Chapter 10
The 1980s: New Patriotism, Old Reds, and a Return to Vietnam in the Age of
Reagan
The purpose of this chapter is to examine the politics–film nexus during the
conservative Reagan era, one of the most fertile and diverse periods of political
filmmaking since the 1930s. In general the most politically active films ranged from the
over-the-top patriotism and strongman hero worship of Rambo and Top Gun to those
concerned not with militarist revenge fantasy but the harsh realities of international
involvement and from traditional value-reinforcing domestic melodramas to those
championing the losers in Reagan’s rightward economic policy.
Objectives for Chapter 10:
1. Explore the ramifications of a former Hollywood actor turned politician becoming
president, especially as his presidency invoked propaganda rhetoric scripted by
Hollywood.
2. Establish the movie-suffused nature of Reagan’s ideological perspective, especially
in relation to foreign relations and increased military defense spending.
3. Sketch the return of Cold War politics and violent, even “ferocious,” patriotism in
the revisionist Vietnam war Rambo films and the anti-Communist fantasy Red
Dawn, among others.
4. Identify a counter-trend in films that addressed the economic and political situation
of working people, like blue collar nuclear plant laborer Karen Silkwood in
Silkwood, struggling farmers in Places in the Heart, The River, and Country, and
coal workers in Matewan.
5. Observe the decline in political process films and the increase in films about the
judicial system.
6. Identify a trend in films that addressed concerns about technology and nuclear war.
7. Sketch the contours of the non-Reaganite films, those that embraced a leftist point
of view like Warren Beatty’s Reds and Sidney Lumet’s Daniel.
8. List the films that embraced a personal and nostalgic view of the past, especially of
the 1960s epitomized by The Big Chill.
9. Track Hollywood’s take on the return of foreign interventionism under Reagan, with
most clearly opposed to Reagan’s foreign policy, especially as applied to Latin
America—among the most critical ever made about America and its foreign policy.
10. Introduce Oliver Stone’s first film on Vietnam, and the anti-Rambo vision of the
horror of war: Platoon.
Discussion Questions:
1. How did Ronald Reagan’s past as an actor and former actor’s union leader in
Hollywood inform his political worldview?
2. How did the movies portray that worldview? Were all political films of this period
sympathetic to seeing in particular the U.S. military and foreign affairs through
Reagan’s eyes?
3. How did his successor and former vice president George H.W. Bush extend or revise
or truncate Reagan’s influence and ideology?
4. Besides exhibiting a traditional patriotism as might be found in WWII combat films,
what other political values did films like Rambo and Red Dawn transmit?
5. How are the working class portrayed in this period?
6. What auteur qualities does Oliver Stone establish in his films of this period?
7. As the isolationism of the immediate post-Vietnam period turned to the
interventionism of the Reagan era, what other foreign matters concerned the films
of this period?
8. In what sense are courtroom dramas political films?
9. What about Sylvester Stallone’s star persona makes him the epitome of Reagan’s
military and foreign policy? How does his persona compare and contrast with that
of Robert Redford in the 1970s?
10. How do the politics of race and gender feature in this period?
Essay Assignments:
1. Research the kind of political and financial support the military and defense
departments offered films like Top Gun. Are such films more properly considered
propaganda when they are so fully sanctioned by government?
2. Update Stallone from his 1980s heyday to his rehabilitation as a star of the franchise
The Expendables. What happens to aging patriotic-identified, strongman-
personified stars when they are past their prime? How is this trajectory determined
by race and gender?