Unclear and Present Danger - The Rock

Episode Date: March 15, 2024

For this week’s episode of the podcast, we watched Michael Bay’s weirdly prescient action thriller, “The Rock,” released in 1996 and starring Sean Connery, Nicholas Cage, Ed Harris, Michael Biehn and William Forsythe. The supporting cast is also chock full of compelling character actors, including John Spencer, Philip Baker Hall, John C. McKinley, Tony Todd and Bokeem Woodbine. In “The Rock,” Ed Harris plays General Francis Hummel, a disillusioned Vietnam War vet who is angry with the American government for abandoning its soldiers to die behind enemy lines with little to no recognition or compensation. To get his revenge, and to get compensation for his men and their families, he leads his force of rogue Marines in a raid on a naval weapons depot, where they steal a stockpile of VX gas-loaded rockets. They then seize control of Alcatraz Island, off the coast of San Francisco, and hold the area hostage. Either the U.S. government pays him $100 million from a military slush fund, or he launches the rockets, killing hundreds of thousands of people.To disarm the rockets and stop Hummel, the Pentagon and the FBI organize a joint-task force of Navy Seals, special agents and a former convict at Alcatraz. Nic Cage plays FBI agent Stanley Goodspeed, a chemical weapons expert asked with identifying and disarming the weapons. Sean Connery plays John Patrick Mason, a former MI6 officer and current maximum security inmate who was the only person to successfully escape from Alcatraz. The FBI has brought Mason out of prison to aid the mission. The team successfully infiltrates Alcatraz, but then the plan falls apart. The Seals are killed, and Goodspeed and Mason are left trapped in Alcatraz. Their only hope of escape, and survival, is to complete the mission before an airstrike — ordered as a last resort — destroys the island and everyone on it.The tagline for “The Rock” was “Alcatraz. Only one man has ever broken out. Now five million lives depend on two men breaking in.”You can find “The Rock” to rent or buy on demand on iTunes and Amazon.Our next episode will be on the 1995 film “Hackers.”Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck.Contact us!Follow us on Twitter!John GanzJamelle BouieUnclearPodAnd join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War, and much, much more. Our latest episode of the patreon is on the 1964 nuclear war thriller, “Fail Safe.”

The following is a state secret gentleman, disclose it to any party, and you will be subject to prosecution. His name is John Mason, British National, incarcerated on Alcatraz in 1962, escaped in 63. There's no identity in the United States or Greek print, and he does not exist. Secrets have a way of coming back to haunt you. There's a hostage situation on Alcatraz. Hostage. Eighty-one tourist. The rocks are tourist attraction.

The one you train to defend you becomes your greatest threat. A battery of VX gas rockets is presently deployed to deliver a highly lethal strike on the population of the San Francisco Bay Area. And the one you abandon becomes your only hope. You go talk to him. Me? Yeah. Hiya. I'm an agent with the FBI.

I'm Stanley Goodsby. But of course you are. At least he got his name right. Now, all that stands between a city and a disaster. The power of this chemical is way beyond anything you can imagine. That's where you're coming with us. Is a man who's never seen combat. You're chemical freak.

I'm a chemical super freak, actually. And another who's been out of action for 30 years. Show us on the blueprints. They can't. My blueprint was in my head. Fortunately, some things, you'll never forget. But don't worry, it'll all come back to me. From Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer,

the producers of Top Gun and Crimson Tide, and Michael Bay, the director of Bad Boys. Welcome to the Rock. We got business. Sean Connery. You sure you're ready for this? I'm doing my best. You're best.

Losers always whine about their best. Yeah. Michael's Cage. Listen, I'm just a biochemist. I drive a Volvo. Page one. So what do you say you cut me some friggin' slack? And Harris.

Fire. This summer. Get ready to rock. Welcome to Unguyen clear and present danger. A podcast about the political and military throwers of the 1990s and what they say about the politics of that decade. I'm Jamel Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. I'm John Gans. I write the substack newsletter on popular front. And I am the author of the forthcoming book, When the Clock Broke, Conman, Conspiracists,

and How America Cracked Up in the early 1990s, which is available for pre-order. You can order it online or call your favorite independent bookseller and ask them to stock it, which would be great. You've been doing the rounds a little bit for press, and the reception has been really good. Yeah, so far, people seem to really like it. I've done a couple interviews about it and more to come. So if you want to, if you want to read a review before you buy it, they're out there now, so take a look. For this week's episode of the podcast, we watched Michael Bayes, entertaining and weirdly prescient in some ways, action thriller The Rock, released in 1996 and starring Sean Connery,

Nicholas Cage, Ed Harris, Michael Bean, and William Forsyfe. The supporting cast is also chock full of very compelling character actors, including John Spencer, who you will recognize from previous. I believe he was, no, he was not in the American president, but he's of course. Leo McGarry and West Wing, Philip Baker Hall, which Patreon listeners will recognize from our episode on Secret Honor. John C. McGinley, who is, I've said this before, he was in the Seagall movie on Deadly Ground. I think it's very funny that John McGinley had this, like, 90s career as a henchman, and then ends up as sort of like, you know, warm-hearted boss on scrubs. Anyway, that always amuses me.

Tony Todd, the great Tony Todd, who you'll recognize from Candyman. And also, I just saw him in, what you're going to call it, lean on me when I was watching on those movies. And then Bokeem Woodbine, another great character actor. So lots of guides in this movie you're going to recognize immediately. The film was shot, I thought this was interesting, I always look this up, film was shot by John Swordsman, who also did Heather's Airheads, a great moment. movie, Seabiscuit, and his work also includes future unclear pod films, conspiracy theory

with Mel Gibson, Armageddon, another Michael Bay, and Pearl Harbor, another Michael Bay. So this guy's a Michael Bay collaborator. In The Rock, Ed Harris, plays General Francis Hummel, a disillusioned Vietnam War Vett, who was angry with the American government for abandoning its soldiers to die behind enemy lines with little or no recognition or compensation. To get his revenge, justice, and to get compensation for his men and their families, he leads a force of rogue Marines and a raid on a naval weapons depot where they steal a stockpile of VX-gas-loaded rockets.

They then seize control of Alcatraz Island off the coast of San Francisco and hold the area hostage. The U.S. government pays him $100 million from a military slush fund, where he launches the rockets, killing countless people to disarm the rockets and stop Hummel, and the FBI organized a joint task force of Navy SEALs, special agents, and a former convict at Alcatraz. Nick Cage plays FBI agent Stanley Goodspeed, a chemical weapons expert tasked with identifying and disarming the weapons. Sean Connery plays John Patrick Mason, a former MI6 officer and current maximum security inmate who was the only person to successfully escape from Alcatraz. The FBI has brought Mason out of prison to aid the mission. Mason, of course, I mean, everyone who watches us know this. It's like kind of like a, it's a big, the concept here is like James Bond was thrown into an American prison.

I mean, let him out. The team successfully infiltrates Alcatraz, but then the plan falls apart. The seals are killed in a pretty glorious firefight. Goodspeed and Mason are left trapped in Alcatraz. Their only hope of escape and survival is to complete the mission before an airstrike, ordered as a last resort. destroys the island and everyone on it. Lots going on in this movie. The tagline for The Rock was Alcatraz.

Only one man has ever broken out. Now, five million lives depend on two men breaking in. You can find The Rock to rent or buy on demand on iTunes and Amazon. And The Rock was released on June 7, 1996. This is Peak Summer Blackwester. So let's check out the New York Times for. that day. There's actually quite a lot of interesting things here. The first thing that catches my eye is this, the main photo above the fold, which is captions, two FBI agents

escorted to Gloria Ward, second from Wright and her daughter's Courtney and Jalen yesterday after Mrs. Ward and her husband Elwyn defected from the Freeman compound in Montana. And And here's the headline. Family of four quick compound of the Freeman. And the first defections from the right-wing Freeman fugitives in two months, a couple along with the women's two children today voluntarily left the group's high plains farmhouse and were whisked away by federal agents. The break follows the government's increasing pressure tactics, which began on Monday, with the shut off of electricity to the compound where 18 people, including two children who left today and a 16-year-old boy had been holed up since March 15th. The four who left were

identified as Gloria Ward, 35, also known as Tamara Mangum, Ellen Ward 55, Elwyn Ward, sorry, 55 and her two children, Courtney Joy Christensen, and Jalen Joy, Mangum. Federal authorities said the child custody charges that were outstanding against Mrs. Ward in Utah had been dropped, and the woman's sister, who was not named, had played a crucial role in persuading her to leave the courthouse, the farmhouse. I'm sorry. The love of family played a significant part of this result, said Sherry Matiucci, United States Attorney for Montana. This is a positive indication we're moving forward. It was very important to accomplish to get those kids out of there. So I'm not actually familiar with this particular far right

group. Yeah, neither am I. This is or this episode, which actually suggests that the government was successful in what they were trying to do. Of course, you know, the 80s and 90s saw kind of efflorence of these right-wing groups, survivalists, and there were very, and, you know, religious groups. There were infamous, infamously bloody episodes like at Ruby Ridge and Waco, which was a catastrophe, that really actually, you know, were propaganda coups for this kind of right-wing movement. And it looks like this was another such group, but I think that the FBI had sort of learned its lesson not to be quite so forceful in trying to apprehend such fugitives. And this looks like it kind of came, it resolved peacefully.

But yeah, it's interesting. There were so many of these groups I did not even know about it. And, yeah, it's a Christian, here I'm learning it up. Ah, it's related to sovereign citizen movement. Anti-government Christian Patriot militia based on around the town of Jordan, Montana. A lot of them were in the West. The members of the group are forward to their land as justice township and had declared their leaders and followers sovereign citizens, no longer under the authority of the outside government.

They became the center of public attention in 1986 when they engaged in a prolonged armed standoff with agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They had surrendered a week later, it turns out. Oh, and Randy Weaver was trying to negotiate Gritz, Bo Grites, I should say, a big member of the survivalist movement arrived with Randy Reaver, who was the fugitive at Ruby Ridge, to try to negotiate some release, but also to get publicity for the survivalist. movement. And it looks like they didn't really weren't permitted to take parts. But yeah, so these movements were, you know, a big part of the 1990s. Obviously, there was the Oklahoma

city bombing, which was related. And we've talked about this in the past and kind of how they're just sort of reincorporated themselves into mainstream politics now. I feel like there is a movie about it's not very good it's about a journalist for someone who like infiltrates you know one of these right wing movements maybe neo-nazis or whatever

and I feel like we should do that for the pod because I kind of just want an excuse to get Kathleen Ballou on here Oh sure that would be great I mean also she when did Arlington Road come out Arlington Road comes in a little later so Arlington Road could be it yeah

I think it comes on 97 so all right we're coming up we're coming up on it I think that would be great to have Kathleen B. Lou on it. One of those movies. Okay, here's another really interesting headline. Cambodian killers careful records used against them. Seuss T. played an important role in the mass killings of communist Cameroot by the communist Cameroon that for nearly four years turned Cambodian to one of the most terrifying places on her. He was a clerk. In meticulous, even radiant script, he recorded the names and personal histories of thousands of prisoners who were blindfolded,

it through his office to be tortured and killed at Tolstang prison in Penh. He was not a violent man, Mr. Suu Kyi said in an interview at this village one hour's drive south of Pen. I was just making lists. Today those lists like the dedicated work of other loyal record keepers are being turned against the Khmer Rouge by a research team financed primarily by the United States Congress that is gathering evidence for possible trials that are leaders. In addition, in tallying thousands of mass graves around the country, the researchers say that the number of people killed between 1975 and 1979 could be double the figure of one million that is generally used. I have a population then estimated 7 million. With six months to go before their two-year

project is completed, the researchers say they have established that the killings were essentially organized on orders of the Khmer Rouge leadership. Yeah. So basically, Camar Rouge leaders, this is just a little farther down, headed by Paul Pot, are believed to be hiding in mountains near the border of Thailand, surrounded by a tough guerrilla army that has repulsed repeated offensive against them and many questions that could ever be captured and brought to trial. I think Pol Pot died not long after this. And actually, many of the leadership of the, or some of the leadership of the Khmer Rouge was brought to trial and convicted. Of course, Cambodian genocide took place in the 1970s. and yeah what else do we got here uh 1998 he died so yeah a couple years after this i remember the new york times as a kid i remember the new york times headline that about his death this is the time of year i'm reading a lot of stuff for like work but when i'm like kind of like maybe holiday research things is just to read up on the kimer Rouge is not that i i have like a cheerful reading Jamel.

I'm just beat your beet treats. I'm just fascinated. Yeah. Part of this is like a friend of mine. You know, her father survived the Cambodian genocide.

But I've just sort of, it seems in a century of truly crazy things, it feels even crazy compared to that. If you know what I mean. Yeah, I know what you mean.

So I'm just sort of curious. I don't know. I mean, the scale of how many people People were killed in terms of the population, as you can see, it's just staggering. And the insanity of what the Khmer Rouge was trying to accomplish, basically, bringing a country back to the middle age, essentially, was really astonishing stuff. Yeah.

Let's see what else we got here. In concession, China is ready to ban A tests. Beijing hopes were packed by end of the year. China today abandoned its longstanding insisting. on its right to conduct nuclear explosions for non-military purposes, and said it hoped an international treaty banning all nuclear testing could be concluded by the end of the year. The Chinese concession announced a day in Geneva in a speech by Shah Zhukang, China's chief delegate to an international disarmament conference, removed a significant hurdle to the signing

of the pact. The only nuclear power that is still conducting tests, China had argued that nuclear explosions should be allowed for civilian purposes, like large construction projects. Man. Chinese scientists have also contended that testing could help provide defenses against the threat of killer asteroids. Okay. Mr. Shaw said the question of testing for peaceful land should be reconsidered at a test treaty review conference expected in 10 years. To today's development left some serious obstacles to a test ban treaty, including opposition to India and a long-standing Chinese objection to what it considers overly intrusive methods of verifying whether countries are complying with the ban. I think that there is a test ban treaty now. Yes, I believe so. There was one of the 60s, and it's a multilateral treaty to ban nuclear weapons. And many countries have signed it, but not ratified it, like the United States, Russia and China, also Iran, Egypt.

So there hasn't been, I don't think it's since the 90s. I don't, there were, there were nuclear tests, of course, in India and Pakistan and also North Korea. Oh, no, more recently North Korea appears to have made a nuclear test, but it may have kind of fizzled. But I don't think there's been a major nuclear test in our, in recent years, as far as I know. But yeah, nuclear testing is obviously very frightening for a lot of reasons. You know, they used to set off thermonuclear weapons in the atmosphere, which is really insane.

And now then they started doing underground tests, which is still insane. Recently, Putin said that they would consider doing nuclear tests again, considering the United States hadn't ratified and was with, he revoked the ratification of the test ban treaty. I don't think they've conducted a test since

we've definitely heard about that. So, yeah. nuclear weapons, very frightening and scary, should not be set off for any purpose, in my view. And I hope we don't go back to the world of, I remember being as a child, being told about nuclear tests and just being terrified of the whole idea, you know, and learning about the bikini atoll test where the U.S. blew up a giant thermonuclear bomb over islands in the South Pacific. It was just really horrifying.

Again, the 20th century man, really, what a time, you know, I think that's it for me. I don't know. Do you see anything that interests you? Just one thing, and that is Dole seeks words to broaden playing on abortion issue. He calls for tolerance. Candidate urges his party to avoid bitter division as it seeks to be majority. In what he described as an effort to promote civilities, Senator Bob Dole called to night for a, quote, declaration of tolerance in the Republican Party platform on

abortion and other issues that threaten to split the Republicans at their August convention and in the fall campaign. Mr. Dull, who has consistently voted against abortion in his more than three decades in Congress, said he would keep the language of the party's 1992 platform opposing all abortion and calling for a constitutional amendment to outlaw. But he said he would add a clause like that espoused by Ronald Reagan in 1980, acknowledging that Republicans have recognized different views in abortion among Americans in general and in our own party. Mr. Dull added that while the anti-abortion wording of the party platform was important, I will not silence those who disagree. This is just, it's interesting to me, it's just sort of like

an example of when the Republican kind of voting coalition was still inclusive of a lot of, or perhaps most kind of suburban college-educated whites who were moderate to liberal on abortion. And so the party was still kind of like trying to maintain this coalition of perhaps a majority of Republicans who opposed abortion wanted an illegal, but a very large number who were not on board for that. You see this beyond just dull here. You see this in, for example, the.

jurisprudence to someone like Sandra Day O'Connor, who is one of the key votes in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 93, which basically, you know, it modifies Roe by adding this viability standard. That if a child is viable, then states have an interest in the pregnancy, but pre-viability, it's pretty much all up to the individual. And that, I feel like represents kind of like the Republican moderate position on abortion at the time. And obviously, the interesting thing is that anti-abortion activists, right, like, however many, you know, pro-choice Republicans there were, they weren't particularly politically mobilized, but anti-abortion Republicans were. Over the next, you know, several decades, they basically out-organize their opponents in the party and the

Republican Party. Basically, I'd say by the end of the us is kind of uniformly anti-abortion in a way that it wasn't quite at this point. Yeah. So I just, I thought that was interesting. Yeah, for sure. It's really hard to mobilize for moderation, you know, like that it doesn't really let itself to political organization in the same way that like an activist position does. because, you know, like the people are like, well, it's the common sense and I will vote and not like, I need to get together with a group of people and we're going to get this through over a series of so and so many years. And here's our strategy. So I think that that is a kind of, I don't know, I wouldn't maybe saying it's a flaw in democracy is going a little too far. But I think that especially, I think certain types of civic mobilization actually favor. activists in extreme positions rather than moderating ones, which is a little bit different from the way a lot of theorists think about how civil society and works in democracy, which is supposed to be this kind of way in which interests are all resolved and it's impossible to

make a dictatorship because citizens are organized and so on and so forth. But I think civil society is a little bit more complicated. People are coming down to the recognition that civil society mobilization, political mobilization, is a little bit more ambiguous than was once believed by political scientists and theorists. I think that's right. Yep. Okay. So on to The Rock.

First thing to first, John, have you seen this before? I had never seen The Rock. I wasn't allowed maybe. I remember my friends in elementary school talking about the Rock because they had all seen the Rock and were talking about how. awesome it was but I didn't see it and I don't I don't I and then I just I never got around to it so this was the first time I mean I knew what it was about because roughly but I knew the Alcatraz featured into it I knew chemical weapons featured into it some of the images of the movie

kind of filtered through the culture into my head I knew Nicholas Cage and Sean Conner but I had never seen it before and yeah I mean it was it's it's a Michael Bay movie it's really over the top tell me more about what you think about the film it's like a car It's cartoonish. Like when I was struck by the visual of it, it was like, I think that you were mentioning the cinematographer worked with him. It's almost like it looks like a comic book, both on the level of costume, but also the level of the coloration, like the way that's shot with all these like lens flare stuff

looks like the like the way in the 90s and 80s, they did those like airbrushing comics. And I was like, this movie like looks almost airbrushed. And so I was like, wow, this is like a comic book and also just like the way Nicholas Cage's like apartment is, the way his character is almost cartoonish. Like, well, I mean, it's Nicholas Cage. So it was very comic booky, I thought. And then I thought that the part of whatever political background of it was kind of interesting. It's not, it's almost like these marine, these disgruntled Marines like have a stab in the back legend and are like, oh, you know, these people, these recon marines were left behind by the U.S.

and they're trying to like make right, which is a vaguely right wing sort of position one could say, I suppose. Nicholas Cage is a scientist, which I find kind of funny in its own right. And, you know, Sean Connery's this total badass. I don't think that, so there was another, that's funny that the movie said that there was the only successful escape from Alcatraz. Also, there was a big fascination with Alcatraz in the 1990s. I don't know if it was because of this movie, but it was like, it was just that itself had this weird cultural cachet about, it had fallen out of use, of course, but it still, you know,

it was some kind of symbol of, I'm not sure what, you know, imprisonment, I suppose. But, but there was an escape attempt from Alcatraz and they're not sure if the people who made it off the island actually died or successfully escaped. There's a lot of, but yeah. So he's an older guy who has to lead Nick Cage back in the team back onto the island. So it's a kind of, he's in prison. There's kind of a coming out of retirement thing too, but he's a political dissident in a way. He's a complete non-cooperator with the system, which is a kind of stock figure of these movies. in an opposite way that Ed Harris's character is from a certain perspective. So, yeah, you know, like the movie was pretty entertaining.

It's pretty over the top and funny. And the dialogue is kind of hysterically silly. And I think it had contributions by Aaron Sorkin and by Quentin Tarantino, which I don't think are credited, but you can kind of see it. what I found really fascinating about the movies when I was reading about it and this just like I think will lead into what you were talking before the podcast of what you found so striking about the movie was a scene from I'm going to just read this because it's the whole thing because it's just it's just very telling I think about a lot of things a scene from the film was the basis for incorrect and false descriptions for the Iraqi. chemical weapons program. Britain's secret intelligence service was led to believe Saddam Hussein was continuing to produce weapons of mass destruction by a false agent who based this reports on the movie

according to the Chilcott inquiry, which was an inquiry in the UK into the origins of the Iraq war. In September 2002, which is, you know, some time, but after this movie came out, it was probably already on VHS and DVD, there were DVDs then, right? Yeah, probably. Yeah. MI6 chief Richard Deerlove said the agency had acquired information from a new source, revealing that Iraq was stepping up productions of chemical biological warfare agents.

The source, who was said to have direct access, claimed senior staff were working seven days a week while the regime was concentrating a great deal of effort on the production of anthrax. Deerlove told the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Sir John Scarlett, they were on an edge of a significant interest. tell breakthrough, which would be the key to unlock at Rock's weapons program. However, questions were raised about the agent's claim when it was noticed his description for striking resemblance to a scene from the film. It was pointed out that glass containers were not typically used in chemical munitions and that the popular movie, The Rock, had inaccurate, and this is like an iconic image from the movie, right, the Little Green Balls, that a popular movie, The Rock had inaccurately

depicted nerve agents being carried in glass beads or spheres. the Chilkot report stated. By February 2003, a month before the invasion of Iraq, MI6 concluded that their source had been lying over a period of time, but failed to reform number 10, number 10 Downing Street, that is, the prime minister's office, or others, even though Prime Minister Tony Blair had been briefed on this intelligence. According to the independent, the false claims of weapons of mass destruction were the justifications for UK's entering the war. The film's co-writer David Weissberg said, what was so amazing was anybody in the poison gas community would immediately know that this was total

bullshit, such obvious bullshit. Weisberg said he was unsurprised to desperation might resort to films for inspiration, but just made that authorities didn't do apparently the most basic fact-checking or vetting of information. If you'd asked the chemical weapons expert, it would have been immediately obviously it was ludicrous. Weisberg said he had some funny emails after the port, but he felt it's not a nice legacy for the film. It's tragic we went to war. He could included. I just was like totally blown away by the story and I just like, oh my God. And it just shows, yeah, sorry, go ahead. No, no, it's just I was, I think we're about to say the same thing. Yeah. To me, to me, it, it first demonstrates how fucking stupid the, uh, the case

for the Iraq war was. Just, I know, like, it's, it's hard. It is, it's genuinely hard to impress upon people how stupid everything was for like years. Um, I didn't, you know, before I was posting about this movie on Blue Sky and actually a follower of mine sent this story to me. I wasn't aware of this. I was not aware that part of the intelligence case was someone like something that got from a fucking movie. I know. I mean, that was like something you would say as a metaphor or a figure of speech almost. Like this sounds like it comes from a movie.

But it was literally from a movie. And a cartoon, as we were saying, or as I was saying, a pretty cartoonish depiction of chemical weapons. And I think that, yeah, the stupidity of the Iraq War was such that it, and I think that that's the way it worked ideologically, almost, is that these things dovetailed. Like, it was like an action movie, right? Right. And the imaginary material of it was literally from an action movie. and the protagonists, including Bush, conceived of himself and presented himself as an action movie, you know, like kind of a Harrison Ford sort of figure. Like, it was, it was really, I think this really, you know, we've, we've hinted all along or even said outright that the movies of this era, how do they contribute to the war on terror?

And it's just so bald-faced and literal in this case. It's really just like, here's our whole podcast in a way. like, you know, if you want to make a case for the, for the, the political influence of these films, like, here it is. Right. I mean, that's, that's, that's the thing. This podcast is all about, it's really about subtext, right? But here, with, with this movie, there's no subtext. There's no subtext in this movie, but also with this sort of relationship to, it's political afterlife strips away whatever subtext that might have been in the first place. The thing that's, I mean, So we already did kind of a plot synopsis, but this, you know, the Ed Harris character is stabbed in a back and betrayed Vietnam soldier, like a trope that was popular in the 90s.

And you can sort of see this movie as kind of falling into this thing that is recurring in these 90s action films, which is sort of like the Soviet Union's gone. We don't have any ideological enemy in the world. But what we do have is the blowback from our own actions in the past. And that is creating our adversaries. So Hummel is a bad guy only because we did something wrong. The state did something wrong, mistreated its soldiers. And so now we have to deal with this terrorist action. But the men around him are some of his own men, but some of them are mercenaries as well.

And they have varying levels of like ironclad commitment. But one of the things that happens in the film is that Hummel isn't actually prepared to go through with using these weapons in the civilian population. He ultimately isn't a bad guy. He is a desperate one. But some of the men under him are absolutely willing to do it. And there's a scene where one of those men, like, has a gun to Hubble and is like, you're either with us or against us. And that was like, and this comes after a scene where the president issues an order for an airstrike and says, we're fighting a war on terror. And it's just sort of like, I mean, two things.

The first is, did, you know, did Bush's speechwriters get you're either with us or against us from the rock? I wouldn't be surprised if even unconsciously, I mean, considering everything we know now, I would not be surprised. I think that was, it was, it was pitched to that level, like they wanted to capture that level and of, of, of, And I think these films had prepared people for it and they would be respond to the kind of dialogue in even the literal catchphrases that came out of these movies. So I wouldn't be surprised. I said this to you over text before he showed recording. This movie feels like a post-9-11 film in that it is both about blowback.

And funny enough, maybe this makes it honestly. pre-N-11, that it's a little more forthright about that, right? Like, it post-on-11, the notion that the United States might have been in any way responsible for the things that happened to it was a verboten. You couldn't say that. You couldn't connect the past to the present in that way. But in this moment, maybe you could. And so, but the notion of blowback being kind of the challenge for the United States, Marxists is sort of post-9-11, but also just the attitude of the characters, which is not ironic, and it's not, it's not sort of triumphant, but it's this sort of aggressive, yeah, like self-consciously action heroes that feels very

American policymakers in the wake of 9-11. Yeah, for sure. This is a kind of gung-ho attitude. And that also makes Nick Cage, who I think is great in this movie, makes his sort of his position in a little funny and a little unusual because he still is kind of this prototypical 90s action hero. First of all, he doesn't look like an action hero. It's Nicholas Cage. I mean, he's a funny looking guy. Handsome, but handsome in a funny way.

He is kind of goofy and his like mannerisms and voice. And much of the movie is him kind of being a fish out of water. Like, I, I'm, I'm a chemical weapons guy. I don't, I don't even know how to fire a gun, really. I don't really do action stuff. So you have this, like, 90s, fish out of water action hero thing in the midst of a film that just feels very, it doesn't have the somberness of a post-9-11 film, sort of like, all those post-on-11 action films, borns, certainly something like Siriana or Munich, all these things, they have this sort of,

they're very somber, very sort of, like, weighty. And this doesn't have any of that, but it, but it, but it feels so much like it was like written in 2002. Um, if there were like new metal in the movie, right? If there's, if, if, if like it was like, it almost has an aesthetic. Yeah, it really. It almost has an aesthetic. But if there was like, you know, a needle drop to lip biscuit, I'd be like this movie was made in, in 2002. No question.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I know exactly what you mean. I think like, the other thing I think that these movies. allow permit or encourage is like there's all these figures who are who are like government operatives but they're they've gone they're rogue or they don't quite fit in like nicholas cage is a little bit of a badass wise ass figure obviously sean connery is like a dissident in a way

or has refused to cooperate and ed harris is obviously broken with you know his rogue and a renegade. And I think like this contributes to this feeling among like this propagandistic message that gets bought by people within the government and within this, this, you know, this national security state is that we may be in the heart of like the establishment, but we're actually like, we're actually like, rule breakers and badasses and the man is holding us down. I think that's like structurally almost necessary for American officials to operate. They're like, no one, I don't think any, I mean, maybe in the state department, some people are like, well, I follow the norms. But I think most people, especially in the post-9-11 world and we're like, we are being held back by a corrupt establishment.

we represent a visionary group of people who understands the situation better than everybody, and it's these, we're not the bureaucrats, man, it's these hidebound bureaucrats that are holding us back. And I think like films like this really encourage that, and that it makes like groups within the government, like the people who, you know, push for the Iraq War, that have this kind a cowboy mentality about it, it encourages that perception of themselves. It's like, we may be on the inside, but we're actually outsiders secretly. I don't think it's a healthy, it's a healthy way of thinking. And I also think it's like, it creates the same kind of idiotic, almost adolescent way

of thinking that would lead someone, I mean, obviously he was just lying because for career reasons, but it would lead people to believe or want to do that. Like, I think that these movies, and I think Ronald Reagan obviously had his mind completely destroyed by Hollywood. But I think it's something that's continued. I mean, he really believed one time addressing a group of POWMIA activists and families, he mentioned his being in a movie about a prisoner of war camp. as a point of a point in common he had with them, which they didn't seem to mind, but that's crazy. Like he thought that the movies were real and, you know, the life was a movie on some level.

And that never ended, you know, like that integration of Hollywood with, it's the system, man, the integration of Hollywood with with the national security state and the way it conceives itself in the world is actually kind of scary because you're like these ideas are idiotic and they're they're getting through and they're they're they're forced like the the writer was like I can't believe that this was taken seriously by anybody I was just making an action movie but it's it's a little scary that that movies this cartoonish can you know can really change the world on a political level and I think it's in a weird way it's more stuff like this than high art that does because first of all it's just seen by so many more people second of all the images are so power like those glass beads

you never forget about seeing those glass beads right right it's it's i mean i was reading an interview with the um with the uh screenwriter who was like you know i was looking up what vx gas was like the actual mechanism it's just to these two colorless odorless gases and then when they combine they create fx he's like that's boring no one wants to see that so i just thought this would be cooler looking and he was completely right it's cool it's scary yeah green evil looking green liquid and also if you're an adult human being and you look at that you're like that's not how it is that's just but like when you're a child i remember being like and and even though i didn't see the movie those glass beads are like oh yeah that's what chemical weapons looks like spheres of

evil looking poison but if you just realize like and i think we can connect this to trump in certain ways too is that this childish mindset is ever present in people and they just kind of revert back to it. I just think that like these movies in a frightening way structure the not even structure that's suggesting something too abstract. They directly inform the way people view the world and think is real. And I don't know what to do about that. I mean, I guess we're trying to criticize that in some way but it's just it's just kind of astonishing and then and i think we've talked about this before when you watch these movies it's it's almost like a key and then you're like oh what was the last movie this is the this is why things are the way they are because people

these movies are not reflective of reality but reality people attempt to make reality reflective of these movies you're like oh they watched that fucking movie and they were convinced that that's the way the world worked. And I suppose, you know, it's easy to say it's stupid. But, I mean, that's where people, that's where, you know, Napoleon famously said imagination rules the world, which I think is a favorite quote of mine. And I think that it's not just stupid people. I mean, it's very clearly that sometimes it gets very stupid.

But we all are participating in these images. and they all sort of structure or inform the way we conceive of the world. And when you realize how much art and culture is creating the world, it's both astonishing, but it can be kind of scary because you're like, this should not inform policy. Of course, it's a fun movie to see, but that is totally bananas. So two things. Yeah, two things.

One way in which, we've talked about this before, one way in which I think, right, in somewhat positive way, this phenomenon you're describing has influenced this. I really don't think that Obama would have happened when he did, if not for basis of 20 years of media seeding the idea of, like, powerful black authority figures, and especially, especially black presidents. I really think that that normalized the notion of a black person at that level of authority. Yeah, for sure. But the other thing, so I recently, relatively recently, did a thing for Turner Classic movies talking about birth of a nation. Yeah, the 1915 film. There's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, a birth of a nation by me, Nate Parker, but that's different. It's not very good.

Nate Parker. Problematic guy. Right. But this one, uh, D.W. Griffith, also problematic. Yeah, you could say that. But so I watched Birth of a Nation for like the first time in years ahead of doing this thing. And I had a series of thoughts very similar to what you just said, John. Because first of all, sort of like the one, Birth of a Nation is a significant film artistically for many reasons.

But it's a hugely significant film socially and politically because it basically resurrected the Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux Klan did not exist when Birth of a Nation was released. to road shows and theaters and such in 1915. And five years later, the clan in garb taken directly from the film was around again. And then a few years after that, it was one of the largest social organizations in the country. So the movie directly created, inspired the clan. But while I was watching this, I had this, I watched the movie, had this generally horrifying moment.

There's a scene where the Klansmen are riding their horses. to the rescue of a white woman under attack by beastial animalistic blacks, really, really horrible stuff. And I should say, people will tell you birth of a nation is a racist movie, but that's almost understating it. It's actually hard to overstate how insanely racist this movie is. Like, it's, it's grotesque in a way that, like, it's still quite shocking. It is just, it is just racism itself. Like, it's not even like, oh, it has racist content. It's just racism. Like the movie.

Right. It's like, it's like the ideal, it's like the manifestation of the ideology of racism. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And even at the time, people are like, this is too racist. Anyway, so I'm watching this scene. And it's, I mentioned that the film was artistically significant. One of the reasons is that sort of like Griffith is this very dynamic filmmaker.

So there's this, during this scene, first of all, the, the, the, the, riders are cutting across the frame diagonally, which helps create more motion. And Griffith ends up, what he does is he puts a camera rig on, like a dug a hole or something, he puts a camera rig there. So the horses, they cross the diagonal, then they leap over the hole and the camera catches them. So you see these horses leaping over an undershot, very dynamic. And it's so that, and the music is swelling, and this is the first film for which there was a written musical score for the film. So the music is swelling. These horses are riding down. The camera's crazy. And like in that moment, John, I was excited. Yeah. And I was like, I felt excitement. Yeah. And then I was like,

oh my God. Like is this was, I had two thoughts after that. First, but behind the horror of like my emotional response. Yeah. The first was, I see why this movie was so effective. And the second was should movies be allowed to exist, right? Like given they have this kind of power, right? They have this real kind of social power. They really do shape people's perceptions of reality. Is this an art form that is like too prone to evil to exist? And I say that, I say that like a little tongue in cheek,

but I think it's a useful thing to think about given what we know about like the human brain was not built to distinguish false representations of reality from actual reality. Yeah. Like, well, I think as soon as we sort of got the movies aren't real, I mean, even though we have trouble with that, movies aren't real thing. Now we've moved into completely new levels of things not being real. So like we may have like been become just sort of starting to figure out movies and then

we're like, wow, we're going to invent something that's even more confusing. yeah i mean look i mean films are like probably one of the most powerful forms of media in terms of propaganda and and rhetoric and visual rhetoric i i don't know um obviously the use of film to propagandize for the third rike was massive and they understood its power immediately and gerbils was extremely keen to control and direct the german film industry you know, in the same way that there are incredible formal innovations in, in birth of a nation, Lenny Rief installs a triumph of the will has, you know, is as a, you know, you look at it and you're like, wow, this is incredible on an artistic level in certain ways. I'm very, I think we're both sort

of torn about this because I think we're both a little bit, this may be a function of our age, a function of nostalgia for really what we consider to be a golden age in Hollywood. But like we like the films that were not made with so much perhaps sensitivity to moral and political issues and were made more of it in an, I mean, that's differently. I think the difference is this, is that, you know, those are tendentious movies in one way and these are tendentious movies in the other way, not to say they're equally bad, obviously the tenacious movies that are I'm not going to be like

John Jans, the Rock, birth of a nation, equally bad. No, yeah, I'm not saying like, I don't know what a super woke movie would be, but I'm not going to be like, I'm going to write like a national review type thing being like, that's an equivalent of birth of the nation for wokeness. But like, you know, I saw origin

and it did have, I did not like it. Right. And did have a sort of like Armand White in post. Oh, boy. Yeah, like that's, yeah, exactly. That's exactly who I was referencing. It was being like, this is a, this is a birth of the nation for awokeness.

But like, you know, we as we age, we start to get those crotchety impulses. But I do think like there's a difference between, and I think this is true for all art, although it's difficult to make this distinction sometimes. There is a distinction to be made between propaganda and art. Obviously, some propaganda can be made very artfully and some art can have propaganda. elements, but I believe that propaganda brings you away from the work of art with a really specific view of action. And a work of art leaves you in a state of uncertainty or more of an openness and thoughtful position about what the world is about and should be done in

politics. You know, like classically going back to the beginning, you know, know, tragedies reveal, you know, impossible situations where people, multiple characters who may be honorable or well-intentioned come into conflict with each other. And it doesn't provide easy answers, right? Or like, so I don't know. Like, I know what you mean, like, it is a little scary to consider the power of art to, um, to, uh, to shape things for ill. And obviously, you know, very famously, I mean, fascism used aesthetics to great effect. And even Walter Benjamin said it was the fascist. He defined fascism as the aestheticization of politics, which is something to think about maybe when we think about these movies.

On the other hand, I don't, I'm not willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I know that you don't mean your question literally. You mean it to provoke a kind of reflection and say, I mean, I'd rat, I don't know, I think a world, a world without art, that sort of like goes back to also Plato's Republic, you know, like when he's talked about how the poets are, poets are dangerous because they give people all these emotional notions about things and that we need to remove them or carefully circumscribe their role in the republic. I as a degenerate asthete, I'm more, I think art, I grant more sovereignty of art, but I think a lot of young people, of people little younger than us, and I am deeply annoyed

with these people, are very sensitive about the images and representations that come through from art and how they affect you know politics and power they have a point i'm not going to say i mean i would be it's it's it's dishonest when some people in the same way people are like well that's just a word and you know like it's dishonest it's intellectually dishonest to be like it's just art it's just words like no obviously those things are like we're interested in them because they're powerful but um i'm unwilling to impose a regime of censorship beyond the critic, I suppose is what I would say. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's the and I think I wish people paid more attention to criticism because I think it'll permits you to

consume things that are quote unquote problematic without reacting to it. Right. You can say, look, man, I can see what's what's a problem with this movie. But like, I mean, you and I are able to watch birth of nation and reflect on it and not, you know, either be like I'm traumatized for the rest of my life or I'm a Klansman. You know what I mean? Like there's a way to, there's a way to relate to these things in a in a thoughtful way, which I guess was what we're trying to do. But yeah, that that's not reactive. I think that that's the thing. It's like I think that's when things become propaganda is when they immediately have an emotional reaction. Obviously, art's always going to give you an emotional reaction, but then you kind of have to reflect on why you had that emotional

reaction. What is the meaning of that? I think when things give people, when people react only emotionally to it, that's, you know, maybe one way of signifying something is propagandistic or they're not approaching it as a critical viewer. You know what I mean? Yes, yes. But the problem is, hurry, to keep going. But we are watching The Rock, what is it, almost 30 years later with this kind of ironical, critical view.

People didn't watch at the time with that. They were just as a harmless action movie. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, they took it as such. No, I'm, you know, I'm very much in sync with you. on on your thoughts here i by simultaneously want people to engage with art even low art even things that we would consider trash with a critical eye but i would also like people not to fall into the trap of like an aesthetic Stalinism right sort of like a uh a demand for

the art people produced to um conform to you know right thinking and yeah or yeah or yeah or even be even remotely virtuous like i you know my my favorite movie of 22 was tar um which is a movie about a distinctly not virtuous person um that is both critical and sympathetic the movies with critical of her and sympathetic towards her uh and i was so frustrated by so much of the discourse around movie trying to decide this is a cancel culture movie or whatever and not really trying to take the film on its own terms but also like who cares if it is right sort of like that's not that's not going to be the measure but the film works whether it's worthwhile i i did want to say

a few a few more things about um the rock before we move on the first is that i think that this film is interesting in the um in the filmography of michael bay uh for it's quite jaundiced view of of the United States military. The thing about Bay, through most of his career, is he kind of worships the military. Right. This is, like, super prominent

in the film, like, Pearl Harbor, in the Transformers films for the military, like the U.S. military sort of, like, heroes along with the Transformers. He did this Benghazi film a couple years ago, which I actually kind of want to watch. I've never seen. But Bay is, like, notably kind of, like,

very sympathetic towards the military, but this film presents the military basically as like the villain, right? Sort of it's the militaries and the government's failures that precipitate the events of the film. I suppose it's said that Bay here is still very sympathetic towards soldiers. Yeah. But not so much sympathetic towards the institution. I just think it's interesting,

not inversion or anything, but sort of variation on the themes of Bay, which, you know, it's very easy to crack. jokes about Michael Bay, but I would 100% in total sincerity make the case that he is like one of the most prominent atores in American filmmaking of like our

past generation. He's a distinct visual style, a distinct visual approach, a distinct set of ideas he's trying to communicate through film. And he's worth analyzing on that level. Yeah. So that's just that's just that. The other thing,

I don't know if you caught this, John, but to part of why Connery's character is like in prison is because he stole microfilm revealing the truth of the JFK assassination. And I just I think it's I do think it's

we've talked about this many times on previous episodes but just sort of like the it's like 90s represent kind of like the apex of boomer power. Yeah. Or maybe not the apex but like the boomer power is like finally matured

Like into that generation now has the reins of power in the United States, the reins of political and cultural and social power. I mean, we'll continue to have it from the next two decades, basically. And it's like, yeah, as soon as it happens, JFK conspiracizing and such just as sort of take center stage. It's just like a part of the culture in a way that it wasn't really in the 70s and 80s in the same way. Obviously, people had conspiracies about JFK, but I think it's so funny and interesting that, like, the film, the film ends, the last line of dialogue in the rock is Nick Kay's saying to his new wife, do you, honey, do you want to know who really killed JFK? Right. And that's the ultimate secret for boomers. It's the ultimate idea, like, key of ideology is the JFK assassination is the hinge on which history turned, you know? who's really responsible for that is supposed to reveal everything about the way the world works. I mean, that's just the center of this movie in a really funny way, as you point out.

It's the last slide. Yeah. Okay. Last thoughts on the rock. I had a response to your first thing. I think, like, about the military. I think, yeah, you were saying that this kind of glorifies soldiers at the expense of the institution of the military. That's very stabbing the back kind of conservative revolutionary sort of stuff.

I suppose he's the villain, but whatever. I mean, is that the big institutions betrayed the soldiers who were doing something honorable. And you see this in the POWMIA movement and you see this cropping up a little bit now, which is a way to kind of separate soldiers from... officers or I mean this guy's an officer but soldiers from the chain of command and kind of indicate that they have some deeper connection to something just or nationally sacred that was being betrayed I think that that's like kind of a sub a sub a minor theme of militarism which is not that it's it represents an unbroken chain of command

and that represents the national will, but rather there are some honorable people who have been unjustly treated, and those are the real soldiers, right? Right, yeah, right. I'll say just to concluding thoughts on the rock, I think to repeat a point, I think this movie is fascinating.

It's both, again, I think it's quite good. I think it's sort of like maybe the most, 90s action movie and action movie could be. It's like it's very kind of like it captures the zeitgeist of what what audiences wanted in this period. You know, it's no surprise that like I think the next movie we're doing it's Independence Day. Roland Emmerich has a similar kind of bombastic style. But it's also, this is like a prototypical 90s action movie, but I want to emphasize again how much it does feel. like it's of a piece with the sort of films that come out after 9-11 and how much we're the podcast is in 1996

and I think it's I think we're going to see more of this I think the siege comes out in 97-98 just sort of like as terrorism becomes I think enters the public uh the public perception in a greater way I think the films are going to start like reflecting some of the themes if it'd really go be supercharged after the September 11 terrorist attacks. But having to that, if you haven't seen The Rock, I recommend that Sean Connery is really good in it. I'm a big Nick Cage fan. He's quite good in it.

So check it out if you've never seen it. That is our show. If you are not a subscriber, please subscribe, are available on iTunes, Spotify, and Google podcasts, and wherever else podcasts are found. If you subscribe, please leave a rating and a review. It helps people find this show, and you can reach out to us on social media if you'd like to. I mentioned that I was on blue sky. I'm also on TikTok these days.

The podcast is still unclear at UnclearPod on Twitter, X, whatever it's called now. But the best way to reach us is probably over email at Uncleared and Present Feedback at Fastmail.com. For this week and feedback, we have an email from Chris titled Nokia Wave and Gibson's Pattern Recognition. Hi, Jamel and John. Hi, Chris. I'm a big fan of both podcasts since inception. Please keep up for great work. Thank you.

In your recent podcast on Mission Impossible, I was struck by John's discussion of Nokia Wave as being reflective of a certain era when technology had reached a sort of inflection point. Surveillance was feasible, but hadn't yet become expected or ubiquitous. Cell phone's primary use was voice calling, and the internet was something you visited occasionally but then left. The post-cell phone pre-smartphone era, maybe.

In that light, I'd recommend the novel pattern recognition by William Gibson. Gibson is better known for helping to create cyberpunk in his novel Neuromancer. The pattern recognition was written in the early noughties instead in that time's world. The book has thoroughly left behind the optimism of the 1990s discussion of the podcast, but the relationship with technology is bang in line. The plot is motivated by a series of blurry video snippets, anonymously dropped into a random website with an explanation or context. A small use in that form of footage obsessives have developed trying to determine their provenance and meaning.

The protagonist is a footage head and a professional cool hunter hired by brands for her preternatural ability to forecast products reception. Ironically, a role likely overtaken by technology these days. She is tasked by an ad agency with finding the footage's creator. Besides depicting the Nokia wave era vividly, you never quite. know exactly who the bad guys are, emailing someone from a Usenet forum is considered a risky or odd activity. The book also does a great job of capturing that vaguely paranoid feeling I associate very vividly with the post-net-11 period. It also has a great subplot related somewhat to John's mentioned love of dead or failed tech, where a sculptor is seeking a specific make

of an old, long-continued mechanical calculator for use in their work, a probably unintentional allusion to the sort of islet of misfit toys tech products we got in that liminal pre-smart phone time. While I absolutely love this book, Gibsonism for everyone, he's better at sentences and big ideas and plotting and conclusions. But the reference to Nokia Wave and Deadfield tech products immediately called this book to mind. Again, love the podcast.

Thanks so much for making them. Thank you, Chris. Have you ever read Niramantor, John? I did. I have. I was really into this kind of shit. I was into like a... I was, I was into computer hacking and it wasn't good at it, but I like the idea of it.

The telephone, doing things on the telephone. Freaking. Freaking. Yeah, phone freaking. And I was into all that kind of stuff. I read William Gibson. I read this other guy, Bruce Sterling. I think he wrote both fiction and nonfiction about this kind of stuff.

It was into all that cyberpunk stuff. And I still have a soft, you know, as mentioned, I still have a soft spot for it and occasional interest in it. It kind of came back in a big way and then my interests had sort of moved on. But I still like to look at, I would highly recommend if you're into this kind of stuff, my friend Max reads newsletter, read Max on Substack, because he's totally into all this kind of stuff and writes frequently about it, has great suggestions of movies, music, and books about this kind of stuff. And it's also just a great journalist on tech in general,

but also has kind of amazing taste when it comes to this cyberpunk stuff. Um, so yeah, I, I don't know what. I mean, that sounds very interesting. I don't exactly. I mean, my little theorization of why it feels nostalgic and cool to me now, even then, um, is sort of the best I could do. I guess I go through phases where I feel more interested in that stage, but I don't know, like only, that's the thing. Like only old technology, like I find new technology to be really boring and flat. like I'm not I lost my interest in technology I guess when it started to become so good you know like when it when it's all seamless and everything everything's just like oh the machine works I'm like man this is boring I liked it when it was a weird box and it was like you know

there was a certain there was a certain analog or you know jankiness or I don't know what you want to call it that I found a lot more fascinating and now that it's all everything is just rectangles with lights coming out of it. I'm sure there's, if you're a computer hacker and you know those kind of stuff, there's all kinds of interesting things going on in the background. But the loss of the physicality of it in a certain way kind of killed my interest in it a little bit. I'm not, I'm not, I don't, I mean, I follow Max's, I find the tech world politically interesting

and I think Max's journalism and others is fascinating, but it doesn't hold the same fascination for me as it did when I was a kid. Yeah. yeah i mean there's a reason why i'm fascinated by like old cameras why the keyboard i use as like a big mechanical keyboard right it's yeah i i i i do i like you know i like my my big 65 inch flat screen tv like i enjoy using it but it's not interesting right yeah it doesn't evoke feelings of sort of like oh this is a an interesting object here in a funny way i have no interest in buying it like it sort of it seems useless to me but i find that apple vision

pro interesting precisely for how clunky it was right it's it's sort of like it's a little bit of a throwback yeah yeah a little bit of a throwback and i i have found it interesting that younger people are kind of if you have like a digital camera from my 2002 you could like sell that shit for like a couple hundred dollars these days because like younger people are interested in them um and like want to use them uh before they're both their physical form um and because they introduce a level of friction that does not exist with a smartphone camera. Right. So that's, that's, I think, I think, I would not be surprised.

I'll say this. I would not be surprised if in industrial design in the next 10 years, we head back to something like the 80s with like blocky shape, sort of like explicit use of, like, not trying to hide the mass produced for industrial character of a thing, you know? and like leaning into that, leading it. It's sort of almost like a kind of brutalism after the past two decades of this sort of like, you know, intense minimalism. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I hope so. I mean, even, you know what even looks like charming now? What do they call it when the way that iPhones used to have the, on the iOS, like it was scoomorphism. Skeuomorphism, is that it? Yeah. That's right. Yeah. And that looks even kind of charming and nostalgic now. And I think I remember when people were like upset when they got rid of it. They were like, no, like I like I like that. I didn't really have strong feelings about it. But now I look back and I was like, it looks kind of neat actually. I mean, I got horribly made fun of by my friends for this justifiably for being a pretentious douchebag. But like I once turned my phone on black and white. And I was like, no, I like it. better this way, but it's not practical. But you can turn your iPhone onto black and white, which is kind of a funny thing to do. Okay. Well, thank you again, Chris, for the email.

Kind of related, Reader Frank isn't an email recommending that we do the film Hackers. Oh, absolutely. No, we got to do it. Yeah. I thought we had hackers on the list and we don't. Let's do it. So I think we should put, I mean, we could just do hackers next time. Yes, please. Awesome. Okay. Yeah. All right. We're doing it. I was, like, shocked that we had not, or I didn't have it on there. We have the net on there. We did that. Yeah.

But, uh, hackers. Yes. So, okay. All right. Oh, as always, don't forget our Patreon. Latest episode of the Patreon podcast is on Failsafe, 1964. I said you met. Um, you can check that at patreon.com slash unclear pod, $5 a month.

Two episodes a month. Um, our next Patreon episode is on. strange love. And I mentioned that the best way to get in contact with us is the email, but actually the best way to get in contact with us, leave comments, discussions, is the Patreon straight up. It's part of what you get is like an ongoing correspondence with us. So don't, don't, uh, check that up. Join the Patreon community. Episodes come out every two weeks, roughly. So we'll see you then with an episode on hackers 1995, tricked by Ian Softly,

starring Johnny Lee Miller and Angelina Joe Lee, among others. Quick plot synopsis, along with his new friends, a teenager who was arrested by the U.S. Secret Service and banned from using a computer for writing a computer virus, discovers a plot by a nefarious hacker, but they must use their computer skills to find the evidence or being pursued by the Secret Service and an evil genius behind the virus, hack the world.

You know, the thing I remember most about this movie is, I think the ending needle drop is Orbital on and on. Yeah, the music is incredible. Or it's on and on by Orbital. Yeah. A group I only know about because a girl I had a crush on in high school was really into them. Interesting. I have similar experiences with this movie, which we'll discuss. So Hackers is next.

And that is our episode. Thank you for listening, everyone. For John Gans, I'm Jamal Bowie, and we will see you next time. You know, I'm going to be. You're going to be.