Red Dawn Will Never Happen
By PatPandaHat 25 Comments
Or: How I Kind Of Think John Milius Is A Twit.
Now, don't get me wrong, I believe that much of his work once removed from the oeuvre of hyper-nationalized war cinema is great. His influence upon such cultural touchstones as the USS Indianapolis monologue in Jaws is, well, important. However, I often feel as if the shadow of Red Dawn looms over what he does, particularly in the case of the coming-up Homefront. In a similar way to how the involvement of Orson Scott Card's wretched Empire work made Shadow Complex a very complicated purchase to decide upon or not, John Milius is complicating a decision on whether or not to observe and interact with Homefront.
It's a right-wing nightmare/wet dream, the opportunity for real God-fearing Americans, the salt of the earth, those lovely gentleman who wear "don't tread on me" t-shirts and wave placards about trees of liberty being watered with blood at political rallies to show those blasted government pinheads that they'll rescue America from the oncoming foreign hordes. How useful it must be to have picked the one foreign enemy America has which is as impotent and sad as North Korea as the main foil to the virtualized conflict.
Obviously, I know that it's a first-person shooter. The hyper-nationalized, hyper-masculine nature of the genre is one I'm well-accustomed to but still, something seems peculiarly off about Homefront's foray into the field. Like Red Dawn, or rather the fans of Red Dawn, it feels to be marketing towards that hypernationalism in earnest, rather than as the implied anti-war narratives of many of the successful war films or even war video games typically follow. To the point, Red Dawn was written in the 80s in support of the Afghani "freedom fighters" who were at the time in conflict with the invading Soviet war machine. Many of those same "freedom fighters" would go on to become the "Muslim insurgents" and Al-Qaeda operatives the American war machine is fighting even now.
I wonder if the irony of the Red Dawn narrative in 2011 will be properly explored in Homefront. Will this become the link of sympathy between the Afghanistan occupation's "insurgents" and how a Western public would react to our own lands being occupied? Or will it just be double-thought out of, as Red Dawn's drama was once it became inconvenient to consider? Just put away as another in a series of modern warfare first-person shooters which grasped at more than it could accomplish, except for that peculiar core of fans who seem kind of... sketchy, like they think the events depicted will really happen any day now.
Plus, call me paranoid, but I kind of feel like this is the game where all the 13-year-olds shouting racial slurs in the other multiplayer FPSs will converge like locusts. So there's that to concern myself with.
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