Unclear and Present Danger - Toys

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

In this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watch “Toys,” a largely-forgotten fantasy-comedy film from director Barry Levinson. Despite its myriad flaws, the boys have a productive conversation about the film’s obvious themes — the military-industrial complex and the rise of remote and drone warfare — and its less obvious themes, specifically the bourgeois vision of family capitalism and industrial harmony at the heart of the film.“Toys” is virtually impossible to watch if you don’t have a physical disc, but there is a low-quality version available to stream here.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.

From Barry Levinson, the Academy Award-winning director of Rin Man. And Robin Williams, the star of Dead Poets Society. I'm in the mood for smoked chicken. How about you? Comes the story of a man who makes jokes. I'm Leslie Zero. Makes love. I like you. Well, I like you too.

I think love is wonderful. And makes toys. Wow! How do you feel? Woozy? That's what we'll call the Woozy helmet. I'm moving with the idea of putting in some war toys. You never made war toys at Cebo.

We're going to need that plus more space. General... Now, only one man is courageous enough and outrageous enough to find a way to fight back. The future is anarchy. Let's wind up the truth. A most unlikely hero in the most unlikely battle that ever saved the world. 20th century Fox presents an extraordinary motion picture. Robin Williams in a Barry Levinson film.

Dundas! Toys! Nick believe, not war. Welcome to Unclear and Present Danger, a podcast about the political and military thrillers of the 1990s, and what they say about the politics of that decade. I'm Jamel Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. My name is John Gans. I'm working on a book about the early 90s, which is almost done. I'm on the last chapter. So I guess I'll still say it because I have to edit it. But yeah, that's almost done. And I write a subsect newsletter called Unpopular Front. I think I think that if you're in the last chapter, you can totally say you're almost done, even if you still have to edit it. I think that totally counts. okay good i mean i haven't written a book so you know if i if i got that far i would say that i was

i was almost done don't do it uh so today for this episode we are discussing what i guess is a now obscure movie a little movie called toys it's a 1992 fantasy comedy film directed by barry levinson off of a script he wrote some years earlier with his ex-wife valerie curtain There's cinematography by Adam Greenberg, who worked on the first two Terminator films, Ghost and Rush Hour, and then a pretty good score from Hans Zimmer and Trevor Horn. Toys stars Robin Williams, Michael Gambon, Joe Cusack, Robin Wright, and L.L. Cool J. And you'll also notice, if you're paying attention, appearances from Jamie Fox, Debbie Mazar, and Yardley Smith. Here is a brief plot summary. Leslie Zivo is a fun-loving inventor who must save his late father's toy factory from his evil uncle Leland, a war-mongering general who rules the operation with an iron fist and builds weapons disguised as toys.

I should say real quickly that Bill's weapons disguised his toys is almost kind of an understatement for his plot. His plot's actually pretty disturbing. Toys is not really available to stream or or purchase or rent or anything. You know, we both watch it. You can check your local library to see if they have a DVD copy. If they do not, I will include a link to a place where you can watch it that may or may not be legal,

but it's not going to mess up your computer or anything, I promise. The film was released on December 18th, 1992. So let's check out the New York Times for that day. Take it away, John. All right. So let's see what we got. Well, this is interesting because I was just writing about this. Prosecutor named her view search on files of Clinton.

Federal court decision. Attorney General saw inquiry Baker and two of his aid's hire criminal lawyers. Attorney General William P. Barr, ever heard of him, has arranged the appointment of an independent prosecutor to conduct a criminal investigation of the State Department's search of Bill Clinton's passport files, lawyers and government officials following the case said today. It is not clear who will be primary subjects of the criminal inquiry by Joseph E. de Genova, a former United States attorney for the District of Columbia, who was appointed by a federal appeals court panel

in a sealed document that has not been made public. James A. Baker III, the White House Chief of Staff and Former Secretary of State, and two of his top aides of hired criminal lawyers who resent them in connection with the inquiry, although is not known of Mr. Baker or either of his aide's Margaret D. Tuttweiler, White House Communications Director of Commission, J. N. G. Mullins, the White House political director is under scrutiny. A White House spokesman said today that officials there were unaware of the appointment. So what's happening here? Okay. Bush has lost the election at this point. And what happened in the waning days of the election was that Bush's chances look so bad,

his campaign decided to go 100% negative. I mean, that's a direct quote from, I think, maybe even James Baker. So they went very aggressively after Clinton. They went a little too aggressively because they were trying to substantiate this insane conspiracy theory that a Republican congressman from Orange County had come up with that Bill Clinton had attempted, had gone, he had made a trip to Moscow in 1969. Well, he was a young man. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. And he they came up with this idea that he had talked to the KGB there and the KGB took him around in a limousine and the KGB convinced him to protest the Vietnam War on foreign soil while he was a student Britain. They made a big deal that he protested against the Vietnam War on foreign soil.

And basically this was a big circular thing. They made up, you know, Republicans made up this idea and then they looked for information to substantiate it. And so, two political appointees in the State Department pulled his passport files and his mothers, which this came out, and Clinton made a huge deal out of it. He said, they're messing with my mama, and this got like a big, big crap, and she got upset. And it was a big backfire for the Bush campaign, not well remember, but this is pretty serious stuff. And it just, you know, this is like, you know, politicizing.

the bureaucracy in an election and trying to find, like, go into, like, sealed documents and stuff like that. It's pretty bad. But this was just like the way the Reagan and Bush administrations operated. There were so many scandals like this. Iran Contra is only the most famous one where the way that they behaved in office. I mean, Bush was a former CIA director. And he directed, you know, he sort of ran the White House like the CIA. in a way. There was lots of skull dudgery like this. So, you know, this is not well remembered, but it's a, it's, but, you know, it was front page news then. I don't know what happened from the inquiry. I can, I have a very good guess, which is that no one really got in serious trouble.

Barr's job was kind of to prevent people from getting into serious trouble, but even he had to occasionally, you know, back, you know, congressional pressure or public pressure was so much that he had to appoint special counsel to look into some of these things. So, yeah, let's see what else we got here. Israel expels 400 from occupied lands. Lebanese deployed a bar entry of Palestinians. December 17th, bus is filled with 400 bound and blindfolded Palestinians across the border into Lebanon today as Israeli troops carried out mass expulsions, ordered by the government

and sanctioned by the Israel Supreme Court after a day of legal arguments and rancor. There had not been deportations of Palestinians, anything approaching the scale since the period after Israel took control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East War, handed $50 each with some food, jackets, and blankets of Palestinians from both the West Bank and Gaza were taken in a wintry night into the security zone that Israel declared in southern Lebanon. They were then to be dropped off at the northern edge of the buffer zone and ordered into territory controlled by Lebanese forces. Lebanon, which had accepted other deported Palestinians to pass, said this time it would close his checkpoints, and Beirut security officials said heavily armed soldiers acting on structures from the government, block roads in southern Lebanon tonight, an attempt to prevent the expelled Palestinians from entering Lebanese-controlled territory. So this is pretty crazy. I mean, this was, I mean, how can they just take people and expel them to a third. country that they occupied part of, but, you know, this is part of the crazy politics and security measures of the Israeli occupation. This was also during Rabin's prime ministership, a Labor Party

member known to be moderate and eventually tried to get to a peace deal with the Palestinians, but still, you know, these are kind of the sorts of human rights abuses that the occupation produces. Let's see. What we also got? Gunmen reappear in Somalia, renewing security concerns. A week after American Marines landed here, Somali gunmen have reappeared in large numbers on the streets, apparently deciding that the foreign troops will make no serious effort

to disarm them. In addition, violence has increased in regions where there is no military, foreign military presence, United States official says. The resurgence of gunmen occurred after the United States officials had made clear that they did not consider their job to disarm the thousands of fighters associated with the clan-based factions, whether disarmament as part of their mission, has been a source of dispute between the Washington and the United Nations. So this is interesting because this is in the run up to Black Hawk down, the disaster,

conclusion of the United States intervention in Somalia, and that had a lot of repercussions for how the U.S. pursued intervention after that. It definitely gave pause to our intervention in Bosnia, which was finally pursued, and it gave pause to an intervention in Rwanda during the genocide. So it would have a moment. That would be a very, you know, a huge deal, both for Americans' consciousness of, you know, its soldiers abroad and for setting policy. I think that's it. In turn, there's some New York news.

Let's see. Oh, well, look. Oh, here we go. President-elect Bill Clinton has chosen Representative of Les Aspen of Wisconsin, Chairman of the House Services Committee, as Secretary of Defense, and Richard W. Riley, a former governor of South Carolina, or Secretary of Education, Tradition and Congressional officials said today, Mr. Aspen flew to Little Rock, Arkansas to meet with Clinton, and the expected selections of Warren M. and Christopher,

as Secretary of State as National Security Advisor and Anthony Lake as National Security Advisor, Mr. Clinton hopes to conclude his major cabinet announcements before his leaves for vacation sometime after Christmas. Okay, so Clinton is staffing up. These people wanted to do bigger. military cuts than Bush wanted. I do not know, and I ought to know, exactly how much the cuts Mr. Clinton want, Mr. Clinton, Bill Clinton ended up doing in the military work compared to what Republicans were. But a big controversial thing in early Clinton was, Clinton attempted to get

rid of the ban on gays and lesbians in the military, and the military pushed pretty hard back on this and that would be delayed for some time. Anything else here look interesting to you? Just a quick comment on Richard Riley. Just part of our noting how party coalitions are so much different at this period, because we think of Clinton as like a modern Democrat, but Riley is a former Democratic governor of South Carolina, serves two terms from 1979 to 1987. It served before that in the South Carolina Senate for 10 years, is, you know, is of a, is of the generation of southern politicians who are after the segregationists, but before Republicans really get a hold in Southern politics in the way that they would, really

beginning in the late 80s and they're in the 90s. So he's kind of this, and all the Southern states have these sort of transitional figures and their legislatures as well. are in this transition as African Americans become an important voting base. And you still have ancestral Democrats, but you'll also have a rising faction of conservatives. And so one of the things that's interesting about Riley and his sort of contemporaries in Georgia and Florida in Virginia is that because of because they sit at this interesting intersection, political intersection of black, at black constituencies, they have white constituencies that are largely pretty conservative. They end up pursuing not, you know, big expansions of the state, but like

really investing in education policy. And you see big expansions of state education systems in the South in the 80s, the late 70s and the 80s in the early 90s. So Riley, his governorship is known for a major educational reform effort in the state. a major occupational training effort in the state and also investment in the South Carolina's university system. And I mention this. I think I'm mentioning this because it is an interesting contrast with the present where Republicans are treating higher education as basically a political enemy. It's in the relatively recent past where higher education and educational systems were kind of an area of bipartisan cooperation in part because states were in this like unusual

period of partisan flux. And so Riley is one of those, one of those governors. Yeah, it's interesting. It's an interesting era of southern politics that kind of gets not a race, but sort of like obscured by the fact that by the mid-90s, by the, by the, by the, by the, by the, by the, by the Republican. Revolution of 94, you really do see the Southern Republican Party has become the dominant political parties in the States. The late 90s is when Virginia starts getting conservative Republican governors when Georgia does. I mean, you kind of can go down the line. Right. There were like a kind of conservative Democrats who were able to pick up black constituencies through courting them in

various ways, and we're not just like Jim Crow apologists and throwbacks, but definitely not liberals, perhaps, in the way we would understand them now. Is that correct? Yeah, that's right. I mean, and interestingly, one of those people was George Wallace. Yeah, in his later, in his later life, yeah. And his later life, that's right. And Bill Clinton to a certain extent. Yeah, Bill Clinton as well. And Jimmy Carter. Yes, Jimmy Carter as well. George Wallace, I just want to say testament to the fact that that guy, there's a great kind of probably the definitive bio of Wallace, in my opinion, is Dancy Carter's biography, the Politics of Rage, which came out in the early 2000s, I think. Kind of a great overview of his entire career.

And the thing that comes across about Wallace is that he's like, he's like, definitely an apex politician, sort of like, sort of like kind of the, you know, the most, um, uh, astute political instincts that you can imagine. He just, for the most part, used them for evil. Yeah. And you can totally imagine because he's so unprincipled, right? He doesn't

really believe anything other than like how to advance George Wallace. You can imagine an alternate world where George Wallace does not become the George Wallace, we all know. But he did. Anyway, toys.

So, toys directed by Barry Levinsey. as I said at the top, if you know, if you don't know him, rather, you've almost certainly seen his movies. He is kind of one of the, it's a big Hollywood guy, big Hollywood director type. He debuts in 1982 with Diner and then follows it up with The Natural, which is a Robert Redford movie. And then he hits it pretty big with a string of critical, I mean, and we'll talk about

how bizarre this has critical hits and commercial. hits. Tin Men, Good Morning, Vietnam, his first collaboration with Robin Williams, Rain Man, which is a huge hit, critical, and commercial, Avalon, and Bugsy, which is a, what's his name, Warren Beatty film. And it's always weird to, you know, Beatty can be generously described as a hands-on producer when he's acting in a role. So I'm actually kind of curiously how much of Bugsy is Levinson versus Beatty. Anyway, Toys was a passion project for Levinson. I read Roger Ebert's review of the movie, and Ebert relays that Levinston, I've been working

on it for about a dozen years, 12 years, and it kind of shows it is a beautiful film. It looks fantastic. I think that's the best thing about it. It's a genuinely strikingly striking-looking film, even if you watch it on a low-res DVD transfer on your iPad. And to that fact, to the fact that it looks so great, it's so elaborate and obviously had a lot of time behind it, it cost about $50 million to make. But it was a big flop. It's total box office clocked in it just over $23 million. And critics were not kind to it. Here's extra from Ebert's review. There's a curious residue of dissatisfaction after

Toys is over. It opens so well and promised so much that we're confused. Is that all there is? The film seems filled with ideas, but what are they exactly? The production creates a wonderful world, but doesn't make its purpose clear. It is impossible to fault the performances. The production design deserves Academy of Recognition. But at the most fundamental level, Toys is a film, not quite sure what it's about. I very much agree. we read that assessment. So let's talk about the film. And I guess we should also include some details what would happen in the plot.

But yeah, what do you think, Josh? Well, I want to point out one last detail about the production. The person who was responsible for the production design was Ferdinando Scarfioti. And I only mentioned that because he worked with Bertolucci on the conformist, which is a terrific movie and visually just an amazing movie. Visconti's death in Venice too. And he worked on the last emperor with Bertolucci. This guy had a very distinguished career of visually designing films. And the film does have an interesting visual style that was kind of like took a lot from from surrealism. There's a lot of references

to Magritte. There's a lot of references to Italian futurism and Dada. It's like very stylish movie. But yeah, okay, so what to make of it? Where to start? Robin Williams is the son of this nice, dying, kindly man who owns his toy factory, and he feels his son is not mature enough or his daughter either to take over the company. So he puts it in the hands of his brother, who's a military man, a general in the army whose career has sort of stalled out. And he takes over the company and he does this kind of fascist coup at the company. He brings in his son, played by L.L.L. Cool J. And they kind of become this uniform security force. And they take over the factory and start producing what are essentially drones. And the drones are going to be

in kind of Ender's game style. If I don't know if you're familiar with that science fiction novel, they're going to be operated by kids, but they're actually real weapons. And the kids don't know that they're actually real weapons. In a weird way, Prestige's drone warfare, which was just in its infancy at the time. So there's that. And then basically, Joan Cusack, Robin Williams, Robin Williams love interest, played by Robin Wright. They and eventually all the Cool Jay, who joins the good guys, try to stage a revolt against this takeover, the factory. And, you know, the movie, I guess, opposes the whimsy of this toy factory where it has a utopian vibe where everyone is very happy to work there.

The toys are very sweet and gentle and, you know, non-threatening. And, you know, Robin Williams and Joan Cusack are kind of like grown children who just play to develop the toys. And then the military is, you know, toys are these sinister evil, you know, perversions of toys that actually can harm and kill people. So the movie's, you know, surface messages is pacifist or, or, you know, trying to protect the innocence of children. And, you know, eventually they prevail over this evil general. That's the long and the short of it.

But again, like, is it making a social commentary? Is it an allegory about innocence and the loss of innocence? which is something that's often in in Barry Levinson's movies. Barry Levinson is a real sentimentalist, and he is very fixated on, you know, protecting values of childhood and innocence and is nostalgic, and opposes that to a world of, you know, materialism and, um, and, and people,

trying to get ahead. And, you know, he does this in a somewhat questionable way in Rain Man, where an autistic person stands in for sort of purity and innocence, which I'm sure would not, would come under more critical scrutiny today. Doesn't seem like it holds up today. No, no. So there's that sentimental spirit of the movie. And I suppose you could say the politics are liberal because of its anti-military attitude.

but I have another layer to add on top of that, but I was wondering what you thought about the social. Whatever message the movie purports to have. Right. Yeah. So real quick, just on sort of the movie as a movie. I said before that it's a great-looking movie.

It is, it looks terrific, and the set designs did absolutely deserve Academy of Recognition. Some bright colors, stark compositions. It is a great-looking movie. But as per Ebert's review, after after kind of the introduction to this world the thing kind of falls apart part of that's because it drags it drags and sort of moving you through the the actual conflict um it's not quite sure

if it wants to focus on the conflict or the relationship between the characters and those relationships eventually get short shrift as the movie is trying to get you up to speed for everything for the final confrontation um uh it it is like in terms of what its themes are it's kind of muddled because you can see a whole bunch of stuff there. You can see a kind of general pacifistic message, a kind of, you know, you got to indulge your inner child. That's the thing that's worthwhile. The whole, the details about the plot, and I have, I've read Inders game, I read Inders game a ton when I was a teenager, so I'm very familiar with the, um, with the story and the conceit there. Yeah, it's very, is very Ender's game in terms of the plot, uh, the plot

of Michael Gambon's characters, what he wants to do. You could read that as, you know, maybe a commentary on the emergence of, you know, precision guided weapons for just a year out from the Gulf War, right? So there's been all this coverage of how the U.S. military can, you know, take out an installation from many miles away with the absolute precision. I get a sense, you know, this is around the time that there's, like, a big panic about kids playing video games. I mean, there's sort of a perennial panic about kids playing video games. But there's definitely what happening in the in 92 in the early 90s. And so you can totally, there's totally some of that there, kind of like these games are turning our kids and the killers.

Yeah. Sort of thing. Yeah. That was a big fear. Yeah. Right, right. You know, kids are going to play Doom and Wolfenstein 3D and then want to, I don't know, like kill people. I don't know.

Chainsawson. shoot up a school or something. Right, right, right. Yeah. So there's that, but it's sort of it's all kind of, you know, there's the, you know, purity of creation versus like profit motive. There's a lot of stuff through it in there, but like there's not one thing that kind of necessarily stands out.

But, you know, I will say that because there's so much stuff through it in there, it is this like interesting artifact of like, you know, cultural, concerns for Levinson. I think Levinson is like 90 now. He's like 80. He's an older guy. Older than Boomer, really. Yeah. Older than Boomer. Yeah. But part of part of the part of this set of concerns of people in their middle age about about the relation of like young people to American society and about you know what there's some stuff in here that we have seen in other movies that are not comedy fantasy movies, but sort of what is the military going to do when there's no longer this big conflict? You know, what is, what can, what's the defense industry?

What's its purpose going to be if it doesn't need to, like, crank out weapons for, you know, great power war? And how is that going to affect, you know, our ordinary society? How's like I'm going to affect our kids? So all that's. stuff is in there. And I can sort of, knowing that it was maybe a bit of a passion project for Levinson, you can totally see it and sort of like, you know, all these ideas, all these things he wants to get at. But they don't, they don't cohere together into much of a narrative. And then there's stuff in this movie that really deserves way more explanation and the movie kind of just throws it at you. Like so the movie will explain to you why, why this American family, why Michael

Gambon, who is their uncle, has an English accent. And he's like, well, I was born and had my formative years in England. There you go, QED. But there's no explanation of why his son is L.L. Cool J. There's like, it's not, it's not referred to at all. Which is like, you know, whatever baby he's adopted. Maybe we live, maybe, maybe this is a total fantasy world where, you know, white parents give birth to L.O. Cool Jays. But it's a weird thing not to explain. the biggest thing, the thing that I saw, and I legitimately shocked me, is Joan Kusack's character at the end is like shot by one of the rogue evil toys in this final confrontation and her head flies off and it turns out she's a robot. And at no point in the movie

has there been any real indication that she might be a robot. It's just sort of like, oh, she's a weirdo. She's quirky. Which is like Joan Kusack's whole thing. But then it turns out she's a sentient robot built by the original owner of the factory, their father, to give Robin Williams character some companionship. And personally, I think something like that should be revealed a little earlier in the movie and deserves a little more explanation. I still think it is, you know, if I were going to rank this movie, give it like stars, it would be like a two and a half star movie. but I'm tempted to make it three stars just because that's such an insane reveal at the end. Yeah, I think I want to like it because of its cool visual style. And the fact, I saw this movie in theaters, actually.

And it made a big impression on me as a kid. I found it to be, I think I had a very emotional reaction to it, especially that final scene when all the old toys sort of go to, they wind up all these old tin toys and they go to war against the modern military toys. It's a very moving kind of battle scene, a kind of hopeless last stand. But yeah, okay, so there's obviously the liberal, you know, I was like, you know, just, there's obviously the liberal side of this movie, which is it's, you know, kind of, it's pacifism. It's a position of creativity and whimsy and individual, individuality to the, to the army and the state and so and so forth.

I had this weird thing where I was trying, while I was watching it, I was trying to come up with a conservative reading of the movie, which is, and I'll give it my best shot, which is just like, you have this family business, right? It's, and it's this utopian version of capitalism, paternalistic, utopian version of capitalism, where workers are happy. And, you know, then the state gets involved, right? The military gets involved and tries to make everything uniform and tries to modernize things and breaks with the traditions of the past and which the company sort of stuck with these traditions despite, you know, them being a little outdated. And then the evil plan is kind of like a welfare program because they're going to, the way that

they're going to like kidnap these children and make them into drone operators is is going to set up like welfare centers in in inner city neighborhoods and then that's going to turn them into and then they're going to like get them hooked on these video games they're actually the war games so it's like this very um traditionalist conservative view of the state kind of pacifist you know um almost libertarian conservative view about the state as welfare and warfare are are um intrinsically related family businesses are the best institution, and they should have these paternalistic and kind relationships to their workers who are all very happy to work there and are part of the family

themselves. So that was my like, the underlying sort of conservative message of the movie. And I think it kind of fits, I mean, it's kind of for fun, but it kind of fits with Barry Levinson's sort of like anti-modernism in his movies because he's really, like, you know, Avalon is very much about how TV ruined everything. And he's very worried about these like new, like, you know, people used to go to the movies together. And it was a wonderful experience, right? Families going to the movie is magical. And then they, and gradually the family falls apart. This, this immigrant family falls apart because they're all zonking out in front of the TV. So he's, he's always looking at like, you know, some older way of relationship.

some older social form is being destroyed. And the toys are the old, these sort of old toys are kind of the emblem of that and a perfect, you know, symbolization of that. On the other hand, it's difficult to totally dismiss it because it's true. I mean, okay, what's the aesthetic politics of the movie is that these sort of innocent and more wholesome toys, artistic traditions, aesthetics are sort of lovely and these modern things are ugly and raising a generation of people that are violent and sort of, you know, the soulless. I have some sympathy with that because I do feel, I mean, it's a top, something we talk

about in this podcast, too. It's like I do feel a kind of, you know, when we watch these older movies and especially movies are quite a bit older, but even with these movies, like, okay, for instance, that there's a loss of certain aesthetic values, a certain kind of wholesomeness, which is not necessarily a moral wholesomeness, but a kind of solidity that some of these movies have. And even this movie, as bad as it is, and we both agree that it's not a good movie, and it's very self. As we were talking, we were praising its production design and it had this unique visual style that, you know, do you, can you imagine a movie looking like this right now? Not

really. Not with this kind of budget. No, right? There is some recent commentary on Twitter about some older Marvel movies and how they actually had characters interacting with things in the world. Right. And, you know, the most recent Anthemann is just like a green screen monstrosity. Right. There's not really any of that anymore, not really, you have to, you have to look to independent film. You have to look to like lower budget stuff, right? Like, stuff still exists, but Hollywood's not going to toss a ton of money at, uh, at a film that wants to have a blockbuster that has sort of artsy pretensions. The last, when I can really think of was the Dune film from a couple of, from what, two years ago, that Warner Brothers did.

Yeah, yeah. Right, and that's a movie that obviously deserves and needs like a really art-fit, focused take on it. Right. It's a whole new world, yeah. You know, I do think it's interesting. I think this conservative reading makes a lot of sense because it is notable, right, that like there is no conflict within the factory, right? There's no class conflict among the workers or the owners. They're in almost perfect harmony.

Their interest are the owner's interest or the workers' interests, the workers' interests, the workers' interests are the owner's interests. It's like it's the song. I mean, whenever we see the shop floor essentially, we get, we get like, you know, upbeat music. And it's like there. it's like the dream of a total harmony of interest achieved through, you know, like the, the paternalistic, kind of small, small holding capitalists because there aren't shareholders here, right?

It's a family. It's a family business, right? Family capitalism. And I think you're right in this funny way. It's like it represents sort of. the ideal um of what capitalism can can produce the only thing kind of missing from the vision right is like the nuclear family but they're it's kind of there right it's kind of you know well he's about to start a family i guess with the new well the mothers are dead in this movie which is

kind of interesting there's no mothers it's very like the mothers his mother is dead the mother of LL Cool J is absent and there's no woman who's well except Robin Wright presumably but Joan Cusack's not even a real woman she's a robot she's not able to reproduce so how is this world being

reproduced it's just being reproduced through sons taking over or whatever and these kind of relationships between fathers and sons disappointed fathers unable to fully like I, you know, they even have this the ancient decrepit great-grandfather who was a military person and the father of Robin Williams is sort of a black sheep of the family or something, you know, who went off and didn't pursue a military career and went and started this creative toy company.

So, yeah, there's the family dynamic is interesting in that regard as well, is that it's sort of, um, it's sort of without women as important parts of a family except sort of as company like she's not she's a robot made for his company right and and i mean and robin right's character is in some i mean she's hired by his father so she's there as company as well she's hired by his father with like with the express purpose that they would like end up together because she was really cute or something like right she's like and like yeah so he's like they're all just like plodding the reproduction of this family firm. But yeah, it's a very idyllic, and it's in this strange part of the country with these

rolling hills, heavenly looking almost. So, yeah, it's like this utopian, idyllic picture of medium family's capitalism, which bourgeois sentimentalist like Barry Levinson, you know, that's their ideal. And we all as Americans share that to example. We love the idea of family businesses. We love the idea of, you know, these cute companies and so on and so forth that have the same values for years and years. And the problem is big corporations, profits taking over everything, you know. And so this movie has an anti-militaristic message and it has an anti-corporate capitalism message, I suppose you could say, I mean, like, this is, it's almost

stupid to put it in, like, I feel silly putting it in these terms, but like, in these like Marxist terms, but I'm like, well, the problem with its critique is that it's bourgeois sentimentalism and it doesn't have a materialist. It doesn't have a materialist critique of capitalism. And it doesn't, it doesn't take into effect class struggle. But I'm like tempted to say that. But it's absolutely true with a movie, right? Like that's what's so striking about it. I don't think I've actually seen a movie that depicts like the internal workings of a factory like this without any kind of conflict between the workers or between the workers and the management. I wanted to say, you know, like the American, the American bourgeois sentimentality for the small business, for the family-owned business.

this is like one of the oldest parts of the American, you know, political psyche, right? Like Thomas Jefferson's dream of the Empire of Liberty was a nation of small-holding farmers who through their mastery of land, and these are all men, so through their mastery of familial relations as well, would develop the capacities to be good Republican citizens. And although, right, like although the transformation of the United States into an industrial economy in the 19th century kind of makes that impossible. There's not enough land. And we don't need farmers anymore.

We need people working in factories. You can think of the New Deal, you know, like Fordist order, right, of a single head of household and an industrial job earning enough to take care of a family as like an update of that vision, achieve through, you know. Hamiltonian means. I think the Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian things are in the background here as underlying tensions in American ideology. It's like the agrarian, idyllic homestead, which has a certain innocence to it, and then urbanization, big institutions, banks, cosmopolism. And so on and so forth, you know, you could, and Hamilton was obviously a military man and was, you know, big part of the Continental Army.

So you could almost even put a Hamiltonian versus versus Jeffersonian gloss on the movie as well, where, you know, the, the military guys are the Hamiltonians. And it's funny, he even has a British accent. Yeah. You know, and he's not really American, right? and the, you know, the nice family business is, are the Jeffersonians. But the thing is, it's a factory, the silly thing about it, it's a factory, it's a, and this is something you don't see much. I mean, you see it in some utopias, mostly actually kind of in Marxist utopias, which is

funny, of a factory where people are happy, you know, like, and it's a very childish conceit because you think, oh, toys must come from a factory where people are happy. Well, no, I mean, they're made in a hell like every other practice. You know, like, there's chemicals and dangerous machinery and so on and so forth. But the idea that because the object is lovely or pleasurable, it must come from a lovely, I mean, it's like Charlie and the Chaco factory. Of course, in Charlie and the Chaka Factory, it's revealed that beneath this surface is actually this horrible man and it's kind of slaves it.

This hellscape of exploitation. Yeah, exactly. In this race of beings that he's imported and exploits. So, like, the, yeah, I think that's interesting. Like, you know, idyllic, it's not an agrarian, it's a factory, but they make the factory look like a utopia, which is something I think is kind of like, I mean, harkens back to some of the modernist sources of the artistic style? Because it's like, oh, well, the futurist and Bauhaus kind of envisioned factories

that would be nice places to work and would fulfill the needs of the workers. And artists really gave a lot of thought to creating that. So in a way, yeah, there is also that modernist dream of being like, well, the workplace can be beautiful. The workplace can be, you know, the workplace can be something, place that you were excited to go to and you feel connection with others and you're working, you know, so there's that going on. But yeah, it's interesting how many weird ideological themes are in this movie. And don't cohere because I just don't think Barry Levinson has a politics as such. He's got a set of vague kind of social consciousness that hasn't really articulated into any clear views or stances.

And lots of artists are like that. But so he has things he kind of likes and things he kind of doesn't like. And he symbolizes him in these various ways. But this movie, there's just so much of it that it becomes, it almost becomes even more apparent that you're like, you're just, you know, you're writing the script and you're just sort of like, all these things that troubled me, I'm going to like try to comment on them in the kind of. context of this film. Right. You know, the very clear kind of like allusions to panic over, you know, the influence of computer games on kids is interesting to me.

Because that's a thing that's very 90s, right? We've talked before about mid-90s sort of concern with violence and media, with obscenity in media. I think we're around the time of the two lives. crew controversy, which is always funny to me. And in a couple years, I think they're going to introduce the V-chip for TVs to sort of like, you know, stop explicit content from reaching a TV if you don't want it to. And I think I mentioned earlier, right, the Doom and Wolfenstein 3D and you have the

first generation and first-person shooters, and those are causing people to freak out about violence and video games, and that's just going to become more of a thing. as the decade goes on. But here we have, you know, it's a real sort of like the Michael Gatman's character first comes upon an arcade where kids are playing, you know, military shoot-em-ups. And the way the whole thing is shot, it's just very much supposed to communicate it. This is like a disturbing thing. This is a disturbing development for youth culture.

And I think it's interesting how, and maybe it's just because we've had like generation changeover, right? Like the people are not necessarily in power. It's all still boomers in power. But like there are plenty of people now in power who play video games as kids and they're totally fine, right? And sort of video games have become violent ones even,

just like an accepted part of, you know, American culture. And so in the absence of any like real evidence that it's turned the kids into a bunch of psychopaths, like no one's too worried about it anymore. But there was that concern. I mean, that's one way of looking at it. Another way, it's just like the business just became too powerful. Yeah. In the business, you know, I feel like it's easy to forget this, but like video games

are a much more profitable business than movies these days. Much larger and more profitable business than film. Right. I think like what I kind of agree, like, you know, like the different, like, okay, here's where I think that the aesthetic, like what I, what I think the movie is on to and didn't really wasn't able to say was like these old toys, which don't aren't as obtrusive as having images in your face all the time and having like just like direct like the electronics like plug into your brain almost essentially, although they're working on some kind of virtual

reality the good guys are too. Um, is that, you know, it left more. room for people's imagination and like people's imagination wasn't completely occupied and every inch by imagery all the time. And I do think that that is not like, like you were saying, like, well, is your mind just a green screen that has these special effects, you know, projected onto it? And that's sort of sad. And, and, you know, it would seem to preclude the type of creativity that would even go into a bad movie like this sometimes. So I think what he was trying to get at, if we're being generous with the movie,

is that, yeah, like, when things are a little bit less in your face and direct and are a little more gentle and retiring and silly and sweet, like there's an opportunity for people. own imaginations to work. And, you know, now, you know, you could say, well, everybody just takes the images, there's just too many images, too many clear images that just fill up people's minds and that kind of, I mean, not always, but may limit the possibilities of creativity. You know, and I should say I'm also quite sympathetic to that. You know, I have two kids, a four-year-old and a two-year-old. And they, they don't play with screens. I get

sort of, they don't, they don't use iPads, don't use phones, don't use video games, barely watch TV, they play with blocks, they color, they draw, they build. Um, uh, so I, you know, I, I don't, I, I actually do not disagree with that. And there's, you can, you can imagine a version of this movie, again, you can imagine a version of this movie that zero's in on that, right? The zero's in, not so much on Michael Gambon wanting to turn, uh, a bunch of, uh, you know, the nation's children into a bunch of, uh, you know, the nation's children into a bunch of little Ender Wiggins, but him obsessed with video games. It obsessed with sort of like artificial creations. And the conflict in the movie is about this. It's about, it's about

the conflict between like imagination and, you know, things provided directly to you. You can imagine a movie that does focus much more on kind of like the militarization of things. It makes a whole movie, a bit of a metaphor for fears of a militarization of society. There's a lot you can do there because, again, there's so much kind of floating around thematically in the film. But because it kind of, it kind of jumps between them all with, I guess when we were talking about the Rocketeer, we were talking about how that is such a great movie because like it hits, it covers all the bases. Like it does everything you want a big kind of blackbuster picture. to do. And you can tell that that was the ambition for toys. This is going to be like a four quadrant

blockbuster that does everything you want a blockbuster to do. But because it doesn't all quite cohere and doesn't quite work, it is like there are these jarring things where you have, you know, a sweet sentimental moment between Robin Williams as Robin Wright that cuts to like L.O. Cool J. Like about to fuck someone. And you're just like, I don't know if this should be. in this movie. The sexuality of the movie is really strange. I don't have that much to say about it, but that is all I'll say. I mean, I have a couple things to say about it. I have some words to say about the sexuality of toys. No, it is, it is, I mean, in the same way that they're really, I mean, there are women in the movie, but there aren't like, they don't have

have they're like they're in servile role servile is the wrong word they kind of they exist to serve the interests yeah you're right they're toys yeah um they they are toys the sex worker nurse yeah like yeah who is obviously it's you know very childish or not childish but adolescent kind of fantasy you know um but like robin rob rob rob rob rob rob rob rob robin's character is portrayed as like this overgrown child but yeah apparently he has like sex sexual knowledge. He goes to Robin Wright's home and can I stay over? And I thought, I mean, I'm

watching this. I'm like, there's just be like an innocent kind of thing. And it's like, no, it's implied that you know. He's not a virgin. Right. They're having sex. Yeah. There's sex noises even. Yeah. Yeah. It's strange.

That's strange. Yeah. It's again, to go back to that Ebert review, I finished the movie and I was like, I don't really know what I just watched here it feels it feels like

there should be more and there's way too much very very strange film I'm trying to think of anything else I want to comment on just like thematically in the movie before we wrap up

there's you know when Michael Gambon's explaining his plot he does do this whole monologue where he says you know, the, the American public isn't going to accept spending $450 million in the stealth bomber anymore. What if you could do that with $5,000? And I just, I do think it's kind of funny because it, it's sort of, you were in this post-Cold War moment and there's this idea of the peace dividend, right? We have all this, we can reduce our military expenditures and put them into funding, you know, cancer research or education or health care or whatnot.

And the public isn't really going to have an appetite for major military expenditures. Even in the 90s, it just like wasn't, that wasn't the case. And certainly, in post-9-11, that has not been the case. And even now, we withdrew from Afghanistan. We've in some ways paired back our foreign involvement. But, you know, the defense budget was recently passed and it was like, you know, $700 billion, $750 billion. And so that's just like a fun, it's like a funny, you know, a little prediction. Americans aren't going to stand for this.

But in fact, that we're pretty comfortable with large military expenditures, even in the absence of any kind of like big geopolitical threat. Yep. Love to spend money on it. I have one funny thing or one stretch connection, one last stretch connection to make this. You know, I couldn't stop thinking about while watching this movie. movie was the Frankfurt school theorist Walter Benjamin, who was very interesting guy. He was, you know, friends with Adorno and all those people.

He died tragically, committed suicide, fleeing from France, fleeing from the Nazis. And he wrote a great deal about toys and what they meant, you know, he had this whole theory basically, he was working on a whole idea that, that, you know, in commodities, especially old and deprecated commodities, there were some kind of, even though they were made by the capital system, they dialectically kind of overcame that. And if you observe them in the right way, you could get this kind of utopian feeling from them. And I was just thinking about that. And he loved especially old toys. And I tried to get. some, I tried to look into what Ben You mean wrote about toys, especially old toys.

And it's a little very complicated and difficult as much of his writing is. But I did find something that may be interesting to add to this discussion because basically he thought that the toys as such were an interesting type of commodity because they both pointed to, you know, a way, you know, we're socialized into the world of production. They themselves are, are commodities that are, you know, sold. But they had a utopian, because of the world of children's imaginations, they had this kind of utopian or liberating side. So he wrote, he went to see an exhibition of old toys in the 20s in Berlin. And this is a little bit from his review, if I might. Today, old toys are important from a number of viewpoints.

Folklore, psychoanalysis, art history, and the new education all find it a rewarding subject. But this alone does not explain why the little exhibition room is never empty and why, in addition to whole classes of school children, hundreds of adults have passed through it in recent weeks. Nor can it popularity be due to the amazingly primitive specimens, even though these would be reasonably enough for a snob to attend the observation. And then he's skipping ahead. He describes these lovely old and interesting toys. As we have said, all this is enticing for adults.

but is not the only attractive or the decisive one. We all know the picture of the family gathered beneath the Christmas tree, the father engrossed in playing with the toy train that he has given his son, the latter standing next to him in tears. When the urge to play overcomes an adult, this is not simply a regression to childhood. To be sure, play is always liberating. Surrounded by a world of giants, children use play to create a world appropriate to their size. But the adult, who finds himself threatened by the real world and confined to escape,

removes its sting by playing with its importance. in reduced form. The desire to make light of an unbearable life has been a major factor in the growing interest in children's games and children's books since the end of the war. And that would have been the First World War, which is interesting to think that, you know, after the traumatic experience of the world, or, you know, you notice a lot of adults got interested in the, in the toys and games of their childhood. And I think there's a lot, too, that still, you know, like adults, when they see toys from their childhood, they find them irresistible to think about and to play with. And there is something, you know, I think that we tend to think of, we tend to think of maturity, you know, when you, when you become a man, you set aside childish things and that it's a sign of regression or immaturity to go back and play with toys or even to think about toys, people who collect toys.

and look at in an odd way as being kind of stuck in childhood. But it's interesting think about it as sort of like, well, what would a society be like without the problems we have? I mean, wouldn't we just be at play much more often? So I think that the movie in its fascination with toys is, again, trying to get into some more interesting questions and just doesn't really quite have the resources to get there. I feel like this is going to sound insane. But if there's ever a movie that would actually be a good candidate for a remake,

it is actually this kind of movie precisely because there's a better director. Yeah, there's just so much there to unpack. Like, you could turn this into something genuinely interesting. But at the same time, I don't know, you know, I'm not, Robin Williams, you know, God bless him, not my cup of tea. Yeah, interesting. So you kind of need that kind of energy for this movie. I'm not sure that there's anyone who exists these days with that kind of energy.

I know what you mean. Yeah. Yeah, I can't think of an actor. All right. Well, I think that that wraps us up on the movie, which means that that is our show. If you're not a subscriber, please subscribe. We're available on iTunes, Spotify, Citra Radio, and Google Podcast, and wherever else podcast are found. If you subscribe, please leave a rating and a review.

It does help people find the show. And you can reach out to both of us on Twitter. Still, I'm at Jay Bowie. John, you are at Lionel underscore trolling. You can reach out to us over email at unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com. And for this week in feedback, we have an email from Tom titled On the Lone Hero in 90s action movies. Hi, guys. your point on the surviving the game episode about the loneliness of 90s action heroes was

interesting. It put me in mind of the defining action series of the first half of the next decade, the Jason Bourne movies, which I think can be read as a reaction to or comment on the trope. Jason Bourne is very much the self-reliant, ultra-competent loner, but the movies are all about the horrific psychological cost of being forged into that kind of weapon. The conclusion suggested is that life as such a person is damaging and ugly and that the process of an institution like the CIA creating such people is outright evil. As we talked about on the show, the 90s doggy dog hyper individualist attitude mostly makes sense in the context where there is no external existential threat.

And it also kind of presumes that the economic social system works such that the exceptional individual can actually win. In the post-911 era where history appears not to be over, America fears that it has real enemies again. And also suspicion begins to dawn that major institutions like the CIA might be actively malevolent and conspiring against us rather than just ineffectual. This is maybe a place where the dangers of lonerism become apparent and a little bit of collectivism begins to regain its appeal.

Anyway, love the pods. Thank you, Tom. I think you're right about the Bored movies, which are very much about kind of the consequences of creating a hyper-competent loner killer. Although I'll say that character still very much exists in sort of somewhat different form as a decade goes on. And I'm thinking of kind of taken and everything that it spawned, right? Sort of the whole conceit of taken of these ultra-competent operators whose lonerism, you might say, is the reason they're able to do what, you know, the state cannot do.

Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, in the one hand, I see what you're saying, that Jason Boren is an individual, but he also has no identity. He's created by the state to do. He has to kind of find an identity for himself. He's probably a product of the state, you know. He has no, he's not like, oh, I'm an individual and I've been, you know, brainwash. He has no self in a way.

So it's almost like he's a nightmare of collective, collectivity from another point of view. I would say, I guess a big theme of our thought. of our podcast is just failed collectivities. Yeah, like we talk about, you know, all these ways, these movies or after 9-11, you know, attempted to imagine collective projects for the country and sort of don't come up with a satisfying picture of it or don't come up with a good enough enemy.

So there's a lot of failed collectivities, but there's also a sense of the individual is not sufficient, needs this collective project. So that's sort of the place where we're stuck. We end up always being stuck is like the collectivities are not satisfying life as a self-seeking individual is also not satisfying. I guess it's a postmodern condition, I guess. And, you know, as we will continue to point out,

this plays itself out in the politics of the 90s when by the end of the decade you're getting calls for national service, right? like a sort of a recognition, at least among some of the political class, that there needs to be, we need to have some great unifying national project and maybe enlisting young people in the service is that thing. But this is something we will continue to talk about, especially as we, you know, I've said this before, as we begin to tackle the kind of disaster movies, the Independence Day is the, not a disaster movie, but contact, out of space contact movie. we may even do Twister, which is sort of like this, that kind of movie, a collectivity is finding meaning and pursuing a thing. The thing just happens to be a big tornado. But yeah, so more of that to come. That sounds great.

Thank you, Tom, for the email. Episodes come out every other Friday. So we'll see you in two weeks with the 1994 action film Drop Zone, directed by John Battam and starring Wesley Snipes. Here is a brief plot summary. A team of skydiving crooks led by rogue DEA agent Ty Moncrief. I love these names. Specialized in landing on police roofs and breaking in so they can steal undercover agent's files and sell them to drug lords. Federal Marshal Pete Nessip lost a brother to this crew and learned skydiving with the help of the tough instructor, Jesse Crossman, so they can track them down.

Drop Zone is pretty much available to rent on iTunes and Amazon. I think it may be streaming in a few places. also have a guest for that episode to watch out for that. Do not forget our Patreon. The latest episode of our Patreon podcast is a team up with Sam Adler Bell of Know Your Enemy on the 1984-85 adaptation of La Carre's The Little Dremmer Girl. You can listen to that and much more at patreon.com slash unclear pod. It's just $5 a month and it is totally worth it.

Our producer is Connor Lynch and our artwork is from Rachel Eck. For John Gant, I'm Smobuie, and this is unclear and present danger. See you next time.