Rambo: Pope of the Church of the Holy Gun
When one of my favorites blogs, The House Next Door, began the Summer of '85 series of posts and asked for submissions, I decided to give it a try. I looked up a list of movies that had come out that summer to see if any were ones I could write about, and lo and behold, many were major films of my childhood. (One, Pumping Iron 2 , was directed by George Butler, who lives a couple towns over from me and once took my father hunting with Arnold Schwartzenegger, or so my father claimed.) Though I could have chosen many of the summer of '85's films to write about, one was so obvious I couldn't ignore it -- Rambo: First Blood Part II . I emailed House editor Keith Uhlich, and he said go for it. I thought I might write 800 words or so. It got a bit longer than that. Despite the current length, the essay feels bare bones to me -- there's a lot more to say about Reagan and Rambo, about gender and masculinity, and about all four Rambo films together, because they...
