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G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Channing Tatum, Sienna Miller, Dennis Quaid, Marlon Wayans

Ronald Reagan did one thing right. That is right, I am praising the Gipper. The man who helped hawk Chesterfields to kids as a television spokesman understood that ankle biters were unfiltering consumers to be exploited and taken advantage of by corporate America. Before our 40^th President sat his jellybean-eating backside down in the Oval Office there was this notion that children’s programming should be high-minded and educational. Old Dutch might not have known what day it was but he knew better. He opened the door and loosed the rules so that the toy manufacturers and the junk food producers could run wild like a NAMBLA meeting at a Toys R Us. Thanks to Ronald Wilson Reagan plump kids could now hector their parents for hours for the latest plastic piece of garbage made in China and go to sleep dreaming of Little Debbie cakes, Ding Dongs, and greenish fast food hamburgers. Why am I praising this? Because, it made children’s entertainment much better. Before Reagan, children’s programming was an after thought. Because there was no real money to be made, television executives could not have cared less what mind numbing garbage kids watched. It was an afterthought. But bring in some psychologists and ad men to turn your child into a Manchurian candidate for sugar and corn slurp and there is money in them there hills. Translation, more money means more attention and more effort to get more kid’s to watch your shows, i.e. better programming.

I should know, I grew up in the dog days of kiddie TV when it was a Bataan death march on Saturday morning. Do not believe me, try these shows on for size. H.R. Pufnstuf – Long before homosexuals were out of the closet, they were making children’s television. The plot – the only female on the show, Witchiepoo (Billie Hayes) wants to get her hands on long-haired British dude Jimmy’s magic flute and Mayor Pufnstuf, a male creature in white go-go boots, will do everything in his power to prevent it. I wish I was making this up. C.B. Bears – Long before cell phones, the latest craze to sweep America were CB radios, they were like adult walkie-talkies a person had in their car so you could talk to methed out truckers and strangers who wanted you to pull into the nearest rest stop because they had something to show you. Imagine the three bears without Goldilocks as truckers Boogie, Hustle and Bump, who hit the road solving mysteries. Even as a little kid I thought C.B. Bears was a great name for a male porn star and almost wet myself every time someone on the show would say let’s go “Boogie, Hustle, and Bump.” “Uncle Croc’s Shop” – Charles Nelson Reilly who if he was ever in the closet always had one foot planted firmly in the door jam was self-hating kid show host Uncle Croc. Now if you are trying to hide that you are flaming gay in an era where teachers were being fired for being such what is the worst name possible for a major foil for you to play off of and what might be the most inappropriate name for the main cartoon you show every week? Answer: Mr. Basil Bitterbottom and Wacky and Packy. Ghost Busters - In a time before a washed up actor could do a reality show to keep their name in the public eye, when your career went south, you either did soft core porn like Adam West, Tony Curtis, or Larry Hagman or Saturday morning television for a paycheck. One step above panhandling, Larry Storch and Forrest Tucker, O’Rourke and Agarn of “F Troop,” play live action ghost busters. Instead of Wrangler Jane, their female companion was a gorilla named Tracy. (The gag was Tucker’s character’s last name was Kong.)

Once Hasbro and Mattel knew that they could run 30-minute long commercials that would have crumb crunchers begging their mommy and daddy for stuff made by kids in factories in China, children’s programming got interesting – He-Man, Transformers, Thundercats, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Micronauts, etc. It also gave new life to a toy that had seen its better days, G.I. Joe.

Lyndon Johnson was in the White House ramping up the Vietnam War and Stan Weston, a toy creator, was marveling at the success that the Barbie doll was having with girls and thought boys should have the same thing. What better toy for future cannon fodder in some Far East jungle than a doll in a military uniform to play war with. Inspired by the 1945 World War II film, The Story of G.I. Joe, Hasbro decided to give this military line of dolls the title “G.I. Joe,”. “G.I.” was the military term for “general issue” and Joe was the generic name for most servicemen. There were three distinct dolls in the first line – Skip, the sailor, Ace, the pilot, and Rocky, the marine. (The only way they could have come up with gayer names for these action figures is if they had done a survey in a San Francisco bathhouse on Judy Garland night.) Tanks, Jeeps, changes in clothes, weapons and other accessories soon followed. As Vietnam wore on, G.I. Joe became as welcome in most houses as Martin Luther King being the keynote speaker at a Klan rally. In 1970, Joe was relaunched under the banner of “Adventure Team” No longer was Joe burning down villages and dropping napalm. He was having hilarious adventures with machine guns and Zippo lighters. To show that he was young and hip, our little plastic man was even given a beard, a “Kung-Fu Grip,” and an “eagle-eye.” So for most of the last 40 years, Joe has fought animals, aliens and forces of nature. In 1990, Joe got his own cartoon and even though Reagan had kicked some brown people’s butts down in Central America, Hasbro, again wanted to stay away from the military thing. So, Joe was given a James Bond theme, his new enemy was a terrorist group called Cobra, maybe the dumbest terrorist group ever.

So if Ronald Reagan taught us anything, it is that Jesus Christ died so we can make money and the best form of patriotism is ATM patriotism, so it is ironic that so many on the far right were upset with this movie. The reason Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and the Fox News is so upset with G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is that “liberal Hollywood” acted like conservative red, white, and blue America and wanted the largest amount of cash possible. The talking heads who had watched none of the incarnations of G.I. Joe in the last thirty years were upset that the “G.I.” in G.I. Joe no longer stood for “general issue.” The movie was not about American ass kicking. Okay, Paramount Pictures is trying to do the same thing that Hasbro Toys did, make money, and nothing is more all-American than making cold, hard cash. Most money is made in foreign distribution. In other words, we are not too popular in the world after the last idiot, who was the decider, ran this country, so watching Joe water board some Arab taxi cab driver might not sell the tickets across the pond.

Much like Transformers, G.I. Joe has a built in audience of young adults who did not realize they were watching crap as a kid and the newest G.I. movie is an even bigger, steamier pile of it. Paramount wants a franchise and this is the origin story of the franchise. A good sign that you know the movie is going to be bad is when it is an assembly movie and Dennis Quaid is the cast. While he does great work in smaller pictures, he is the biggest name in Hollywood willing to work for a smaller paycheck and with no concern for the script. The only other two names in the cast that anyone might recognize is Sienna Miller, an actress whose personal life has been more interesting than her movies, and Marlon Wayans, one of the Wayans brothers from “In Living Color” fame. It is crap, not worth giving one inch of space to this tale of how the anti-terrorist team G.I. Joe got started. Trust me, just say no to Joe.

Verdict: No Joe