In my teens, Sergeant Hulka was The Boot on the Neck of the Hero. In my fifties, I totally understand his girlfriend when she dumps him. My guess is that the Gen Z kids out there will feel the same way when the re-watch some of their Woke heroes on film. Let’s behave as if none of it matters and laugh like loons at all the squares!” As an adult in his fifties, I can see that this lifestyle, this dogma of nonconformity and 1970’s SNL thumbing noses at the Establishment, wears thin pretty soon. On some level, I feel his man-child attitude was exactly what a fourteen-year old kid needed: someone who threw all of the conformity and mundanity of adult life and said “Fuck this, man. Under the scrutiny of 2019 and the Overwhelming Parade of Wokeness, this film is not making the cut. Mild homophobic humor (cuz being gay was funny in the 80s…) Check. Speaking of gratuitous boobs, why does Captain Stillman (John Larroquette) have to be pulling a Porky’s move and spying on naked women in the shower on a military base with almost no women present almost anywhere? Token black actors with lines that only reflect that they are, in fact, black? Check. “Monkeyheaded chicks” when referring to Vietnamese women? Check. Stripes is a relative stew of problematic elements, simmering without malice but just as tasty when the ingredients are sussed out. Throughout it all, Murray maintains his smarmy, smartass objectivity. Soles and Sean Young) who remarkably take a shine to them and the inevitable representation of Boot Camp authority, Sergeant Hulka (Warren Oates). Thus the two enlist and are instantly surrounded by a cast of complete outcasts, idiots, and miscreants who basically had the same idea. Life has passed them by so Winger convinces Russell to join the Army because Why Not? His best friend Russell (Ramis) is seen to be a completely unqualified ESL teacher for new New York immigrants who doesn’t really take his employ seriously and for his first lesson teaches his class to sing the refrain of “Da Do Ron Ron.” In the first five minutes, he has two guys ditch the fare in his cab, he abandons his cab on a bridge because his new fare is a caustic old woman, his car is repossessed, and his live-in girlfriend dumps him because he is basically coasting through life and squandering any future she may have with him. Written by Len Blum, Dan Goldberg, Harold Ramisįrom the get-go, John Winger (Murray) is shown to be a complete loser man-boy. In 1981 my cinematic, comedic hero answered the call that asked and answered the question: What if the Army took in a squad of the least capable idiots ever comprised for military service and they managed to succeed despite all evidence to the contrary? The idea being that perhaps being indoctrinated into a highly disciplined, brutally conformist system that I couldn’t escape from would sand off my anti-authoritarian edges and prime me better for life. In 1980, as I joined the awful social experiment known as high school, my mom had had about enough and I started getting appointments set up for me with military recruiters. The rules were flaccid and pointless he told us. When Murray came out in 1979 with Meatballs the caricature of my character became popular in a way that only pop culture can define. On the other hand, maybe I was just an asshole who decided early on to play things by my own set of rules. I could see through the built in hypocrisies and the shallowness of the popular crowds. I believe that because I was perpetually new to each system in place, I was able to be more objective about the flaws in those systems. A kid who tried to redefine himself multiple times due to being the new kid in every school, every year. I was always a bit of an outlier in grade school. Bill Murray saved my life in high school.
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