7:9:23
Mel Gibson interview about Lethal Weapon, 1987
In an email to a male friend, who has also been rewatching the Lethal Weapon movies—he started after I posted about it—I wrote:
“i've been watching george michael videos--whose voice i have always loved--a lot and thinking how sensitive and interesting these old stars and talents used to be, before they were ruined. at least before there was a before. now you don't ever even see people start off innocent because the internet/phones has already debased and corrupted--mk-ultra'd them--from childhood.
i love the relationship between riggs and murtaugh in lethal weapon. it's great, even as each sequel gets worse and worse. pesci is amazing. such a great (odd) character. riggs is so loving toward women. it's such a compelling/moving contrast. is that the secret to heterosexual manhood--knowing when to be strong/fight and when to be tender and loving? we've completely lost that. destroyed that. it's all been perverted and confused.”
“Natural creatures.”
What are we now? Everyone is so weak. So weakened. So unnatural. In anger, I find it all pathetic. Uninspiring.
The only people I see now that see me as I see them, are kids. We wave at each other on the street. They do double takes. Look me in the eyes. I root for them to last as long as possible. For their parents to do their job: protect them from the world. Protect NOT coddle. Preserve them. Make them strong and ethical and good—which is how they start out. With everything inside of them.
The week before, after I posted screenshots from the first Lethal Weapon, and it’s Mk-ultra background for Riggs, my same friend responded:
“Strange, perhaps, that a new vitality would come for cinema in its red pilling. That post-covid cinema would mean that and not something else. I guess it's almost an allegorical way of watching films, except that with the original Lethal Weapon what was perhaps an allegory at the time is now just a direct statement of fact. Hiding in plain sight all along.”
This cinema-as-red-pilling could also be called, “shock history,” as Celia Farber puts it. That is, the shock of realizing of realizing we have not understood what we have seen—and lived through—throughout our lives.
Upon rewatching the Lethal Weapons films. it turns out these movie—at least the first three—are weirdly ethical. Friendship, family, love, courage. An abiding loyalty to high principles. These kind of blockbusters would never be made today. I love that Riggs is okay being this white man whose entire life revolves around a black family—normally, it’s the other way around in movies. Riggs adores Murtaugh entire brood. He is truly devoted to them. Protective of them. He is always there for Murtaugh, like a gentle watch dog. I love how in the 3rd sequel, Riggs tells a drunk and grieving Murtaugh that Murtaugh’s kids are also his kids; that he loves them that much. It’s so touching. In the 1980s and 90s, the fantasy was actually real. Now supposed reality is pure fantasy, gaslighting all of us into I don’t know what, Like the vomitous Sex and the City and it’s empty-as-fuck (the show has NOTHING to say) reboot, And Just Like That.
