"Battle of Britain" and Allied Boasting

The 1969 film Battle of Britain is a decently made war film that attempts to portray the air campaign of the Fall of 1940, which was fought over the English Channel and the southern UK. It is a British production and more realistically portrays the events of that Autumn than a typically sensationalist American film would. However, like the previously reviewed film Conspiracy, this particular movie also has its share of subtle, yet effective, propaganda. The key elements of this are the consecutive scenes where, in the first, Berlin is bombed and, in the second, Adolf Hitler gives his response.

The careful trick played here is not an outright lie, but how the truth is shown; namely the selective editing of it.

First, a flight of Luftwaffe bombers gets disoriented in thick clouds and accidentally drops its bombs very close to London - blasts can be heard in the city causing some panic. This prompts the RAF, on orders from Churchill, to launch bombers on Berlin with the intention of the terrorizing the German capital. As far as history goes, this is a huge white wash. The fact is that the "gallant" Sir Winston Churchill had been itching for an excuse to bomb Berlin for a long time prior before he finally got his wish as this article shows:

"I want the Germans to start bombing London as early as possible because this will bring the Americans into the war when they see the Nazis' frightfulness, and above all it will put an end to this awkward and inconvenient peace movement that's afoot in my own Cabinet and among the British population." ~Winston Churchill

Adolf Hitler, the honorable leader that he was, specifically forbade the bombing of civilian targets in England as he did in France just months prior and in Poland at the outbreak of the war. The Blitzkrieg, which has been made out to be a merciless and destructive assault on innocent nations, is actually much more accurately described as a great achievement in military tactical precision. Though, remarkably advanced and disciplined the Wehrmacht forces may have been, they surely were not perfect down to every calculation and thus, bombs were accidentally dropped near a large civilian area.

Excerpt from this IHR article by David Irving:

"Which was why, on August 25, 1940, Churchill gave the order to the British air force to go and bomb Berlin. Although the chief of the bomber command and the chief of staff of the British air force warned him that if we bombed Hitler, he may very well lift the embargo on British towns. And Churchill just twinkled. Because that was what he wanted -- of course.

At 9:15 that morning he telephoned personally the bomber commander, himself, to order the bombing of Berlin -- one hundred bombers to go and bomb Berlin. They went out and bombed Berlin that night, and Hitler still didn't move. Then Churchill ordered another raid on Berlin, and so it went on for the next seven or ten days until finally, on September 4th, Hitler lost his patience and made that famous speech in the Sport Palace in Berlin in which he said: "This madman has bombed Berlin now seven times. If he bombs Berlin now once more, then I shall not only just attack their towns, I shall wipe them out!" ("Ich werde ihre Städte ausradieren!") A very famous speech. Of course German schoolchildren are told about the Hitler speech, but not told about what went first."

In the film, we hear the bombers begin to approach Berlin, sirens go off, people start to run for cover, but then, the scene cuts before any bombs are actually seen or heard to detonate and we see Adolf Hitler giving the previously mentioned speech at the Sport Palace. It's an angry speech, he vows vengeance and the destruction of London. The cutting of the scene before we see destruction in Berlin is starkly contrasted with the scenes in which the Luftwaffe bombs London. These scenes contain a great amount of detail: large scale destruction, civilians in terror and the whole lot of intense imagery meant for the audience to think: "those damn Germans."

London shown bombed in a promotional poster

This quick and selective omission of the bombs impacting Berlin makes the film subliminally sneak in the myth that Hitler launched an unprovoked imperialist war with the intention of World domination. The crowd watching the speech is, for the most part, uniformly dressed and shouts "Sieg Heil!" in unison over and over. In the several close up shots of the crowd we can readily see the standard "pure Aryan" blue eyed girls with long locks of blonde hair. There are no close ups of Hitler shown in this scene making him more of a menacing presence than an actual person. However, there is an image of Hitler, a semi-subliminal, in the film. It is a painting of him standing behind a podium, a similar position to that of when he is giving his angry speech, thus it was probably carefully selected for the film.

The Luftwaffe's first raids on England display some inexplicable incompetence. First, a flight of Stuka dive-bombers manages to successfully take out a radar site, but is then shot to pieces by an RAF interceptor squadron. The question is: where was their escort? Even the British pilots ask that question! But, nope, no fighter escort shows up and the result is "shooting rats in a barrel" as one of the Spitfire pilots says happily. The second of these scenes shows a flight of Heinkel bombers intercepted even before they get to their target. These bombers also lack a fighter escort and the Spitfires quickly chew them up.

It is right before this scene where the aforementioned image of Hitler appears. This one:

The image appears in the background, slightly out of focus, over the shoulder of an officer who is making a blunder of a decision. This also supports a key aspect of the ZC version of Hitler: the militarily incompetent leader who ordered his forces on pointless suicide missions. The great masses of movie goers are not historians and so they take in these kinds of movies as they would a self-proclaimed (or even an actual) documentary. What's worse is that this film isn't nearly as bad as the more recent film from 2001, Pearl Harbor, about a key chapter from the Pacific Theatre. It took even more liberties to glorify the Allied side and dehumanize the Axis soldiers. Now think to the summer of 2009 when Inglorious Basterds came out; this movie cannot even be called a "period piece" or a "historical film" in any way, shape, or form. Not that it tries to be, but sadly the masses eat it up without thinking and the ZC distortions continue on gleefully.

Attempts at Accuracy
The film manages to pay some service to those keen on history and general objectivity: in the opening scenes pilots from both sides are shown as normal human beings. One of these early scenes even shows the fact that Hitler wanted peace, but it was the British who denied the opportunity. This is all washed over for the remainder of the film and thus was meant to be quickly forgotten. By 1969 standards, the special effects and action sequences are quite impressive so this must have really wowed the audience upon premier of the film. With all of the bombing and aerial combat sequences the film contains the story arc of a Lone Wolf archetype, who in this film is Britain. Like a typical Lone Wolf hero, Britain takes an immense beating, but doesn't cave in, but rather pushes on until all the bad guy's henchmen (Luftwaffe pilots) are beat up and worn out - this is shown in a battered Heinkel bomber that manages to fly back to the German lines and the wounded crew is pulled out. This also means that now the villain is ripe for the taking. However in this case, the villain flees in cowardice; note Goring's last scene in the film, he is seen riding away on a train as two glum officers look on and each manages to give a tired salute.

A Bit of Reality
Hitler's Actual Speech in Response to RAF's attack on Berlin:

The film footage is from Battle of Britain, however, the audio is not the fake sounding rant that the film provides, but rather the actual audio of Hitler when he gave the speech. The music certainly adds a touch, though it is neither from the film nor from the era shown. For the curious ones out there, it's the opening theme to The Rock composed by Hans Zimmer, who is known for epic musical scores, albeit in fluff Hollywood blockbusters.

In the film, Churchill never appears, but is frequently mentioned, including in the form of his famous quote about the battle portrayed: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." This is the typical Allied boasting of their commanders. The fact is that Winston Churchill probably had the ugliest character of any of the leaders of the Second World War - Stalin was brutal, but he didn't hide it, while Churchill was infected with the Jewish line of thinking and hiding all of his and his henchmen's criminal deeds.

Other Matters
This being a film about British boasting, it also neglects much of the help that the RAF received from non-British personnel. The Polish 303 squadron, which had the most number of aerial victories and least number of losses is briefly shown in a few scenes and those legendary pilots who proved vital to defending Britain are shown as goofs who don't follow orders. They are shown scoring a few victories, but their disorderly behavior is far from reflective of their overall performance. One scene has a Polish RAF pilot bail out of his fighter and parachute down into a field. A bit shaken by the experience, he introduces himself to some shocked farmers with a thick accent and they take him for a German. "Put your hands up you boche bastard!" In one smooth move, the film manages to, once again, make fun of the best RAF squadron and utter an anti-German slur. Though, this scene could also be viewed as an example of Churchill-style ignorance and racism, which actually makes it quite accurate in this respect.

I watched a non-subtitled version of the film on YouTube (first part here), perhaps someone who knows German can confirm a suspicion of mine: that the Germans in the film utter no slurs. Though, some minor expletives like "damn" are probably here and there.

Lastly, the film ends with the final battle tally. Even the German casualties are shown. However, there is a great oddity here: the last Allied pilot listed is said to be from Israel, when in fact, that territory was only illegally occupied and recognized by that name in 1948 or 8 years after the events depicted in the movie. The final tally of nations involved doesn't go in alphabetical order and the Germans are on a separate title card, or right after the lone Israeli is acknowledged at the end of the first title card. I would bet that it is just more Jewish lust for German blood.

Verdict: the film is aptly summarized in the title of this essay: "Allied Boasting." Or more specifically: "Anglo Zionist Boasting."

Now for a positive note: the epic opening credits sequence to the film with Ron Goodwin's military march-style score and the Luftwaffe in formation!

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SIEG HEIL!

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American Psycho: The Madness of Materialism

It’s movie time again. Today’s feature presentation is the psychological thriller from 2000 called American Psycho. The film was directed by Mary Harron who also co-wrote the screenplay which is based on the novel of the same name by Bret Easton Ellis. The movie version is a reasonably faithful adaptation of the source with the overall themes and main character arc very much like the novel. However, many of the book's graphic descriptions of Bateman’s gruesome exploits are only implied. This was a low budget film, but it did make effective use of its limited resources and went on to see a fairly wide theatrical release, but still less than a typical studio film.

In a broad stroke the story is a satire on 1980s yuppie culture. The word “yuppie” meaning Young Urban Professional came into widespread usage during the 1980s though the concept of a young business executive had been talked about and described since at least the 1960s. The film’s protagonist, Patrick Bateman, is in a way the ultimate yuppie: intelligent, healthy, fit, rich, basically “he has it all” - a capitalist success story. But there is another side, a very dark side, to handsome, young, and even initially charming, Patrick Bateman.

Bateman’s Superficiality
At first, Bateman seems very methodical and organized. His apartment is clean and neatly furnished, he has a good job, and he finished a good university. However, all this capitalist success is juxtaposed with an incredible superficiality. Bateman is particular, to the point of obsession, with details in his life. This is first seen when he describes his morning routine - as he gets up and walks about his impeccably organized apartment he narrates in a way that it is clear that he is driven by obsession. The way he works out, the way he showers, what soaps and cleansers he uses, to even how he applies them and why he buys them in the first place is all the result of a desire for longevity so that he can live longer in his world of pleasures. The scene ends with Bateman basically summing up his current state of existence: “There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman; some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable... I simply am not there.” Patrick Bateman is just a vessel of corporate America, traveling a pre-plotted course to an already established destination so that he can carry out pre-determined tasks to ensure that the establishment continues to intake profit as unopposed as possible.

This callousness is rampant throughout the film. When Bateman is riding in a taxi with his fiancée, Evelyn, for a night out, he is annoyed that she keeps talking about their upcoming wedding since it interferes with him listening to the newest pop song. He doesn’t even really like her and calls her “my supposed fiancée.” Interesting is that Evelyn is just as superficial, Bateman may be ignoring her, but how can she not notice the fact? Does she care as little about him as he about her? In the next scene, the two of them reach the restaurant where they are to meet some friends and Bateman is worried that they won’t be seated at a “good table” but is relieved when the people they are meeting are at table he is content with. In his narration Bateman admits to an affair he is having with one of Evelyn’s friends, Courtney, who is the fiancée of Carruthers, a co-worker of his. His narration is also packed with not so subtle insults, particularly when describing people, which shows what he really thinks of everyone: he doesn’t really give a shit.

He tells his secretary, Jean, what to wear, obviously to find her more visually appealing since he has to see her everyday at the office. After having sex with Courtney in one scene he just leaves her, despite her showing some desire for a deeper connection between them, though this is likely a futile effort not just because she is extending warmth to the cold Bateman, but because she herself is much like him thus incapable of a real relationship in the first place. Bateman is also jealous of other peoples’ business cards, especially if his are complimented less in relation to others. When looking closely at Paul Allen’s business card he seems to relish it in his narration while his face has his typical cold and empty stare. Bateman’s face is a key image throughout the film.

Society’s Superficiality
In the business card scene we also see that all the business cards have the same title, Vice President, and the same phone number. While it is true that all the men work in the same company, surely their direct office number, the one they would have on a private business card, would have at least an extension listed. The fact that it doesn’t goes hand-in-hand with the fact that people often confuse one another in the film. When Paul Allen approaches Bateman he addresses him as Marcus Halberstram, whom Patrick calls a dickhead in his narration and says that although he and Halberstram go to the same barber he has “a slightly better haircut.” This confusing of identities is another running theme and is means that these people are basically interchangeable, they are not true individuals, more like robots or cattle. They are goys who have been given so much pride that they believe themselves to be the masters. A variant on this theme is people failing to acknowledge close friends, such as Evelyn being surprised to see Bateman at a Christmas party. “I was here, you just didn’t notice,” he says. They must have a real intimate relationship. This scene also has Evelyn saying “Merry X-mas!” to people, which is the commercialized shortening of “Merry Christmas.” What used to be meaningful tradition has now degenerated to pure materialism.

The first restaurant scene, in which Bateman narrates that he is having an affair, he also states, rather casually, that he suspects Evelyn of having an affair with Timothy Bryce, another one of Bateman’s co-workers. All these people seem to be together as friends just so that in secret they can all exploit another. Their little talk veers into politics and Bateman states his solution to all of the World‘s problems: “Well, we have to end apartheid for one. And slow down the nuclear arms race, stop terrorism and world hunger. We have to provide food and shelter for the homeless, and oppose racial discrimination and promote civil rights, while also promoting equal rights for women. We have to encourage a return to traditional moral values. Most importantly, we have to promote general social concern and less materialism in young people.” How that can be seen as anything other than empty slogans and naïve ideals is beyond me. Especially since Bateman is in a position of power in society and he could use his money and efforts to actually help others, but he chooses, like all his “friends” choose: self-help and more than likely it’s at the expense of other people, even the “friends.”

The Madness of Materialism
The film’s main theme is how excess eventually leads madness. The political connotations are all implied, but metaphor and symbolism in art is effective when it is discovered by the viewer and not preached by the artist. Thus, like Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (to which I have referred to before in this sense), American Psycho isn’t about any one person, place, or even about any particular era. Rather the film is about a general phenomenon: material desire and how it destroys a healthy existence. Also, in this case it happens to be a force that is gripping our World with increasing viciousness. Bateman gives us his own version of this idea: “I have all the characteristics of a human being: blood, flesh, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust. Something horrible is happening inside of me and I don't know why. My nightly bloodlust has over flown into my days. I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy. I think my mask of sanity is about to slip.”

“I like to dissect girls. Did you know I’m utterly insane?”

Bateman’s materialism and relentless pursuit of fancy foods, expensive toys, and sexual adventure has led him, first, to murder during select nights, but now these urges are mixing. He is losing control and his methodical yet vicious nature is slipping into utter madness. This theme of ambiguity is actually present in the opening shot as we see what appear to be drops of blood falling, but turn out to be syrup and raspberries for a fancy restaurant dish. Also, note the knife that violently cuts into the steak: a blade slicing flesh, also known as murder. This bit even has an exaggerated sound effect of the “chop.”

This idea of intermeshing urges appears much more clearly as Patrick is filming his romp with the prostitutes. Evelyn must have gotten boring, so he first added porn, then went to hiring a prostitute, then two at a time, and then to making his own porno films with the hired girls… a spiral of excess. It is not clear what Bateman does to these women before they leave, but they are not happy and at least one of them bleeding; his urges are slowly becoming indistinguishable.

In a club where Bateman meets a model she mishears “murders and executions” for “mergers and acquisitions.” It seems work and murder are becoming one and the same. In fact, the film’s first murder, that of a homeless man, seems to be behind the Wall Street Stock Exchange, Bateman passes it right before he meets the man. A dirty little Wall Street secret? In his failed dinner date with Jean, Bateman’s dialog is clearly doublespeak, he talks about how he might “hurt” Jean if they get involved. She understands this as Bateman not being able to commit to a relationship since he is officially engaged, thus their involvement would be a one-night-stand. Bateman, of course, means “I might have to kill you, because I am utterly insane.”

The second prostitute scene is the final meshing of insane desires. He coaxes Christy the prostitute to come join him for another romp. She is hesitant and says, “I had to go to emergency last time.” However, the sight of the fat wad of money convinces her to go anyway. Earlier in the film Bateman killed Paul Allen in a scene with a pop song playing, thus linking art to murder, and is now pretending to be Allen to the point that he takes Christy to Allen’s apartment which is next to the Guggenheim Museum, a subtle detail, but art is about to meet murder again. There is another girl in this scene, Elizabeth, a friend of Bateman’s whom he drugs and gets to make out with Christy while he watches and rambles about a favorite song of his… there’s the music… and in the next scene as he is having sex with Elizabeth we see that he actually BIT her. Bateman's mouth is bloody and a shocked Christy runs out of the apartment, but not before finding many dead bodies in some of the side rooms. As Bateman chases her with a chainsaw note the framing in the first shot with the saw, it looks like a phallus. With Bateman’s bloody mouth and naked body we see all of his material desires as one: sex is violence, violence is food, and it is all encompassed by Bateman’s proudest possession, his own soulless body. He is now really “utterly insane” in his pursuit of materialism.

Christy is a polar opposite figure to Bateman here, and the prostitute we initially didn’t really care for before is suddenly a scared victim. A victim of not just Patrick Bateman, but more importantly, a victim of what he symbolizes. In a rampant consumerist society run by the all mighty dollar, people out of desperation often turn to any method they can find to get the money they need to live. Christy sells her body. She too is guilty of materialism and selling her dignity as she takes the money knowing full well Bateman will likely hurt her again, but now it gets her killed. In a way she is tragic figure. In a National Socialist Aryan Folkdom, no citizen would have to resort to such undignified methods of survival, only rampant capitalism in consumerist society allows such things to happen to innocent and often honest people. It is the materialism in society that destroys the humanity in people and then gets them to destroy others and, often, even themselves. If everyone in society lives as a hunter, then everyone is at risk of being hunted.

The scene ending in Christy's death is definitely the most shocking scene of the film, but a key thing is that it has surreal quality to it that leads to yet another interesting idea.

Self-Imposed Delusion
In a supposedly posh apartment building, in the middle of a big city, Patrick Bateman chases a screaming woman who is pounding on doors and yelling for help, he then drops the chainsaw several stories down and impales her… and no one notices.

How is that at all possible? The final act of the film is packed with increasingly bizarre events such as an ATM displaying a message, “Feed me a stray cat” just as a cat is walking by. An old lady notices Bateman trying to stuff the poor feline into the machine and protests so he whips out a gun and shoots her. Patrick Bateman, proud to display all of his possessions, including many tools of murder, did not once mention this gun before. The police hear the shooting and give chase, so Bateman shoots at the police cars and they… explode. Not just to our surprise but to Bateman’s as well, he even looks at the rather unconvincing looking explosion what looks like a cheap movie effect, in total confusion. After gunning some more people down he frantically calls his lawyer, Harold Carnes, and leaves a voicemail confessing that he killed many people over the past months.

The next morning, still not fully articulate he calls Jean at his office, but she doesn’t understand his rambling. She goes to Patrick’s desk and finds an appointment book that first has little notes, but then increasingly violent doodles. This escalation mirrors Bateman’s spiral to madness, however… was this just a delusion? At a bar Bateman sees Carnes and asks him of he got the message to which the lawyer laughs and says it was a great joke. Ironically, Carnes recognizes Bateman as someone else and thinks the impression of Patrick Bateman over the phone was very well done. Also, Paul Allen is revealed to be alive and in London. When Bateman killed Allen earlier in the film, he then faked Allen taking a trip to London in order to explain his disappearance. Yet, now Paul Allen is actually in London. A subtle detail of the Allen murder being a delusion is when Bateman is dragging the corpse and the trail of blood disappears, we also never see the body as it is supposedly in a bag. In fact, virtually every scene where Bateman threatens someone or unleashes violence, contain hints of delusion: alcohol (in frame or drunk people present), smoke, or mirrors. In a scene where he yells at an owner of a laundromat he leans in and shouts at her, but then after the angle cuts back to him, he is standing up straight... did the shouting actually happen or is he hallucinating?

This brings to question the authenticity of not just his narration, but of his entire perception of reality. Is he living in a delusion? Has his materialistic greed rendered him pathetic and impotent? Were his gruesome acts just a fantasy of having and enacting power, but really he is a hollow powerless slave? That seems to be the case. Bateman’s last dialog and the last lines of the film are the following lament: “There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone, in fact I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape, but even after admitting this there is no catharsis, my punishment continues to elude me and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself; no new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing.”

Just like Patrick Bateman didn’t really care for anyone or anything, nobody and nothing cares for him. He is a vessel without purpose doomed to the callousness of his existence. Not even the sensation of a failed joke will be granted him. In a way, he is a dying Lone Wolf, he pursued his own selfish way so much that now he is forever severed from compassion.

Conclusion
Interestingly, Christian Bale played John Preston in Equilibrium, a film I wrote about here before. While that film showed a callous man overcoming his emptiness and finding purpose and even Arya, here Bale plays the condemned Patrick Bateman, a man who doesn’t find his way out, just realizes his bleak predicament.

Also, I thought that the theme of delusion here might really be just a nightmare Bateman is having, which could be part of his inner-revolution before at least finding a way to Arya if not Arya itself. However, given the film’s pessimistic endnote, which includes a sign on a locked door in the background that reads “This Is Not An Exit” I scrapped that idea. That sign is also the last line of the book, thus both writer and filmmaker seem to have intentionally left Patrick Bateman sentenced to limbo.


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American Psycho IMDb Page
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The Lone Wolf Archetype

The Action/Adventure Film is one of the most popular genres in cinema. Virtually every big studio regularly releases films that fit into this category. These films are relatively easy to market to a wide audience and have consistently provided big studios with huge returns on their investments. The James Bond franchise is the most successful series of films in history and is part of the action genre. Film stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Clint Eastwood, Chuck Norris, Wesley Snipes and Jet Li (to name a few) have the action film genre to thank for their hugely successful careers. The adventure film was never really anything new and goes back to some of the earliest days of Hollywood. It was a genre that was successfully transposed to the big screen from some very popular in literature; the works of Jules Verne come to mind. One of the famous early films is A Trip to the Moon, which can be seen as a loose adaptation of Verne‘s From Earth to the Moon.

The film adventure hero, mainly the archetype propagated by Hollywood, gradually took on a distinct shape of his own as more and more films came out. Due to film being a visual medium (in fact, the first films were silent and thus purely visual) the superficial characteristics of traditional hero archetypes came more and more to the front and by now have become a standard and mainstay of the male action hero. One does not need to look at any one film to see this at play, rather this phenomenon is prevalent over an entire spectrum. However, a good place to start would be the adventure serials that came out in the 1930s, by that point Hollywood was a booming film industry.

The action hero in these films was most often an Anglo-American male with the most basic male traits accentuated. Commonly these were: apparent facial hair, high physical strength and endurance, and sexual prowess. Later, as restrictions in the cinema-code became less puritan there was a steadily revealing display of male muscular build with the musculature of the hero steadily veering into the superficial with a body-builder, Mr. Olympia-look. At a glance, just think Bruce Lee of the 1970s (natural build result of ascetic motivation) to Schwarzenegger in the 1980s (artificially induced result of vanity). The hero’s sexual exploits also become more graphic with a high (sometimes absurd and even comic) dimorphism between male and female; the woman that the hero woos was often a coy, oversexed lass. Together with the overly macho male, it makes for an image that propagates the differences between male and female, instead of a profound unity leading to mutual respect.

Another key trait of the action hero is his “lone wolf” attitude. He does things his way. He is his own boss. Even if he is part of an organization, one with concise procedural rules, he still does things his own way and gets away with it. In fact, by the end, it has become commonplace for him to be applauded for what he was originally warned about, his recklessness. One of the first “rogue cop” films, Bullitt, has the hero facing the consequences of his tactics. It is not shown to be all his own fault, others too were reckless, but the point is that all around recklessness leads to all around destruction. The case Lt. Bullitt was working on doesn’t get solved and the film ends with him looking glumly into a mirror, most likely reflecting on his ways. Dirty Harry was another popular film in the same style with a rogue cop protagonist. It came out in 1971, three years after Bullitt, and has a noticeable increase in sensationalism with many crooks being gunned down by the lead character. In contrast, Lt. Bullitt only fired two shots resulting in one death. Though, Dirty Harry also ends on a glum note with Detective Harry Callahan somberly reflecting on his job and on his actions, he even throws away his badge, the film, however, spawned four sequels with each one more destructive than the last and it was in the 1970s that the “lone wolf cop” archetype had become a mainstay. John Wayne’s only role in a cop thriller, McQ from 1974, is also the lone wolf formula, but with some new details: not only does he gun down all of the crooks, but he acquires and illegal firearm to do it with after he is kicked off the police force. And he’s supposed to be the guy we’re rooting for: one who is effectively an impulsive vigilante murderer on the loose. The Dirty Harry sequels are much in the same light, gunning down crooks and breaking skulls all while looking “bad ass.” It isn’t impossible to imagine a scenario where violence is necessary to end some wrongdoing, but these films’ stories are designed in ways that connote violence as the inevitable answer to all wrongdoing.

Lone Wolf McQuade
A perhaps perfect example of the Lone Wolf archetype can be found in the very aptly titled film Lone Wolf McQuade with Chuck Norris. It has virtually all the characteristics that were described above. The “hero” J.J. McQuade is Texas Ranger who lives as a loner in a dirty trailer out in the desert; he is unkempt and rather arrogant. The film’s story is the basic good guys vs. bad guys deal that ends in a big shootout as well a martial arts duel between hero and villain. The film is not a standout movie in any way, it is just another product straight from the action movie assembly line at the Hollywood film factory. I only chose to talk about it since its name is so fitting to the archetype described in this post.

Take a look at one of the film’s promotional posters:

No caption needed

That pretty much says it all about the film and hero right there. It makes a good guy out of a vanity obsessed brute and glorifies his acts of excessive force and violence. His self-serving nature and macho image can also be seen as a corrupted image of Aryanism; he has some of the right traits, but virtually all the wrong motivations. He is a survivalist and self-preservationist. He doesn’t care about anything unless it comes riding up his driveway. He is disconnected from society in everyway almost, except to serve his needs.

Kamerad Delendaestziobot wrote an article about this archetype as it can be seen in real life.

Sowing Discord
Storytelling has always been a human mainstay of introducing ideas into society and with the effective industrialization of filmmaking in Hollywood, the introduction of ideas through story in the last 70 years has been going on overtime. The US Department of Defense even regularly helps productions that are military oriented and many of these promote the reckless Lone Wolf Archetype, which seemingly goes against military procedure. One film of note here would be the 1987 action film Death Before Dishonor, in which a US Marine goes on a vigilante rampage after some of his men are killed. Featuring cartoon cut-out Arab villains and, of course, innocent Israelis that are victims to Arab terror, the film is nothing but propaganda once examined rationally.

This archetype is meant to appeal to base human instincts, and especially pride, in order to sow discord in society. Weekend Warriors, Closet Commandos and survivalist types are undoubtedly influenced on some level by these kinds of films. It’s the much propagated “American can do spirit” that promotes individualism so much so that the message ends up being comprehended and acted out as arrogance. The aforementioned Chuck Norris has often made public his anti-statist and wild west orientated political views thus it is no surprise that he made his career playing like-minded characters. Upon rational examination the libertarian ideals that such an archetype preaches are almost pure folly. It’s as if the people believing in those ideals are denying the existence of a state and government. They want to be in their own little comfortable Hobbit-hole. “The Lone Wolf dies. It’s the Wolf Pack that lives.” Some are arrogant lone wolves, many are just naïve little pups, but both are effectively pulled apart by their own doing thanks to propaganda and thus prevented from uniting to achieve goals that benefit the noble in society and punish the ignoble.

The Lone Wolf is motivated by vanity, is bound to himself, he lives by false honor. He will DIE.

The Noble Warrior on the other hand:

He is motivated by Honor and Duty.
He is bound to his Kameraden and to his society by it.
He lives by it. He is an Aryan.

Which One Are You?