{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "Do you ever watch cable tv and see an old movie or show like \u201cLethal Weapon\u201d, and realize with sad, wistful nostalgia that the...", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/176462512588/", "html": "
Anonymous asked: Do you ever watch cable tv and see an old movie or show like \u201cLethal Weapon\u201d, and realize with sad, wistful nostalgia that the next generation will not know such apolitical, feel-good interracial action-buddy entertainment or the strange truce between black and white masculinity that football was the foundation of? That that era where action and comedy cinema especially were defined by such simple masculine *fun* is gone forever?
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bambamramfan:

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kontextmaschine:

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Richard Linklater has literally made it his life\u2019s purpose to make sure the memory of that early-80s interracial truce on the basis of earnest, earthy, fun-loving American clear-sky summer day masculinity is not forgotten

Obviously the idea that\u00a0\u201cLethal Weapon\u201d (or Die Hard) is apolitical is hilariously absurd.

But this ask makes the bridge from that to\u00a0\u201cthe strange truce between black and white masculinity\u201d, which is a very salient connection (again, see Die Hard.)

Which is what apolitics is really: a truce. It\u2019s not really some ontological claim that what\u2019s going on is outside politics, but it is the truce between two class elements to focus on something else.\u00a0\u201cFree speech\u201d is not really a philosophical claim that speech has no negative consequences, but just that the various actors would like to stop fighting over speech acts, and they have larger reasons for a truce.

And whenever truces of the apolitical style collapse, it\u2019s important to not put the cart before the horse. The implication of the ask (and civil libertarian discourse anyway) is that the injection of politics destroyed the apolitical realm, and that dissolved the truce. But what we really see is that something else destroyed the truce (lack of external enemies, a growing power imbalance, realization by one side they were getting a bad deal, whatever), and as that collapses it is reflected\u00a0in the art becoming more self-awarely political.

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Endorsed.

(Like, the bit in Die Hard where the emotional arc is that the new career woman\u2019s liberation is a threat to the integrity of the nuclear family and the protagonist has to resolve this through exhibition of masculine virtue, which became a standard theme in 80s-90s action movies, is political as hell, the reaction to the breakdown of a gender truce)

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