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(LONG THREAD ALERT) Action movies are one of my favorite things, so I've thought a lot about what they mean, and whether their values are at odds with my own. I don't take them literally, so it doesn't bother me being a non-violent person watching dudes get kicked in the face.
But plenty of them, including some I consider classics, paint a picture of the world that I think is wrong. Many are militaristic and xenophobic or racist or depict cities as crime-ridden wastelands in need of vigilante justice due to the "red tape" of police accountability.
I love all five DEATH WISHes and many of their rip-offs, but I do have to worry when our country has policies decided by people who seem to believe those movies reflect real life.
And I like stories about ex-special ops badasses, but after 100 movies where the hero is capable because of their participation in real life wars I never believed in, it starts to feel like accidental indoctrination. I've tried to remember that and note it in the reviews.
But what I've come to believe is that boiled down almost all action movies - having come out of westerns and martial arts movies and samurai movies - are about standing up to bullies and protecting the vulnerable.
Even some of the right wing ones are more nuanced than people remember. RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II promotes some myths about the war, but Rambo himself is very ambivalent about having been turned into a killing machine.
The DIRTY HARRY series figured out by the very first sequel (written by John Milius!) that even if we trust Harry's judgment, letting police shoot whoever they want leads to disaster.
And so many others are less obviously political, but glorify characters who stand up to corrupt cops or politicians or developers or rapists or neo-nazis or victimizers of some kind.
In movies Steven Seagal throws a guy through a windshield for hitting a woman, because obviously he understands that's the side the hero should be on. So I separate the art from the artists and don't expect humans to be without flaws...
...but it feels like a deep betrayal when these actors whose movies I love and advocate for show themselves as bigots or are accused of rape or perhaps are personal friends with dictators, because it's so much the opposite of what action movies are about.
And that extends to Trump support not because he's a Republican, but because never has there existed a more transparent and flagrant bully. Supporting his policies also means we can't be friends, but that's not even needed. If you can't see that he's a bully then you're lost.
I really started thinking about this stuff not because of any actor, but because of other action fans. Several years ago there was a new place writing about the type of movies I like but seeming to only enjoy them as an excuse to be misogynistic assholes.
(I just checked and they still exist and their top story has the phrase "woke extremists" in the headline.)
It's easy to ignore people like that, but I actually ended a friendship with someone whose work I admire greatly, in part because he posted a picture of Judge Dredd to express his the-exact-opposite-of-what-the-movie-DREDD-is-about views of this summer's protests. It sucks.
So I had to do some soul searching about why I'm so obsessed with the same movies those guys are and what it is we're interpreting differently, and the above is what I came up with.
Fuck bullies and bigots, and thank you so much to the ever growing community of action fans and scholars who I've seen promoting empathy and inclusion rather than using the genre to excuse fascism and macho bullshit. I appreciate you more than you know.
