Live free or die.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Rhymes With Libertarian: John Carpenter, Snake Plissken, and the Hollywood ...
Rhymes With Libertarian: John Carpenter, Snake Plissken, and the Hollywood ...: "Growing up in the 80's one of my favorite film directors was John Carpenter. Movies such as Escape from New York and They Live featured m..."
John Carpenter, Snake Plissken, and the Hollywood Libertarian Anti-Hero
Growing up in the 80's one of my favorite film directors was John Carpenter. Movies such as Escape from New York and They Live featured memorable male individualistic main characters such as Snake Plissken played by Kurt Russell and Nada by none other than WWF wrestling superstar "Rowdy" Roddy Piper. Carpenter once mentioned in an interview that he cast Piper in the lead for They Live because there weren't any real men left in Hollywood. It's hard to argue with that, especially today, and They Live came out in 1988. Carpenter was influenced by a number of different genres and one that really stands out when you watch most of his films is the classic Hollywood western. His characters are 80's variants of the macho loner types in westerns portrayed by actors like John Wayne. Even when I was a kid this type of character had a lot of appeal to me and I could instinctively relate to their motivations and world view. Snake Plissken would definitely be considered a libertarian anarchist if one had to guess his political leanings upon watching Escape From New York as well as the inferior 90's sequel Escape From L.A. In the sequel however Carpenter makes an astute observation on the logical extreme of the libertarian anarchist worldview actually playing out in the real world. While Snake is trying to escape L.A., he's joined up by a beautiful Muslim woman who believes the complete anarchy taking place on the island of Los Angeles is true freedom and the fascist American government on the mainland has taken away everyone's liberty. Snake agrees with her and states "A dark paradise." Just as he says that, the beautiful woman get's shot and killed by a rogue gang packing more heat than the United States Marines. It's an honest observation of what true and complete liberty would create in this day and age. On the other extreme, near the end of the film when Snake asks one of the fascist military men for a cigarette, the answer he gets is “The United States is a no Smoking nation – no smoking, no drinking, no drugs, no women (unless, of course, you're married), no guns, no foul language, no red meat". Snake dryly remarks "Land of the free."
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