Unclear and Present Danger - True Lies

Episode Date: May 14, 2023

In this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watch “True Lies,” James Cameron’s tonally-incoherent (but hugely successful) spy thriller starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis. They discuss the film as a straightforward take on the American crisis of masculinity in the 1990s, as a depiction of American beliefs and ideologies around sex and power, and as the beginning of a significant turn in the cultural depiction of America’s enemies. They also talk about American interventions into Haiti, welfare reform and James Cameron’s marriages.You can watch “True Lies” on Apple TV Plus or Paramount Plus. Episodes are released every two weeks, so join Jamelle and John later this month for an episode on the 1995 adaptation of “Judge Dredd,” starring Sylvester Stallone.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. The latest episode of the Patreon is on the 1969 political thriller “Z,” directed by Costa-Gavras.

For 15 years, Harry Tasker's been leading a double life. Mr. President, one of our best men is inside. Transmitting now. Now, they're about to collide. Not like he's saving the world or anything. I see this is the problem with terrorists. They're really inconsiderate when he comes to people's schedules. Have you ever killed anyone?

Yeah, but they were all bad. The true lies. What can I say? I'm a spy. 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 have a substack newsletter called Unpopular Front, and I'm editing my book about American politics in the early 1990s. This week we watched True Lies. Let me try that again. Let me try that again. This week we watched True Lies.

I can't do it. A 1994 action film written directed by James Cameron and based on a 1991 French film which stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Arnold, Bill Paxton, Art Malick, and Tia Carrere

with cinematography by Russell Carpenter. Russell Carpenter also shot Titanic. He shot Hard Target and he shot Triple X the return of Xander Cage. Fine movie, I guess. Here's a very short plot synopsis, a fearless-trodding terrorist-battling secret agent has his life turned upside down

when he discovers his wife might be having an affair with a used car salesman while terrorists smuggle nuclear warheads into the United States. It's basically right. The tagline for true lines for true lies is when he said, I do, he never said what he did, which is in bed. I think it's not bad. True Lies is available to stream on Apple TV Plus and Paramount Plus. I don't know how long it will be there. This is a very recent edition, but that's where you can find them. It was released on July 15th in 1994, so let's check out the New York Times front page for that day.

All right. Well, the big story here on the front page is Rwandan refugees flood Zaire as rebel forces gain. relief agencies overwhelmed by influx. Rwanda's Hutu leadership fled today before a Tutsi-led rebel offensive and a wave of refugees poured into Zaire prompting urgent appeals from international relief agencies unprepared to deal with the staggering number of refugees.

More than half a million Rwandans had fled into Zaire in the last 24 hours, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Zairean Boretown of Goma said late this afternoon. The refugees were trying to get out of the way of the advancing rebel army, which seized a major town, Rung Gary, early today, and immediately continued pushing west toward Giseni, where the Houtu leadership has been holed up for several weeks. Reports out of Goma this evening said the last members of the Houtu leadership had fled Gassani, and were headed toward southern Rwanda, where French forces have established a safe haven. So this day, July 15th, is considered by historians to be the last day of the Rwandan genocide, which occurred from the beginning of April until the middle of July. Basically, what happened there was that the Hutu majority, after the assassination of the Hutu president, maybe by Tutsi rebels, perhaps by hardliners in the,

the Hutu government and the Hutu power movement assassinated the president of Rwanda. And then a genocide basically ensued that resulted in a kind of power vacuum at the same time. And the Tutsi led rebel force went on the offensive. So as a genocide was taking place, the Rwandan government was also collapsing. And as the Rwandan, as the Tutsi army advanced, the areas they took over, the killings of Tutsi's stopped. but not before, I think, nearly one million Tutsis were murdered. You know, this was sort of highly, I mean, it's a world historical horror, you know, on the level of the Cambodian genocide, the Holocaust, and, you know, this is a, this happened in a time

where, you know, we thought, well, history is over. These sorts of things were consigned to the past. And also time when the U.S. was sort of pulling out of engagement with the rest of the world because we had a very bitter experience in Somalia. And the Clinton administration, with that in mind, decided not to intervene in Rwanda. The actions of the U.N., the actions of France and Belgium, having criticized and scrutinized a lot as as either failing to stop or actually abetting the genocide in certain ways. But yeah, this was this was the end of the Rwandan genocide.

So what else do we have here? Well, I said the U.S. was pulling back from the world, but obviously not in our backyard. U.S. making moves for Haiti action, invasion not imminent, but troops step up training. While insisting again, the United States invasion of Haiti is not imminent. The Clinton administration continued today to lay the groundwork for such an action. Elite Army paratroopers, who would probably lead an invasion of Haiti, stepped up night training exercises at Ford Bragg, North Carolina. The administration announced that 15 countries had signaled the willingness to join a multinational force

that would maintain order and retrain Haiti's security forces after the current military government leaves. The exiled Haitian president, the Reverend Jean Bertrand Aristide, also issued a statement calling for swift and definitive action by the international community to Haiti's leaders. So Aristide had been overthrown in a coup. I feel bad. My history of Haiti is not very good. But Aristide had also been at one time thrown out in a coup, I believe, back by the United States and then return to power. And then in this coup, the United States was on his side. I think that's the story.

A day after the administration's senior-fault briefed congressional leaders on Haiti policy, Senator Sam Nunn, the Georgia Democrat, who was an influential voice on military matters, warned the White House to consider any invasion planes very carefully and said Haiti is not a vital American interest, except I guess when we're overthrowing their government to put a military dictatorship in or something like that. At the same time, the Senate rejected by a vote of 57 to 42, a proposal by the Senate Republican leader, Bob Dole, to head off military action and be creating a bipartisan commission to study the Haiti crisis, which opponents said would tie President Clinton's hands for months. So I'm going to look up quickly, the Haiti intervention. Yeah, I was, I'm quickly looking looking it up right, right now. Yeah.

See, it is elected in the first, he's elected in 91, there's a coup in 91. Right. And he is elected following the removal, deposing of Jean-Claude Duvalier. Right, baby doc. Baby doc. Yeah. And then there's another coup. So, yeah, there's Duvalier deposed.

Erested coup and then another coup that brings Erested back back into power. Oh, okay. So, oh, all right, let's see. Eristead was president of Haiti until 1991 military coup. That coup regime collapsed in 1994, and then he was again present, and then there was another coup much later, which he blames the United States for. Okay. So the coup that brought him, all right. Okay. Anyway, Erci is a really interesting figure, a kind of left wing, an actually left-wing leader

who was, I believe he was a priest and believed in liberation theology. And of course, the Duolier family was a brutal regime that, you know, tortured people. and did all kinds of awful stuff um so what else we got here i mean just real quick on on haiti i mean just the the extent of this all this turmoil i always feel like whenever you talk about turmoil in haiti you just have to remember the broader context of basically the entire western world spending more than a century punishing the country for overthrowing slavery like that's kind of the basic context for haiti yeah yeah yeah they're the one country that ends up defeating uh ending slavery by force of arms uh against the colonial power

and then uh then the rest of the world those those those powers and their allies spend the subsequent 140 years basically making them pay for it um so yeah that's i feel like that's just context you got to have about Haiti um because it's other way it's far too easy to fall into tropes about the place being like in this whole place right right but yes um okay the clinton welfare bill a long stormy journey with four days before they were present sorry with four days left before they were to present a plan to overhaul the welfare system president clings as aides faced a painful question they were about to pose the strictest work requirements in welfare history but were they ready to cut off every penny to mothers who did not comply?

At a day-long meeting on Saturday, February 26th, Andrew M. Cuomo, an assistant secretary of housing and urban development, warned that the very poor, like chaotic lives and that failures would be frequent, ending rather than decreasing payments would leave women and children on the streets. Then what do we do? Watch them wither and die. But others stress the need for dramatic change in a system that is almost universally reviled. They argued that only a no work, no pay plan would offer the dignity of a real paycheck and said that only a bold break with the past would satisfy the president's famous pledge not to reduce but to end welfare as we know it. This is the battle for welfare reform, which occurs after, I mean, Clinton had always targeted welfare, but particularly kind of returned to his attack on it during the shift right word that happened when it was clear that his administration wasn't.

doing very well and the country was was pretty fed up with him and there was a big groundswell of conservative energy that led to the republican revolution of 1994 when they finally won the house after not having it for i don't know 40 years um so this is the story of of the of going towards welfare reform so this story produces a book by jason de parle that is very good. Even now, it's still very good. I remember reading it in college, and let me just look it up with right. American Dream, three women, 10 kids, and the nation's drive to end welfare. It's a terrific book about sort of the consequences of welfare reform. And I highly recommend it if you're unfamiliar with it. Oh, that's really interesting. What is this, what is it, what is it,

is there an argument or what does it document? I mean, it be, the, it, it, it documents. It, it, it, it, it documents. it's like this article documents the human effects of welfare reform like what this actually meant for actual families and the argument it makes that like this is this was not necessary that this actually in the end this what this did was entrenched poverty and make it more difficult to escape it did not actually teach responsibility or any of the things that it was um uh build as doing for for maybe a more For maybe a more kind of like political economy look at all of this, there is what Melinda Cooper's book, Family values. Family values. Family ties? Family ties? Way. What is it? Yeah, look it up. Melinda Cooper. Family values. It's called Family values. Okay. Which is about kind of the relationship between neoliberalism and social conservatism or at least post-70 social conservatism. And one of the argument that she makes in the book, is that the entire welfare reform saga really needs to be understood in terms of this effort

to sort of push people into the market, but then also kind of you've used the state in this like very paternal role to kind of like make people good, upstanding moral citizens. Right. To form family units. Right. Right. Under the under kind of the thinking that if the government is going to step away from really providing direct shielding from market forces, then the institution that

can do that as the family and I essentially like use the state to construct families and well for reform as an effort the kind of force recipients of aid to reform families right so that they can

you know be in the market yeah that's interesting yeah it's a good book that sounds very I'm gonna I've read parts of it I have not finish it but I'm a big fan of her work and highly recommend it. It's a big influence on me as well. Okay, this gets that kind of it for the stuff that we focus on.

There's something about, yeah, anything else? No, I think it's funny that there's a, you know, a scandal in Italy involving new government that just, you know. Never ends. Oh, that, I mean, that was the big one. I mean, I was about to say that involves Berlusconi. Yeah, the magistrates whose corruption investigation brought down the Italy political Ocar challenged Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi today asking to be reassigned

rather than work under a new government treaty that could free suspects from jail. So basically in 1992, yeah, it talks about tension topfully, bribe city, which is basically like they discover that every member, this is no very small exaggeration, basically every member of the Italian pop problem, it was corrupt. And it caused it massive, it caused a massive scandal. The government fell. People call this the second Italian republic because it restructured the government. I don't know if they have a new constitution, but it, it, it, it restructured the government so, um, deeply. And, you know, it was the socialist party, which was sort of the center left party, um, which was the central left party. Ever since then, the

kind of the Italian left, which used to be really strong. They had both the Socialist Party and a Communist Party, very powerful Communist Party, has never really recovered. It was just a complete, so just to give you an example, I mean, now Italy has pretty much a fascist government, but just to tell you where Italy was going, as a result of the inquiry, the Christian Democrats who had dominated Italy's politics for four decades were disgraced, along with their socialist allies. So Christian Democrats are the center right party.

The socialist allies leaving a power vacuum filled in march by Mr. Bolconi and his coalition partners. The separatist-minded Northern League, which still exists, and the neo-fascist National Alliance. So that became one of the bases of Maloney's party. So Burles County kind of like basically Italian politics were based on this anti-fascist coalition or agreement between. the communists, the Christian Democrats, and the socialists, that they were all sort of like, their origin story was, we're the anti-fascist, like, we're the anti-fascist parties, and like, we all can be defined by our opposition to Mussolini's regime.

And then basically, with the end, with Tentopoli and with the end of the Socialist Party, And the really big damage to Christian Democrats and the end of the Communist Party with the end of the Cold War, you know, the kind of barrier to the fascism and Berlusconi is responsible for this. And two really fell in Italy and now we, you know, 30 years later, we basically have a fascist government again. Anyway, it's a long interesting story. I would love to talk more about it. But, you know, that's, that's maybe maybe on the Patreon feedwell. We'll do one of the crazy crime thrillers from the years of lead. And it'll just use that as an excuse to talk about Italy.

All right. Yeah. Let's talk. True Lies, a little background. I don't know if we've done an Arnold movie yet on this podcast. We have not Arnold Schwarzenegger, one of the biggest Hollywood stars of his generation, just straight up. directed by James Cameron, one of the biggest box office hitmakers of this generation, maybe actually the single biggest box office hitmaker of his generation.

True Lies is just, it's more or less another Cameron action film. I think it comes, what was the movie preceding this? It may have been Terminator 2 was the movie just before True Lies. seems right. Yeah. Yes. So Terminator 2, Judgment Day in 91, the Abyss in 89, Aliens in 86, Terminator in 84. So Cameron's been in it for a minute.

But I mean, you just look at that filmography, Terminator huge hit, aliens, gigantic hit, made nearly 10 times its budget back. The Abyss is less successful and underseen, but it did well, and it's a good movie. And then Terminator 2 Judgment Day is like the, I feel like that's like the canonical early 90s action film. It's like it is the one. It may never really look this up before. This movie made total box office like a half a billion dollars in early 90s. his money um so yeah this is kind of to borrow a phrase from uh my friends at the blank

check podcast true lies it's kind of a blank check for cameron letting him do whatever he wants and i think you can 100% tell that that is the case in this movie because it is tonally insane it's a movie that does not make any sense tonally it has as much like excess as you can imagine from James Cameron and was extremely expensive. This was a very expensive movie to make. It cost about $100 million to make in $94. So very expensive movie. Schwarzenegger, obviously bodybuilder in Austria comes over, a winner of mystery universe comes over to the United States. I'm quickly looking at his personal records for powerlifting. He has a 264-pound clean-in press, a nearly 300-pound, Jesus Christ, clean and jerk, a 545-pound squat, a 520-pound bench press, and a 683-pound deadlift.

So, yeah. That's impressive. That's very impressive. I mean, these days less so because of training and enhancements and steroids. But for the 60s, very, very, very impressive. So he comes over to the United States in the 1970s and gets his first role as Hercules. And Hercules in New York, he's a speaking role. He's in a film called State.

That's in 1970s. And the film called State Hungary in 1976, right, by Bob Rifleson. I've never even heard about this. He shows up as an extra in, what's his name, Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye, which is really, funny to me. He is in the documentary Pumping Iron, which is kind of the thing that actually makes him quite famous as an actor, as like a personality, because he's very charismatic. And this is also the origins of a very famous Arnold line where he talks about the pleasure of bodybuilding. And he's like, I always feel like I'm coming. I'm coming when I'm bodybuilding.

Jesus. I think that's funny. His big, his big breakout film roles in 1982 with Conan the Barbarian, directed by John Milius, and written by Milius and Oliver Stone. Too idiots. Sorry.

I mean, yeah, two very talented filmmakers and also two dumb guys. Yeah. Um, that's followed up with Conan the Destroyer, uh, uh, directed by Richard Fleischer, uh, from a screenplay by Stanley Mann. And, uh, then we get the Terminator in 84. And I feel like it's from the Terminator onwards that like his star trajectory is just, yeah, he's just shooting up to the stratosphere, Terminator, Commando in 85, a personal favorite of mine, raw deal in 86, Predator in 87. The Running Man, same year.

Red Heat, which we should probably do at some point. Twins, when he starts moving into comedy, Total Recall, kindergarten cop, Terminator 2, Last Action Hero, True Lies. And then he follows this up with Junior, another comedy, a racer, another kind of spy action film. Then we get jingle all the way. And it's around this time where this is like his, yeah, this is his peak. And then you see is kind of his decline.

His last movie in this phase of his career is Terminator 3 Rise of Machines, and then he's governor. He's governor the same year, and then he comes back to films in the 2010s. And I'll say, I will say this for Arnold, in this later year period, he actually has had some quite good performances, one in the movie Maggie, one in the movie The Last Stand, and he was quite good in Terminator Dark Fate. So he's actually done some good work since he came back to Hollywood. And he now does like, you know, takes on the internet.

But he does like anti-Trump videos. Right. But they're very compelling to watch. I don't know. I've ever saw I watch what I'm like, man, this guy is good. Yeah. Good, good retort returition. Oh, he's also a vegan now.

Oh, that's surprising. Interesting. um okay so that's schwarzenegger that's cameron uh so watching this movie yeah watching this movie said it was tonally off and i do find it to be a very strange movie and i find it to be a very strange movie in terms of just as a film like getting let's put politics for a side is that it really seems to want to be a comedy yeah and The French movie on which it's based is very explicitly a comedy. That movie is called La Total.

I think that's how I'm going to pronounce it. Yeah, that's right. And same basic premise, but it's like very much framed as a broad comedy. Cameron is not that funny. No. but wants to translate that comedic element over but also does want to make kind of a traditional action film but the two don't really mess very well and so you know in the movie Tom Arnold plays Schwarzenegger's kind of partner and best friend and it's really the comedic

relief for the film but it's utterly grating just like every time he shows up I'm just like get this guy off the screen Bill Paxton who plays the used car salesman who's trying to like you know fool's way into sleeping with Jimmy Lee Curtis, Schwarzenegger's wife is doing it's like it's like a good performance and that it's doing what the movie needs but it's also like intolerable to watch

it's very annoying to me and just like the humor doesn't really work and then it's also just sort of a brutally violent action film and what it made me think of is this is like Cameron trying to do a last action hero which is the McTiernan film

that comes up the previous year, starring on Schwarzenegger. And it's very written by Shane Black, very much and very specifically, a send-up of the whole genre of Schwarzenegger action movie. This isn't a send-up, though. It's just like a straight film. But that just renders it, like, really bizarre to watch. And I don't know. I thought it was funny when I was young, I guess, or, and I was a little bit, I don't

think it was that funny watching it. Now, it's also kind of hard. like the jokes are the kind of jokes are like he uses like the state so he's part of this ultra secret it's not the CIA it's some kind of ultra secret counterterrorism uh cell within the u.s. government and he like when he thinks his wife is having a fair like he uses like the resources of it to like kidnap her and like interrogate her and terrify her and you're just like why i watch her I was young I was like ha ha and now I'm like that's horrible I mean I think it's also because part of it is just like we're post war on terror so like the idea of like extraordinary renditioning

somebody to like a black side is not quite so funny anymore perhaps um I mean the movie's still fun to watch it's got I mean I think it's you know I'm not like a huge action adventure guy in terms of like the thrills it gets but they would say some of the explosions and shooting stuff and this is pretty good no i mean yeah go ahead the harrier the harrier jet is awesome he flies a harrier jet i love that um sorry go ahead no i'm just say it i mean it it is a it is cameron james cameron is sort of the top a top of the line action director that's like the thing he is very good at kind of traditional hollywood action so it works really well as an action film and just real quick yeah that's how the movie unfolds basically the first half of the film

is we're seeing schwartzinger whose name is harry i got to say as a parenthetical i kind of just love the era where all of arnold's characters have like the most generic american names yeah there's like don't deal with him being obviously german you know and having an accent and being a gigantic human being and all right um but he plays he it's you're you're seeing him do spycraft. Actually, the beginning of the film is an extended spy action sequence. And that's intercut with Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays his wife, kind of as she works in an office. And she is basically flirting with this guy who says he's a spy.

And the way the movie is structured, it's after, after. an instance where Arnold is basically it's not able to make it home for a birthday party because he's trying to catch some terrorists. He tries to make it up to his wife with taking her up for lunch and then he discovers this relationship she has. And this sets up the next half of the film where he extraordinarily renditions her,

interrogates her. They kind of scare off the car salesman, Bill Paxton's character. And then he's like, you know, She says she just wants a little excitement. She's not going to cheat on her husband. And so he tries to orchestrate some excitement. But this ends up turning into an actual thing where, like, the actual terrorists kidnapped them both.

And then this begins the final sequences in the end of the film. They have nuclear weapons. They got nuclear weapons, the terrorists. Well, this is the beginning of a new, well, not the total beginning, but it's inaugurating a new era of racism in Hollywood movies. because there's a lot of like there's uh Islamic terrorists we haven't seen very many of those in the films we've done so far um so that's that's a that's notable the other thing is um who are given very little actual country they're from or real grievance i mean they're kind of like supposed to be al qaeda but al qaeda wasn't that well known because they're angry

about u.s troops in the persian gulf they're called crimson jihad um i suppose maybe because of blood, but maybe to connect them a little bit to the previous communist menace. I think maybe just, I mean, so much about this movie I think exists because James Cameron is like that, that sounds cool or that's funny. Yes. Yeah, it's not that well thought out. But I will say, I think what you're noting, here's my theory of this movie. I think this movie is so weird and doesn't make sense on so many levels when you read it just the text on the surface.

But if you read this movie as like an extremely archetypal version of what we've been talking about this entire podcast, which is like the reconfiguration of American ideology in the post-Cold War era, it all starts to make sense. And it's weirdness of tone, the strangeness about Arnold Schwarzenegger supposed to be playing a normal guy, you know, the centrality of this marriage. and cheating thing, it all starts to come into focus. And basically what I want to propose is that this movie is kind of like pure ideology, it's pure fantasy, and it has very much to do with,

as you mentioned when we were discussing this beforehand, American Crisis of Masculinity. Basically, like, what I would like to say is that this movie is responding to a worry, an anxiety about like the breakdown or the basic fantasies that would make, like, you know, men and women, heterosexual relationships possible anymore, or couples still interest each other, keep marriages together.

Basically, like, the fundamental parts of, you know, of American masculinity and American femininity for that, you know, just sexual difference or gender differences, however you want to put it, is the background of the movie. And that's, like, really what it's about. It's about their marriage. It's about their sexual relationship. the fact that they no longer have one

and she's looking for another one or she's just looking for some kind of excitement. And it's interesting that the fantasy that this guy, Bill Paxson, the used car salesman, and it sells her, is like, oh, this fake spy plot. When, you know, and then this guy realizes, well, I actually am the fantasy that she desires. I have it.

And all I need to do is actually show it to her. So it's sort of like encouraging, it's encouraging the United States to think of itself again as like a country at war involved in some kind of ideological struggle and involved in this in espionage and adventure in order to kind of reignite the possibility of just like the society reproducing itself or family staying together or sex being even possible. Sex between between couples even possible. and so that's why I think it's so strange and Arnold is like Arnold is like a fantasy figure of American masculine well he's not even American of masculinity in general but it's like he's not you're like how could you miss it that this guy is such an like he's like a massive dude as he said and like obviously not like an everyday computer salesman like if you looked at him like he's he's you know I

think it's because it's like the character's fantasy of himself as a man and like the real and the other side of america masculinity is is is tom arnold this kind of weasy annoying uh guy and bill paxton who's kind of a fraud and it's like well no you got you you you got to think of yourself as arnold right right you got to break out of these out of this and like we have to return to um to being that it's funny because like arnold was such a archetypal figure at the at the end of the of close of the 80s and of 80s action movies which we've talked about as being like you know more about these like muscle bound guys who just go in and like blast and rambo type figures uh and then you know the type of action figure sorts of sort of shifts in the 90s to something a little bit

more subtle or clever um but yeah so that's my theory of the film and i will note to support this theory when they finally kiss in the movie and it's like their sexual relationship has been re-inaugated Jamie Lee Curtis and Arnold Schwarzenegger is when a nuclear bomb goes so terrorists steal a nuclear bomb and they explode one as a test and exactly in the moment the nuclear bomb goes off as it flashes this couple kisses it is the weirdest fucking thing in the entire world and the only way to explain it is like we need to drop a bomb or like we need to have this threat like we need to return to the world of nuclear annihilation to have sexual fantasy still function that's like basically the message i would see as the movie like we need to return

to the post-war the cold war situation again to reorganize society right the movie doesn't deal with the fact that a nuclear bomb went off i mean there would be horrible it's just like oh it was far enough away it was in the florid keys there would be horrible fallout like it would be poison, you know? So anyway, that's my theory. I think you're right, right? The tension of potential nuclear annihilation provides the basis for like, you know, sexual reality between men and women. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And just the existence of any kind of ideological or military framework for people's lives. Like the society has to be organized in this sort of way. And otherwise, it doesn't, you know, their lives are boring. They're just going to the office. But he's,

secretly works in the secret office you know the funny thing about the CIA and all these things is they're bureaucracies in the same way corporations are they're just like cool it's a cool office job right it's a secret office job so he has a secret office job um yeah so i think that that's what's going on this movie it's just like a weird series of i wouldn't even call it reactionary fantasies it's just american ideology just shooting all over the place no i think that's exactly right like i don't reactionary either and I wouldn't describe James Cameron as a particularly reactionary guy and he's the way he wrote the thing

I think and it's funny because I'm not even sure I don't think Cameron has a politics and as the avatar movies make very clear it's like a very sort of like juvenile kind of politics right so I'm not

even sure he's thinking politically or I think to be something he's thinking about anything it's his own personal life since by At this point, this is 94, so this is being, you know, produced 92, probably films, 93. So he has just divorced Catherine Bigelow, or she's just divorced him. Let me correct that. And James Cameron's marital history is very funny. He was married in 78 to Sharon Williams, divorced in 84, married in 85 to Gail Ann Hurd, divorce

89, married to Catherine Bigelow in 89, divorce 91, married to Linda Hamilton in 97, Divorce 99, and then married to Susie Amos in 2000. And that's, that's, that's, that's been his, uh, his, um, partner since. So I think this is like Cameron channeling his own sort of like anxieties about his masculinity into the film. But I think that you're, I think that you're reading is, is right. And I think that what also gives it strength in the text. It's just kind of the function, the terrorist play.

First of all, we've already, we kind of noted a little bit, but this is a terrifically racist depiction of Muslims. Of Arabs, yeah, Muslims. And of Arabs. It's sort of when you, when you imagine the most stereotypical, like, 90s action film depiction of Arabs and Muslims, this is kind of it. This is like, I was saying to someone on Twitter that even for the period, it's bad yeah it's bad um like that even the even that the name given to the terrorist group crimson

jihad i mean it's so lazy it's lazy and it's stupid and it's like it's like comically you know it's comically bad so yeah but but the key thing is that like the the the terrorists aren't just threatening the country they're also specifically threatening the family they're threatening Arnold's family. And in the climax of the film and the final confrontation between the lead terrorist and Arnold, part of the stakes is that he's kidnapped Arnold's daughter. Right. So it's like in order to, in order for Arnold our kind of, um, or archetypal American man to not just like bring peace to the country, but to resolve the tension within the family, he has to like kill this Muslim terrorist. It's like this, this extremely foreign body.

in within the body politic and it's like yeah it's like right there just like on the screen and very obvious but it's precisely because Cameron isn't like a political filmmaker really and not like much of a political thinker that if we've said before that like the bad movies are often interesting but this is a case of like a very well-made movie maybe not entirely coherent, but a well-made movie in a lot of ways, effective movie, still having the quality of gesturing to something political in part because Cameron himself is kind of like a little incoherent. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And like, I think it's that it's funny that the title of the movie is true lies, which doesn't really get addressed in the movie, but like that's

almost just calling your movie like ideology movie. Like it's like, it's like it's like it's like what is the what is a better title it's like oh these are the structuring fantasies they're they're true they have material effects they define people's social roles they define what they do but they're fantasies right so like it's sort of it just just gives away the whole game and the title like it's like yeah this is this is a movie about the ideological fictions that undermine underpin not undermine under mine underpin like a American beliefs about masculinity, sex, so on and so forth. It's just like, it couldn't be any perfectly titled.

And, like, it's just so funny to me. And, like, it's interesting, like, it shows Bill Paxton. It kind of deconstructs itself because it shows Bill Paxton as being, like, I have to invent this silly story, you know, to get laid about being a spy. But then the movie was like, well, we're all kind of doing that. some level like that's sort of the background of all of our like our fantasy world like the beginning of the movie begins like with this you know uh kind of james bondesque fantasy where he's you know he he walks into this party um uninvited but he's very so suave you know completely

built you know like uh blends into the crowd he's wearing a tuxedo it's this very fancy party at some, you know, villa in the Alps or something like that. And then he meets this extremely beautiful exotic woman and they tango together. And he's, you know, and then he blows everything up, et cetera. I think to hear, Carrera's role is really interesting because, like, she's very hot. She's like, she's presented as being, like, extremely attractive, seductive, a threat to the marriage between, Jamie Lee Curtis and Bill Paxton I mean not Jamie excuse me

I'm Freudian slipping all over the place Jamie Lee Curtis and Arnold Schwarzenegger but she's also you know racially and ethnically Right I was gonna yeah she's she's Asian American But she's ambiguous It could be anything she's exotic looking You know right in Hollywood language

She's very exotic looking And she's she's you know like A threat to their family tries to seduce him him and he's flirting with her at some point in the movie and that's just sort of shown to be a part of his job and not you know and you know she gets the wife gets mad at him for sort of flirting with with Tia Carrera but um so that was just interesting it's like you know I don't I don't want to harp on the racial stuff too much but it is interesting that every pretty much without exception like all the brown people are on one side and all of the white

people are on the other side. That's very rare, even in Hollywood movies at this era, like you'll usually get like a token character to be like, okay, we're going to put like an Arab guy on the good guy side or we're going to put an Asian guy or a black guy or Hispanic or whatever just to show that racially it's not like about that. This movie, I think, in its innocence of being like, no, we could never be racist because we're just good, nice people sort of like recreates this like ethnic and racial anxiety about like immigration and the Muslim world or whatever. So yeah, I think that that's another thing.

There's lots of lots of shit going on. And you kind of can't ignore that. Oh, to my other point about this being like a deeply ideological movie, there is a the head of the secret agency is a cameo by Charlton Heston. That's right, yes. With an eye patch and he's sort of like, oh, here is the like the secret power in the United States is this like arch conservative patriarch who's still in control, you know, and like still pulling the strings. don't worry, like Charlton Heston is still still there. Yeah, so I think that and like this whole agency, like the whole idea, we've talked about

this, like the whole idea of a secret agency is interesting because it's like a fantasy of control and power and ultimate responsibility that's like, oh, don't worry. And this is like completely brainwashed me in the way I respond to 9-11, which I've talked about many times. I was like, oh, there are so much hidden power in the deep state that will kill Osama bin Laden tomorrow. It was just like, oh, hidden in the deeps and the depths of the U.S. government, there is so much power and all these secret agencies that see everything around the world. Like there's this myth of omnipotence, fantasy of omnipotence projected onto the U.S. government and movies like this are responsible for creating that perception. And that's like where all these, this kind of has a negative side and these fantasies about the deep state.

but this is like a positive depiction of the deep state right but this depiction but the deep state is nothing except i mean in my reading of the movie is like this ideal belief in like the ideological self-sufficiency of the united states right there is this agency run by charlton heston with arnold schwartznager and tom arnold hollywood i don't know that that is basically um creating the fantasies creating the fantasies creating fantasy don't worry they're around the world saving things but they're also generating the fantasies that you need in order to still sleep with your wife in order to you know make our lives meaningful be a good father to your daughter be a good father to your daughter and balance being a new kind

of father who's sensitive and and kind to his family and understanding but it's also still a man and has these masculine fantasies so it's just like this whole the secret agency is just like the like the dream factory, the American oncologist or whatever, or whatever structuring that. It's, yeah, so it's just like that, we've seen that many times as like the, this is like a benign deep state. And I think we've seen that in some movies. We've seen both a benign deep state and a, um, and a malicious deep state, right? And that's like a super ego care figure.

It's like sometimes the super ego is very scary and sometimes a super ego is like a good father but instead of fathers in instead of well there's a paternal I mean he's the father in the movie but instead of like the just like fathers we have like agencies right so we have a whole it's a bureaucracy of patriarchy or something like that like like it's like oh it's got to be an office too like we can't imagine anything I mean especially in the I mean maybe now now the office culture but office culture was so huge in the 90s because partially because that was like the jobs that were remaining in the United States. But like, you know, white collar, malaise was such a huge theme in 90s movies.

It's like we can't even imagine the basic archetypes or structures of human existence in society outside of the structure of like, oh, this is going to be run like an office, right? It's definitely going to be run through like a bureaucratic structure, which I think is very fun. I try to think of what other, what I, what I have to, to, to ask. add to that. Just there, I think there's, I think there's something to develop a bit about just the, the tri, I guess like, it's like the trifecta of like white manhood in the movie.

Arnold as like the archetype Tom Arnold as not, I mean, interesting about Tom Arnold in the movie is he's comic relief, but he's also very much portrayed as like very masculine, very macho, lacking of kind of familial responsibility, but like even that in the movie says is like preferable to someone like Bill Paxton, who is not just, um, his wife left him. Right, his wife left him. He has no family. Uh, he has to lie to, I mean, I mean, his Bill Paxton's whole thing about like when he's confronted midway through the movie, you know, I have to lie to women to get them to sleep with me. He says, I have a small dick. Yeah, I have a small dick. Like, um, sort of just like the movie telling you that this is this is this is the kind of man you do not want to be and uh uh this is an example of the kind of of you know threat to the family that like arnold is going to vanquish right one of the two threats to the family kind of this um man without masculinity and then the terrorists who are portrayed as being quite i mean they're they're quite threatening like they're

serious but they are uh they're foreign and they hit women they hit women that's so to be i think he does too at some point but like he that's like the first introduction of the terrace is he smacks tia carrera right um and so this is yeah we're i mean it's kind of i hate to use this language but it's sort of just like yeah they're masculine but they're savages right they are they're they They represent like the, like the, what, I hate to use this language, like the toxic, toxic masculinity in the sense of where it's like racialized in the U.S. where we're like, the way men treat women in Arab countries is terrible. You know, like this is a big part, like they don't, or in foreign countries in general,

like they beat their women and so on and so forth. We just saw an example of this in the president when Tucker Carlson's text messages when he says about. Oh, yeah. This is not the way white men. fight exactly right yeah yeah i mean Tucker carlson is the kind of person that would essentially take this movie seriously and not be aware of it so like Tucker carlson is like such a fucking idiot preppy in some ways like he's not a dumb guy but he's like he would just

watch this movie and with some sense of irony because he's like a little self-aware but he would just say to like this is an amazing movie because he just thinks like this is like what needs to be like beaten into the american people like this is like the stuff that like we need to return to like to true lies and like he was he wanted to be in the CIA and like he wants he wanted to be like that just not to go off on a Tucker Carlson thing but like he wanted to be this kind of guy and like and wanted to be this kind of American man and that role wasn't really available to so he became this kind of like monster version of it like this resentful you know, angry,

snotty, rejected version of it. I mean, that has always been the striking thing to me about Carlson, which is that the extent to which he himself does not present as traditionally masculine, really in any kind of way, right? Like, he, in his earlier iteration of his career, he wore those bow ties and this very sort of like childish dress.

He has just like very round and soft face, this kind of high voice. He's obsessed with his masculinity, though. He's obsessed with his masculine. And that's like, I think talking about, like, I think he's always kind of being threatening and being macho. And like, that's the two sides of like, there was a great quote I always quote for. I think it was Adam Gopnik or something like that.

He said like American masculinity is not just like or is not like stoic, Gary Cooper type thing. it's like a guy who thinks he's really funny like it's wheezy genial and like talker carlson kind of goes between those or he's like I'm a really clever smart guy but I'm also like kind of kind of like not a tough guy but like at least as tough as a guy should be like I could fight I would fight if I needed to you know like I'm not a coward I'm not a pussy but yeah like and I think that this kind of movie is really like as much as anything it's just sort of like what those sorts of people long for maybe not more than like

the country bringing the country back 100 years or 50 years it's just 30 years when when they felt a little bit more comfortable and like that even I mean that's why like when when top gun came out all these conservatives were like oh thank God and I'm like is that all you want on some level it's not like i think that they're serious about their policy things but i think it's true i think it may be this maybe all these policy things are doing are trying to bring back a world that just will not come back no matter how reactionary violent they get or weird about it they get because like we just don't make these sorts of movies anymore but when we made the new top gun conservatives were like oh my god thank god the woke movies are over we can watch our movies again you know

And I think it's that simple for some of these people. I think that the fantasies, they want to see these fantasies lived out. They want to inhabit these fantasies again. And they're not available or they're less available. So maybe we should just let. And I think I've made this joke before because they're so obsessed with cultural production. Why don't we take over all the government for 30 years? You can take over Hollywood.

Make as many reactionary movies as you want. We'll have the Supreme Court. You know, and let's see what let's meet up again in 30 years. and see it was happy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I guess what I find what I find so funny about that, because I kind of think you're right.

And it's not just the reaction to Top Gun. There was something else that came out recently that had this sort of, you know, thank God that the woke movies are over reaction. But I think part of it, what's so funny about it, is that like, as we have discussed before, part of the reason Hollywood does not make these kind of movies anymore

isn't really because of any like, ideological commitment to diversity, it literally is sort of like market, it's like marketing conditions in the actual structure of Hollywood as a business. Right. Right. Sort of like we're right, as we're recording this, there's currently a writer's strike. Right. And the writer strike is basically about like writers not wanting to be completely cut out of profits for streaming productions. Because with the advent of streaming, what studios have been able, essentially been able to do is like renegotiate the terms of what they pay writers. Yeah. But sort of like, so much of the changes in Hollywood over the last 20,

25 years have a lot to do with the emergence of streaming, with the emergence of video games and other forms of entertainment that are getting people necessarily out of theaters. With sort of the, it's been, it actually has become more difficult to finance productions. Right. equity is also taken like real stakes in studios in this in the Hollywood business right and so

there's a need for not just consistent returns which was okay in the 80s or 90s you could have like a consistent and baseline level of profit but like massive returns right right so how do you get massive returns for movies well maybe you make them based off of existing properties so there's a built in familiarity maybe aim for like the broadest possible audiences which means means in part that you are going to be searching for diverse cast and you're going to be thinking internationally what's going to work in the Chinese markets, et cetera, et cetera. All of these things begin to flow from sort of like the demands of profit seeking within Hollywood and just the way the business of the industry has changed.

But it's like the conservative cultural obsessives have no awareness of that part, of that part, right? Like that part of it doesn't even seem to weigh on their analysis of what's happening in the culture, which is just funny to me. It's like it's funny because it's exactly what you would expect. Right. Well, it's also funny because like they're, as often as the case, they're like nostalgic for a liberalism. They're nostalgic for some things that they probably would have criticized 45. 50 years ago, like Hollywood was like the Jewish conspiracy for these people at one time, right? And now they're like, they're like, oh, they're Jews. I was just, I was just, I'm,

you know, connected my book, but this is not isolated to this person. It's sort of far right. But, but, but there's an aspect too that as my book argues kind of comes into the, bleeds into more mainstream conservatism. You know, the belief that, oh, Hollywood run by Jews and other ethnics kind of like diluted real American culture with this like alien ideologies, right? Secretly communist or liberal or so on and so forth. But now these fucking idiot reactionaries are like, oh, they love all these old movies that were made by the people who they're people they read thought were like these Jewish interlopers. who were destroying the country. And I'm like, well, which one is it?

Like, this is the masculinity. You think that this is the image of, like, America, as it should be? Like, there's one time where you thought this was, like, terribly liberal. So it's just, it's just very funny to me that, like, basically every 30 years or so, everyone forgets everything. And, like, and there's not that much historical memory. And basically, conservatives become nostalgic for a world. I mean, this is sort of the nature of conservatism.

And not even in a, and I don't mean this in a totally critical way. I mean, like, yeah, like, we often on this podcast and in our interactions and life, you know, reflect with nostalgia and fondness for this era of filmmaking, even on its lower end as being superior to the other things you say, I get it, I get it. But it's like there's sort of like, yeah, a forgetfulness that in this era, this was not always satisfying even to consider, even, you know, movie like this might be too this movie maybe not but but definitely movies would have been considered what they didn't have the word for it then to two to woke um so i mean the word woke is just the best thing that's ever happened to them because now they have the word that to just for everything that bugs them you know they didn't they were like ah we're mad and we don't really know what to call it and now they have the word and then they're so mad when you're like

is that really word apply to all the things you're like are you using that correctly they're like you can't you can't take this word away from us don't take this word you're always trying to take our words away from us you know like it's like they need the signifiers to to anchor their worldview and every time we're like maybe that's the word that you're using I don't think it means what you think it means it's it's always like it always really freaks them out and I think because a lot of it is like about finding one's bearings in a confusing world and needing like these structuring ideas and like the loss of them is highly traumatic and and dude it's true I admit it the world is changing in and quite radical ways not in ways I think are all negative

but like yeah there's gender differently performed than it was 40 50 years ago sure is but it was also like the way men behave is different now that it was a hundred 200 years ago men don't wear stockings anymore you know like right right always change so i i think a lot of it is is is you know i know the material side is definitely huge but it's almost like i mean not to just be it's about misrecognizing the material changes and thinking like there's something else there's like there's something going on you're like yes there is something going on but it's not exactly what you think it is right exactly yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it's not that nothing is changing it's that Something is changing, but the reasons are not being identified correctly.

It's always like it's impossible for them to think outside of an agency, you know, an agency is the metaphor in the movie is of an agency of control, right? Yeah. There must be an agency of control. Who is it? Oh, is it Jews? Is it some coalition of Jews and blacks and Latinos and the woke coalition? I don't know.

It's always somebody, you know, doing it. It's never like, oh, there are structural things happen. You know, there are, there are, there are, there are forces at work beyond any individuals control and, and, and competence. That's a very difficult thing for people to understand, especially, yeah, no, I'll just say it's very, I mean, it's very classically American thing to reject. I think, as I've said on this podcast before, you know, part of the history of American politics, it's just kind of a constant recourse to these sorts of conspiracies,

yeah, to explain changes, uh, in American society. I'm thinking I just read, um, uh, it's Adam Hawkshield. How do you say it? Yes. Yeah. I said it wrong on another podcast and I'm just like, I'm like anticipating when that thing hits and people are going to be like, what the fuck are you talking about? But I'm saying it.

Hot child. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. He's like, he's like, he's like British or whatever. Who knows how they say their names? Um, Hawk shield. Wait, I'm trying to.

I don't actually know how those pronounce. I think it's hot. Hawkshield. Yeah. I think it's Hawk shield. Yeah. But I just read American Midnight, his new book on America from 1914 to 1920. Yeah.

And part of the, part of the dynamic in that era was exactly what we're talking about. There are these really massive changes happening in American society, not just industrialization, which has been ongoing. But really, this is the time when people are emptying out the farms and the rural areas and moving into the cities. And part of the panic in the country is it's like, well, is this, you know, is this something structural happening? Or is it all these Russians and Jews and Italians who are like, who are spreading foreign ideas and corrupting the country, right? Right, right, right. It's funny to think just real quick that, like, Italian Americans and like 1910s played basically the same role Muslims did in the 2000s. I know.

It's really funny. It's really, yeah, like, because they're like, they're all. Radicals. Or the radical anarchists. I mean, an Italian-American anarchist assassinated the president. So it's sort of just like, yeah, they're all radicals. They're dangerous. They're bringing foreign ideologies.

Crime they have a weird foreign religion. Right. Roman Catholicism. Our old enemy. The Pope of Rome, papism. Yeah. Yeah, it's very funny. And yeah, and I don't think anybody, like, people kind of, I mean,

I'm not going to play this is not to say Italians have had it as hard as everybody else in this country but there were Italians were lynched but this happened in the South like you know they were you know so they you know like many other ethnic groups

became white as the old as that as that as Ignatio's book puts it but like the yeah there was a time in the country there was an enormous amount of racialized fear of Italians of Jews of Jews of Greeks, which you don't hear that much about it anymore, except when, except when the president says, the president, like, weirdly, like, says these, like, old-timey racist things sometimes,

which really crack me up. It's like, it's actually my favorite thing about it. Yeah. This is a form of, like, jocular racism that's, like, not been heard in years and, like, barely is legible to most of the American public anymore. He's like, yeah, you know, the Greeks are good at making ice cream and shit like that. It's just like, all right. And now here we are in 20, in 20, 23, and a movie about an Italian-American plumber can make a billion dollars in two weeks.

That's right. That's right. Progress. Is he Italian-American? I have no idea. Okay. He's Italian. We do have to wrap up, but I'm going to say this.

Here's Mario Italian-American. Longest thread in the history of forums. Right. No, so when they announced a Mario movie, and they announced that the voice is going to be Chris Pratt. People were like, why Chris Pratt, not Italian, doesn't sound Italian, it's going to be weird. They released the voice and it was like not good. And the entire time, you know, I had fun with some of the memes, but I was like, this is a very stupid thing to be upset about. And then I watched the movie for which the Mario Brothers being like Brooklyn Italians is actually like a meaningful part of the story.

And at a certain point, I was like, you know what? I think it might be a problem that they didn't cast Italian American actors for this. It is a huge problem. I'm angry as a person who thinks he's Italian-American. Because speaking as a fake Italian-American, that makes me angry. And I think it's actually really bad because I think it shows that, like, our cultural memory of these stereotypes is fading. Is that a good thing? Some might say yes, but I would say no.

Okay. That's the true lies episode. All right, let's wrap up. That is our show. If you're not a subscriber, please subscribe. We're available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher Radio, and Google Podcasts, and wherever else podcasts are found. If you subscribe, please leave a rating and a review. It does help people find the show.

You can reach out to us on the internet, Twitter, I guess, if you want. On Twitter, I'm at Jay Bowie. The podcast is at Unclear Pod. John, you are at Lionel underscore trolling. Obviously, Twitter is kind of going down the tubes right now. Tucker Carlson might have a show on it. There's, like, lots of horrible things. It's bad news these days.

I'm going right down with it. You know, for now, Unclear Pot on Twitter. We'll see how things fare in the future. You can reach out to us over email at Unclear and Present Feedback at Fastmail.com. For this week and feedback, we have an email from Adam titled Canadian Bacon episode. Hello, Unclear Pod. I was just listening to your episode in Canadian Bacon, which is our previous episode before this one. And I was curious about your thoughts on the role Canada plays in the American political imagination.

It seems to me as a Canadian that when Canada is invoked, liberals tend to present it as a peaceful socialist utopia with no guns. That is certainly the image that Michael Moore puts forward in his movies. While the right-wing view of Canada seems to range from in a feat in any state to a tyrannical dictatorship where freedom of speech has been outlawed. Well, yeah, we saw that during COVID where Justin Trudeau was presented as, like, I don't know, King George III. Yeah. I guess I'm curious how you think these viewpoints became solidified and how they have evolved through the 90s to today. Thanks for the note, Adam. Any thoughts, John?

I don't have any real sense of it up. I mean, it's true. I hadn't really thought about that much, but it's absolutely true. And it's like one of those things that's so basic to the way we talk about politics and such cliches that you kind of ignore them. you're just like, yeah, I'm a liberal. Canada seems like a nice place. Conservatives are like, eh, it sucks. I hate Canada. And now Canada is very multi-ethnic and they seem to be doing a nice job at everybody being friends. So everyone's like, Canada's a woke country. You know, like, so that's sort of my impression of it. I think, but it's what's interesting is Canada also

produces some pretty crazy reactionaries too. I mean, Jordan Peterson is Canadian. Right. There's Doug Ford way back when yes yes that whole thing right so it is I think much still much I think it's very ethnically diverse now Toronto is a very diverse place I think it's still a lot wider than the United States I don't want to get in trouble I think that's right it's like Toronto and Vancouver are like ethnic diverse yeah I think metropolis is and then the rest of the country is not so much and then there's like there's Quebec the French the French I would I'd say I'm in favor of a violent armed revolution that would separate Quebec from Canada is how I'd answer your question. Okay.

I'll just note that it seems like the high watermark of liberal affection for Canada was the Bush years. I have, I very much remember the, after the 2004 election, the map that's circulated, like, the Jesusland map. And it was like, yeah, it was like Canada and Jesus land. um with jesus land incorporating much of the united states and i think i think that's sort of like that was like the absolute high watermark for how americans like look to canada as being a better kind of place i think i do think the 2010 kind of complicated this somewhat as there were revelations about right like as more americans became attuned to canada's quite nasty history with its native americans first nations population um uh and that sort of thing it's weird i feel like the

The relationship U.S. House of Canada is weird, not for the least because there are just so many Canadians who are effectively kind of just American icons. And that whole... They walk among us. They walk among us. That's right. As Canadian Bacon made note of saying, you know.

Yeah. That was probably like the funniest line in the movie, really. Canadian walk a month. I still think that sometimes, yeah. Right. No, and you never know who they could be. Drake, a Canadian. Come on. Right. True. I'm always surprised on Twitter when someone turns out to be Canadian because you think they're normal and then they're like, well, here in Toronto,

we're having a real bad problem. I don't even know if that's how they talk with housing. And I'm like, oh, you're not even from here. Like, who are you? Okay, the one last thing I'll note just for complicating people's image of Canada is that Malcolm Gladwell, not great, but he has a great essay from years ago about Jamaicans in Toronto and Jamaicans in Canada and about like the role Jamaicans play and kind of like the racial

arrangements of Canada that I really recommend people try to find and check out. Episodes come out every other Friday so we will see you in two weeks with the 1995 adaptation of Judge Dread

directed by Danny Cannon and starring sly Stallone. Here is a short plot synopsis and a dystopian future Dread, the most famous judge, the cop with instant field judiciary powers, is convicted for a crime he did

not commit while his murderous counterpart escapes. This movie is available to rent on iTunes and Amazon. It is, I'll just say it right now, it's not good. There's some things about it that are fun, but it's not good.

If you want to watch a good judge dread movie you got to watch the recent carl urban movie just called dread dread but this one judge dread 195 sylvan i am the law that kind of thing um and we'll talk about that with a guest we have a guess i got to confirm within to make sure it's available but we do have a guest on the lineup for that episode the talk judge dread remember there is our patreon uh uh you can find unclear patreon patreon. patreon.com slash unclear pod and for $5 a month you get access to a whole separate show dealing with the films of the Cold War.

We are currently doing the films of Costa Gavras. We have recorded an episode of Z for some, for reasons we have been able to get that one up yet. It'll be up very soon. By the time you hear this, the Z episode will be up. And then we'll follow that up with the confession and then state of siege. So that's what we're doing on the Patreon. We did a

recent Patreon on a movie called Executive Action JFK conspiracy movie not good but a rich text a lot of good stuff

on the Patreon so check that out $5 a month for John Gans I'm Jamal Bowie and this is unclear in present danger we will

see you soon you soon I'm going to be able to be.