Bring On 'The Expendables': I Was a Teenage 'Expendable'

Rumor has it that Sylvester Stallone’s The Expendables marks a return to the glory days of 1980s action mayhem and pro-American machismo. Its appearance on the cultural horizon has certainly stirred up memories of my mid-Eighties, Midwestern suburban adolescence.

It also brings to mind an excellent documentary I saw a few years back called Bigger, Stronger, Faster* (2008 — the asterisk leads to a footnote: “*The Side Effects of Being American”). You can check out the spectacularly funny, rousing, and nostalgic first ten minutes (and then the whole movie, if so inclined) at YouTube:

[youtube a-8MY1Gep_A — click here to watch full-screen]

Stallone, Schwarzenegger, the Hulkster — all are members of a category of celebrity I described in a previous BH article as “silly video-game tough guys.” The walls of countless Reagan-era boys, myself among them, were papered over with posters and photos of these oversized he-men. Throughout our teen years we read their exercise books and magazine interviews, followed their advice, and strove to live up to their examples.

Examples that, as it turned out, were far too good to be true.

The director/narrator of Bigger, Stronger, Faster*, Chris Bell, kindly but thoroughly strips his beloved childhood icons of their mythic qualities, reducing them to a series of ordinary men who used tricks, illusion, and lots and lots of steroids to become larger than life to millions of youngsters. “It is kind of sad in a way,” Bell said in a Sundance interview at the time his movie was released, “how all of our heroes in America are now falling.”

Add to that his documentary’s many vignettes of confused, aging fans still following their muscle-bound pied pipers after so long. Their stories are heartbreaking, because many of us harbored similar fantasies of stardom and badassery once upon a time, and on some deep level there remains a whole lot of our own hopes and dreams wrapped up in those forlorn guys still waiting for their pro wrestling or action star trains to roll in. It’s a chilling realization that prompts me to mutter, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

Largely left out of the analysis, though, is the more sensible side of the coin. The vast majority of boys who marinated themselves in the action films of the 1980s dreamed of being mighty and indomitable like Sly and Arnold, yes, but unlike the outliers of Bigger, Stronger, Faster*, they left those fantasies behind as they grew older and mortality set in. Nevertheless — and this is the important part — they retain to this day some healthy inner fire of masculinity from those pictures that’s served them well in their adult lives.

How many men serving with distinction and bravery in our armed forces can trace the genesis of their decision to enlist to Rambo or Commando? How many fathers who’ve fought off intruders in their homes can credit their successful defense of their families to martial arts and weapons training undertaken when they were teens in thrall to “silly” cinematic heroes? How many guys who’ve rescued people trapped in floods or fires or raging rivers did so by calling on notions of courage hammered into their heads over two decades ago, and using muscles once built by youthful sessions of pumping iron in rooms decorated by large posters featuring stern action heroes gazing down on their efforts like dark demi-gods?

Yes, movies like The Expendables can be silly. But then, on that narrow basis of criticism, so are classic action extravaganzas like The Iliad, rife as they are with ultra-bloody scenes featuring warriors cutting down ten or twenty enemies at a clip. So are Westerns with their ritualized duels and codes of honor and amazing pistoleering, all of it at odds with much of real history. Whenever you veer too far towards the realm of the impossible, it’s going to strike many as silly.

But it’s thoughtless misandry to dismiss these myths as unimportant or, even worse, as a form of violent pornography that young boys need protection from. The inherently brutal nature of males isn’t a design flaw but a feature, and cultures need fierce heroes to guide boys toward ideals of masculine and martial perfection. Wiser minds adhere to the dictum expressed so memorably in John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” We mere mortals emulate these legends imperfectly, but our country and families are the better for our having tucked away some of those savage lessons to be called upon when needed.

The Expendables, like the 1980s action movies that came before it, looks set to once again “print the legend” in all of its wild implausibility and silly, bloodthirsty grandeur. I’m old enough now to know it’s a legend, but I’ll be eager to see the movie anyway, as ready as always to engage in that age-old ritual of using the fantasy world of the impossible to fortify and strengthen and reassure the real world of the possible.

And if you think that’s crazy talk, or reading way too much into a blissfully mindless popcorn movie, then I feel sorry for you, I really do. How pathetic to see otherwise decent and intelligent people lost in a candy-colored fantasy world more ridiculous than the most preposterous action film, too unreflective to realize that their smug stance of non-violence is a luxury made possible only by the sacrifices of strong men of heroic spirit who stand ready to do life’s bloody work for them.