This week I saw the first Naked Gun movie for
the first time, and of course I immediately loved it. The timing, the masterful
subversion of genre tropes, the over-the-top but still somehow restrained gross-out
humor, and a beautifully deadpan performance by the late Leslie Nielsen all
make for one fun romp. However, buried in the film’s mountain of wacky antics
are elements, both subtle and in your face, that would simply not fly in the
modern era.
The most
obvious example comes in the very first scene of the movie. We open on the
Israeli city of Beirut with a meeting between dictators and terrorist leaders
plotting some grandiose attack on the American people, claiming that they can
prove that America and its people are weaker than they claim to be. Then, our
bumbling hero reveals himself, beating up his foes in a goofy yet wildly
entertaining fight scene. Before he departs, he delivers a high-and-mighty
warning to his enemies, stating that he “doesn’t want to see them anywhere in
America”. He turns to make a grand exit, only to bump his head on the door.
Where do I
even start with this? Well, for starters, all of the villains at the meeting
are real life people. And I don’t mean thinly veiled stand-ins, I mean the real
deal. Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, Russia’s Mikhail Gorbachev, and Libya’s Moammar
Gaddafi all make an appearance. This serves to date the film in more ways than
one.
I recently
read The Looming Tower by Lawrence
Wright, a fascinating dive into the history of the rise of modern terrorism. At
one point, Wright points out that there was once of time, prior to 9/11, where
terrorism was considered more of a nuisance rather than a legit global threat. It
existed back then, of course, but its presence on US soil was minimal, and to
the public and our government it just seemed a million miles away.
That sort of naiveté and
arms-length attitude is reflected greatly in this scene. As threatening as
these real life villains may seem at first, they can still be reduced to jokes
with no sense of hesitation or social consciousness. They’re threats of being
able to challenge American supremacy are not even remotely taken seriously, and
they are simply toppled by a American agent, whom, by the way, is a dense,
stumbling buffoon for about 80% of the movie.
We see real life issues depicted in
goofy comedies even today, of course, but the execution is nowhere near as
brazen as the Naked Gun. Take Zoolander for example. While its
structure has a very similar storyline and wacky tone, it doesn’t come close to
pushing the same number of buttons as the Naked
Gun. The film has an extremely silly critique of the fashion industry,
namely the exploitation of workers in the developing world, but never at any
point shows us something that comes directly from the real world.
The main villain is a world-famous
fashion mogul, but he is a work of fiction and his characteristics could be
applied to ANY prominent member of the fashion industry. The dim-witted hero of
this film’s story must save the prime minister of Malaysia from being
assassinated as part of a conspiracy to continue exploiting workers, but the
prime minister does not appear to be based on ANY real life figure. The real
world issue is there, but it’s kept at arm’s length, resembling reality but
only just.
The whole Reagan Era “America Fuck
Yeah” element of Naked Gun is also
still around, but it has also been tempered with. The two most obvious examples
of this are, naturally, Team America:
World Police and its sort-of-spiritual-successor-but-not-really The Interview. Naked Gun has a gung ho, take-no-prisoners and yet somehow
apolitical feel to it, whereas the later films lack a good deal of that
self-satisfaction and confidence in ourselves, giving us just the slightest
hint of self-reflection.
As I stated above, Naked Gun is certainly a product of 1980s
Cold War Americana, but lacks any sort of social or political critique. America’s
foreign policy, issues of police or government corruption, the overreaching
power of Big Money: all of these topics could potentially be read from the
film, but they are never given even a sliver of analysis, much less parodied. Its
parody is strong and often hysterical, but is solely aimed at the genre clichés
of both 1980s action flicks and classic noir thrillers. It’s never directed at
any part of American society or culture.
By contrast Team America and The
Interview have a much more pronounced social consciousness. In the former,
American foreign policy is shown as well-meaning but also carelessly
destructive, and our obsession with celebrities nearly allows for the
tyrannical Kim Jong-Il to take over the world. In the latter, our media is
shown to be glitzy on the surface but hollow underneath, and our foreign policy
is shown to be short-sighted, knocking down despots like Kim Jong-Un but doing
nothing effective to replace them. Comedy has always been used to tackle
uncomfortable and harsh topics, but now we feel like we need to examine and
laugh at ourselves as much as we do others. Gone are the days where all we
needed was for Leslie Nielsen to punch an Islamic radical in the groin…ah, the
naiveté of youth.
In addition, this sort of brazen
smearing of dictators is apparently much less welcomed by said dictators today
than it has been in the past. As you may remember, North Korea was none too
thrilled with the depiction of its leader, and the threats were taken so
seriously that the film was temporarily pulled from release, only to be
released on time after all with no ill effects. Just to put into context of how
childish this was, Charlie Chaplin made a film in 1940 spoofing Adolf Hitler
and the Nazi Party, titled The Great
Dictator. According to records, Hitler, an avid cinema lover, ordered the
film for his own personal viewing and apparently loved it so much that he
ordered it a second time. So now we have proof that Kim Jong-Un is indeed worse
than Hitler since at least the Fuhrer had a sense of humor!
The
Naked Gun has been called a timeless classic, but there’s no denying it
comes from a world that viewed itself in a much different light than our own. But
it’s not the world-view that is the most dated part of the film. Funny enough,
that honor belongs to the supporting role filled by none other than OJ Simpson.
He was given a decent-sized supporting, comedic role—a role that expected
viewers to laugh at him and sympathize with him during humorously over-the-top
physical moments of torment…it was a different time.
Written By: Zak Kizer
