"Olympus Has Fallen" And The New Patriotism Narrative

It's sometimes so bizarre that I can't help think there is something more to it.

Just as "Olympus Has Fallen" -- a movie about evil Koreans bombing and taking over the White House -- does gangbusters at the box office, North Korea suggests, through a conveniently placed bulletin board in a war-room photo, that they are readying missiles for Washington, D.C.:

How weird is that? Does art represent life, or does life reflect art?

What is the psychological impact on an American citizen from watching "Olympus Has Fallen" and then having this news plastered all over our media right afterwards?

"Olympus Has Fallen" took in $30.5 million in its opening last weekend

Some might theorize that this makes the American people more fearful and paranoid -- but I would offer that the prevailing feeling throughout the public, at least according to social media, is one of gung-ho patriotic jingoism -- of the "well then we'll just bomb them into the stone age" variety.

I might also humbly suggest that such an instinctual and joyously defensive appeal to said patriotic impulse distracts the populace from such domestic issues such as financial crisis -- instead, giving people a shared threat to rally against. Some say that Kim Jong-un looks as if he just stepped out of central casting for a James Bond movie.

Let's look at the cast for "Olympus Has Fallen," for there are several actors involved who have subtextual meaning as it relates to discussion and their previous movie roles.

The film's protagonist is played by Gerard Butler -- who of course played the mighty warrior King Leonidas in "300." Leonidas is the ulitmate macho war-dude, rallying the "troops" to battle.

The president is portrayed by Aaron Eckhart, part of the symbolically-loaded Christopher Nolan "Dark Knight" trilogy. POTUS has the name Benjamin Asher, which has very Biblical overtones; both Benjamin and Asher are part of the Tribes of Israel.

One person the president in "Olympus Has Fallen" does NOT seem to allude to is our current president, Barack Obama. Often, movies such as this will choose an "analogue" to the sitting president. But this does not seem to be President Benjamin Asher's function. Asher seems to function as some sort of idealistic character straight out of the Good Book; functioning in what is essentially an Apocalyptic film as the representation of the United States as a "promised land" that needs defending from the Philistines.

HOWEVER, when Asher is incapacitated in the Korean takeover, Morgan Freeman's character, Speaker Allan Trumbull, is made Acting President. Freeman also played the U.S. president in "Deep Impact," alluding to the recent spate of asteroid paranoia that has recently filled the news.

While Freeman resonates both the President-During-The-Apocalypse symbol as well as a possible "stand-in" for our own president, I would also suggest that in the bigger scheme of things, he also resonates a paternalistic, transcendent, "God" figure (as he literally was in "Bruce Almighty).

And Freeman, of course, was also a figure in the Nolan "Dark Knight" movies, especially the third one in which his character was the creator of a bomb that Bane hijacks and threatens to use on Gotham; as Kim Jong-un threatens to do to the U.S. as present.

All-in-all, rather than being a true eschatological movie as "Deep Impact" or "2012," "Olympus Has Fallen" is more a narrative designed to rally the American public against the outside Enemy -- as the successful "Red Dawn" remake has done (featuring the North Koreans), as the upcoming movie "Iron Man 3" will do (with the Asian Mandarin as villain), and as the immanent movie "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" will do (swapping out a specific ethnic group for the generic evil of "Cobra").

In truth, we have moved out of the end-of-the-world cycle of films, spurred on by the 2012 prophecy, and are travelling into a "we can win this war dammit we are Americans!" phase; the phase of "let's bomb them into the stone age!"

And why is this? As I've mentioned before, this appeal to patriotism distracts the public from economic turmoil at home. It also more helpfully "defines" what it means to be a Patriot; taking control of the word and concept from various Constitutionalist groups etc. labelled as "fringe."

In short: this narrative, running through both news media and entertainment, attempts to push the United States out of the "paranoid," untrusting-of-government periods of the 70s, 90s, and 10s and into something more manageable. Witness the 80s and "Aughts" -- both eras where the U.S. have been threatened with, in the latter even hit by, attacks from abroad.

And if "Olympus Has Fallen" doesn't float your boat, you can check out the #1 movie in America, about cavemen.

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Who Is The Master Who Makes The Flash Run?

“They say I'm The Flash! If it only were true I could help them! Please make it come true God!”

I've decided to give this blog a bit of a refocus. There's a billion comic book blogs out there, and I feel if I can't contribute some original thoughts beyond "I like this, I hate that; look at some coming attractions," this is a complete waste of my and your time.

I am specifically interested in the way comic books reflect -- and sometimes shape -- culture and politics. I can take an esoteric step beyond that and say that I'm very interested in the way comics reflect, shape, and even seemingly "predict" the elements of our very reality.

I think that last sentence really is the litmus test as to whether you want to keep reading this site.

Obligatory image at this point:

Sometime around the start of the 1990s, comics became Self Aware, due in large part to Grant Morrison's run on "Animal Man." Such a "meta" approach had been teased for many decades -- often though we already had those cute "the creators meet their creations" storylines such as "The Day I Saved The Life Of The Flash" in 1974, where writer Cary Bates appeared as himself to help the Scarlet Speedster out:

"Who is the mystery man that controls every move of the Flash's life?"

That caption makes me think of when Robert Anton Wilson discusses this Buddhist question:

"Who is the master who makes the grass green?"

In both cases, that Master is ourselves (or, in the case of Cary Bates, the person who wrote the cover copy). These stories and heroes are not created, maintained, and presented in a vacuum; we -- and our world -- are always a part of it. And the color of grass is dependent on how our senses and brain interpret it. Everything is dependent on our perception. 

This is why I think some fans get really psychotic over changes to, or "wrong interpretations" of, their beloved characters; because in their perception, Batman or Spider-Man or whomever really is -- in some timeless, objective way -- the way they perceive it to be. And a challenge to their personal experience of this character -- a challenge to their personal reality, which they see as an objective reality -- is taken as an act of "blasphemy" or even war.

One of my theories is that comics=religion to some people, even to those -- and sometimes especially to those -- who consider themselves "free" from religious belief. That's grist for what will do doubt be a lively future post.

Bates really got the ball rolling on the whole "metafiction" idea in comics, but Morrison wove it into the very heart and soul of "Animal Man" -- and, by implication, into the entire DC Comics universe as well, leading to such myriad self-referential elements in their comics such as the DC memorabilia-themed diner in Kingdom Come, the Bat-Mite/Mxyzptlk one-shot "World's Funnest," and a large portion of the animated series "Batman: The Brave and the Bold." 

Welcome to the Cafe Nostalgia; you can check in any time you like, but you can never leave

But whereas Morrison was getting at larger questions regarding the nature of reality and the totemistic qualities of these very familiar heroes, the "meta fad" in comics which started in the late 1990s and sort of slouched through almost every aspect of The Aughts, was obsessed and entranced with Nostalgia. In fact, "ultimate fanboy" Bat-Mite -- whose two appearances on the "Brave and Bold" cartoon pushed the "meta" button almost to unwatchable lengths -- became sort of the patron saint not only of transgressing the Fourth Wall, but of this whole period in comic book history.

Bat-Mite's meta-fart

Constantly fixating on and rehashing your Sacred Cows and favorite "gods" can be quite decadent -- and I see the last decade or so's obsession with nostalgia in both the comics industry and comics fandom as being the direct result of the anticipation of massive change on the horizon. There was a sense like every aspect of the Beloved -- heroes, retro-cool, key scenes, landmark issues, primal moments of adolescent pleasure -- needed to be honored and embalmed in the most elaborate and exclusive of collector's sets of all time. You know, before the impeding cataclysm (bad economy, corporatization, the death-knell of the paper format, steadily dwindling audience as the result of insular marketing strategies) wiped them away from the active stage.

And whereas these meta stories by Bates and Morrison posited the comics creator as the master who made the grass green and The Flash red -- increasingly the Artist's sovereignty was getting pushed to the side, as the Ultra Fanboy (as personified with our dimension-hopping Bat-Mite) duked it out with  what was revealed to be the true Creator (in the Old Testament sense of the word): the Company.

From the ultra-meta "Action Comics" #9 (analysis of the issue here)

In the war between Fan and Company, what is the role of the Artist?

And further: in such an environment, what becomes of the comic book hero itself -- his or her soul, the essence of the character? (It is my belief that they, too, have lives and existences of their own)

These questions -- and their answers -- are key to Understanding Comics in the present period. 

Morrison: "It's only a comic."

Animal Man: "It's not! IT'S NOT ONLY A COMIC! IT'S MY LIFE!"

And as we understand the comics, we can expand our vision and see what it says about our culture, our  reality, and our future.

I expect that only a relative few will take this blog journey with me; but if you do, I assure you it will be worth your while. Or at least give you a few blips until the next series of blips.

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