Europe, okay? Setting the table for Arkansas Travelers. So there's a piece here about how Washington is going to change with the people that Clinton brings in from Little Rock. Aides say Clinton will swiftly void GOP initiatives of bold images saw abortion rights and eliminations of officials' privileges are cited's top priorities. There was a lot of talk in this time of codifying, as we say now, codifying Roe v. Wade of making a federal abortion law.

It kept on coming up and not happening, as we know, it didn't happen. And then here's the one that's kind of relevant and interesting. Ukraine facing the high cost of democracy, 14 months into independence. Ukrainians are learning that the romance of national is hard to sustain when the economy is in shambles. This is about the difficult time that Ukraine was having after becoming its own country, achieving independence from the Soviet Union. dealing with, you know, becoming a capitalist economy for the first time and the severe political problems that arose with that. In suburbs, the stealthy war against infiltrating students with a self-pursion of agents on a drunk raid, private directives and security guards formed out through Elmont, Long Island, and unmarked cars went their inquiry was not crack dealers.

It was teenagers from Queens who crossed the border into Nassau County in search of a better education. Okay, so people trying to go to school in Queens in better school districts. All right. I don't know. Do you have any thoughts about any of this, Jamel? I mean, the setting the table for the Arkansas Travelers gets just like one of the stranger, I think, subplots of the Clinton years, which is that. You know, because so before I even start, the thing about Bush, what Pappy Bush and Reagan, and sort of the Reaganite, establishment in Washington is all those people are kind of long-time Washington hands, right?

Like the Reagan administration was staffed by people who had been part of Washington for a long time. Bush, obviously, has been in Washington since the 60s. Reagan, although he is out from California, I mean, Reagan's at least in his background, like kind of cosmopolitan. So there's sort of this sense that like these, you know, these conservatives are, you know, obviously there's the moral majority, moral majority people who are part of the conservative coalition, but kind of the, the headline people seem to be, you know, they're like sophisticated rich Republicans. And so one of the funnier and stranger kind of subplots of the Clinton years was

sort of official Washington being kind of like, what are we going to do with all these Hicks? And a lot of the coverage of Clinton, especially in these first few years, is very much of just sort of like, you know, what's this guy from Arkansas doing here? Despite the fact that Clinton went to Georgetown, he's a Rhodes Scholar. Like, he's very much, he very much has elite credentials. But it's that like, you know, first year, first two years of Clinton in office. And this kind of coverage is not unusual. Sort of like, what are we doing with this guy, this guy in Washington?

There's like uncouth redneck, which I think it's kind of funny. It's funny that the way that he was being covered. as this outsider in redneck, but then the right kind of decided that he was, you know, at the very center of the New World Order conspiracy and like the most insider liberal elite that could possibly be imagined, you know, which was kind of in a way, not to say that there's too much to that, but a little bit closer to the truth. In terms of Clinton's, as you mentioned, his cultivation of elite credentials and his real effort to kind of step into those in those fears and be accepted in those fears.

Amanda, do you see anything on the page you think it's interesting? Yeah. I mean, I definitely think that growing up I was probably about seven when he was elected. And so I grew up with kind of the idea of Clinton as the GOP had framed him by the end of his run, where it was the Clintons are too powerful. They're insiders. You know, it was that angle. It is so interesting to see how in the span of basically eight years, the framing was completely flipped. I had forgotten how much of it was initially, who is this guy from Arkansas, who's bringing in his family.

He's bringing in, you know, all of those aspects that prior to that the whole whitewater thing was because of Hillary's brother, that it's all kind of these very insular almost Arkansas politics that suddenly go on to the national stage. But also the Ukraine thing is fascinating just because it's 30 years later to see how much that has changed and how basically that whole generation now. has very clearly adjusted to democracy. It is always kind of shocking to see how much that feels new every few years is basically just a rehash of, to a degree, what we've been experiencing. Even I'm a writer. And so down here, there's ruling by courts back networks on rerun issue. And the WGA is about to go on strike over issues about residuals from streaming services because streaming networks don't want to give the writers the money that they deserve for the, you know, then the residual checks have been cut so dramatically.

So even seeing that in the bottom corner, and then you've got the abortion on the top right, and it's just truly kind of fascinating to just see this loop. No, it's really, it's true. We have that experience looking at this all the time. It's just like all of these issues are unresolved, and they were crystallizing then and have become to come to either crisis points or have new aspects now, But there's always, you know, everything we see in these old issues of the newspaper is still issues that are developing and being resolved.

And always treated like it's all brand new when it's like, did you guys read your own paper? Because very clearly trying to codify Roe v. Wade into actual law, it's being treated again like it's somehow new when it's been the conversation's been happening for 30 plus years. I clicked through on the story on the right. Aides say Clinton will swiftly void GOP initiatives, a bold images, saw. And it's, the other thing is interesting in me about sort of Clinton, how is, how his perception and how his, um, image develops over the course of his administration is that coming in, he was sort of like, you know, we're going to do big things. Like we're going to, you know, obviously national health insurance of some sort of like part of what's on the agenda, lifting the ban on gays in the military part of the agenda, you know, abortion rights part of the agenda. And obviously by like 94, that stuff is like, you know, well in the rear view.

era. And by his second term, he's very much kind of like the centrist, um, triangulating Clinton that we, we think of when we think of the Clinton era. Or at least like that sort of very much, that's, that's, that's established by his reelection campaign. Um, it was interesting to think that that wasn't the case in 92. And also to think about the, the changes, right, in like the composition of the Democratic Party and the, you know, political economy of the United States that left it as such that Clinton could run. run as a liberal, but there is no real kind of like, or no serious external pressure to kind of like keep him committed to those promises in a way that wouldn't have been true for like a prior

generation of Democratic politicians. Yeah, he came out of the Democratic Leadership Council. Right. Which is, you know, a centrist or even right-wing Democrat group. But he, he ran a little to the left, especially in the final stretch of the election, he ran a little to the left of DLC consensus, actually upsetting some DLC people. I mean, he was always in the center of the party, but he definitely kind of adopted a slightly more liberal democratic approach, you know, towards the end of the election, and not as much during the primaries, but that it failed. And the kind of people who were the keepers of the DLC thought sort of swayed him back over to the right as the as the way to succeed and it apparently did i don't know if dole really had a

chance to win but after the you know the route in in 1994 and the and you know the huge the republican revolution as it's called um they that basically put it end to whatever kind of liberal tendencies uh clinton had and he went right back over to the right right so passenger 57 the movie. In a previous episode, I think it was the Rising Sun episode. We talked actually a bit extensively about Wesley Snipes. I think I gave my sort of like theory of Wesley Snipes. I'll repeat that. I think that Wesley Snipes, he's obviously the one of the big action stars in the 1990s. But when you compare him to someone like Will Smith, who occupied, I think a similar and much bigger position in the later half of the decade, I think of Wesley Snipes as being kind of

the more, like, this always sounds strange when it comes to my mouth, the more black of the two, not that Will Smith is not, not black or anything, but just sort of like Wesley Snipes being dark-skinned, being sort of like in movies, like always having a love interest who herself was black, and that never really being ambiguous or anything, kind of like, oh, I think I see Wesley Snipes being kind of like the populist alternative to Will Smith, Will Smith being geared towards like mainstream audiences and Wesley Snipes being geared towards like black audiences despite having himself like a really big and wide reach as a movie star. And this movie, Passner 57, is I think you can think of as like the beginning of Wesley Snipes

big movie star. He is in Spike Lee joints prior to this. He's in New Jack City, which is, you know, a big hit with black audiences, generally well regarded. but Passenger 57 and then drop zone and then like some movies like that. This is sort of where Wesley Snipes becomes big leading man, Hollywood star. And we will discuss at least a couple more Wesley Snipes movies on this podcast. Murder at 1600 U.S. Marshals, probably demolition man, probably not Blade, but Blade is also kind of like a big Wesley Snipes, you know, headlining picture.

So that is Snipes. The other actors in this movie, I don't know a ton about. There's Bruce Payne, who is an English actor, and the only other thing I've ever seen him in is Highlander Endgame. I mean, it's like the fourth Highlander movie at that point. I don't know who's watching Highlander movies other than me. Ironic that there were four when you can only have one Highlander. You can only have one Highlander.

There keeps on being more immortals that. show up that Christopher Lambert has to kill. I thought he was the serial killer, not Hannibal Lecter, the other guy in silence of the lambs, but he's not the same guy. Okay. No, he's the fancy British version. You know, we have to have the American kind of version and then there's, who's always a little bit rough around the edges.

Yeah. Now, he's too, this guy's too posh to be there. Yeah. It's funny how much this performance really is trying to channel like a Hannibal Lecter vibe. Yes, exactly. So that's Bruce Payne, and he's been in tons of stuff. He's like one of those guys who just like does all sorts of things. As far as I know, like not like a big star, like a character actor.

Tom Seismore, who people recognize from Heat, from true romance, natural born killers, strange stays, saving Private Ryan, kind of like a character actor who's in a lot of stuff, always really great, always playing kind of as he plays in this movie, a fast talking kind of guy. And then Elizabeth Hurley shows up as one of the terrorists And she shoots someone in the head And that's pretty exciting It took me about halfway through the movie Until she actually shot the guy And we got the low angle shot of her

And I finally was like, oh, that's Elizabeth Hurley I thought this was just a random Like that moment is when it clicked When we get the low angle of her And you really see kind of What her face becomes as she gets older This must be a very early role of hers Yes, she's so young in this

The director Kevin Hooks is mostly a TV guy mostly directs TV, TV movies, that kind of thing. He, his feature film direction is Strictly Business, which is a 91 movie with Tommy Davidson and Halle Berry. I've never seen it. I'm surprised I've never seen this as someone who has like, I feel like seen all of the early 90s black comedies. Not black isn't, you know, dark, but black isn't comedies with black people in them. But I've never seen this one. So directs strictly business.

He directs a movie Lawrence Fishburne and Stephen Baldwin called Fled and then a Patrick Swayze movie called Black Dog. But after that, it seems like it's just mostly television. So this guy seems like, you know, he's just like a Hollywood dude, you know? He's a journey man. Yeah. Just a guy who's working. And that's the movie.

I did a plot synopsis, but like the basic shape of this movie. And I really admire Passenger 57 for having almost no exposition. It's a thing that I really appreciate that it starts. You meet the serial killer who's having like a face off style face change. He escapes and then gets arrested or whatever. And then kind of just like moves quickly into everything. You get, you get Wesley Stimes' character's backstory, his wife is killed in the holdup with a quick flashback. and then it's like off to the plane.

You meet you, you meet Wesley's time's character like a five-minute scene. Like there's very little fat on this. I don't know if they filmed the time. They just like cut it all down or whatever. But I appreciate that this is a movie where it's like, we know what you're here to see. You want to see the terrorists on the airplane and we're going to give that to you in like 20 minutes, 25 minutes tops. Now, by the end, I feel like it kind of like slows down a bunch. and it gets really boring towards the end.

But at least the first half, I think, is actually kind of exciting because it just moves very quickly. And the short plot synops I gave at the beginning is exactly what the movie is. Wesley Snipes is a security guy. He's hired to take over this airline's anti-terrorism program. The movie explains that there have been tons of hijackings and plane bombings, which gives this movie. which give this movie, in addition to, I think, its soundtrack and a few other things, gives this movie the feel of something from the 80s, not so much to the 90s, the 80s being the decade of plane hijackings and bombings.

And Bruce Payne, our diabolical, strangely apolitical, strangely apolitical international terrorist, Charles Raine, is on the plane as well, being transported by the FBI. His terrorist allies are on the plane, and they spring him loose, and then the movie, unfolds. But we talked about this a little bit before we started we started recording. For a movie about an international terrorist taking over a plane, there's really no sense of any motivation for Bruce Payne's character. He just seems to be like evil. He really enjoys being evil. That's what he's all about. But he's also somehow got a posse who comes along for the ride, I have no clear motivation except also to join him in being evil. I mean,

they're not even really after money. No, it's unclear, like, if there's any money to make from any of this. They're loyal in the way that henchmen are just required to be loyal. The lack of ideology of Christopher Rain or Charles Rain is truly the weakest thing only because of the fact that he then, like, all he wants is to escape. And then I guess the ongoing threat of why we have to stop him is that he'll do it again. But really, the only insight we get into him as a character is that his father was horribly abusive. Right. And while, yes, that is a very common backstory for most characters, generally speaking, that gives them an ideology or it gives them a motivating thing. Like, my father was horribly abusive and now I want to kill all fathers

would be stronger than I am being transported to Los Angeles and I don't want to be in a I don't want to undergo an arraignment and be tried for my crimes, so I'd like to escape. It doesn't really, you know, there's no real full planet that we see beyond. He wants to escape. And he's somehow got a lot of loyal people, including a stunningly beautiful woman who loves him, but he has a platonic relationship with, from what I can tell. One might say he was coded a little bit queer people say these days. I don't know.

He's definitely like a feat. Yeah. Is he queer or is he British, is kind of the real question there? In the language of Hollywood, what is the difference? I think there's definitely like, there's, there's his, let's say, his form of masculinity is definitely contrasted very strongly to Wesley Snipes. Yes. So it's been very quick background reading on this movie. And apparently, according to the screenwriter, Stuart Raffell, the original script involved the terrorist being from Iran and being an Iranian terrorist. And, I mean, you can imagine a version of this movie that does have, like, is quite political in that in choosing not to go that route because, for political reasons, because it was too sensitive for whatever, the studios didn't want to go that route, in choosing to go the route of a more or less,

ideology-less villain, the thing that actually occurs to me is that, like, this kind of villain wouldn't be out of place in a movie after 9-11 where they really do kind of erase any motivation terrorists might have in Hollywood films after that. It really is kind of just like, well, I'm going to blow this plane up, or I'm going to do this terrorist thing because I'm a terrorist, and we're all evil. The terrorists, of course, wouldn't be a British man. um they they Hollywood lost it sort of whatever reticence it had yeah um whatever whatever reticence it had about like you know doing explicitly middle eastern um villains at lost uh but it's interesting to think how this movie could have been made in 2002 and i think it might

have even fit a little better in terms of its portrayal of a terrorist just being kind of like motivated purely by malice. Yeah. It's interesting what he said literally in the screenwriter, he said the head of the studio said to me, I mean, I'm just, I don't even know why I'm giving him a voice. If I make that movie, they'll blow up the theater. So I did a couple of rewrites for them

for Warner Bros. who owned it. And then I got another picture and came back and then it became a black movie, which is an interesting comment. Because I guess they, I mean, beyond the star, they envision this is kind of like having an ethnic audience, which kind of is interesting about who they decided to make the villain and how they decided to code the villain too. There is a kind of things in the 80s with these sort of like,

I mean, there's diehard, has these European villains of kind of ambiguous ideological or any kind of motivation, which are sort of like, but those kind of are, you know, suggestive of Nazis because, you know, the Germans were the bad guys. But the movie runs on a lot of cliches and tropes without trying to anchor them necessarily to a picture that makes sense. Like you just imagine an audience enjoying this because they roughly recognize what was going on and from other movies.

That sort of makes it watchable and fun. But when you like think a little bit harder about the script, you're like, why would anybody be doing this, why would this guy have a first class ticket to be transferred? Why would Wesley Snipes be doing this job? Why would Wesley Snipes be taking this job as terribly seriously as he is? The other, and even Wesley Snipes' origin story is this vignette that's like just the 90s, just a series of 90s cliches, like it's a holdup of a Korean liquor store and he intervenes and, you know, then there's a killing.

So there's a lot of like signifiers that are, thrown into the movie and Wesley Snipes is one of them. So it's like very much in the genre of action movies and has very little pretense or desire to get outside of that genre or try to make any larger point. It's like, look, this is an action movie. Here's what you expect from an action movie. We have a villain. We have a good guy.

We have some kind of punchy dialogue and one-liners and so on and so forth. I think it's something Jamel said is interesting about. You made a point that, but, um, Wisely Snipes was like the more populous black star, more than the mainstream Will Smith. I think what you start to see in movies, and I think it starts with black exploitation and it gets bigger in the 90s, is kind of like a black actor standing in for populist rejection of authority in general that a mainstream, like a white audience or a broader audience can identify with as well. So it's sort of like using that as like instead of being like, oh,

this movie is just for a black audience, right? Like this is an exploitation movie for black audience. We're going to use like the alienation, the anger, the like feeling of being always put on of a black, you know, character and use that as a, you know, a set of experiences that like a white audience would get into as well. Like, and you can see that, you know, with at the same time with white audiences like getting into gangster app and stuff like that. It's like there's a rejection of authority, a questioning of authority that is like being used or is a broader kind of populism is no longer just like, oh, this is just, you know, a particular community's political problems. So I think that that's kind of like what Wesley Snipes and even to a certain extent

maybe Samuel L. Jackson's rise to stardom kind of represents in a certain way. Like it's like, yeah, this is no longer just an ethnic thing. Like, it's like, no, like, this is, this stands in for like, you know, a broader part of the American, we're allowing this finally to stand in for like a broader part of the American experience. The way the racial politics of this movie play out is interesting to me because the fact that, like, once you mentioned Will Smith, I thought that was a great comparison because Will Smith has always been notably sort of the, you know, accessible to white people,

black actor in Hollywood for the 90s. Until he's really securely the box office opener, he's a very asexual character. Like, Will Smith is, there's no sexual threat of Will Smith with any woman. Whereas with Wesley Snipes, what we see in this movie is that he is sexually desirable by women around him. And there's, you know, the whole scene of him going through the airport and the TSA woman or, you know, the security woman, because TSA doesn't exist at the time, like fully gropes him. She, he gets sexually assaulted at the airport that's played as a joke.

But it's because, you know, he's so desirable. He radiates this masculinity. The assumption that the flight attendant must be sleeping with him that Charles Rain makes that, you know, he must that when he threatens to rape her, the assumption that he must be doing it with her. There's a, there is a full picture of who he is beyond just being an action hero. in this movie. And I think that that's sort of an interesting contrast to see with Will Smith where like he might have gotten a couple of winks, but he wouldn't have had that sort of nod to this man has a penis that this movie has. And then by the contrast of it, you know, the fact that they went from having Iranian terrorists who would have had a very clear ideology to they decided that it was

just going to be this white guy, this white British guy. And therefore, he doesn't have an ideology. It's sort of the, that to me was really interesting because of the fact that it's almost the opposite of how we see in the real world of we always find a million different causes and excuses for why a white guy is committing an act of violence. And this must be his true motivation and it must be financial fears or it must be all these different things. The idea that an act so violent and so inherently political in the real world, if a white guy is doing it. It must be just an apolitical act of rogue madness. When they had options, you know,

it's 1992, as we saw from the front page, you very easily could have made it a separatist group or a former KGB who have decided that they, you know, want to reclaim this plane for Russia. There's so many different things they could have done with, if they're going to have a white antagonist, that they couldn't apparently conceive of a world in which you either have to have Iranians, and so they have to be Arabs, or they have to be, and there's clearly a motivation if they're coming from the Middle East, but if it's just like a white guy, you know, he's just acting rogue. And I thought that aspect of it and that shift was really interesting as sort of the blind spots as a writer that one might have, like from a writing standpoint to me, that

shift and that decision I think is really interesting, not in a good way, but just, interesting to look at of why did that happen and where were those choices made and did they decide that because it was becoming a black movie they then couldn't bring in other things that it would be too complicated at that point or any number of other reasons but it is I mean it is a worst movie for it it's it was still a great ride but for the lack of figure figuring out what a possible motivation could be it is worse for it it's interesting to go along with what you're saying it's like and and to elaborate around I was saying because both it both movie and in and in uh and and in what's the what's that fucking movie called the the japan one the

really racist one we did rising sun rising sun that in in that movie and this movie wesley snipes stands in for americanness like no nonsense to act against a like uh kind of like complicated maccavilion foreign threat and it's just like i'm an american i'm pragmatic tough I don't deal with bullshit. And both of them have this thing where, like, there's a reconsolidation of America that happens. Like, Wesley Snipes has this interaction with these, like, racist cops in Louisiana. But then he kind of wins them over and they're able to, like, joke around and, like, make, like, racist jokes towards each other, but still be friends. So, like, and the same thing kind of happens in Rising Sun where, like, the foreign adversary, like, allows, like, the American characters who have, like, these racial and class differences and so on and so forth.

to, like, reconsolidate as, like, one team. So it's like, yeah, we're all different guys. Like, they also, like, this movie, like, plays up one of the characters. What is the actor's name? Bruce, Tom Seismore's character's Italianness, like, they're both in his accent. And they also, like, in case you didn't know he was Italian from the way he talked, they, like, mentioned, like, his ethnic background. So it's, like, the movie is very much on, like, here are the foreigners.

And, like, here's America. And even though America, we have all these different types of ethnic groups, like, we're all going to be on the same side and we'll fight this sort of amorphous foreign threat. Why are they bad? Well, just because they're kind of foreign and weird. And so like, but it's interesting that, you know, in movies of this era now, instead of, you know, a black actor being part of like the platoon and being part of like the, like, oh, the mosaic of America, they're actually being like, no, this person actually extends in for like, like the lead American, most American person in the movie, which is kind of interesting. I wonder when that actually begins, and I would hazard to say it was around now. Yeah, I would imagine that seeing, you know, that this sort of starting in the early 90s,

you know, you were a year prior to the Rodney King riots, so there's, or the uprising, and so there's not really. No, this would have happened after it. Was that, oh, was that 91? Oh, right. That was 92. Right. This is, yeah, that's right. This is, that was earlier this year. Yeah. I'm, yeah, I mix that with when the, I'm from L.A.

And so I always mix it in my head with when the 94 quake happened. I always think it was closer to the 94 quake than it was. And that's entirely because of the movie Volcano, which combines the 94 quake with the Rodney King kind of social unrest to create a movie about a volcano. As a, as a timestamp, I mean, it makes sense that we're starting to see this. you get, you know, you get the whole Arsenio Hall mix up that's happening. So one of the running jokes of this movie is that an old white woman is seated next to Wesley Snipes's character and she has been told by the flight attendant who he has a push-pull relationship with, she's been told that basically that he's in Arsenio Hall and

the white woman just fully starts gushing to him about what a fan she is. So we've got now, I mean, at this point we now have a late night host. if you're looking at like what the cultural kind of footprint is, we now have a black late late night host, which is for late night, which has been dominated by middle-aged white guys up until that point, huge. And he is successful. And he is, you know, a cultural phenomenon. So you start to crack open what becomes accessible to people as an entry point. So I, I agree that, yeah, that would be kind of we're seeing it right here. This is one of those starting points. it's worth talking a bit more about sort of the way that the movie deals with Wesley Snipes being a black man because there is that there's as you mentioned John there's the whole sequence where he he there's a struggle and Wesley Snipes kind of falls off of the plane as it is landing and then he's arrested by two redneck cops basically and there's a whole thing where it's like they're clearly like well this guy's

up to no good and then the sheriff is like well I don't believe anything you say you're very clearly you have to know good you know whatever um we can't we can't trust you and like it was it's it's it's a sequence in the movie that um it's not like really played for for laughs at all like to an extent like on this watch of the movie i felt like the racist cops were like far more of a legitimate threat to wesley snipes than like the terrorist ever is whatsoever kind of like the terrorist is um you know, he's a threat to the plane. He's like a bad guy, but, like, he doesn't seem like he really threatened

to Buzzley Snipes's physical safety, but here are the movie. He's like, oh, no, these racist cops definitely could, like, mess up this guy's day in a serious way. And... Well, the terrorist, like, tries to order him to kill him, and the guy considers it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he believes the terrorist word that this is an escaped member of his crew over the

guy sitting in front of him saying, hey, there's hostages on board, and we have to stop them, and you just need to call the FBI, and they'll tell him. tell you I'm legit. And instead, the absolutely idiotic small town sheriff, or he immediately is like, no, I'm going to believe the guy on the phone who's holding a hundred people hostage. That's a more reliable narrator to me than you, sir. The sheriff switches, switches tones, not when Wesley Snipes proves himself necessarily, but when the FBI agent comes, who also is black and also is sort of a person of authority

who can be like, no, was John Cutter, Wesley Snipes's character. is someone trustworthy and someone who is on the right side and a good guy. And John, we've talked about this before, but sort of the way that these movies use black men and as authority figures, I just find very interesting. Because, you know, like sometimes, as was the case in White Sands, it's cynical. In White Sands, Samuel Jackson's character is sort of like, you know, I'm beyond suspicion because, you know, who's going to, who's going to question the word of a, a black man in uniform um with my record and in this case it does serve to give

snipes some of the every man character that you were discussing sort of it's one of the things that makes him you know making him a cop making him this figure of traditional you know male authority um isn't a way to kind of evoke feelings of resentment but is a way to get an audience identify closely with them. Even, you know, the scene, the flashback of the convenience store robbery, even that feels like, it feels almost as if the director and the screenwriter were, like, if this star was a white guy, like, how would you get, how would you evoke sympathy for the character? And it's like, you would kind of put them in that sort of situation.

and in this funny way, the fact that Snipes is black lets you take a scene like that and even make it more of a racial caricature. You can kind of get away with it a bit more, right? You can have the Korean shopkeeper doesn't speak English, the gunman who is like, who is like, I mean, truly like a racist caricature, right? Sort of like...

Yeah, I feel like his character name was just thugs that was probably how it was written in the script. Yeah, almost certainly, kind of like a black criminal, which, you know. But what's funny is that other than that, and other than, like, you know, you talk about the cop aspect of, or the Louisiana police,

that there's a real sense of threat. I wonder how much of that real sense of threat comes from watching it from the 2022 side of it, versus watching it in theaters at the time where it was more of a complicating roadblock of like, no, you're going after the wrong guy. versus here where you watch it, you're like, oh, my God, Lake Louise, Louisiana cops deciding that they're going to make their name because they've caught one of the terrorists.

Like that is a different kind of threat, I wonder, versus back, the way that this movie intended it to be, which is why we can then turn around. And it's treated like just a wacky misunderstanding by the end. And by the end of it, they're all, you know, they have the laughing sort of, oh, and even he's here where it's sort of like, we're just supposed to be like, oh, this bum sheriff character, he didn't know any better, but, and it's a mistake any of us could have made. So I do kind of wonder how much of the sense of tension and threat is actually amplified now, watching it in retrospect, versus in 1992 when I don't know that that, I don't know that the

dynamic of he's been caught, he's been captured by the police and they think that they have a bad guy. I don't, I don't think that that had the fraughtness to it in the same. way versus kind of the oh you've got the wrong guy frustration and complication to the plot if that makes total sense i think i think you're right that what would have been legible to an audience then when you have like hick southern cops is like deliverance right i mean there's no cops and deliverance but right but it's sort of like that's that's that's the um that's the trope being referenced here sort of like yeah of course if you're in louisiana you're going to have like these dumb dumb cops um who who caught a black guy and think he's it but the sense

of, yeah, the sense of danger that you might perceive today may not have necessarily been in the air when it comes to that kind of encounter. Because, again, Rodney King, that's L.A., right? Like, that's not, that's, it's not the same kind of thing. In a movie that was maybe trying to be, like, there should be, there would be theoretically a scene where they do beat the, beat him up. Yeah, but they can't because he's Wesley Snipes. Right, he's Wesley Snipes.

He beats them up. They try to do something to him, but he's too strong. I know it's the Vin Diesel law that no one can actually, the same reason that like Jason Statham and Vin Diesel both cannot lose fights in a fast and furious movie. I think there was a lot of, you know, well, this movie was probably shot before Roddy King, but I think that the police brutality stuff would have been legible to an audience for sure because there had been such an ongoing issue both in New York and L.A., And there were lots of new, it exploded with Roddy King, but that's almost after years and years of frustration with it.

And yeah, the southern part of it, well, that's a little bit of a displacement because as we know, you know, the places where these things reached a crisis was big liberal cities or New York and L.A. and kind of displacing it onto southern sheriffs as this kind of like old time figure of of menace you know harking back to the clan and the civil rights movement and the freedom writers and so forth is a little bit of an easy out but yeah the movie in the end does this kind of makes it's like a lot of these movies he kind of just like smooths everything out and in America and makes everybody part of the same

team, you know, um, and, you know, like his character is, his character, like characters often are. They're like, oh, you know, he's a little bit like, you know, McLean and Diehard, which is someone who's like, charged with keeping order a cop, but still like counter hegemonic in a weird way because they're like, don't want to put up with authority and, like, have their own plan and are much more competent and smarter than everybody else, even though people in higher positions to them, which appeals to Americans because everybody thinks of themselves that way.

Every American man, and I think a lot of American women, also think about themselves that way, where they're like, look, everyone's telling me what to do, all these big shots, but I'm actually the smart person in the situation. Like, if push came to shove, like, I would be the person who could handle this situation. shouldn't fix it all, which is a fantasy that I think a lot of Americans have and like I find it very satisfying when there's a character who's like not quite fully like everyone's like this

guy's actually a genius or really good at his job, but not quite fully received full recognition. I mean, I guess his character has gotten this bigger position in the movie, so he's on his way. But like this figure I think of someone who hasn't quite fully gotten full recognition for their contribution and is like just has a ton of potential and just needs the right situation to show it appeals to a lot of Americans who believe like deep down you know all they needed is a situation to show that they were you know like really had something special to offer and that's like kind of what action movies are doing it's like yeah you know like I think it's sort of like what under siege is trying to do but because fucking Stevenson is so stupid like he couldn't

make the character into just like a chef who turns out to be like amazing and rises the occasion he had to be like a special forces chef but it's like it's sort of an every man sort of somebody who's who's who's not been fully recognized um and ignored and then like they're thrown into a situation and they rise the occasion it's the mark walberg delusion yeah exactly it's the mark walberg alone could have stopped 9-11 that is that is what this is in its little chrysalis yeah the The point about the use of Southern Copscomb displacing the racism behind police brutality in this moment to, you know, this region associated with anti-black racism is interesting. Because I think you see a lot of that displacement in thrillers in the 90s, right? So like a movie I love that I don't think it really fits this podcast, but a movie I love is a time to kill, which is Joel Schumacher directed kind of like,

you know, very, racism in the South. Like, racism's so bad that it feels like you're back in the 1950s. Like, there's no air conditioning either in the movie. So, like, you know, people are very sweaty. And it's very racist. And that whole movie, I mean, it takes place, it originally takes place in the 90s. But the whole, like, kind of thing the movie does is basically be like, yeah, race problems exist in these kind of like these bubbles. that are like almost outside of time

in the country, these sort of insular communities, which makes it kind of a curiosity and doesn't really say anything about the larger society or vice versa. Also on the very bottom of this of the social order. Among like the poorest, you know.

And this is not a thrill. Oh, go ahead, Amanda. I'm sorry, I was going to say like as when you're looking at it from like a plotting standpoint, the question becomes where is the worst possible place for this plane to land. And that the answer is in a small town in backwoods, Louisiana, because obviously

they're not going to be suited to handle this. And obviously, they're going to be in over their heads. And they're going to be gullible and they're going to go along with it. All those different things that you kind of blow it out and then add in. And then, of course, they'll take him into custody. Like, there's a reason that they decided that at this time, that that location, it could have just as easily been a small town up in Minnesota would have been just as ill-suited. There's no, but the choice that they made.

specifically to do Lake Louisiana, to do a small place in Louisiana, as that's going to be the thing that will give us the most tension to build off of kind of the idea that what you're saying. I think that's exactly right. And I was just going to give another example of this, of this sort of this placing racism to another period of time or other area that's not kind of of the mainstream of society. And that is, you know, a movie that comes out, I think the same year as a time to kill is Amistad, which is another very strange. film if you've ever seen it's like very weird as far as an historical drama goes but like so much of that movie is also like the implicit message there is like yeah serious racism was a problem in the

past and this is an example of that and look how we through kind of like you know in this moment in this instance and depicting the movie through civil society um and through law resolve this great injustice. And in the present, that's how, to the extent that there are injustices, that's how we'll resolve them here as well. Well, isn't that kind of the fallacy of the 90s? Like the whole the positioning of Bill Clinton as the first black president that, well, we're in a post-racial society now because Bill Clinton's been elected. So clearly we're through it all. And so it feels like the 90s did become very much a time of like, let's look back at what, at what was and how far we have come, as opposed to then as we start to really have to pull away from that and then

adjust and reckon, theoretically reckon, not well, but theoretically reckon with the present aspect of it. But it does feel very much of the 90s to basically be like, well, look at how it was then and how much better we are now. There's a, you know, there's a kind of a burgeoning field of like history of the 90s, like cultural history, political history of the 90s. I mean, this podcast is kind of trying to do something like that. But one thing, one thing that Nikki Hemmer, whose new book, Partisans, steals kind of like Republican politics in the 90s, one thing that she points out in the book, and one thing that is sort of like one of the odd, one of the paradoxes of the 1990s is, is simultaneously

you do have kind of like a post-racial moment. You have television networks like ordering, you know, a predominantly black series for sort of like mainstream consumption, right? like Martin is on like eight o'clock, Eastern time. In Living Color is sort of like a mainstream hit. You have more black actors. You have more black directors getting a shot. This tends to be mostly for black men, more to more so than black women.

But sort of like there's more openness to black Americans and like members of other ethnic groups, other racial groups, having opportunities in popular culture at the very least and much more representation in popular culture. But at the same time, you have this sort of like super reactionary kind of like on crime, on social policy, reactionary tilt that has like a not unsubtle dose of like anti-black racism in it. Someone like Charles Murray can publish the bell curve and get like a respectable hearing from like mainstream organs about the thesis that like are black people too genetically stupid to save, right? like um and so this just sort of it's it's one of those it's like it's it's one of the odd things about this decade that simultaneously there is this kind of like self-serving we are past racism um kind of thing you know like racism isn't a big problem in the 90s anymore but then also like this reactionary um aspect of political and social life um and also these big flash points

like the LA riots, like the Dialu shooting later in the decade, the whole Giuliani thing. So, yeah, I have no grand point, just an observation. Well, it's interesting, like, it's interesting the way that the black breakthrough and culture serves as both like alibi and evidence for those reactionary things. Because on the one hand, the reaction can say, look, racism is not a serious issue because look at all the, you know, cultural representation of black stars and musicians and so and so forth. If we truly lived in a racist society, that wouldn't be the case. On the other hand, the whole discourse around crime and around, you know, black pathology really took a lot from, you know, black popular culture to, make those cases. So the existence of gangster rap and so on and so forth, it really gave it a lot of fuel and said, look, this stuff is very intimidating and scary. And obviously, you know, what we're

saying has something to it because, you know, see all this music. It's very frightening. And it deals with all these themes that, you know, ought to scare you and show like that this kind of criminality is so widespread and glorify. So, yeah, the way that that that, that breakthrough, the mainstream interacts with the real racial reactions going on is interesting and complicated and both and literally mediates it because it you know it both makes it possible for people to claim that their criticisms are not truly racist or that racism is not a real issue because of you know and also to like use the evidences of popular culture and what became popular as you know ways to make their arguments so yeah it was also it was also just

in part a reaction to I mean I think it was just in part a reaction to the the more the entry of of of of of black Americans into more more visible roles, both not just in Hollywood and in music, but just in professional jobs. I mean, and more middle class jobs, which was something that was very, you know, dealt with in a lot of weird ways, which on the one hand, you know, was celebrated by white America and the other created all kinds of panicked and strange reactions. So, you know, the growth, I think the growth of the black middle class also has a lot to do with this as well. And thinking just in terms of the post-Cold War theme of the podcast, I mean, the other thing you see during this decade is simultaneously the celebration of like American multiculturalism, multi-ethnic pluralism, sort of like, this is one of our great strengths that helped us prevail in the Cold War, but then also sort of the multiculturalism panic, which I remember very firmly from like, you know, being 11, 12, 13 towards the end of the decade, kind of like the, the, this sort of.

Is does America have any more unified identity? Is there any unified American identity anymore? All the hyphenated Americans and hyphenated American identity is sort of like harming national unity. And this sort of like preoccupation with the decline in national unity, partly stemming from sort of this post-cold war sort of like, well, what are we now that we've defeated our signal ideological enemy? And is there anything that hold? Is there anything holding us together as, as, um,

as a single people to the extent that that's a you know idea that makes any sense well movies like this try to say yes right because we're all on the same team right against the terrorists or whatever uh the amorphous terror the morphous bad guy out there you know uh wesley snipes angry alienated black guy but when a push comes to shove you know very reliable when it comes to getting terrorists so you know he'll he'll he'll stand against tisa Englishman any day. Yeah, exactly. The true enemy.

Yeah, the true enemy. Let's bring it back to 1776. Yeah, the hereditary enemy. Yeah. You say, I joke about that, but like a movie. There's something to it. A movie like Mel Gibson's the Patriot, which I think we're going to cover on this podcast because it's kind of an interesting artifact, is kind of doing something like that.

It's kind of like, you know, positing. It's sort of like, it's sort of looking to the past and looking to, of the Revolutionary War is like a place where you can kind of like reforge kind of an American unity against like I mean against a British army that's portrayed like Nazis I mean it's kind of right yeah conducted the war in a really way that they didn't right right yeah when we cover that movie I will talk a lot about the scene where the the uh the British commander burns a house full of Americans um to the ground and it's sort of like I don't think that never happened. Probably not. I mean, there's a lot. If anything, probably more the other way around.

No, yeah. Yeah. If anything, it's much, much greater likelihood of the Patriots trying to burn down a bunch of loyalists than, uh, tarn feathering people and stuff. Yeah. My understanding of was part of the problem for the British Army was that they were so regimented and rule following that they couldn't adapt to the Americans being like, no, we're just going for it. Right. Right. To Americans fighting like savages. But also, like, it's sort of, I mean, bringing up Mel Gibson is kind of fascinating because I think that, you know, talking about the idea of all the different, what are we as Americans and we have all the hyphens now. And what it really is is it's the proto white nationalist movement that we're seeing now, but not saying the quiet part out loud. It was the, they didn't, their words weren't put together of if we're not a nation who is kind of created and.

harnessed in uniform and uniform around whiteness, then what do we have? If we're letting all the, you know, the idea was always, I mean, even being Jewish that you would assimilate into and you would subsume your Jewishness in order and your ethnicness to then become part of America. And America is sort of, they would, you would say it is one nationality, but in truth, it's sort of just waspiness. And that in the 90s, it was very much the like, well, we're losing our national identity because we're fractioning off versus now what we're, it's turning it has turned into

is we're losing our national identity because the national proportions are wrong. And so Mel Gibson making the Patriot is Mel Gibson in his finding a way to make a movie that goes, remember those good old days

when it was white Americans fighting for liberty and justice before he could really go fully Mel Gibson mask off? This was his studio his studio picture version of that and i think that that's kind of i mean that that is this movie though again doesn't like it's still in the early 90s this is a national unity issue before it sort of gets the mass taken off and the name given to it yes um and i mean i could be i could be wrong no no i was going to say to to kind of bolster a point that like part of what john

has writing about and has to written about is the degree to which sort of the there's like a lot of proto maga energy in the early 90s that you know well represented by someone like Pat Buchanan uh and his presidential run but kind of like it's there right like it's there in the rush the rise of rustle and ball it's there in the new world order conspiracizing. It's there and kind of the militia movement that kind of really takes steam. Like the early 90s are not. Like the early 90s, there's a lot of ideological fervent happening in the early 90s that takes time to play itself out. And one of the strands there is something very recognizable to us in 2022. Well, there were more movies like this one that kind of

envisioned not multicultural, but just like kind of like some multi-racial settlement and sort of, except for a very angry group of people kind of worked out in a certain way. But yeah,

the more, it's difficult to say whether it was worse now or worse than. In some way, it's kind of shifting. It was both it's both more racist then and more racist now, if that makes any sense. Like, there was more, I mean, it's less because it's more of an issue, like, the politics

themselves, the whiteness was so much more normative that it didn't really need always to be expressed in these kind of radical white supremacist politics because it was kind of present and everything. So the more that becomes less normative, the more that that sort of shifts over into a radical politics. On the other hand, you see the beginnings of that kind of political concern about the lack of, you know, of the fall of waspiness. But the fall of waspiness is twofold because on the one hand, there is the literal whiteness

of the wasps. And then there's the wasps as being feeling like they're the keepers of a large international project and that kind of splits apart so of you know of america as a creedal nation or a covenant nation as having some kind of purpose and that kind of splits apart into an ethnic nationalism and a civic nationalism um which is sort of kind of one might say is one way of thinking about the current issue in the united states is people who can conceive of it although if you spoke to Trump people, they would say that they were, and they had the vocate, well, that's not nice to say. If they could articulate it that way, they would say they were civic nationals too, that they

weren't, but their idea of civic nationalism is really much more ethnic. So there's kind of a breaking apart of normative American ideals at this time into two versions, which is, are we defined by this norm of what it means to be an American, or does being an American actually have, like, an ethnic meaning? Like, can only white people really be Americans, or only people who really closely conform and take a subordinate role in the system? What does I have to do with this movie? I don't know. But, like, it's not clear. I mean, like, what is, I mean, you can ask yourself, what is the role of a black star in a movie like this? Are they accepting a role in a hegemonic white supremacist society?

Are they undermining it? Are they an equal partner? I don't know. I mean, you could come up with interpretations that say a lot of different things. You could say, well, this is how they're reconciling them. But, you know, it's always more complicated and it's always more contested that, you know, probably, in some ways, yes, but in other ways, there is some kind of real

cultural change going on that makes, that has changed the world in ways that upsets people and forces them into kind of this radical white nationalist politics that you were talking about. We're going to have to wrap up soon, but John, you just brought up something that I think will be something we can discuss in later episodes, which is this like, what is the role of the black

action star? You know, I'm thinking about contemporary black acting stars, like a Michael B. Jordan, who in the pick, in a movie like Creed, right, which is both like a loving homage to Rocky, but also like a critique of Rocky and kind of a subversion of Rocky in a lot of ways. And kind of like, I don't think that's, that's not some like accident. I think it's very intentional to want to make that kind of movie. And for Michael B. Jordan to want to use himself for B. Jordan to want to use himself for B. Jordan. be used in that way like there are other ways to approach that kind of that kind of project and I think I think if you begin to think about other contemporary um black stars who are in action movies you see you see a lot of something like that the movie is controversial for reasons um for its historical depiction but the woman king um does some of that kind of like of like what what is the place or role of a black action star

and it takes it's not one of like trying it's not what it's not the the approach it takes is not sort of like inclusion into a mainstream right it's something else whereas

even even if even as I described Snipes is like the more the more the star more geared toward black audiences like he's still taking on mainstream roles. He's still sort of like a mainstream action star who is who is in roles that would that you can't imagine white actors in. There's not there's not. Snipes will make the role something a black audience can get his teeth into but the role isn't necessarily written

for for a black actor or black audiences and teasing that out is is something I think to continue doing over the course of this podcast. With that said, any last thoughts on Passenger 57, Amanda? You know, for a movie titled Passenger 57, I didn't anticipate so much of the set piece would take place at a, like, country fair. That's right. But I appreciate how much of it did. Like, what a great time that was.

And on the whole, that movie was a fun ride. It was, there were parts of it that I was just like, wait, what is that? But it was a, that was a ride. I appreciate anything that can take me from an. airplane out to a country fair back into an airplane and then throw a villain out of the plane. And I'll say as a connoisseur of movie violence, some of the movie violence and this is like pretty good. Like when they decided to use it, like when people get shot in the head a couple times and it's a pretty good. Pretty good head shots. John, any last thoughts

before we move on to wrap it up? You know, for me, this is not my kind of movie. And I mean, like, yeah, like you were saying, like, it's fun to watch, like, I mean, Wesley Snipes is, like, a really good martial artist, and it's, like, fun to watch them kick people's asses and stuff like that. But, but I was just, like, so, like, I was like, this is for babies. And, you know, like, and I just remember, like, this, what this made me think of is, like, how every little boy, like, in my class, like, it was just, like, the mentality of every boy at that time like like the karate like the w the wesley snipes one liners like the bat like i just

i just had these like flashbacks of being like seven years old and like eight years old nine years old and like how these movies are like you know like somebody somebody's parent would let one kid watch them and then suddenly like it would be the only thing they would talk about at school and then so you just like get the lines from the movie and like images from the movie but like be only vaguely aware of what was going on so i was like i was i got like weird moments of childhood nostalgia for like kids who were like way more exposed to pop culture than I was like were definitely watching movies like this and definitely influenced the way they talked and thought and like played imaginary games so I had that from it but I was like but that made me

associated with being like eight years old so it made me kind of think it was sort of puerile I guess yeah all right well a movie for babies you heard it there But not. You should not show this to babies. And before, you know, we got to mention that the catchphrase in the movie, always bet on black, very funny, great line. And I feel compelled to say it. Okay.

So that is our show. If you're not a subscriber, please subscribe. We're available on iTunes, Spotify, sit your radio and Google Podcast, and wherever else podcasts are found. If you subscribe, please leave a rating and review. It helps people find the show. You can reach out to all of us on Twitter. I am at J. Bowie. John, you are.

I'm at Vinyl underscore trolling. And Amanda, you are. I'm Amanda Smith says. And tell us about Disaster Girls. Tell us about the show. So Disaster Girls is a podcast about disaster movies. My friend Jordan Cruciola and I talk about every week a different disaster movie. We unironically love them.

So it's always kind of this quest to talk about disaster movies. with a very straightforward, not like, I apologize about my dog who wants to chime in. He's been so good this whole podcast. But yeah, it is a podcast where we're trying to really have fun and talk about these movies that we genuinely love. And you came on, Jemel. We had a great time talking about Anaconda with you.

Yes. So I would definitely recommend check that episode out. We get great guests all the time. You were an exciting one. We've had Paul Fieg. We've had Van Lathen Jr., Sarah Marshall. So we wrote these people. wrote people into talking about these incredibly dumb movies but with nothing but love um so you can check

us out where all podcasts are found i highly recommend the show and not just because i was on it doing my best bad john boyt impression um it was a great bad john boy impression uh what was that what's that line he had it's uh uh uh they're tal they're babies there are a talism ways to die in the river or something like that. Yeah, there's that one. For me, it's the, they're babies. But yes, the thousand ways to die in the river with his weird semi-equedorian but not accent. It was what a fabulous film.

Great movie. Great movie. Okay. You can follow the podcast, our podcast as at UnclearPod, where I will occasionally tweet about the movies. I keep mentioning trying to use that account more, more stuff that show up. on that account just to give it some uh make it make it kind of a fun thing to follow you can also reach out to us over email at unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com for this week in feedback we have an email from erin titled some thoughts on white sands dear unclear and present

danger i wanted to touch on some comments that came up in your episode on white sands in it you mentioned the new mexican location and link it to a vogue for santa fe design well this was likely part of it, I think in the context of movie is the legacy of the Western and its radical decline from the center of American movie making has a part to play as well. In the past few years, job-related moves required me to drive cross-country a few times, and it is striking how many places in the interior southwest still trade on the old Hollywood westerns of the tourist draw. The 90s really saw an attempt to find some way back into the Western as a commercially viable film, either via modern updates from the John Sales underrated neo-Western New Orleans Star,

which is a very good movie, to tremendously flawed comedy of city slickers, to prestige revision, unforgiven, ironic revivalism, tombstone, or big-budget Oscar bait, dances with wolves or last of the Mohicans. I suspect that among the reasons Hollywood wanted a return to Westerns is partially tied to their embrace of the IRA as the villain in so many 1990s political thrillers, or vague Eastern European mobsters. It gave them pathways to more or less white antagonists. Leading up to the 90s, with the Cold War not looming so large,

Hollywood came to lean more and more on non-white antagonists, from Arab terrorists to South American dictators, to generic Southeast Asian warlords holding Vietnam POWs, and multiracial street gangs for the black and Hispanic members seemed to get more camera attention. Criticism of this started to break through by the 90s, and it's just possible that the classic Western, which often centered itself totally in the internal conflicts of the white settlers,

provided a way via story to justify heavily armed gangs of bad-to-the-bone white guys who the protagonist can reluctantly gun down by the third act. Tied into this, I hope you will cover the 1999 thriller Arlington Road, we will, in which a college professor makes every bad choice possible and becomes the next Timothy McBay. Great podcast, and thank you for your time. Thank you, and that's a really interesting thesis, and I kind of buy it. Yeah, I think I kind of buy it. I think there was a weird thing going on at that time with nostalgia for the American past general,

but that definitely fits into that story very well. Yeah, so that's interesting. Yeah. Episodes generally come out every other Friday. The past episode came out a little late for scheduling reasons, but we will see you in two weeks from now, from when you're listening to this, hopefully. with The Firm, which is a legal thriller with some political stuff in it, starring Tom Cruise, a young Tom Cruise, in kind of the, he's a hot shot, you know, insert profession and needs to learn to humility. But also in a kind of fun conspiracy thriller.

Here is a quick plot synopsis of the firm. Mitch McDeer is a young man with a promising future in law about to sit at his bar exam. He is approached by the firm and made an offer. he doesn't refuse. Seduced by the money and gifts showered on him, he is totally oblivious to the more sinister side of his company. Then, two associates are murdered. The FBI contact him, asking him for information,

and suddenly his life is ruined. He has a choice, work with the FBI, or stay with the firm. I got to be honest, I love this movie, and I'm excited to watch it again. John, have you seen the firm? Do you have any opinions on the firm? I have. I like it. Yeah.

Okay. Amanda, have you ever seen the firm? I haven't. That is one of those. The Tom Cruise, the early Tom Cruise, the early Tom cruise movies. Gap in my film knowledge. It's really great. Has Wilford Brimley with a great kind of a wonderful one-scene turn. Has Gene Hackman doing Gene Hackman things? It's kind of a great, it's a great artifact of the period. I'm a big fan of it. The firm is available for rent on Amazon and iTunes and for streaming on HBO Max. Our producer is Connor Lynch. And our

artwork is from Rachel Eck. For John Gans and Amanda Smith, I'm Jamel Bowie. And this is unclear and present danger. We'll see you next time.