Oscars upon movies more or less forgotten today, while more populist fare like Stripes starring Bill Murray turned into cable classics with every single line of dialogue memorized by millions. “This is America,” Murray says as he rallies the troops to a dazzling performance at their graduation from basic training. “We’re 10 and 1!” Later, Murray and his fellows will kind of win the Cold War by invading and then exiting Czechoslovakia in an RV. Harold Ramis, who co-wrote and starred in the movie and fancied himself an anti-establishment type, scoffed at the third-act turn and blamed it on director Ivan Reitman. “That was just Ivan grinding his anti-Communist ax,” Ramis told GQ. “His family were Czech refugees.” Yeah, an anti-Communist ax. Could you imagine such a thing from a refugee from, you know, Communism? If the search in Hollywood was for the “real enemy,” time and again audiences told the industry that what they wanted was to see movies about the “true friend” – that secret friend being the country itself that Hollywood so often seemed to find so distasteful, even as it swam in the lucre American capitalism rained down upon it.
Stripes is about a rudderless man afflicted by a horrible problem with authority who finds manhood by becoming part of something larger and greater – the United States Army. After he mouths off one too many times, Murray’s drill sergeant says, “You think you know something about everything, don’cha, but you don’t know nothing about soldiering... I’m talking about something important, like discipline and duty and honor and courage. And you ain’t got none of it!” The sergeant then invites Murray to take a swing at him. Murray does, and misses, and the sergeant knocks the wind out of Murray with a punch to the midsection. The post-’60s jerk gets his. At the end of the movie, both men salute each other with admiration. No wonder everybody loves Stripes and no reasonable human being on Earth would watch Stone’s Platoon a second time. If the search in Hollywood was for the “real enemy,” time and again audiences told the industry that what they wanted was to see movies about the “true friend” – that secret friend being the country itself that Hollywood so often seemed to find so distasteful, even as it swam in the lucre American capitalism rained down upon it.
American Consequences
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