Anti Punk Bias in After the Bomb Films of the 1980s
Last week I was watching one of my favorite 80s after the bomb flicks, World Gone Wild. Like any kid that grew up in the 80s I was fully aware of a couple of things:
1) That the world could and would end at any moment due to the fact that the leaders of the USA and Russia were homicidal wackos just waiting to drop the bomb. Which was the bigger offender/threat depended where you lived, for me it was squarely on the shoulders of the US president.
2) Down the line the world would be a waste land of mutants, gangs, remnants of the government, communities in peril, and lots of chaos.
Of course I know now that many of these films were your basic westerns with Mad Max and his various clones as the hero in white hats, and on the other side either gang of outlaw, or mutants (who were the Indians). Road Warrior, the most popular and successful of these films, was a riff on Shane, and lesser films like Neon City (Stage Coach), and World Gone Wild (the Magnificent Seven) taking their cues from classic westerns.
So as Im watching World Gone Wild I noticed for the first, the fact that you could read the film as an anti punk/new wave film. The Hero is played by Bruce Dern as his 60s hippie hero who faces off against a gang of killers led by Punk/New Waver Adam Ant. Dren fights off Ants gang long enough to head to the city to recruit a small gang to fight for his little commune, I mean community of farmers called Lost Wells. It is revealed along the way that Ants gang are followers of a book The Wit and Wisdom of Charles Manson. Manson along with the Hells Angels is largly considered to have killed the love generation, which adds another dimension to the undercurrent of the film.
The fighters who are recruited to fight for Lost Wells sing 60s tunes House of the Rising Sun and there is a scene with a Cannibal in a suit draped in the stars and strips as the Hendrix version of the Star Spangled Banner plays.
Ant and his gang are hardly the only Punk/New Wavers used as bad guys in After the Bomb Flicks. In the turkey Warrior of the Lost World, early on the hero is ambushed by a pair of distinctly new wave punk thugs, the MST3K version of the film even comments on this, when Joel (the host) yells out Stiv Bators, Richard Hell. NO! when these thugs appear. Think over the after the bomb flick you have seen and consider what the bad guys dress like.
Some might shrug it off as dressing the outlaws in Bondage Gear and punk clothing was cheap and an effective way to set them apart from the good guys. That might be in the case of several films, but Im willing to bet that there were a lot of 60s refuges that worked on many of these films that had lived through the really Anti-Hippie era of punk, and in Soc Cal the rise of hardcore and the violence the media reported around it. Punks were easy villain to use, after all who was going to stand up and defend them?
. Questions, comments, spare change?
Last week I was watching one of my favorite 80s after the bomb flicks, World Gone Wild. Like any kid that grew up in the 80s I was fully aware of a couple of things:
1) That the world could and would end at any moment due to the fact that the leaders of the USA and Russia were homicidal wackos just waiting to drop the bomb. Which was the bigger offender/threat depended where you lived, for me it was squarely on the shoulders of the US president.
2) Down the line the world would be a waste land of mutants, gangs, remnants of the government, communities in peril, and lots of chaos.
Of course I know now that many of these films were your basic westerns with Mad Max and his various clones as the hero in white hats, and on the other side either gang of outlaw, or mutants (who were the Indians). Road Warrior, the most popular and successful of these films, was a riff on Shane, and lesser films like Neon City (Stage Coach), and World Gone Wild (the Magnificent Seven) taking their cues from classic westerns.
So as Im watching World Gone Wild I noticed for the first, the fact that you could read the film as an anti punk/new wave film. The Hero is played by Bruce Dern as his 60s hippie hero who faces off against a gang of killers led by Punk/New Waver Adam Ant. Dren fights off Ants gang long enough to head to the city to recruit a small gang to fight for his little commune, I mean community of farmers called Lost Wells. It is revealed along the way that Ants gang are followers of a book The Wit and Wisdom of Charles Manson. Manson along with the Hells Angels is largly considered to have killed the love generation, which adds another dimension to the undercurrent of the film.
The fighters who are recruited to fight for Lost Wells sing 60s tunes House of the Rising Sun and there is a scene with a Cannibal in a suit draped in the stars and strips as the Hendrix version of the Star Spangled Banner plays.
Ant and his gang are hardly the only Punk/New Wavers used as bad guys in After the Bomb Flicks. In the turkey Warrior of the Lost World, early on the hero is ambushed by a pair of distinctly new wave punk thugs, the MST3K version of the film even comments on this, when Joel (the host) yells out Stiv Bators, Richard Hell. NO! when these thugs appear. Think over the after the bomb flick you have seen and consider what the bad guys dress like.
Some might shrug it off as dressing the outlaws in Bondage Gear and punk clothing was cheap and an effective way to set them apart from the good guys. That might be in the case of several films, but Im willing to bet that there were a lot of 60s refuges that worked on many of these films that had lived through the really Anti-Hippie era of punk, and in Soc Cal the rise of hardcore and the violence the media reported around it. Punks were easy villain to use, after all who was going to stand up and defend them?
. Questions, comments, spare change?
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
nordicgoddess:
Assholes!!!!! I almost went by myself!! Rock, Rock, Rock, Rock, Rock and Roll Hiigh School!!!! I love P.J. Soles. She's in Stripes! Give a girl an e-mail if you want girl company. I also love the Ramones! "Ahh met her at the Burger King, fell in love by the soda machine...." If Jr/SR are Danish, my apologies. I thought they were Swedish. I saw them on MTV in Norway in the morning when I was there this fall. Don't you like fake 80's rock?? 
nordicgoddess:
I am sorry to leave so many messages, but I have to say, I like the last joke. You Swedes are so funny! LUV U!!!! 