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Popular Culture Review
military presence in the world resulted in the death of over 200 marines at the
hands of suicide bombers in Lebanon. The disaster in Lebanon and subsequent
military withdrawal from that nation was followed by an American invasion of
Grenada in the Caribbean, ostensibly to protect American medical students from
a Marxist dictatorship. American forces quickly prevailed, preventing the
construction of an airfield by Cuban laborers and soldiers. President Reagan
proclaimed that American valor checked Castro’s expansionism, and the
misjudgments of military intervention in Lebanon were lost in the glow of
victory in the island nation of Grenada. As William Chafe observes in The
U n fin is h e d J o u r n e y , Reagan “appeared to the American public as a hero
rebuilding America’s vaunted strength and dominance in the world.”15 These
images were crucial in explaining Reagan’s 1984 re-election.
The militaristic values and anti-Soviet paranoia extolled by the Reagan
administration found cinematic representation in director John Milius’s popular
adolescent fantasy R e d D a w n . A talented screenwriter, Milius penned the scripts
for such notable films as J e r e m ia h J o hn so n (1972), M agnum F o r ce (1974), and
A po c a l y p s e N o w (1979). In fact, he is credited with the infamous Clint
Eastwood line, “Go ahead. Make my day.” As a director, Milius made well
received films such as D illin g e r (1974); The W ind a n d th e L ion (1975)—
featuring his historical hero Theodore Roosevelt—and C o n a n the B a r b a ria n
(1982), which introduced Arnold Schwarzenegger to American audiences. The
conservative Milius celebrates men who eschew compromise and are willing to
fight for their ideas. An avid hunter, he has served on the board of directors for
the National Rifle Association, and in his films Milius often equates manhood
with hunting and survival in the wilderness, describing his political philosophy
as either “zen-fascism” or “zen-anarchism.” R e d D a w n proved a perfect vehicle
for Milius to pursue his ideological agenda.16
The implausible plot line of R e d D a w n embraces the domino theory of
communist expansionism. The film begins with Soviet and Cuban troops
parachuting into the school grounds of a rural high school in Calumet, Colorado.
No explanation