A backlash to the Jimmy Carter era

That's an interesting point. I wasn't around for Carter, and I can't really relate to the era. I do still see a post-Vietnam war sense of self doubt about the country. Actually, I always saw Reagan's aggressiveness towards communism as a ploy to seek more weapons to the military -the defense industry was huge in his Southern California home turf, and obviously paid a lot of money to his fundraising drives.

I always heard that the red scare was BS. Nobody on either side was stupid enough to push the button.

I really like this movie for the war situations it presents. I think that the beginning is BS, with Soviet Troops raiding the school and shooting random people. I think that the film gets good once the crew returns to town, because it deals with the hard issues of living under occupation. It helps that the invading troops look just as human and just as brave as the defenders. That's the way war always is, fought by people who believe in their country but don't have any say in the decision to fire the first shot.

Interesting post. Red Dawn is definitely a product of its time, I'm sure the political climate influenced it as you said. They could only have made a movie like this in the mid 80s. The zeitgeist or whatever you want to call it.

Acting like you some one-man GPS

One thing I recall as a major issue in the early 80s was panic over Nicaragua and the Sandinista regime. When I was in high school, I saw a film from the American Conservative Union which predicted a domino theory in Central America, which would then spread to Mexico, then the United States. It was pretty much the same scenario of Red Dawn, which was made even more obvious when Powers Booth's character talked about "the whole Cuban and Nicaraguan armies" invading.

Jimmy Carter's election was a backlash in and of itself, mainly against the Nixon-Ford era. Jimmy Carter was not exactly the hippies' favorite at the time, and the Democrats were still pretty divided. Carter was a compromise, middle-of-the-road candidate, more of an old guard Democrat.

To be sure, Carter inherited a huge mess left by the previous Administration, and he was also facing opposition within his own party. Ted Kennedy opposed him for the nomination in 1980, and that, coupled with Carter's perceived impotence over Nicaragua, Cuba, the Iran hostage crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and a failed hostage rescue mission that made it appear that Carter was mismanaging the military, it seemed like Carter just didn't know what to do. Granted, much of it wasn't entirely his fault, and no one expected him to work miracles. I think most people thought he was a good man, but just not a good president.

I was in high school myself in 1980, and by that time, the Cold War was viewed on a more strategic level, although I could recognize that most of the initial causes of the Cold War were no longer relevant, and that the center of world crisis and instability was shifting to the Middle East. The US and China were seeing more eye to eye and saw the Soviet Union as a common enemy, which kept the USSR somewhat bottled up. The global situation had changed since the 1950s, but Reagan and many of his followers didn't really seem to see that. They kept thinking that the commies were still planning a big global takeover, which seemed rather absurd considering the overall geopolitical situation. They could barely hold on to what they already had, and even that was slipping out of their grasp by the late 70s/early 80s.

I think the scenario outlined in "The Day After" got people's attention since there was a belief that something like that could happen. But the scenario in Red Dawn was a completely different kettle of fish with a lot of variables which seemed a bit too far fetched even for the 1980s. I was already in college by then, and a lot of people laughed it off as Reagan propaganda.

Many people liked Reagan for his economic policies, but he was criticized for ostensibly wanting to provoke and revive tensions with the Soviet Union that didn't really need to be revived. The Cold War was waning and effectively over by 1980, but then Reagan must have been bored and wanted to start it up again. Both sides already should have been aware that the true problems were in the Middle East, and perhaps if we had tried to work out a more amicable truce with Russia instead of trying to drive them into the ground, the world situation might be far better today.

Great post. Very insightful.

I was 11 when this came out and thought it was great. I’m not American but live in an American allied country so any war of America’s tends to be ours too. The Cold War was still on and we really did fear nuclear holocaust.

There were a lot of patriotic films during the 80’s. Rambo First Blood Part II, Missing in Action, Uncommon Valor explored the concept of Vietnam retaining POW’s after the war and people going in to get them. There were real missions planned around this too.

Iron Eagle is a teen fantasy of a boy going in to an undisclosed country with “borrowed” F16 fighters to rescue his captured Air Force pilot dad. Helps that the two F16’s have infinite war loads.

Top Gun is the ultimate Rah Rah flag waving macho and arrogant display ever. Great film!

You even have Rocky getting in on the action going up against Russian Drago in Rocky IV.

War Games although not patriotic also explores nuclear holocaust via teen age fantasy and general ignorance of computers and their capabilities at the time.

There are more serious films about WW3 too like The Day After.

It was a hot topic of the time. There’s a lot of oddities about the film. Why the Russians/Cubans would want a small town. Why shoot it the high school. How is it these kids do so well against them?

Where is the American military? Etc