Aggressively Regressive; “penis brained militarism” andits consequences in Top Gun and An Officer and a Gentleman.

It will be scarcely surprising that they – as it were,incidentally and obliquely – diminish, defuse, and rendersafe all the major radical movements that gained so much

impetus, became so threatening, in the 70s: radicalfeminism, black militancy, gay liberation, the assault on

patriarchy, (Wood, 2003: 146).

In 1980 Ronald Reagan was elected president of the

United States. His victory, and the victory for the

Republican party as a whole, was evidence of an upswing

in conservative values in the America following the

liberalism of the 1960s and ‘70s. A backlash against the

‘soft’ liberalism of President Carter and the 1970s

began. Reagan’s program of social spending cuts and

increased military spending was seen as a harsh

necessity in a world destabilised by communism, and

successive US military failures in Vietnam and Iran.1

The political and cultural rhetoric of the era was

characterised by anti-intellectual populism, jingoism,

nostalgia, individualism, and a deeply conservative 1 I refer here to the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979, in which the US military failed an attempt to rescue US hostagesheld in Tehran, which resulted in the deaths of eight soldiers.

Christian morality. Many of the social movements of the

seventies, such as the women’s movement, gay liberation,

and racial equality campaigns were considered ‘fixed,’

no longer relevant, or worse – potentially destabilising

to society. Robin Wood has argued that in many of the

Hollywood films of the era these issues were contained,

neutralised, and “rendered safe” by the cinema’s

insistence on their non-existence (Wood, 2003: 144).

Wood was writing in particular on the fantasy cinema of

Spielberg and Lucas, however it is useful to expand his

arguments beyond obviously ‘fantastic’ films. Two of the

most successful films of the eighties, Top Gun (Tony

Scott 1986) and An Officer and a Gentleman (Taylor Hackford,

1982) are guilty of many of the charges levelled by Wood

at Spielberg and Lucas. For Wood, the “dominant project,

ad infinitum, and post nauseum… a veritable thematic

metasystem” of the films of the 1980s was the

restoration of the father:

must be understood in all senses, symbolic, literal, potential: patriarchal authority (the law) which assigns all other elements to their

correct, subordinate roles; actual heads of families, fathers of recalcitrant children, husbands of recalcitrant wives, who either learn the justice of submission or pack their bags; theyoung hetereosexual male, father of the future, whose eventual union with the “good woman” has always formed the archetypal happy ending of the American film.

From this one agenda all other issues spring; the

reinvigoration of a strong assertive masculinity, the

recuperation of the military, the negation of the

potential for homosexual masculinity, the re-

subordination of women, and the elision of black

masculinity from the patriarchal project.

Top Gun and Officer… are bildungsroman type stories of two

young men Maverick (Tom Cruise) and Zack (Richard Gere),

as they are moulded by the military from rebellious

hotheads into responsible ‘gentlemen.’ They offer

startlingly similar plots in which the military is

utilised as a microcosm for a cohesive and unproblematic

America. They enact and fulfil male fantasies of

militarism, sexual dominance, and self-actualisation.

These films explicitly reform the liberal, soft bodied,

pacifist youth of the 1970s into conservative military

hard bodies, a reconstruction analogous with the

concurrent transformation writ large in American

society.

The most obvious parallel between these two film is

their military setting, and this is a crucial factor in

any reading of them. Following the disaster of Vietnam

the rehabilitation of the military as an institution was

essential in the reassertion of militaristic patriarchal

authority as the logical mode for society. In these

films the military training camp is constructed as a

liminal zone between adolescence and manhood, in which

the true identity of the male heroes is formulated. Both

Maverick from Top Gun and Zack from Officer… are orphans.

Maverick literally, and Zack symbolically, and the

military is formulated as a surrogate family. As Kenneth

MacKinnon notes, movies such as these seem “to teach

masculinity by militaristic substitution in the absence

of parental guidance” (MacKinnon, 1992 : 35). The

military defines masculinity in its own terms; that is

to say, in terms of aggression, homosociality, and

misogyny. The hero is reasserted as dominant,

authoritative, and masculine through the military

process. The masculine authority of Maverick and Zack is

unproblematically established as normative, and the film

makes obvious their superiority to their female military

counterparts, Charlie (Kelly McGillis) and Seeger (Lisa

Eilbacher).2 Charlie is proven to be an unreliable

authority, and Seeger’s physical capability is

constantly undermined.

On a more literal level the glorification of the

military in these films serves an important ideological

function for the Reagan administration. The military

life portrayed was so appealing that there was a surge

2 I do not refer here to Zack’s love interest but his professional competitor, his love interest Paula (Debra Winger) is so far removed from his status in the hierarchy ofthe film as to render her unthreatening from the start.

in recruitment following the release of each one. In

1986 Time magazine reported that Top Gun’s:

glorified portrayal of Navy life spurred theatre owners in cities such as Los Angeles and Detroit toask the Navy to set up recruiting exhibits outside cinemas where Top Gun was playing to sign up the young moviegoers intoxicated by Hollywood fantasy (Kellner, 1995: 80).

Following the failures of the 1970s, the revitalization

of the military through films like these served an

important function in Reaganite America. In order for

the restoration of an aggressively masculinist,

capitalist society, the military had to be successful,

and in order for the military to be successful it had to

be perceived publicly as successful. The recruitment

boom that followed Officer… and Top Gun had a material

effect on the functioning of the military, and as such

the position of the United States on a global

militaristic stage. In these films celebration of the

potency of the military, through the battle scenes in

Top Gun in particular, or in Zack’s triumph despite his

father’s failure, the films collectively “forget” the

failure of the military in its most recent prolonged

engagement. Thus, the nation is allowed to “forget”

through these films, their collective insecurity, and

believe in the rhetoric of military potency espoused by

the Reagan administration.

Inherent in these military narratives is an overwhelming

emphasis on male homosociality. In Top Gun there are no

female recruits, in Officer… there are a few female

recruits, but in both there is an overwhelming sense of

fraternity as the men banter and posture. This fraternal

fantasy is perhaps indicative of a nostalgic desire to

create a world devoid of female influence or presence, a

pre-feminist male utopia. Both films feature a

significant ‘best friend’ character, who stands in the

way of the hero developing a serious relationship with a

woman, ‘bromance’ rather romance is paramount. Tanya

Modeleski has noted that homosocial desire “operates at

the expense of women and turns men’s aggressively erotic

energies toward one another” (Modeleski, 2007: 102), and

it is not until these male partners are killed off by

the narrative, that the heroes are able to commit to a

heterosexual relationship. At this point the however the

women function in a traditionally conservative role as

support, not partner, enabling the men to realise their

potential as ‘real men.’ Consequently, the female

characters are marginalised even as the film accepts

them as worthy of the male heroes.

Early in the film in the briefing room one cadet puts

his arm around another and whispers “this is giving me a

hard on, ” the man replies; “Don’t tease me.” Incidents

like this, combined with eroticised images of the young

male bodies, in particular, the Volleyball scene, have

invited readings of Top Gun as homosexual. Both Cruise

and Gere were certainly gay icons, and the plots and

military uniforms from Top Gun and Officer… have featured

prominently in gay as well as straight pornography.

However, it would be a mistake to insert homosexuality

into the diegesis of the films themselves. The

homoerotic potential contained in these films is only

ever potential, to be read if one chooses to do so.

Within the actual narratives the possibility of

homosexuality is never entertained. The homoerotic

signifiers in these films are the result of a

combination of testosterone charged male sexuality and a

focus on the male body that potentialises erotic

contemplation. Both heroes are frequently shot wearing

little or no clothing, displaying their chiseled bodies,

and both ride large motorcycles, conspicuously phallic

symbols of their virility. however possible

eroticicisation and thus feminisation is evaded in both

films through action sequences which assert the potency

of the men, in contrast to the passivity of the female

subject of the gaze.3 The term “homoerotic” has become

charged with masculine signification,4 so that the

sexualised male body is often automatically (mis-)read

3 See Mulvey 4 Despite the gay liberation movement and the political lesbianism of the feminist movement in the 1970s, homosexuality, or homoerotica was, in the 1980s, and to a degree even now is, still regarded as male.

as homoerotic. Had the Volleyball scene in Top Gun been

shot with women instead of men, there would be no

question of homoerotics. This privileging of male

sexuality, even male homosexuality, over female

sexuality is further evidence of society’s failure to

assimilate the feminist agenda.

The emphasis on masculinity and male sexuality in Top

Gun and Officer… is accompanied by an aggressive assault

on feminism. The female characters are transparent

narrative devices, designed solely to aid the male

heroes in their quests towards manhood. Top Gun

presents us with Charlie, an astrophysicist and Top Gun

instructor, superior in rank to Maverick, also

conveniently young and attractive. Charlie’s position of

authority is short lived and she soon succumbs to

Maverick’s charms. In a crudely constructed schoolboy

fantasy scenario it is Maverick’s arrogance in her

classroom that attracts Charlie to him against he better

judgment. In the end of the film, when Maverick returns

to the Top Gun school as an instructor, the film makes

his authority clear. By giving him the line “this is

going to be complicated”, first used by Charlie when she

was instructor and he was student, Maverick is

positioned referentially as the superior, and Charlie as

the subordinate. Tanya Modeleski notes that in war films

female voices attempting to speak authoritatively about

war have tended to be silenced (Modeleski, 2007: 102),

and thus Charlie’s assumption that she is qualified to

instruct Maverick is necccessarily demonstrated to be

false, when he disregards her classroom instruction and

successfully follows his gut instinct, proving to

Charlie that her knowledge is inferior to his. When

Maverick assumes his ‘true’ position as master, Charlie

is more than happy to submit to his dominance.

In Officer… the misogyny is, if possible, even more

crude. There may be female recruits, unlike in Top Gun,

but they are easily dismissible tokens of liberality.

Casey Seeger is included in the film only to allow Zack

to prove his sensitive maturity as the climax of his

development at the end of the film. In the final assault

course scene he stops to help Seeger climb a wall, which

has left her crying and defeated, and in doing so he

forfeits his record time and the attendant personal

glory. Yvonne Tasker’s observation that “Hollywood

representation is characterised by an insistent equation

between working women, women’s work, and some kind of

sexual(ised) performance.” (Tasker, 1998: 3) is made

obvious in the characters of Paulie and Lynette (Lisa

Blount). The two women are set up as friends, working in

a factory, and looking for an officer to marry in their

spare time. It is quickly made apparent though, that

marrying an officer is their chief occupation, the work

they do in the factory is unimportant. Moreover, their

friendship is more of a thinly veiled rivalry. In a

scene described by Wood as one of “the ugliest moments

in recent Hollywood” (Wood, 2003: 184), Paula denounces

Lynette for trying to ‘trap’ Sid (David Kieth) by faking

a pregnancy, distancing herself from Lynette and thus

securing herself in Zack’s affections. Wood has pointed

out how in this moment, women are used to denounce each

other in an ideological sleight of hand which allows

patriarchal Hollywood to figure women as the agents of

their own oppression (Wood, 2003: 184). Issues of female

empowerment are elided by suggesting that it is in

women’s interaction with each other that prevents them

from attaining parity with men. Both Top Gun and Officer…

rationalise this through women’s incapacity for

sorority, which is contrasted with the obvious capacity

that men in these films have for fraternity.

The fraternity enjoyed by the male characters in Top Gun

and Officer… extends to and to a degree includes black

male recruits. However, the black presence in these

films is problematic. The black man is positioned above

the woman, but emphatically below the white hero, he is

discharged of any dangerous potential, and stripped of

personality. Wood’s discussion of ‘otherness’ in E.T

(Spielberg, 1982) is interesting here, “All the others

of white patriarchal bourgeois culture – workers, women,

gays, blacks – are in various ways threatening, and

their very existence represents a demand that society

transform itself.” E.T he asserts, is otherness

reproduced as something cuddly, safe, “one of us; he

just looks a bit funny” (Wood, 2002: 160). It is not to

much of a leap to read the black characters in Top Gun

and Officer… in this way. In Top Gun Maverick

metaphorically castrates the lone black recruit

(codenamed ‘Sundown’ in case you missed his colour), who

is acting as his second choice copilot. When Sundown

challenges Maverick’s inability in the air, Maverick

rounds on him attacking him physically and verbally,

essentially aggressively defending himself against a

perceived slight to his own virility, while

simultaneously renouncing that of Sundown.

Significantly, Maverick never attacks anyone else in the

film with the same degree of aggression. The black man I

put firmly in his place for daring to challenge

Maverick’s white authority.

In Officer… one can point to the character of Sergeant

Foley (Lois Gosset Jr) as a black authority figure, yet

Foley is not really black. The character was written as

a white man, and Gosset’s Academy Award for the role can

be read as his reward for successfully playing a white

character. Foley’s function within the narrative is in

his endorsement of the military, Katherine Kinney

explains that “The military is good because Foley is its

spokesman, implicitly testifying to principles of

integration and equal opportunity, and to a non-

convulsive image of historical change, … [a] “military

meritocracy” (Kinney, 2000: 116). As such, his agency is

removed, his character is never developed beyond

surface, and he is reduced to a narrative function and

Foley too is castrated . The other significant black

character in Officer… Zack’s roommate Perryman (Harold

Sylvester) is portrayed as a docile pacifist. He is

devoid of energy or self confidence, and allows himself

to be patronised by Zack. In both of these films issues

of racism are ignored, and the presence of a black

Sergeant, and a scattering of docile black recruits

apparently resolves the United State’s history of black

oppression.

In cinematic terms Top Gun and Officer… mark a return to a

classical style of filmmaking, or as Bordwell defines

it; “super classical”(Bordwell, 2002: . This style is

typified by strict continuity, seamless editing,

simplistic narratives, functional characterisation, and

a teleological narrative drive towards an inevitable

conclusion. Bordwell elaborates; “far from rejecting

traditional continuity in the name of fragmentation and

incoherence [like 1970s cinema], the new style amounts

to an intensification of established techniques.” (Bordwell,

2002: 16). In contrast to much of the cinema from the

1970s this new “super classical” style encouraged the

viewer not to think. In an extension of the prevailing

Reaganite mood of anti-intellectualism the audience is

never required to question what they are being shown.

Don Simpson one of the producers of Top Gun stated “I

never start out intellectually. I commit my instincts.

It’s gut to heart to mind to mouth” (Simpson in Prince,

2000: 218).5 Simpson echoes Maverick’s statement that

“if you think, you’re dead,” and points to the mechanism

of inbuilt disavowal that these films contain. One is

not supposed to analyse these films, and, as Wood points

out “To raise serious objections to them is to run the

risk of looking like a fool (they’re “just

entertainment” after all) or, worse, a spoilsport

(they’re “such fun”).” (Wood, 2002: 146). Therein lies

the ideological danger of these films, if the audience

is encouraged to passively enjoy the spectacle, then the

regressive ideologies contained within are transmitted

without challenge.

Within the film texts there is a concomitant

emphasis on instinct and innate feeling over

intellectuality. In Top Gun Maverick arrogantly insists

5 It is worth noting that Don Simpson, and his partner, JerryBrukheimer, were responsible for a number of the biggest hits from the eighties, including Flashdance (1983), Beverly Hills Cop (1984), Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), and Days of Thunder (1990). It is significant that the pair credited themselves with artistic control of the films, claiming that directors, writers, actors etc, could all be hired and fired at will without affecting the film (Prince, 2000).

on his own individualistic talent, over academic

learning and authority. In the climax of the film he

saves the coldly rational Iceman (Val Kilmer) in a

dogfight, proving the superiority of his intuition over

Iceman’s logic. Furthermore Maverick’s “think and die”

statement is set, early in the film, in opposition to

Charlie’s intellectualism, and when she is seduced by

him, she is also, implicitly, conceding to Maverick’s

‘natural’ heroism. Officer… is not perhaps as insistently

asinine as Top Gun, but the hero Zack is certainly not

portrayed as a deep thinker. He possesses a certain

enterprising spirit, evidenced by his boots and buckles

racket, but he is never allowed to develop beyond crude

equations of exploitation and gain. The impression built

of the surrounding locale is one of working class anti-

intellectualism. Paula, unlike Charlie, never poses an

intellectual challenge to the narrative, she is

uneducated and works in a factory, and her sole ambition

is to persuade Zack to marry her.

At the risk of looking like a fool, or a spoilsport, the

need to reexamine films such as Top Gun and Officer… is

fundamental to our understanding of a period in time

when a tentative radicalism was subsumed by resurging

conservatism. Society and culture exist in a symbiotic

relationship, neither one existing without the other. As

such to ignore the misogyny and racism in these films,

to deny the power of their ideological message on the

grounds that “it’s just entertainment” would be to turn

a blind eye to the propagation of a patriarchal right

wing agenda. The sheer popularity of these two films,

and their unassailable place in popular culture is

testament to the strength of the right wing project in

the early 1980s. Moreover the continued right wing

morality in the contemporary United States is a product

of the same era. In order to enjoy a film like Officer…

one must necessarily put aside all feminist conviction,

to accept Top Gun one must embrace “penis-brained

militarism”(Kellner and Ryan, 2000, 297). As such, to

suspend one’s faculties, and surrender to the world of

the film, is to resign oneself, however temporarily, to

a society in which only vacuous white heterosexual men

are normative, and all others are subordinate to them.

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