Asia Times: When the pawnshop has it all

[marmar]

When the pawnshop has it all
By Julian Delasantellis


Historians of the future who accept the common paradigm that the United States in the 1980s was a confident, proud nation, its triumphalist psyche restored by president Ronald Reagan, will undoubtedly be quite confused when they come across two remarkable cultural artifacts of the period, the movies Red Dawn and Amerika.

John Milius' 1984 Red Dawn was a fairly typical teen movie, in that most of the action of the plot involved clean-cut photogenic American adolescents dissing adults and destroying their property - what made it unique was that the adults who were tearing their hair out at the antics of the lil' tykes were the invading armies of the Soviet/Cuban/Nicaraguan communist military force that had parachuted into the teens' small Colorado town at the beginning of World War III.

Donald Wyre's 1987 Amerika is a bit harder to dismiss. This was a 14ฝ-hour mini-series, broadcast on the US ABC television network, about life in America 10 years after a bloodless coup installed Soviet-backed Quislings as rulers of the country. One thing that made Amerika different from Red Dawn was the quality of its cast, with Kris Kristofferson, Mariel Hemingway, Sam Neill, Robert Urich and others. These were then the elite of the made-for-TV movie gallery of stars, a definite contrast with Red Dawn's cast of teen unknowns who previously could only get close to the A-list by waiting on their tables.

Although denied by then-ABC network head Brandon Tartikoff, the common perception at the time was that Amerika had been greenlighted in order to quiet conservative critics of the network's 1983 anti-nuclear weapons TV epic, The Day After. That showed what would have been the devastating effects of even a limited US/USSR nuclear exchange on a small town in Kansas - in effect, with Amerika, I suppose, ABC was giving equal time to the other side, the pro-nuclear war lobby. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/KA07Dj05.html

[NMDemDist2]

1. K&N, well worth the read n/t

[IndianaGreen]

2. Red Dawn had Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen

a great movie about what happens to a regular army when it meets popular resistance. It still plays on cable TV regularly. Never heard of Amerika, but The Day After is a very good flick with a warning to humankind to the consequences of a nuclear exchange (it was a limited exchange in the film, not the total war).