Hi folks, we're just going to start the episode with a quick reminder about a symposium on Leo Strass being held at the University of Austin in Austin, Texas, January 2nd through 7th. The deadline to apply is November 12th, but they're rolling, so be sure to apply as soon as possible. Greg, who's eligible? Oh man, anyone who's currently enrolled in undergraduate.
So if you're a junior or senior, if you've recently graduated from college, if you're in a master's program, if you're in a PhD program, basically anybody between the ages of 21 and 35 who hasn't entered the political philosophy of Leo Strass. Yeah, and there's a great faculty, Mark Blitz, Chris Lynch, Chris Nainan, Lauren Rotner, Devin Stauffer, and then includes some lectures. Do you know who those lectures are, Greg? I've heard tell.
Yeah, one's you. One's you. Yeah. One's me.
And then Daniel O'Toole of Hillsdale College and the great Jacob Howlin former two time guest on the New Thinkery. So if you want to meet a bunch of new thinkery folks, you want to meet two thirds of the podcast, the better two thirds of that, come join us in Austin, go apply, go to our Twitter or just Google University of Austin symposium, Leo Strass, it'll be right there for saying that comes up. Did you mention that this is free, by the way? It is free.
The tuition is free and there's actually even a $300 travel voucher for folks who don't live in the Austin area if you to defer the cost of getting there. It's free. It's free. All right.
And now wisdom. Welcome back to the New Thinkery with me as always. I'm David Barr. Hold on.
Pulling with you as always as you. Yeah. Sometimes it's my good friend. I was pretty.
How are you Alex? I'm doing well. How are you David? Good.
Good. Your personal life doing well. Everything's great. Yes.
Same with me. And how are you doing Greg or good friend? I'm doing, I'm already annoyed. I'm already annoyed.
Greg is too happy at the start of the episode. That's why we try and keep him a little bit depressed. And a returning guest, our friend Bernard B.J. Dobbsky.
Thank you. Yeah. Big spear scholar, professor of political science at Assumption College. Antucidity scholar.
No, it's not assumption. He really does teach at college. But it's assumption university now, fellas. We are stepping up big time.
Whoo. Yeah. You got a wiener president, right? No.
Yeah. Definitely. Listen, he's a great president. Love him.
Love that wiener, president wiener. Great. We've a little scientist. Yeah.
I hired him. We were hiring many, many years ago for American politics. And I was the chair of the search committee. And we landed him.
And now he's my boss. Is he? No, no. But he's he studied with was it?
Kerry at Georgetown? Nice. Okay. That's still nice.
I heard a wiener studied under bloom. Was it bloom bloom studied under wiener? I don't remember Greg was. But he's very sproucing, friendly.
In fact, I think he was one of the last people to one of the few people involved in Harvey Mansfield's last class. The Mansfield will offer to teach that he invited Greg to kind of co teach that with himself. Quizion. We just gave Harvey a big award on our side of Claremont Institute Salvatore award.
It was a job. It's another award. I know he cussed out in e-speaks for 40 or 50 minutes. And then you realize how old he is and just what a blessing in his to have a mind so sharp.
Yeah. You know, he needed to deal with somebody in the world we can't see to retain his faculties for this long. But we're not here to talk about Harvey Mansfield's content. No, no.
Or his longevity. We're talking about Coriol. How do you say? Anous.
Anous. And Stripes the movie Stripes. First of all, let me just say I haven't seen Stripes since I was I don't even I don't even I've never seen it. But my God, so many breasts in this movie.
And Greg Greg I told Greg I was like this is gratuitous nudity. And Greg's like not not for the movies I watch. I mean, really really really. He's like the woman is clothed for like 45 seconds to like two minutes.
And then it's just nude all the way throughout. I don't know what movie this is, but I got to see it. Is there a pizza guy involved? Yeah.
Pizza guy or a pool boy or a basketball team. He likes those especially. Well, he likes old yellow also. This is true.
Yeah. But we're talking about strikes, which is a really funny movie from 1981, the movie is older than I am. And yeah, so I'm excited. I want to just I want to jump into this because I want to know how did this idea comes to you because at first I was like I was like, Dobski's been been smoking something.
Yeah. You know what I thought I was like, Oh, Dobbs he got a sign. And he's like, boy, I better write about Shakespeare. How do I cut some corners here?
Oh, we've seen that happen. You know, I thought it was one of the traditional ex-files and political philosophy. And it was a real snooze fest. But no, no, as usual, BJ turned out to find something very edifying and it's real.
Yeah. So how did this occur to you? Yeah. So I mean, I don't know how many of you know, we're familiar with Greg, you know, Dustin Gish and Dustin and my old friends.
We've done a lot of work together and doesn't really just kind of studies everything, reads everything, knows everybody. I mean, Shakespeare's Anna Fon, Jefferson, I mean, going on. So, you know, we've done a lot of work together on the classical stuff, on Shakespeare and other things. And we have similar tastes, you know, in food, wine, entertainment.
And we're talking about stripes one night over a couple of drinks. And I kind of make some random joke about the big toe, the big toe speech, where Murray is having that little bull session with Sergeant Olga. And he says, you know, he's our big toe, but he's not always going to be around. So I want to offer my leadership and be that big toe.
And, you know, we've done a lot of work on Shakespeare's Roman plays. And I've been thinking about Qui-Ladice a lot of that time. I thought, okay, it reminds me of this scene, you know, and I kind of fly this with with Gish and if he just laughs at me, because he knows I've flown many crazy, really off the wall ideas by him. And we just laughed and I thought, well, wait a second.
Is that really so crazy? And he said, B.T. Don't you even think about it? That's it.
That's a dare. I'm going to think about it. And then I kind of let it sit for a long time. Just like, well, one of these days I should take that.
I bet there's something to it. I wonder if there's something there and the more I started to watch the movie in light of Qui-Ladice, the more I thought there's actually something we're thinking about here. And I didn't quite know how to get an angle on it. And it was when this opportunity to participate in a special issue on perspective or in perspective dedicated to the Shakespeare scholarship of David Lowenthal and Paul Cantor came up that I thought, okay, maybe I can get an angle through their work that'll make this fly.
And I think I kind of did. I don't know. I mean, let's see what people think. You said you give this paper last year to your dad and I was like, oh man, you got to be on the show.
That was fantastic. That was hilarious. Well, the whole piece of the funny thing is I was like, gosh, it was the last two of every time I was in the night. It was the Northeastern when it was in Boston last.
And then I had an opportunity to kind of clean it up, tighten it up, do a little more work on it for the New England in Mystic this spring. And but the weird thing is, I delivered it twice, kind of forms of it twice. And conferences, nobody at the conferences, this really has me worried about our discipline gentlemen. Nobody at these conferences has ever seen the movie.
No one. I mean, people 20 years of my senior, 20 years of my junior, none of them have seen it. None of them. None of them.
None of them have seen it out. I can't mean the person in the generation. This would have been akin to missing. I don't know, like the American pie film.
Yeah. I think that's, yeah. There's more to the Murray-Raymus collaborations than American pie, but exactly right. That's the kind of thing where everyone who's a teenager is going to see, you know, and it becomes a classic in time.
And it just kind of shocked me. No one was able to comment on the stripes part of the paper because they never seen a movie. Before we go, we should, you know, it's the title of the paper, et cetera. But I wanted to ask this question from the outset.
Which illuminated, which is so did stripes illuminate Shakespeare or Shakespeare illuminating stripes? Yeah. Obviously it's both, but I mean, just for instance. Yeah.
For me, the way I worked, it was Shakespeare illuminating stripes, right? You think this is just a gag movie, a lot of wisecracks, some gratuitous nudity. And that's it. Movies over roll credits, you know, and that was whatever up.
And I won 45 minutes of your time. So for me, it was Shakespeare illuminating, actually barely serious political message of the movie, the political teaching if you call it that. So first of all, does gratuitous mean something you're thankful for? Because I agree that it was gratuitous if that's what it means.
But can you, so since a lot of folks haven't seen it, can you briefly summarize the movie for folks? I mean, I mean, I should have probably a hundred times. Yeah. So right, 1981 Cold War movie, right, kind of a height of the Cold War.
But you know, also America's kind of the dump for coming out of the Carter presidency, right, the Great Malays there where we're dealing, we're, we're, we're, we're, whatever, just under a decade after Vietnam. And the kind of political scarring created by that war. And stripes comes along and gives us a much needed Cold War victory kind of a shot in the arm against the Soviets. And how does it do that?
Well, it tells us the story of these two down on their luck, flat-footed, wisecracking jokesters who, you know, played by Harold Ramis and Bill Murray. So Bill Murray's winger and Russell Zisky is Harold Ramis. Ramis was also one of the screenwriters for the movie. They're down on their luck and they decide to turn to the military because the military is pitched to them as an opportunity for improving their lot in life, right, becoming self-sufficient.
And so they, of course, these guys are not cut out for the military in any way, shape or form. So they're, they're, you know, the first half of the movie is them cutting wives against the hardened, grizzled, you know, drill sergeant played by the wonderful Warren Oates. And of course, they spend their time, you know, evading discipline, breaking, breaking curfew, going out and getting in all sorts of trouble, trying to seduce the sexy military police women who are charged. Well, that comes later.
Good. Okay. Good. But the mud wrestling, yeah, the mud wrestling, well, that's that, that's being for itself.
And in the course of their basic training, right, so you've got this antagonism between a wise-cracking winger and the serious duty-bound, honor-bound drill sergeant who is then injured by a freak mortar accident, right, fired during basic training. So the men have to, yeah, that's right. Yeah, Captain Stillman. By the way, the cast of this movie is insane.
The number of leads on the gap is just the Tiffany Busfield as a cameo. You got John Deale. You got Judd, oh, got the guy from, he was in Fast 9 to Ridgmont High. Yeah, he gets high.
Yeah. Ryan Holz with Eddie Murphy for 48 hours, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, really just amazing. You know, PJ Scholz, Sean Young, I mean, I'm just unbelievable. Oh, Bill Paxton is soldier number eight.
Bill Paxton is in this. Yeah. He's soldier number eight. Unbelievable, John Tandy.
Obviously, I would forget about John Tandy. So anyway, their taskmaster, drill sergeant, is out of the picture and the men have to complete basic training on their own. And of course, they do so in the most unorthodox fashion. And this saves them from having to retake basic training all over again.
They do this under the leadership of John Winger, right? Bill Murray's John Winger. And as a result of this, the General Barnacles overseeing the graduation ceremony rewards them with a special trip, a special mission in Italy where they have to unveil, they're going to guard, and then unveil the military's new secret surprise weapon in the Cold War, the EM-50, the Urban Assault Vehicle, which is, of course, hysterical. You've got this.
It's just camouflage Winnebago, right? It's an RV, right? That's somehow armed to the teeth for America's fighting men and women. They steal the Winnebago while they're in Italy to go meet their girlfriends for a weekend romp somewhere in Bavaria.
And of course, then the platoon's left behind led by John Larrick, Kevin Stillman, go to rescue them. He's, of course, a buffoon. Instead of taking a left to go into Germany, he takes a right to go into Czechoslovakia, where they're then captured by the Soviets. And so Murray and Remus and Scholes and John Young have to go rescue these men, and that's what they do.
And then so the end of the movie is Bill Murray rescuing these American troops against incredible odds, right? They defeat the Soviets, they humiliate the Soviets, and then happily ever after or something to that effect, where the old grizzled sergeant and Bill Murray acknowledge each other at the end is almost equals, and then they need to go off to pursue their lives and careers and in fortunes. The end, America wins, shot in the alarm with a Winnebago. With a Winnebago?
It's so funny, though. I mean, they talk all along about how one day they'll get a Winnebago, and then they finally get one. But like, the idea of this like leisure cruising machine, like Shagenwagon, turning into like this thing that defeats these tanks is like, to me, that was like the central metaphor of the whole film, that like that's essentially what you're trying to do is take guys who just want to live a life of leisure and turn them into, you know, these killing machines. And I mean, even the whole scene where they're going in and getting the guys from it, it's so silly.
Like they're cracking jokes. He's like, going around with his gun being silly, like he's not going to die. I mean, it's the whole thing. Nobody dies, right?
Not even the Soviets, right? They're getting blown up and they're jumping out of the way just in time, right? No one gets even wounded really, right? So it's more like a Bradhouse prank than anything else.
It's screwballs, you know? But yeah, no, I do like that, Alex. I'm going to steal that and maybe slip that into the essay before it gets published. The Winnebago really don't put a footnote.
I don't want to be associated with this. Don't worry, I'm keeping you far away from this thing. I want all praise my way, okay? But yeah, I think that's right.
I think that's right. It's gaudy, it's tacky, it's taking something meant for leisure. And if you just dress it up with enough camouflage, it too can defeat the Soviets. And so when does Shakespeare start popping into your head?
Well, no, for me, look, so when I'm watching this, it's obviously that great tow scene, right? With Hulk up. But when you start to go back and, okay, look, I'm going to see if this is a thesis that's worth really pursuing seriously, let's see how the movie reads against the backdrop of the play. And so what is the play about, right?
The play has basically two storylines. One is the birth and development of Roman republicanism. And then one is the story of Coriolanus and how he fits within or doesn't fit within the republican political community that's just been created. And so when you read the play, read the play, read the movie against that backdrop, you see a number of overlapping themes and images that come into it.
So the wonderful opening scene of Coriolanus, right? The pleves are up in arms. They're angry over being denied grain. But what they think is a fair price.
And so they're going to revolt. That's that they've had it. They're going to revolt. But they stop and have a debate, right?
I absolutely this one, my all time favorite scenes in Shakespeare. They're really angry. They're really hungry. But let's first stop and have a debate about this.
Are we resolved to do this? And are we going to go after Coriolanus? And what are we? I mean, anyone who's been angry before knows how absolutely maddening something like this is.
You want to just strangle the first set? Are you getting me? We're going to have a debate over this now. But they do.
And it's extremely rational, deliberate, extreme, right? And then here comes Menenius. They engage Hamman in discussion. So this is a wonderful opening, right?
But we've got the pleves against the patricians here. Economic classes divided, political classes divided, and stripes opens the same way, right? He's a bleed, right? He's at least a member of the economically or socioeconomically speaking.
He's a bleed. And he has patrician aspirations, right? For sure. He has patrician tastes.
But he's a bleed who is basically getting on by the system, right? And he used to work on employment. But now he's a cabbie. Uh, people are abusing his, uh, his services, right?
That the guy sniffed him for a fair at the very beginning, then that aristocratic woman knows, you know, the 1% with the fox soul around, I absolutely love that, right? Fox soul, you know, take me to the airport and be careful with my expensive luggage. And you know, just giving him shit the entire way there, right? And he said, that's it.
I'm not going to do this anymore. We're not a community anymore. That's out. I'm leading you here.
I'm done. Similar things, you know, moving in. He has a sense of dignity. Yeah.
I just won't take this anymore, right? I know I'm worth more than you're treating me. And he has he has material aspirations, right? He's upset over these kinds of this deprivation that he has.
Right? Of course, his tastes are larger than his wallet can afford, right? That the $100 shine for $3 pair of boots. I mean, this is this ridiculous, of course.
So I start thinking about it there, right? I go back and I'm looking at this, and like, you know, that the opening scene really is reminiscent. There is a revolution there. If we're looking at these individuals as members of a community, here we have this plea opting out.
And he's opting out not simply because of material considerations, although that's certainly involved, certainly on his mind. But because he's being insulted, right? I mean, this is what's driving the pleads at the beginning because what satisfies the revolution in the play that is in Coriolanus, what allows them to lead them to put down their weapons is not getting great, right? We only hear later, Coriolanus complains later about them getting grain and gratis to satisfy them.
But that's not what lay this first mob. They lay down their weapons because they hear they get tribunes. What they're hungry for, right? Not just grain, but they're hungry for some matter of dignity.
They're hungry for honor, for respect from the from the patricians. And they're willing to tear the political community apart unless they get that. So these are these are repetitive men, but they also have great spirit in this. Yeah, I think one interesting sign of that is that, you know, he loses his girlfriend, his job, his car, he loses all this stuff and he's really upset about it.
It seems like there's like the repetitive side there, but then he just go off and enroll in the army. It's not like you see him move out, like that's like they just get up and go. And it seems like he gives up all of his stuff as well. So it seems like he's a guy who has a sense of dignity, a sense of honor, but he doesn't know what to do with it.
And I wonder whether he's enrolling in the army in the first place is him wrestling with not not having an outlet or any guidance to the sense of honor. And this is in a way a critique of this materialistic society that you know, it can't find a place in so this untutored longing sort of flies off, even in his relations with Holka, you get the sense that it's not so much that he doesn't want to be disciplined or anything like that or have any of that sort of cultivation, but that he doesn't think Holka should do it, right? Or that he thinks that he should be independent in some way. And then he shows up for it when the time comes and he does the work and he is noble and he's happy to have it.
Well, I just want to add there, I mean, like, you know, Alex, since you mentioned it, you weren't even born yet. You were about a twinkle in your old man's eye as he was. Anyway, it really was bad in the late 70s and early 80s. This movie comes out in the only ones, it's probably like 70s, probably coming to fruition with 3980s and stuff like that.
Like, you know, BJ talked about this, you're coming out of the Malay speech, you're coming out of Carter, like, we thought we were losing relative to the Soviets. I mean, the economy was in shambles and the beginning of the movie, like, I mean, New York City looks disgusting. And the cars were all kind of crap. And I mean, you know, the girlfriend has a nice place, but I mean, everything just looks like it's deteriorated.
And so I thought that was really good. I thought the comparing of the grain, I thought, you know, Rome is the beginning of the Republic and, you know, late Republic, New York City or something like this, clearly past its prime. I don't think it revived in the 90s, I suppose. But I mean, it really did seem like it was awful.
And so the material success wasn't there. It's yeah, I mean, right, his car gets re-voted at the beginning. He quits his job, he's walking back with a pizza as a girlfriend strike cleaning, and his car gets ready, because he can't make the payments on it, right? Of course, the pizza ends up on the ground, right, cleaning gets tracked.
Yeah, it's extremely dingy. And when they go to the military recruiters office, right, they abandon their car, right? They can't hear it. No, we're working, we're abandoning it.
And the cars are real. These are right. I mean, it's young, right? It's on its last, like, but the neighborhood looks terrible, right?
I mean, it's quite clear. And of course, the people who are joining the military, right, are joining for all sorts of reasons, most of which have nothing to do with patriotic service. You brought up the scene where Harold Remus's character is teaching all the immigrants, England. And it's because there's anybody in English and the one guy goes like, **** or something like that.
And then it's hilarious. And then it's like, okay, so you get a sense that, right, if you're picking up anything from this culture, it's just a vulgarity. And by the end of the lesson, they're seeking to do audidity. That's not that's like the cultured, like, course, it.
And then he's like, I'll see you next week. So they didn't repeat later when they're doing that marching, by the way, right? That's right. Yeah.
So you get a sense that there's even people coming here for opportunity, they're being fed like, you know, obviously not the sort of the full range of youth possibilities to put it. Yeah. Yeah. But even the way the military adds back then we're pitched towards making you self-sufficient.
You're going to get job skills. You're going to get you're going to get toughened up. But it wasn't about, you know, it'd be all you can be not about serve your country against this against the Red Menace, right? That was never part of it.
It was it was come here and get your individual needs met and satisfied and that and wait, you know, I forget, I think Greg, you were mentioning or maybe Alex mentioned that the sense of dignity or self-respecting as he has no outlet for it. You know, he's like doing push-up, right? The Ziske says you got to, I can't bet you can't do five push-ups for three dollars. I bet you can't do five push-ups.
And he says, you know, he does them, but they're bad. Nearly kills him. I got to get myself in shape. I'm going to be dead before I'm 30.
He looks like he's about 42. That's what I was thinking. He does look like he's 49 or something like this. He looked quite as wide as his microfiber.
He goes, he's supposed to be younger than 30 in no way. But right? He's run down, right? He has to look old sooner.
Yeah, that's true. Much harder. He was only 31 at the time of the movie's release. So, I mean, he lived a hard life by then.
I believe it was a success with me, Paul said, send him down at the path of access. But yeah, so I think that's right. I think we think about America in the 1970s, New York in the 1970s. It was a real hellhole.
And so America was down, and this movie gives it a real shot in the arm. And of course, the picture of America you get at the end is a very different picture of America. Although in terms of its culture, it's not much better. It's perhaps what elevated in terms of its production values, but its culture pace is much better.
So you've got the Hulka Burger, you've got the Pranchai, you've got John Candy is now the teen dreamboat at Tiger Beat. And you've got the PJ Scholes is the penthouse girl of the month or whatever, still pretty culturally bad, not a lot of substance there. Do you think that sometimes when like Airsoft and use or these other guys, they would have comic things turn out well to show that it couldn't happen well in real life? So do you think that there was any sense that they're making this movie like it ends on a happy note, but that's an unrealistic happy note that in fact, country of slackers, we have no chance against the Soviets.
Well, I think that's absolutely right. That last picture you get of Murray on the news world, Mag is right. Right. Right.
Right. You know, America's new army can America survive? And the answer is you can does. No, it's not.
This guy, I mean, he's he's lazily cradling the M16, giving it a Murray Smirk, you know, and he's like, if this is our armed forces going forward, we're well and truly fucking. Tom Cruise. I think there was an ironic point that because then the guys in in was a Czechoslovakia are hailed as heroes in their media, right? Yeah, but the daily informants that I love that.
Yeah. And so you look at that, you say, well, it's only against the backdrop of utter incompetence being betrayed as competence. And it was I took it as somewhat, yeah, pessimistic, but over and against like the sort of bumbling poverty of like the Soviet block, I thought, it by comparison. Can we return to the pushups thing?
Because I thought one interesting thing is he starts off barely being able to do five. And then as he's getting punished in the military, he keeps doing more and more and more and completely success. So he's sort of trained, and this remind me a little bit of a sort of corioleness type, but like the other side of the coin, he is trained in his slacking and his punishment. He is unwittingly or wittingly, it's not clear on consciousness, is trained into being healthy and capable.
But yeah, I think that that shows up in the in Shakespeare's play as well, because look, I mean, I love for you, Linus. I know it says a lot about my own disordered soul to register that kind of respect for him. But I mean, he's just an absolute badass. And anyone who can appear to his friends, family enemies as a dragon, a god, a city, a planet, I just I just I'm like, wow, you're badass, right?
I sometimes think he has a planet. So spherical. He has nothing, it seems, but disrespect for the pleves. And yet the pleves do fight.
And they don't always run away as he likes to say they do fight, they don't always have the souls of peace for the hearts of hairs. They do fight, they do stand with him. In fact, when they see him covered in blood, and he's like, let's go, let's let's attack, let's hit this town again. They're they're all for it.
And in fact, he has to say, okay, I'm only gonna take some of you, even though a lot of you want to go. So there's something like that that that you see in winger, Bill Murray's character, he is not completely weak, right? And he can be trained into the life of soldiering. And is, as I argue in the essay, the movie really is this kind of story about how he becomes educated towards civic responsibility.
And the question is whether his kind of education is enough to last or sustaining him over the long haul. But you do see this happen in the movie that that encounter with Hulk, right, where he and Hulk are finally going off to kind of have their model a mono moment. And he says, oh, yeah, all this marching in a straight line is real tough. You know, that that's so hard.
And he's not talking about that crap, right? I'm talking about duty, encourage and honor and discipline. And then whivinger has a good reply, he's like, oh, that taught me a lot to a man who scums, scrubbed garbage cans, right? Don't talk to me about honor and courage and discipline when I'm doing KP duty every weekend.
That means not nothing to me. So he has to learn that, right? He has to learn that soldiering is more than simply cleaning up the sh of others and walking in a straight line. It involves this kind of self-mastering.
And so we see really two important moments where that happens from when you're the question is whether again, as I said, that's sustainable to one law. I think the movie cast is a fish and doubt that that is. So I was looking at the dates of some of these Vietnam films. The two most significant ones prior to the release of stripes was Apocalypse Now and the Deer Hunter.
Those are very dark films. And this film goes in a totally different direction, right? It was this comedy. And the war itself wouldn't officially end, I guess, for four more years and 75, right?
So we pull out in 72 and Vietnam War engines 75. Yeah, and then stripes was made in 7081. Oh, and 81 oh, so there had been a number of films. Sorry, I got I got something because I was going to say how much of this is some revisionist history.
What do you think the project of the director was the broader project? I mean, is he just having a laugh with the direction of the film? Or do you think that he's trying to recast our minds to think about the war in a different way? Well, look, I mean, about Vietnam, I would be hard pressed to say.
But if you know, again, as Greg noted, you've got the malaise, of course, well, you got the Carter presidency, which in terms of foreign policy, domestic policy, I know a lot of people have respect for Carter. But in terms of outcomes, it's an absolute disaster, right? I mean, you've got the Iran hostage crisis, you've got economic disaster on the home front, you've got America getting its ass kicked by the Soviets all over the globe, things look like we're going to have to be a nation and manage to climb, right? And Reagan gets elected in 80, new shot of optimism, and this movie comes along and reinforces that, not for Reagan night reasons, I think, but reinforces that.
Now, if I'm pressed to answer this question, kind of literally David, I go, well, what has I been writing and thinking here? I'm not entirely sure, right? Because the initially the bit was to go to the Cheech and Chong, right? At which point can I imagine the movie that was made somehow being a product to the chief?
It's going to be a pot movie, right? It's going to be by the way, it's going to be in the military, and then with the same amount of gratuitous nudity, but I mean, tell the people, tell the folks at home why Cheech and Chong fell through, I thought this was one of the funniest details in your paper, why? I didn't think they were apparently a bit worried as they want a total creative control, which, which, which you just want to like, well, I mean, what are you going to do with this that we don't already, we're not already inclined to do anyway, first of all, right? It's, I mean, but we, you know, so I, they wanted to try a first hand at a serious movie, this was actually going to be an action to live.
Now, it's possible that there was something like the US military might have objected here, right? Because the movie did require in some case, the participation, the military, right? There was this film in Kentucky, right? And so that there had to be some participation of the US here, US military here, which they might have said, or if you're going to get total creative control, the Cheech and Chong, no, but, but, but they bring in, they bring in instead then, so it's denied to Cheech and Chong, they bring in, uh, rain is because he, you know, yeah, he's a good actor, but primarily he's known for screenwriting abilities, and he's a buddy with Murray, uh, and so he'll be a great way to land Murray for the, for the lead role.
But, you know, um, rain is a serious guy, a reason very funny guy, he's got great comic timing, um, but as we all, anyone who studies great, the really great comedians know they got a lot of going on in their head, right? There's a lot at work, uh, with him and, um, he, you know, his professional career, he shows, uh, an inclination towards taking up serious themes of using comedy to advance a single series and ground all day, right? I mean, it's, is really one of those films, um, that's right for philosophical reflections, in fact, inspired, um, by some pretty serious work. So, yeah, he was, and he was trying to get the Confederacy of Duns is made as a film.
And so I saw that your paper and I was like, what do you talk about? Okay. So it didn't happen. Okay.
Cause I was, you know, yeah, I love that. Okay. Yeah. So he's, he, you know, if you look at some of the other series roles he's had, um, you know, this is guys isn't just a goof, right?
Isn't just Bart humor or slapstick humor. Um, so, so, I mean, how much of this was intended, I refuse to go there, right? I mean, in the end, I'm like, look, I'm not gonna make my interpretation hang on whether or not I thought Harold Reimas, you know, God rest his soul was reading Shakespeare and his trailer and then writing, writing the screenplay for this. I don't think that stands up.
I don't think there's any evidence to indicate that. But there's a, I mean, we look at the film the way I try and look at it. I think, I think there's reason to take it serious whether or not the audience will agree with my particular reading of the film. Um, I don't think it's simply pushing, you know, or imposing on the text for the film.
Something it simply cannot bear. This isn't just war shocking on my bar. So what is Reimas doing here? I'm not sure.
I think, you know, I view this more as a, as a, a Reimas vehicle than a Reimas vehicle, um, because the, the script, you know, I mean, I want to give, I want to give Reimas some credit. I've seen somebody out takes from the film. I've seen the unedited length of the movie and there's just some, some garbage scenes that, that thank God were caught. I mean, there's a, there's one scene where, um, Murray and Reimas decide to escape for the weekend and they fly to South America and they take a bunch of drugs and like get busted by the guard.
There's a big acid trip involved and, and, and there's some, believe it or not, and maybe this will send some of you scurrying for the, uh, the outtakes, uh, extended sex scenes between, you know, uh, Murray and PJ Scholes. Um, uh, yeah, thank God. Those were called that, I mean, they made those, they're like planning to cut them. Like, no, no, it's definitely going to make it in the film.
Keep going, keep going in film stop though, right? No, keep going. Um, yeah, no, so, so, uh, yeah, I don't mean to, to downplay right in here, but I think when I'm thinking about the film's political insight, I'm thinking primarily of Reimas and the screenplay. And I don't know if that, do we know that he had considerable influence on him on, on the screenplay?
What's he, I looked it up and see if there's three code writers for the, for the screenplay. Yeah, so the, the word around the campfire is that, uh, that Reimas and Murray were the ones working together, uh, to get the kind of, uh, the scenes, some of the movie's high points, right? Like the big toasty that I was referring to earlier. I mean, I would like nothing more than there to be some smoking gun out there that says, you know, Reimas was reading Coriolanus, but I mean, that's pretty close to me.
That big thing was big. I know. And it's possible they were thinking about it, right? But, um, my old account's everyone says that, that that was Murray improvising and that Murray and Reimas would play off of each other on these things, but that doesn't mean that they weren't still thinking about these things.
It just means it wasn't there in the script and you've got these, you've got these two comic geniuses really working in front of a, from, there are times, by the way, if you watch the movie, not the times, don't always pay attention to whoever's speaking, watch the reactions of the faces of people in the scene and you see they're doing their level best, not to break character, right? That there is something going on here that was not scripted and they're holding it together for all they can. Um, Reimas, in particular, is really bad at keeping it together. These things always be cracking up.
So, so really David, when I, when I go back and I think about the ultimate point of the, uh, you know, if I'm taking this seriously as a vehicle for, for political education or civic education, I mean, I think it's something like, look, democracies need to take their Republican remedies seriously. They need, they need to avoid the kind of unregulated mixing of classes that Republicanism, right? Republicans, this is one of the nice things that I think Cantor's treatment to bring it back to Cantor, the Cantor's treatment of Coriolanus really brings out, right? When we're looking at Roman Republican politics and the birth of a republic, we see that that birth to be, to be finally kind of what affected or executed, maybe that's not the right word executing a birth, has to, has to balance the classes and, and mix the classes in a particular way so that the city can not just be two cities, force together, right?
Because then you get something like civil war, but you got to mix and blend the classes, but not too much, right? And I think when you look at stripes and you see everything is just mixed up, everything is mixed together, uh, there are problems with that, right? Because there are important political traits that, that need to be preserved and can only be preserved by separate political classes. And I feel Republican helps, uh, helps effectuate.
You know, and Bill illustrates the cohesion of social classes. Alex, what was the, uh, the French director, I like so much, I can't remember. They're going to do, you know? Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Hey, why is grand illusion? Have you seen that? Okay.
Fantastic. Well, the cohesion of social classes. So, you know, I think you say this at one point in your paper, but quite me, if I'm wrong, I mean, I really like the comparison where you're thinking about Coriolanus as the birth of a republic out of an aristocratic, you know, Patricia regime. And then looking at stripes as the decline of a republic, and the one is struggling with democratic personalities, the other one is struggling with aristocratic sentiments, you could I'm really just trying to balance them against one another.
I thought maybe you could say something about that if you have something. So with respect to the player or the movie? Just like how they're showing you maybe, if you put them together again, two ends of a republic, right? As it moves further down this democratic sort of leveling, you could say.
Right. So one of the things that Shakespeare shows us in this portrayal of the birth of a republic is that the separation of the classes in terms of the spirited men on the one hand and the competitive class on the other hand is a myth, right? That it's not mandated by nature. And so your loyalty to a particular class like Coriolanus wants to be loyal to the patrician class because of their spirited attention to virtue, to honor, to martial glory.
That's all we need. That's all we are. We don't need to depend on bodily needs whatsoever. We don't need to depend on the pleves to help carry out aristocratic games.
Right. The Shakespeare's portrayal of the birth of a republican Rome shows why that's a lie. Shows, first of all, that you get spirited men among the competitive classes and shows that you get a pettitive man among the spirited classes, most notably Menenius, right? And it turns out that in both cases, this is absolutely crucial that you have this.
And you need it partly because you have to have spirited members among the pleating class who will defend the rights and needs and interests of the police. And then it turns out you also need the pettitive kinds of souls among the spirited class. So one, they can actually communicate with their fellow citizens across the party divides, but also because you've got to remind the patricians that their bodies too, right? That they simply can't live on spiritedness alone.
And spiritedness by itself won't constitute the political hole. It's incapable of doing that for reasons that should be obvious to any sentient being. So the birth of republicanism requires acknowledging the need of both of these elements within a community and the ability to separate them, but also blend them, right? So there's this very difficult balancing that has to be carried out.
Anyone who's read it, Livis, History of Rome will know that there is no simple program for solving that balance. It is something you're always trying to solve. White politics is always necessary. You're always adjusting to new developments and new conditions.
So this is something that's very important to recognize. The republican communities are wonderful for ordered liberty under the law, but they require a great deal of attention to the needs for that republican balancing. So you've got to acknowledge the parts that you need and the measures in which you need both elements in each class. When you get to strikes, we are in an utterly democratic community with no divisions, no recognitions of particularities, competitiveness and spiritiness are utterly run among.
The only place that's left for spiritiness in American life is the military. And that's where you get someone like Sergeant Volka, who can be who he's going to be, and unlike Coriolanus, he's not going to be as read to the political community because he's kept within the confines of the professional American military. Now, I remember I raised this kind of jokingly, right? But there's a reason you keep him there and you have to keep him there because when you get someone with these kinds of appetites, appetites, principles, attention to martial glory, virtue, duty, honor, and you take him out of that and you put him in an environment where it's now all about commercialism and catches catch can.
He's going to eat you up. I don't want to go with this. Get to the joke. Literally.
Literally. So right at the very end, we find out he creates a franchise called Holka Burger Brandtise. And there's this link, I think, that the director kind of very subtly draws between him and John Candy's Dewey Ox-Oxburger. And why have there a Holka Burger and an Oxburger in the movie?
It seems like a needless repetition. And I think what we see here is that when you get someone like Holka in a democratic society, read from Republican constraints, the kind of curbs on his appetite, he will heat up and make his profits out of men too fat to get out of his way. And so yeah, he'll make Holka Burgers out of Ox if he has, but that's the danger these kinds of martial characters pose to a democratic society. And why you need Republican guardrails to kind of keep them in their lane.
I mean, what the Shakespeare's play show is the very same thing, right? If you don't keep Coriolanus in his lane, he will f*** you up. He will turn everything upside down, right? And you can't give him leadership.
You cannot give him leadership. You got to keep him squared away somewhere else. And I know that there are lots of fan of people on Twitter who are, and I have to say, really respect a lot of these individuals. I don't know their names.
I don't know who they are. But going by their Twitter handles their really lovers of Shakespeare and they, by all accounts, but based on what they post, they really know Shakespeare well. And they love genuinely love Shakespeare, which is something that's so rare. So I really, really value a lot of their posts.
But some of these individuals think the world of Coriolanus. I love Coriolanus too, but Coriolanus is like a nuclear bomb. He's like this human cereal. He'll blow sh** up if you let him.
But that's why you keep him contained, right? He's simply too reactive. I love it. When he ends best in self-diver in Shakespeare is when he calls up the pleeps fragments.
I love that. That is the truth of these people. They are not old. They are not self-sufficient.
They are shreds. They're shatters. They're fragments. That is beautiful.
And when Ray finds his character in the movie, Coriolanus delivers it, he delivers it with just the rest of the people. He delivers it with just the enough contempt to deliver that point. I love that. But you cannot live with Coriolanus in a free society.
You can't. You can't. And that's partly because he's not a serious man. He seems serious, right?
But I think when you get to the bottom of it, he is as Lohan Thal points out a boy who's never outgrown his mother. And in that respect, I think, some of on Twitter asked what character would be the character in Shakespeare's Coriolanus would warn Ose play. And I said, Coriolanus, he's the representative of the embodiment of aristocratic or patrician-made principles. But in another way, Winger represents Coriolanus, right?
Because he's fundamentally unserious about political life. And Coriolanus is the same. He's fundamentally unserious about political life. He will not reflect on the ends of politics.
He doesn't reflect on what he hopes to get out of his own political activity. He doesn't reflect on the kind that he has on the plebes or on his own body or on other people or on off-bidious his enemy for the opportunity for him to get the glory he wants. He doesn't reflect on any of this ever. He thinks he's, you never see him eat.
In a play that's about eating and drinking. You only see him ask for wine. You never see him eat or drink. Because I think this is part of the fact that he believes he's utterly self-sufficient.
That's the same thing that he plays. When he goes, when he's about to go back in the battle, he refuses to eat in the gods after putting food in his stomach. So he only plays into that concession now. So do you think so?
Go ahead. Sorry. I was just going to, I mean, I like the idea of Hulk as maybe Coriolanus, but I was also thinking like, is John Lark, I mean, I sort of thought John Lark out was a comic equivalent of the repetition. Mm-hmm.
Okay. I think that's absolutely right. Yeah. Yeah.
In fact, his name is Characterism. Still in it, right? Yeah. So there's something you blame about that because he's a still, he's a big lot of action.
And yet he's still a man, right? So you can see him. He wants to look at naked women. He wants glory.
He wants, he's utterly vain. You wonder why he got to be a captain in the first place and you're thinking, well, it certainly wasn't through combat, right? It was, you know, he just rose up the ranks as a result of just, probably went to OCS. Or OTC.
And, you know, started, started as a first lieutenant somewhere. And just as a matter of course got bumped up. But yeah, yeah, he's absolutely, he's entitled, he's vain, he's cowardly, he's authoritarian in a certain respect. He's stupid, right?
And he thinks his position entitles him to a respect that his accomplishments certainly don't grant him or merit him. So yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right. And you seem to get the come up and sit the end, right?
Right. So one of the things I noted, I know Alex, you want to jump in here, but one of the great things about the lack of Republican guardrails in American democracy in excess of the American democracy in excess of the American democracy. If you've got the natural talents, you're going to rise, right? And in Rome's Republic, if you're a plea, you're a plea, at least at the beginning, you're a plea, the best you can become a tribute.
Yeah, well, I want to push back on that just a little bit, right? Like, so I grew up in military families. And I think that the military more than any other aspect of life seems to demonstrate that fully, right? You can rise to things with one great, I try to comment, please, like the military so backwards with bureaucracy that tries to make like, to office because so many of them make it to the top without deserving to prosper.
I was just going to point out that Lissomann can't come off. So that Hulk is probably the guy who really should rule. Yeah. Yeah.
But what you point about stillman, right? Like, you know, his parents probably sent college there for he's an officer. And so that's the way you become an officer in American democracy. Right.
But he does get his copy. I think you were saying the opposite. No, well, I was saying I was going one direction. I was going one direction.
I was going to say this seems like the entire this seems like the opposite. Good job, Dave. I know I cut you off. So we're coming closer now and I wanted to pivot a little bit at the end and ask you to do other other papers like this.
I think you've got a real I got to think you got a real connection between him like this. Oh my God, that is a great idea. You write that paper. No, no, no.
I was really just really. That is a great idea. Also, the question is bad. And he should do a real good Romeo and Juliet and what's that one?
Poor. What's it called? That's right. Yeah.
He's a Romeo and Juliet. I don't think I know that one for a little bit. Go check. Greg Scott's DVD copies.
Am I going to regret my is this two hours of my life? I'll never get back into thing? No, no, no, no, no, no. This is it's pure enrichment.
Well, any closing comments while Alex tries to show you instead of actually tending to the business of the show? Well, look, I mean, I would say one of the things I tried to I hope would come out of this was an ability to take, you know, popular, some islands of popular culture more seriously than we are otherwise inclined to do. I hear this clap trap from Paul Cantor. Well, that's right.
He's speaking to him. But you really think there's something there because there could be a certain point. You know what I feel? Can I go on a little rant here for a second?
It's like these nerds that are like the X men and then they try and kind of like intellectualize the X men cosmos. Give it a break, man. You know, we're going to read the platonic cosmos. We're doing with this.
I just had to get to my science. I think that's right. I think that's right. That's something I certainly struggled with in writing the papers, you know, how am I, you know, am I, am I, am I projecting things here that aren't really there?
One has to really kind of watch how far you go and. And you know, yeah, it's plenty to joke around about some of these possibilities. Like I said, the first time I mentioned this to Dustin, he just we just laughed our asses off for like 30 seconds. And he was like, wait, you're choking, right?
And I was like, well, I was, but now I feel like there's a dairy. So no, no, I think that's right. But look, I don't think Cantor is always wrong to treat popular culture seriously. You know, one of the things I remember reading about reading all of his that I really liked was his essay on the Simpsons and the politics of the Simpsons.
That stands up. That actually stands up. That's a reason. What season is he capping that actually?
Oh, yeah. Well, go this is this long before it's declined. It's certainly become a joke. Well, they were having guys like the Harvard Lampoon kids were writing for them.
So, well, right. I mean, so what we're, you know, this is the crowd ring. This was running around in the 70s and 80s, right? So, so, you know, I think it's not something you're right.
Some people go too far. Look, you know, I'm probably going to get a lot of trouble for if I bring up Harry Potter here because I just don't think Harry Potter cuts the mustard because then people are going to go, well, Tolkien, I'm like, well, Tolkien, exactly. That's my point. I know I know I'm probably going to get a bunch of hate mail over Tolkien here, but, but, you know, Tolkien's not Shakespeare.