Unclear and Present Danger - Sniper

Episode Date: June 11, 2022

In this episode of Unclear and President Danger, Jamelle and John discuss “Sniper,” a delightful piece of genre trash that also happens to speak to some of the paranoias and prejudices of the era. To that point, their conversation veers from the anti-Bill Clinton conspiracy theories of the early 1990s to the militia aesthetic that emerged later in the decade.Contact us!Follow us on Twitter!John GanzJamelle BouieLinks from the episode!New York Times front page for January 29, 1993“The Panama Deception” documentaryWikipedia page for “Soldier of Fortune” magazine.

He's a shadow. He's out there somewhere, waiting, fighting a war. No army can win, but a single bullet... Arrange me. Can. But this time, he set his sights too high, and his only backup is a new recruit. Sniper. One shot, one kill.

Welcome to Episode Welcome to episode 17 of Unclear and 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 U.S. politics in the early 1990s. Today we are talking about the 1993 military thriller Sniper directed by Luis Losa and starring Tom Berringer, Billy Zane, J.T. Walsh, who we saw previously in the Russia House, and Aiden Young.

Here is a short plot synopsis. A veteran U.S. Marine sniper is partnered with a rookie sniper as a spotter to take out a politician and a rebel leader in the juggles of Panama. If you'd like to watch sniper before listening to our conversation, you can find it on Tubi or YouTube for free. I watched it on YouTube for free. And you could also rent it on iTunes and Amazon. Before we get started, let's take a look at the New York Times front page for the day that this was released, which was January 29th, 1993.

Okay, let's see what's going on here. So this is our first Clinton era movie. Clinton has been inaugurated, and there's a big photo of him with meeting with Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Oh, yes, Slick Willie is here. He's here. We're fully in the 90s. and it says U.S.

economy grew at fast pace in fourth quarter and it says 3.8 rate best in four years okay, Greenspink gives a surprisingly strong backing to Clinton's plans to cut the deficit, which was a big deal. There's an article about Israel Palestine.

Israel's highest court upholds the deportation of Palestinians. UN action, U.S. reaction are now awaited. In a much weighted decision carrying a immediate implications for Israel's diplomatic standing in the future of the Middle East peace talks. The Israeli High Court today unanimously validated the deportation of more than 400 Palestinians from the occupied territories to Lebanon. I'm sure the justification was that they were PLO members, but probably was not. A lot of people were just caught up in it.

A new crisis engulfs Angola as the rebels make big gains. A little bit of the end of the Cold War there. challenges from a headstrong public. This is about the gays in the military and how Clinton wanted to end the ban for gays in the military,

but there's a strong public backlash against it. And Chinese Buy American Dreams by the Inch. What is this? Sooner or later. This is a very strange story. I was just glancing through it. Basically, some company were selling novelty deeds to the United States,

sort of like, hey, you can buy a piece of America. And this caught on in China, and among members of the Chinese public, began buying them up at wildly inflated prices, thinking that it might make it easier for them to get a visa to come to the United States. Oh, that's interesting and kind of sad. But, yeah, Dinkins to propose using unpaid taxes to get a bank loan,

New York City, I think, was still in pretty bad fiscal straits at this time. Computer translator phones try to compensate for Babel. Oh, ha-huh. Phones that translate. Would you ever see anything like that? No. I guess they never came up with that technology. Yeah, so, again, this is sort of a very 90s newspaper, not a lot of huge news.

It's so strange to read the newspaper prior to, I don't know, 2014 or 15 when it's just like there's just like less of a crisis I mean also after 9-11 but just less of a crisis on every page it was like oh this is a normal day of news and that was definitely contributed to the sense that the 90s is a particularly stable and prosperous time even though there were a lot of weird things going on

you know subterranially subterraneously underground and so yeah this is not not a real, a real, a lot of mega news or events that people would necessarily remember, but a nice snapshot of the era and the day. Just want to point out some quick things that are right at the bottom, sort of what's further inside the paper.

And one thing in particular, this little mini headline is Rehnquist Lodd's Marshall. And we are not far removed from the recent, in death of Justice Thurgood Marshall. Oh, right. And I guess William Rehnquist, who is giving him his due. Thurgood Marshall's death is one of those things, one of those, I mean, not small things, but one of those events that

really does change the course of things, right? Had Marshall lived just a bit longer, Bill Clinton would have appointed his successor. Yes. And as it stands, right, he dies, Marshall and George W. Bush appoints his successor, who is Clarence Thomas and Clarence Thomas, ends up, you know, is a very influential jurist. It's not to say anything about his merits of his judicial thinking or his opinions, but just to say that the man is legitimately influential is a kind of a major part, major member in the, you know, Republican Party apparatus and has made a mark on basically a general. of conservative lawyers and conservative jurists, including, you know, a member of the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch. And so it's just, it's not fun.

I mean, I guess it's funny, however you put it. It's interesting to think, right? Like, how would things look if Thurgood Marshall had held on to his seat, had pulled a Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and then, you know, stubbornly held onto his seat, and then died in 1993, rather than leave the court the previous year and dive next year. Yeah, completely different timeline there. I mean, yeah. Completely different.

Thomas is, I think, we can say, the most hard right justice. I mean, that's, not to make this an episode of the 5-4 podcast, but, um, yeah, I think I would call Thomas the most, yeah, the most ideologically right-wing justice on the court. I recall Sam Alito the most sort of like rigidly partisan justice, although Sam Alito also is a right-wing maniac. So it's like, I mean, the way I kind of think of it is that Sam Alito is a classic Fox News grandpa. Right. And just Clarence Thomas is graduated from Fox News Grandpa to like one America news network grandpa. Right. Truly, truly on the fringes. I think also, well, I mean, this may have been earlier in his career, but I

do think, you know, Clarence Thomas being a black man definitely has influenced some decisions that led him to depart from the conservative orthodoxy on certain things like on cross-burning and stuff like that. Or, you know, he was definitely a little bit more, had a different perspective on that stuff. But in general, pretty hard right. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Just, just one of it. He's ideological enough, like the thing about being hyper-ideological is that like it can't lead you occasionally to like interesting views. Like this is

with Gorsuch, you know, he had the opinion, was it Bostock where he held a majority opinion for the court that the Civil Rights Act of 64 covers discrimination against, you know, gays and trans people. And that's

that's not because I think Gorsuch has gorsuch is an honest enough ideologue that his sort of textualist view of interpretation leads him to this like conclusion that cuts against maybe his partisan commitments. Right. Um, which is like Alito, you would never see anything like no. He would find a justification. He would find a justification. Although, I mean, I don't want to start that this, we're going down this road, but there might be some kind of political caginess and occasionally using the method to come up with an opposite view to show that it's not

completely part, you know what I'm saying. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay. Okay. so yeah sorry guys let's not talk about the Supreme Court anymore um they suck that's all you need to know it's terrible bunch of bunch of assholes if you ask me um let's talk about this movie i want to do some quick kind of just background on to the key players uh louise losa the director is more or less like a peruvian exploitation guy he worked with roger Corman somewhat doing kind of English language movies in Peru. His big American film, which comes out a couple years after this, is Anaconda, a movie I really like, even though it's terrible. It stars Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez and John Voigt. John Voight, with a hilariously

terrible accent of, I don't know where he's supposed to be from, but it's a ridiculous accent in the movie, as you might guess, is about a giant anaconda. Yeah. Don Berringer is one of those guys who is sort of everywhere. For a while, it was just like in every movie. He won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Platoon. And then he also had roles in The Big Chill in Gettysburg in Training Day and Inception. Like, the guy just works. Fans of trash, so people like me, will recognize him as the protagonist in the substitute, which is in 1996.

crime thriller. You've never heard about this movie. Basically, in the substitute, Berenger plays a mercenary and the Vietnam veteran who goes undercover as a substitute teacher at a crime-ridden high school to ferret out a crime lord who is at that high school. Wait.

Wait, is it just dangerous minds with a guy? Well, I guess there's no mystery part of dangerous minds. It's dangerous minds with a guy and like murder and guns. Okay. In action. yeah it's like it's like if instead of is it offensive if in yes um if in if instead of like edver james almost like you know turning around and sitting on the back of a chair like in stand and deliver or or or or or michel fifer or morgan freeman i mean it's a whole genre of movie instead of one of

those people doing that imagine that he sits on the chair and then like pulls out a gun oh god yeah there was a genre of like reaching trouble inner city kids movies like if you get the right white person or whatever they'll be able to do it

and in this case the concede is like no these schools really are dents of iniquity and we're sending in one of the boys to take care of the problem I actually think this is a movie we should probably cover it's sort of like a little

a jar of the theme of the podcast but it does speak to lots of like 90s America concerns. I'm down. There you go. And then Billy Zane, the Barringer's co-star in this movie, was

kind of at the peak of his career almost. It was also at the peak of having hair still. Yes. Very, very, it means very young in this movie. It does not look like someone in the military, even it doesn't look like a young person in the military.

But he had his first starring role in a movie. in 1990 with a science fiction film called Megaville, which I've never heard of. And he had a well-regarded supporting performance in Memphis Bell, a World War II picture. That is also Harry Connick Jr. Oh, yeah, Memphis Bell, sure.

Yeah. And then he also was in 91, he was in Femphital, which is a fun sort of trashy little thriller. Right. In 93 of the year, this comes out. He has a role in John Singleton's Poetic Justice, which is a great movie. And he also shows up in Tombstone, which is a fun movie.

I love Tombstone. He, I remember him as a kid primarily from two films. The first is The Phantom, which was one of the throwback superhero movies from this period, like the Shadow and the Rocketeer. The 30, like the 30s style things, like, where there was a big trend for that. Right, right. It was like after Tim Burton's Batman, it was sort of like, you know, studio executives were like, well, kids, what kids love is 1930s.

They love that arc deco. They can't get enough of it. It was true for me. Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah. But he stars in the Phantom, which is a huge bomb. Right. A gigantic bomb. Yeah.

But then he's a couple years later, or next year even, he is the Villan and Titanic more or less. And that is a huge role for him. He, you know, he, it's a big role for him. He's sort of everywhere. And that's kind of, I feel like Titanic is the absolute high watermark of his career. Right. He's mostly done kind of low budget and direct video stuff, although I'll credit him for being one of the producers behind in a character in, an actor in. The Believer, which is a 2001 Ryan Gosselin movie.

Yeah, the Nazi movie. Right. Which I think it's very good. I think it's a terrific film. Yeah, that's a cool movie. so that's that's some background on kind of the main people involved in this film i feel like we should talk as well about the i think the event that this film is clearly drawing from which is the american intervention in panama yeah yeah for sure i mean okay the movies political has almost next to zero

political context i mean it hints of things going on um but it's really a strong strange and fictitious world compared to what actually happened. So, you know, they're talking about rebels and they have to go out and assassinate these rebel leaders. There was no rebels in Panama. I mean, there were rebels in in, uh, in, uh, in Nicaragua, um, you know, in other Central American countries, but that wasn't really part of the political struggle there. There was a, well, basically there was a dictator, Manuel Noriega, who was once very closely tied to the CIA. He came to power, after Omar Torrijos, the previous president who was pretty much a dictator. He ruled in it.

It was kind of a left populist dictator who somehow mysteriously died in a plane crash. And then the CIA's man became president. So you might wonder. You know, as often happens, mysterious plane crashes. Yeah. And then so, yeah, he was very close with the CIA. He was, I think it was George H.W. Bush, who was director of the CIA, was, you know, like, he was his direct contact in Panama. And his regime was sort of, again, kind of a populist regime, I think more conservative, less focused on, you know, there's a, there's a, there's a racial context in Panama because there's a lot of, it's very diverse. and, you know, the ruling class has always been kind of the white Hispanic population.

Under Torreos, there was sort of a reform movement that kind of included more members of the society. And to, real quickly, to plug our friend John, John Katz's book, Gangsters of Capitalism, he has a whole chapter on the American occupation of Panama in the early 20th century, where Americans, you know, brought in lots of laborers from Africa and from around South America and basically kind of kind of brought, imported Jim Crow along with it. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And I don't know in the exact history, but I wouldn't be, you know, surprised to learn, right, that part of the racial stratification that takes place in the 20-country Panama is tied to this.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, this is revolved, all revolves around the canal, which is extremely important economically to the United States and everybody. So for a very long time, the United States directly controlled the Panama Canal and the zone around it. Carter negotiated a treaty with Torrijos to eventually give up the Panama Canal by 1999. And this was a huge right-wing issue in the 70s and 80s. You know, Ronald Reagan was very outspoken about it. Strom Thurman was very outspoken about it, about, you know, keeping the canal. It's very unclear, really, what happened in the intervening years.

Noriega basically, I think, stopped cooperating, and he was definitely involved with drug trafficking and racketeering, which the United States had sort of looked the other way while he was working on an interest, but then when he started to get difficult, they indicted him for drug trafficking. the United States sort of tried to provoke, made efforts to provoke an incident, there had been an election where the United States had a favored candidates.

The election was halted because Noriega looked like he was going to lose. The candidates were beaten in the streets, and Noriega just became a total dictator, and this kind of caused a lot of outrage of the United States and, you know, consternation of the national security apparatus and then the United States basically clearly had a plan to get rid of Noriega that involved an attempted coup which failed and then eventually creating an incident where a U.S. service member was shot by Panamanian troops and then a kind of a massive overwhelming invasion of Panama which involved airstrikes um artillery a lot of loss of civilian life and, you know, really unclear what the point was, because in the end, we just gave up,

we didn't change the Carter-Torio's Treaty that much. We ended up giving up the Panama Canal as we had agreed to. It was sort of this kind of the beginning of the foreign policy that, that, you know, we saw under George H.W. Bush, well, I mean, the U.S. has done these kinds of interventions, but, you know, where it was sort of many places and before, but it was not necessarily legal because, first of all, by international law and first of all, because it was really not covered. It was not authorized by Congress, and it was a horrible scandal, especially, you know, when I was coming up on the left, as a young person, the invasion of Panama was sort of the

signal thing about the perfidy of imperialist American foreign policy before, you know, we had the Iraq War because, I mean, in the Gulf War, it was arguably we were helping Kuwait defend themselves, so it wasn't such a clear-cut case. But this was, I watched as a young person in the documentary, which I just rewatched, which is a very good one called the Panama deception, which was sort of hailed among leftists as a great expose of, um, you know, U.S. foreign policy. So this, this happened, this invasion happened under George H.W. Bush. And it's been kind of forgotten, frankly, like nobody talks about it anymore.

And it was pretty remarkable, yeah. Which is often the case with America's interventions in Latin America. As far as Americans go, the general public doesn't really think about these things anymore. Obviously, people in the countries in question are very much aware of the ways in which we, you know, trust the place. Exactly, which we really did. And so that's the context. It was called Operation Just Cause, but that kind of had a double entendre because it was like Just Cause as in a Cause that is Just and then Just Cause

Like as in just doing something because you wanted to. So that's a political context, which is sort of lacking from the movie because the movie just has these kind of rebel forces who are supposedly, I don't know, you know, you know, trying to overthrow the democratic U.S. supported regime or something like that, I don't know, and are attacking indigenous people, which did happen in South and Central America a lot, usually with United States support. And they have U.S. trained torturers. Again, something that, you know, usually we were involved in doing. So the politics are pretty thin, except there's like a little bit of a commentary in the movie about the bureaucracy and the

politicians and a critical, like Tom Berger, well, you can take it from here, but he's like an archetypal Marine who's just like there to do the job and really has very little time for politics. Right. He is very much in this mold of, especially post-Vietnam military action hero who is, is contemptuous of civilian leadership who

may not in this movie he doesn't necessarily say it explicitly but you very much can get the vibe right that he believes civilian leadership is hindering the ability of the military to do its job

Billy Zane's character in the film he is so the setup and the setup hilariously enough I mean the plot on this thing is thin and the setup will be familiar to anyone

who's played a Nintendo game and a literal Nintendo Entertainment System game like you know bad dudes where it sort of like this game starts and the title screens like

you know are you bad enough to save the president I mean is that kind of set up Billy Zane who is a young sniper young officer or whatever is tasked with being responsible for the assassination

of this rebel leader and this i think i think also a leader of a cartel or something and uh he is given the cartel and the rebels are getting together right right um and he's given this mission and he's like you're going to work with tom barringer and you're going to be responsible for the mission and you'll you know if barringer doesn't do it then you have to you'll have to kill him that's your right your task there and within the context of the film and in these scenes that take place you know once in Panama, Zane's character for much of the film is sort of like the representation of the

military bureaucracy. And part of the story of the movie, part of the character journey for Zane and the source of conflict between him and Beringer's character is that Beringer, the man on the ground, who knows terrain, knows the people, his previous spotter as a sniper, he blames that person's death on the military sort of like big footing its way in there. Barringer is basically trying to teach Zane that the only way you're going to survive and accomplish your mission here is if you relinquish and let go of what you've been told by your masters in Washington, you don't really understand what's going on here and do the mission according to what you see with your own eyes and ears and what you experience. And so that's the conflict

and it does, I mean, I think this would, for any viewer, for any person watching this movie, already adult watching this movie in 1993, I think they would immediately recognize the trope here, right? This idea, again, coming out of Vietnam. Right. That the politicians are to blame. The politicians can't execute, can't wage war. And so, you know, we need to rely on operators like, you know,

the barringers who not only know the land, but are willing to do what needs to be done. And part of the story in the film is that Zane's character can't pull the trigger. He has the enemy in his sights and he won't fire around. He won't do it. Whereas Berenger is like a cold-blooded killing machine. Sort of like feels no remorse will quickly do what needs to be done. So I think there is well you have that dynamic, which again would be, I think would be

very legible to viewers of the time. It's sort of, it is a common trope in this genre of film, the genre of fiction, you know, what have you. Yeah, I mean, anytime you're in the jungle, I think in an American movie, it's kind of a Vietnam movie or it's like trying to deal with the demons of Vietnam so that you're absolutely on the money with the whole thing with the incompetence or sneakiness of the military, especially this kind of, of like P-O-W-M-I, there's even a P-O-W-M-A section. It's part of the movie where Barringer gets captured, and then, you know, he goes and freeze him.

There's, like, the secret plan to assassinate Berringer. Yeah, and, you know, Billy Zane is, like, from the civilian world, and at one time, like, he says he would rather have a desk job, and Berringer upbraids him for, you know, basically saying, you know, it's the same ordering people. to be killed as a desk job than doing this. And, yeah, basically the movie is, like, teaching Billy Zane how to kill, and that's, like, when his character is sort of redeemed, is, like, when he finally learns how to kill people.

And, like, when he can draw blood without mercy, then he becomes, he truly becomes a man. That's, like, that's, like, literally, that's the thing. That's the movie. And, like, and, like, and then he's, like, not a coward or, you know, a weakling anymore. So there's that. And then what was I going to say about, yeah, so there's definitely like this celebration of killing or violence as being like the crowning achievement of what liberates you from something. And he doesn't care about the, he doesn't care about the politics, but he's extremely, but Berger is extremely motivated.

I wonder, okay, so did this start? Like we kind of say, we kind of talk about this. without remark but did this start the fascination with snipers or was that pre this i don't know like snipers were such a huge thing like there still are like and but that was such a huge thing in the 90s was like among boys and stuff like that was like snipers being cool and interesting the gilly suits which feature prominently in this movie the sneaking around the marksmanship and so and so forth i don't know if this is what started it but it definitely is a trend and there's lots of movies obviously that feature snipers as like as a kind of action star trope that are that are you know and there

was American sniper which is a more serious movie but definitely played on the you know fascination of America with the sniper and also that has its dark side because there was lots of you know killings and shootings that sort of were inspired by sniper type movies you have the DC shooting the DC snipers so it's a kind of macabre you know aesthetics of violence where somebody like is very

stealthily sneaks to a place and then you know kill somebody in cold blood which a lot of people seem to have a fascination with and I don't I'm just trying to think of the fascination with snipers and I cannot think of anything

prior to this, that would be responsible for it. I can certainly think about how just a few years after this, right, sort of in the late, beginning in the mid to late 90s, when you have the more modern first person shooter and multiplayer first person shooters, sort of like the sniper become the thing you can play in video games. And that seems like it might be a part of,

you know, whatever adolescent fascination with the sniper. But I can't, I think you might be right that this movie might be ground zero for, for that yeah for sniper fascination um what was i going to say about billy zane's character yeah i mean he's sort of like a wiener is that he's sort of horrible i mean like he's barely redeemed at the end of the movie i was like shocked with how you know usually these kind of buddy movies like the characters kind of grow to view see virtues in each other as it progresses and they say well you're different but you know it turns out that you've got good qualities now

we make a team but billy's name for the most of the movie is like a liability almost gets the guy killed like is a real problem and sucks and then he he redeems himself through at the end by rescuing him from prison camp and being a little more you know easy with the trigger um but uh it it is it's pretty remarkably unattractive character he plays for most of the movie uh which I was like, oh, this guy sucks. And, like, they're trying to make him look like he sucks. I remarked him this briefly, but, you know, I grew up in a military town. I knew quite a few people who join the military at high school.

Billy Zane does not look like the kind of person who joins. I mean, the movie says that he was on the SWAT team, D.C. SWAT team, before joining the military. And he just does not look at the parties. just like way too pretty. He's like he's big thick lips, um, full lips, sort of like very soft face. Like he just doesn't, he doesn't look like he belongs anywhere in this movie. It's, it's similar. I'm watching gangs of New York as part of this sort of long running me trying to watch every grosezzi. And Leonardo DiCaprio is the, um, lead in that movie. And like, Leonardo DiCaprio does not look like he belongs in 1862. Just like not at all. I'm sure. I'm

Humans have infinite variety, and I'm sure that there was a person in 1862 in New York who may have been vaguely similar looking to Leo de Capra may have been beautiful. But Leonardo DiCaprio, the human being... He would have had to have no fucking teeth. He would have looked like shit. He would have been malnourished.

People looked, especially like working class Irish Tufts from 1862 would have looked terrible. Right. And so in the same way, Billy Zane just like doesn't look like the kind of guy who's gone through the training to become at least on paper a sniper, either for a police unit or in the military station in Panama. And for me, I mean, it does add to the fact that Zane's character is just sort of like he's kind of a piece of shit, you know, he's sort of, he's a coward, he's soft,

he lies, he's a coward, he lies constantly. and, you know, Berenger has, Berenger's contempt for him is completely justified. And the movie doesn't try to suggest that it isn't. It's actually, it's, it's kind of funny how little work the movie does to sell to you that Zane's characters changed really in any way. Although, again, I mean, the growth, the growth trajectory for this guy is not that he's, like, learning how to be less arrogant

or even unless you're learning how to be a coward, he's more or less just learning how to take a human life. That is kind of the thing he's supposed to learn how to do by the end of the movie. So, you know, you're left with the character who by the end still sucks and now just has the capacity for murder, which doesn't seem like a good resolution, you know, even in the context of combat.

Right, yeah. I mean, that's the thing about this, like, the sniper stuff and the special forces stuff is, like, these people are not, I mean, they're soldiers, and he and Berringer is, like, you know, a hyper-competent soldier who's very brave and so on and so forth. But there's a degree of this, and this is, like, kind of just, like, the nature of modern warfare, which is, like, these people are murderers. Like, this is death squad shit. like this is this is assassination you know like that's the thing about sniping sniping as a as a trope it's like that's it's borderline assassination you know like it's not a soldier like taking a position bravely storming you know the the idea is basically like you sneak around and then you like pick somebody off it's pretty cold blood it is we've

mentioned and it's pretty murderous um you know he gets in some hand-hand hand conduct because they need more action stuff but yeah it's something very disturbing reactionary one might say if there's even any politics at all about being like the military is there to kill people I mean that's very Marines

very Marines which I'm sure Jonathan Katz would tell us is like this first of all the mission focus the total contempt for politicians the total dedication to mission and the belief in the importance of being able to kill like killing is just a huge part

of being known as a killer or training yourself to become a killer is a huge part of Marine Corps ideology. So this movie definitely goes along with that. I mean, somebody very funnily once said on Twitter, which I think there's some truth to it, is like, the U.S. Army is communist. The U.S. Marines are fascist. And there's something to that in the sense that, like, you know, the Army encourages cooperation and equality and, you know, you. You know, but the Marines, it's like you have to be the meanest, toughest son of a bitch who can kill people without any compunction and so and so forth. I don't want to insult any Marines out there, you know.

I mean, I'm sure there are many fine people who have been members of the United States Marine Corps, including people that I know. So, yeah, I don't. But there is a hyperviolence to the Marine Corps ideology that this movie definitely, like, kind of goes off of. Yeah, setting apart individual members of the Marines, who people I know who have been in the Marines, it's more, yeah, it's more sort of like the image

the Marine Corps likes to give off. I think I've been thinking about since, as we mentioned at the top, this is, we are officially in the age of Clinton. Bill Clinton is officially in office, not yet under constant investigation, for, you know, various fake scandals and, you know, the various real ones of him not being able to keep his dick in his pants. But, you know, part of the Clinton controversy in the 92 election and kind of, you know, part of the right, the very to right wing grievances against

Bill Clinton is that he got this draft deferment. He didn't serve and he didn't serve the military. He didn't go to Vietnam, obviously, and was, like, condemned as a draft Dodger. And I kind of wonder if, you know, how this movie and how this sort of genre movie plays in that context, because you'll notice that we haven't really gotten many of these, this type of kind of military thriller yet. No. In terms of the movies we've covered. No.

Lots of much more covert action, which might just be a coincidence, but it's funny to think that in the H.W. Bush, era. You have something that feels attuned to the kind of person Bush was, who was, he was a soldier and he did, was a member led the Central Intelligence Agency. And then with Clinton, from the jump, we have this kind of like, you know, Vietnam, um, throwbacky movie. Yeah. That even if it's not directly commenting on kind of the controversy, and I don't think it is whatsoever. It is an interesting thing to think of in that context and sort of not just the context of Clinton's avoidance of Vietnam, but the extent of which sort of Vietnam veterans

are becoming a much louder and more visible presence in American politics. John McCain's been in the Senate for a minute at this point, but is a pretty prominent senator at this point. We're a couple years away from normalization of relations with Vietnam. Yes. Um, and has a Vietnam Memorial been built yet? I think it's sort of, that was the 80s. That was big controversy because of the way it looked and a lot of people weren't happy about it. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's funny. I hear what you're saying.

I think, you know, on some way, though, it's kind of like an 80s throwback movie in, and it's like, in its politics or absence of politics and its score, it's, you know, kind of just, uh, adulation of tough. guy macho shit without much political sophistication like I feel like these faceless brown bad guys was a thing that you saw in a lot of 80s movies who are just like where are they from what's their political motivation doesn't matter just like mow them down you know like right and you know once we in some of the movies we've watched even when they do have rather crude stereotypes or their politics are sort of sus they generally try to give some kind of complicated political motivations or something story

behind it not just like but this is very the mission I think of the movie there's one scene where he's meeting with like a state department guy or a CIA official and he's just like I don't really care what you have to say just tell me what I have to do and he kind of makes his own dissident comments about the politics being like oh the politicians fuck everything up again um so like yeah it's a little bit of a throwback and I think you know that may have explained the popularity of the movie which was critically panned, but I think people really like a movie, sometimes really like a movie where they don't have to think very much. And, you know, it just sort of is like, this movie's not pretty, it's kind of dark in a way. It's not that, like, you know, it's not that triumphal

about, I mean, there's a war on drugs thing going on here, obviously. There's some kind of counter-insurgent thing. There's not really that triumphal about the United States. It's just sort of like, there are still men like Tom Berringer and they're training another generation of men to go out and kill people and that is what we should be proud of or something like that it's not like you know our political program or project there was that virtuous it was just like we count on these sorts of people to go out there and do what needs to be done so maybe an 80 movie would be a little more like stars and stripes flying and a little bit more um america ps like top gun or something like that and this movie is a little darker and it's but but there were some also because of it's sort of like what it's reactionary

anti-anty war thing with vietnam it's like disdain for civilian leaderships and politicians and stuff like that that might contribute to some of it but what were you going to say no i was just i was trying think of what this movie really reminded me of and what it reminds me of is a cover uh it reminds me of a cover to an issue of soldier of fortune magazine right it is like soldier of fortune the movie practically right yeah um and for those you don't know soldier fortune magazine still exist yeah um it's sort of like uh i mean it's it's like it's a gun magazine it's also like a hyper right wing magazine it's sort of like it's sort of like a magazine for a person who fantasizes about like shooting a black intruder on their property like i don't know how else to put it like

It's very much... Yeah. It's fucked. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's like not good. It's corrosive to the culture. Um, but it's been around since the late 70s and it's sort of, I mean, I just, I pulled it up on Wikipedia real quick to get my, get a, get a sense of, by my dates right.

And the cover they have, um, on Wikipedia, it's a, it's a September, 1995 issue. And it's two, what looks like, you know, special forces operators carrying, you know, M16s maybe, I don't know guns. And the, the splash, you know, headline is prey and spray Columbia's Coke Bustin Broncos, right? It's just like, that is, it is the exact aesthetic of this movie. even the characters in this film are soldiers. There's a real paramilitary aesthetic to the whole thing. And I think that that's only taken off with the special operator aesthetic, which this movie kind of predates,

but like commandos and special forces became really popular. And like, there's a weird part of that because it's like, yeah, they're somewhere between like police and, you know, they're somewhere between police and military. there's something kind of murderous and their assassination squads and I think that the valorization of them rather than just like your normal

soldier sailors, airmen in battle is pretty weird and not good for our culture and is now like a really huge part of gun culture. You know like I talk about this a lot of it's like gun culture I mean obviously there are problems with all these things

and guns can always be used to harm people but you know it's a big difference between being like a frontiersman with a shotgun or cowboy with a six-shooter than like this image of like the the sniper or the death squad you know commandos like masks death squad commando or the sniper with their gilly suit you know like there's something more sinister about those things it's less like you know these people are engaging in it's kind of a fair fight they're they're involved in like subterfusion infiltration and are you know doing a combination of assassination police work whatever

Um, yeah, so like the, the, the valorization of the death squad or the commando or the special operator, I think is pretty creepy and I never really thought of it that way. I was like, yeah, they're cool. Navy SEALs, whatever. Um, but then it just like gets more and more strange and now you see it in right wing gun culture a lot. And it's just like, um, again, like a valorization of really cold-blooded, uh, killing and not necessarily against armed targets or targets that can defend themselves, you know, like in this movie, they always have, I mean, they fight it out with guns, but like they have the drop on these people, you know, they're not like rushing into bat, they're ambushing people and stuff like that, which is part of war, but like, it's pretty

sneaky is what I'm saying. So being sneaky, being murderous, being laying ambushes, you know, this sort of stuff is definitely a more big part of like militia and gun culture than I think it was in the past, and I think, you know, you could probably lay the blame on movies like this to a certain extent. It's interesting. So the 1990s are, I wouldn't say like a heyday for gun culture, but it's certainly the point in which, you know, gun culture is becoming much more mainstream, yeah, much more kind of a part of sort of like what American male culture is not to the extent that it is now right we're sort of like it's not just like gun culture but sort of like tactical culture it's just like part of part of what being um being a male is

for a lot of american men it's part of how you dress right like you go to i mean do people still go to jc pennies or whatever you you go to a department store and you you're a guy and like you buy khaki you can buy khaki um khaki cargo pants but they're not sold his cargo pants, which holds tactical pants, sort of like, you go to the gym. I go to the gym, every morning. I'm a big gym goer. And dudes are in, you know, shirts with like, you know, punisher decals and American flags and sort of like, you know, kind of the style of patches you might see on a tactical uniform. Before the pandemic, there's a big gun rights rally in Richmond, Virginia that I went to. And that was like, that was how people dressed. It wasn't,

right it wasn't sort of like uh uh dudes with six shooters or dudes with you know various revolvers whatever it was guys with you know military style rifles long guns dressed as if they were going to go you breach a house and gun down some insurgents yep um that was the style but in the 90s, it wasn't quite there yet in terms of the mainstream. And I'd even go as far to say that that was still considered a little creepy, right? Sort of like when after the Oklahoma City bombing, which is 96, and you know, after the period where everyone's like, well, obviously a Muslim did it. After that, and they actually catch Timothy McVeigh, there's lots of sort of like, you know, fascination, some of it, like quite lured fascination with the fact that Timothy,

Tim Fibbe was a regular gun shows was sort of like part of this sort of, you know, associated with the kinds of people that were at Ruby Ridge or whatnot and kind of like this really heavily militarized kind of gun culture, this like you're sort of like deaf squatty kind of aesthetic. Right. And people were like super creeped out by that, by that aspect of, uh, of being, Bay, the kind of Turner Diary is aesthetic of it all. And, you know, my sense of it is that it's not until Columbine, at the end of the decade

in 1999, when they're kind of, the conversations and discussions of serious gun control kind of pop up again. Maybe, maybe you can, two points. Well, there was the assault weapons ban, which lapsed, yeah. So there was, like, a push for gun control, but there was at the same time, and probably they're absolutely regulated was an explosion of interest in militia activity in both in popular culture and an actual participation. There went from like a handful to hundreds.

Right. In the 90s, under Clinton, yeah. My sense is that sort of the reaction, the reaction to Columbine, the backlash to the reaction in Columbine. So like, Columbine happened and sort of like, we got to do something about all these guns. And if there's a backlash to this, we're just like, you know, guns aren't the problem. And then sort of out of that backlash where you, I think, think you see the um the explode the further growth and explosion of like the contemporary kind of

gun culture kind of like you know the valorization of guns sort of the emerged of this tactical stuff um but again i at this point it's still kind of it's still kind of considered kind of weird to do to yeah to be into this yeah it's it's still subcultural for sure but it's a subculture that's growing rapidly at this time, because of magazines like Soldier of Fortune, because of interest in militias. And, you know, it's, you know, that kind of got going in the 80s, but really accelerated the 90s because I think there was a lot of paranoia about what Clinton's, Clinton, who, you know, a fairly right-wing Democrat, as we know now, but really created an enormous amount of paranoia on the right, or fed, the, the paranoia was fed by lots of people.

But, you know, there were lots of conspiracy theories about Clinton being. communist new, it was a core of John Birch society stuff, but, but a little more intense. Like, I just remember, you know, the really far-right paranoia about the federal government got super intense under Clinton, especially after Ruby, well, that was during Bush still, but after the Ruby Ridge incident where a Ku Klux Klan dragon and, you know, militia guy was shot by federal agents. I think his wife was also killed while holding a baby. baby or something horrible like that and then you know that event and waco um which i think happens

not long after this movie comes out um you know both brings the militia survivalists far right to public attention um create some backlash against them but also those events outrage to people who would likely to be sympathetic with those groups and they glom and they're attracted to those kind of groups, which I think later, you know, kind of become the core of the kind of far-right street fighting and militia cadry that kind of attach themselves to Trump in a certain way. So, yeah, I think it's like it's entering the mainstream, and it's still subculture and creepy, but, you know, like, I mean, I don't want to give this movie too much. I think this is something that...

you know, it's always unsure of how much power you should give to culture as a determinant or whether culture is being influenced by something else. But, you know, I'm tempted to lay some blame on movies like this for encouraging these aesthetics. But, you know, I think it's certainly a more complicated picture than you can just say it was TV and movies. The TV and movies were reflecting something that was in the air or what was going on. Yeah, that's, that's, I agree with that. It's, um, kind of the, you can think of the canonical or the paradigmatic example of this is birth of a nation. I'm like, one hand, birth of a nation does reflect the, um, the, the, the, the insane racism of American culture in the 1910s of, you know,

Jim Crow having been firmly established, sort of the, the, um, the triumph of white supremacy in the South and really across the nation, like, birth of a nation grows out of all of that, sort of this like literalization of like lost cause ideology and Jim Crow racism. Just as well, though, that the imagery and iconography that comes out of birth of a nation, sort of the image of the clan, the image of all this stuff, does influence how people act, right? Sort of like the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan is very tied directly to the success of birth of a nation and that the new clan draws.

its aesthetic, draws its sort of mythology, it's much from that movie as it does from the actual historical clan. And so I'm not going to, I don't think sniper is some sort of like birth of a nation for militia freaks. But I do think that it does, you're right to say that it does reflect something happening in the culture. I just was quickly Googling to pull up some of these Clinton era conspiracies primarily about the New World Order, right? Sort of like Clinton, he signs NAFTA. He signed. signs the Brady Bill and sort of like, oh, what's going to happen? You know, you're Pat Robertson, who headquartered in my hometown of Virginia Beach, you're Pat Robertson's, you know, lots of

figures, a guy named Jack McLean who founded an organization called Police and Military Against the New World Order. I mean, this is a very common thing in that early to mid-90s. The narrative is that, you know, Bill Clinton, he went to Russia. As a young man, he's like, you know, he's probably a communist, Soviet communist, and doesn't respect this country as evidenced by its draft dodging, which the story there is he had a high draft number and never got called. That's pretty much what happened. You know, he's going to take away our guns, and then he's going to, like, you know, fuse America and Canada into a single nation. And then this is the age of like multilateral interventions and the United Nations is taking

sort of like a larger role in the public mind. And so this is, you know, he's going to fuse this with the United Nations to be a world government, new world order. Not for nothing, right? Should of the conservative evangelical Christian apocalyptic novels left behind show up at the end of this decade. And kind of the whole conceit of those is that like, you know, a global government is the antichrist will establish a global government new world right globalism right i mean this is all part of the air and the movie sniper doesn't go into into any of this stuff no but certainly um the the uh kind of there is nothing for to be objected to by anybody who's into that stuff in this movie there are no right exactly politics yeah like it's a it's a far right safe movie it's not

necessarily a pro far right movie but it's a pro it's a far right safe movie right that's exactly right um yeah sorry i'm just i'm looking at this timeline of um of new world order conspiracies i had forgotten that way back in 2007 the montana house of representatives issued a joint resolution standing against the quote nafta super highway i don't know if you remember this sort of like it was it was the um it was it was two things happening simultaneously because this was around bush's immigration bill, which was a huge flashpoint for the far right. Right. It was both that, you know, Bush is in league with these people.

We're going to get rid of the dollar and adopt the Amero and be a single market with Canada and Mexico. Then there's also, well, you know, the Mexicans are going to try to retake parts of the United States. They call it La Rasa. It's going to be, you know, they're going to reclaim their territory, et cetera, et cetera. Lots of that Paranoia in the 2000s But it's all there in the 90s as well It's sort of it's it almost feels like a forgotten part of

1990s culture since we're kind of in this weird 90s nostalgia moment still Zoomers are you know wearing You know Caprize again I don't know There is Forgot in the kind of like hey the 90s were kind of cool

was this subcultural insane paranoia about the U.S. federal government. Yeah, well, I'm going to get into that in my book, hopefully, plenty. But that's absolutely right.

There's a forgotten kind of dark side of the 90s, which was a time when there was a lot of anxiety and paranoia and some of it, you know, turned out to be kind of justified when 9-11 happened. People didn't think that was what was going to happen. But there were a lot of...

I mean, George Bush, orchestrated it. So, of course, the paranoia was just... Well, we know that. We know that today. There's... I mean, I'm not a crank, but basically yeah, there was a real

sense. I mean, look, there's a racial aspect to this, which is unavoidable, which comes to real intense fruition with Obama, which was that, you know, society's becoming, I mean, integration. I mean, there was lots of setbacks during Reagan and a horrible shit that happened

but like society is integrating to a certain degree culturally the middle class is integrating to a certain degree and you know this is making a lot of people pretty unhappy. That's a part of it. You know, gays are getting more visibility and rights that's a part of it.

Feminism is having major successes. That's a part of it. So, you know, there's a sense that this old you know, that the old world is fading away and it's creating a reaction Which, you know, we saw in the 1980s that, you know, there was a lot of reaction to the 1970s where the, you know, efforts to have forms of art that included different types of people, you know, led to major backlashes and so on and so forth. in the 90s

movies and race and sexuality are complicated and not something easy to get to in one sentence but I definitely think that a big part of the militia movement and the fear of the new world government is connected to fear about immigration and fear about the inner city

so there's obviously a racial aspect to it but, and because, and which was made more acute by the increasing integration and diversification of the society, which, you know, was still, you know, much whiter than it was, you know, much whiter than it is now. But I think there was the sense that things were changing and it created a lot of anxiety and fear and hatred. Yes. And we're actually, I think this is a good, I think this is a good place to end because when I say what our movie next time is going to be, you'd be like, oh, a perfect opportunity to talk about this exact aspect of 90s culture and this exact part of 1990s anxiety. So I'm going to say, that's our show. all right if you're not a subscriber please subscribe we're available on iTunes

Spotify Stitcher Radio and Google Podcasts wherever else podcasts are found if you subscribe please leave a rating and a review it does help people find the show and it's nice to read nice reviews you can reach out to both of us on Twitter

my handle is at Jay Bowie John yours is at Lionel underscore trolling and you can reach out to the podcast of her email via the email unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com. For this, we can feedback. We have an email from Ian titled Tommy Lee Jones. Sorry, I don't have a Twitter even though I'm just an older millennial. So are we. So you know, whatever. You guys pointed to men in black as Tommy Lee Jones's major shift to serious character.

I think this is in the Under Siege episode. But missed the movie that came out. the year after Under Siege and both definitively marks his serious transition and should be on your list of movies. The Fugitive. Oh, yeah. It's a seminal movie for me at 10 years old. The fugitive is on our list of movies. Do not worry, we will get to it.

I will never forget Harrison Ford at the edge of a dam, sorry, yelling, I didn't kill my wife and Tommy Lee Jones yelling back, I don't care. I don't care. Which really is a all-time great moment, all-time great line delivery from Jones. this says a lot about the changing nature of law enforcement and where it would go and lead us to our current world, especially since Tommy Lee Jones doesn't really be antagonist of the film, just a thought. Thanks for bringing back all the films from my youth that I loved and now have hugely, and now have hugely ambivalent implications. The movie Clear and Present Danger has lived in my VHS for a solid decade and my dad dragged me to see it in the theater when I was a kid. Love the pod. Ian.

you so much for the note, Ian. Episodes come out every Friday, and so we'll see you in two weeks with finally Falling Down, which is why I said that that was a great place to end this conversation, because falling down is a movie about the racial and gender anxieties of the 1990s. Yes. I was checking, I was going to letterbox real quick just to kind of see where it was playing, you know, where you could find it. and the reviews are like mixed between people like me who are like I think this movie is great

and sort of subversive and interesting and people who are like it's reactionary trash so we'll discuss that we'll discuss sort of yeah I think we'll have to spend some time on its reception in the public because I do think that it was very much received as reactionary trash even though I don't think that's what the movie is but it'll be a great sort of it'll be a great foundation the movie for for talking and thinking through this aspect of 1990s. A very short plot synopsis. An ordinary man,

frustrated with various flaws he sees in society, begins to psychotically and violently lash out against them. It is available for rent on Amazon and iTunes. For John Gans, I am Jamal Bowie, and this is unclear and present danger. We'll see you next time. I'm going to be able to be.