by Don Hall

Bill Murray saved my life in high school.

I was always a bit of an outlier in grade school. A smartass. A kid who tried to redefine himself multiple times due to being the new kid in every school, every year. I believe that because I was perpetually new to each system in place, I was able to be more objective about the flaws in those systems. I could see through the built in hypocrisies and the shallowness of the popular crowds.

On the other hand, maybe I was just an asshole who decided early on to play things by my own set of rules.

When Murray came out in 1979 with Meatballs the caricature of my character became popular in a way that only pop culture can define. The rules were flaccid and pointless he told us. Everything was a joke he proclaimed. No wonder my teachers mostly hated me.

In 1980, as I joined the awful social experiment known as high school, my mom had had about enough and I started getting appointments set up for me with military recruiters. The idea being that perhaps being indoctrinated into a highly disciplined, brutally conformist system that I couldn’t escape from would sand off my anti-authoritarian edges and prime me better for life.

In 1981 my cinematic, comedic hero answered the call that asked and answered the question: What if the Army took in a squad of the least capable idiots ever comprised for military service and they managed to succeed despite all evidence to the contrary?

Stripes
Directed by  Ivan Reitman
Written by Len Blum, Dan Goldberg, Harold Ramis

From the get-go, John Winger (Murray) is shown to be a complete loser man-boy. In the first five minutes, he has two guys ditch the fare in his cab, he abandons his cab on a bridge because his new fare is a caustic old woman, his car is repossessed, and his live-in girlfriend dumps him because he is basically coasting through life and squandering any future she may have with him.

His best friend Russell (Ramis) is seen to be a completely unqualified ESL teacher for new New York immigrants who doesn’t really take his employ seriously and for his first lesson teaches his class to sing the refrain of “Da Do Ron Ron.”

Life has passed them by so Winger convinces Russell to join the Army because Why Not?

Thus the two enlist and are instantly surrounded by a cast of complete outcasts, idiots, and miscreants who basically had the same idea. They meet two hot MPs (P.J. Soles and Sean Young) who remarkably take a shine to them and the inevitable representation of Boot Camp authority, Sergeant Hulka (Warren Oates).

The plotline exists solely to showcase the sort of early SNL sketch moments of these ridiculous fish-out-of-water morons navigating the Army: buzzcuts, marching pointlessly, a tell-us-your-story session with Hulka, clashes between the Sarge and Winger, the night of leave at a strip club with women mud wrestling (remember when this was a thing?), and a classic moment that apes the commercials of the day as the morons slowly crawl back to the barracks, exhausted, singing the “Be All You Can Be” jingle.

The two hot MPs whisk them away from being arrested from the strip club and then we have the two loser dudes have bizarre childish sexy times with them.

The inevitable Bad News Bears triumph, the assignment to a classified operation involving a militarized Winnebago, an illegal infiltration of Czechoslovakia and RV rescue, and a wrap-up where everyone but P.J. Soles comes out as a hero (her big post-Stripes achievement is the cover of Playboy.)

Throughout it all, Murray maintains his smarmy, smartass objectivity. 

PROBLEMATIC MOMENTS/THEMES

Oh man. Stripes is a relative stew of problematic elements, simmering without malice but just as tasty when the ingredients are sussed out.

Mocking immigrants? Check.

“Monkeyheaded chicks” when referring to Vietnamese women? Check.

Unnecessary topless women. Check. Check, check, check, and check.

Token black actors with lines that only reflect that they are, in fact, black? Check.

Speaking of gratuitous boobs, why does Captain Stillman (John Larroquette) have to be pulling a Porky’s move and spying on naked women in the shower on a military base with almost no women present almost anywhere? 

Mild homophobic humor (cuz being gay was funny in the 80s…) Check.

DID IT HOLD UP?

Let’s face it. Under the scrutiny of 2019 and the Overwhelming Parade of Wokeness, this film is not making the cut.

BUT.

I love early Bill Murray. On some level, I feel his man-child attitude was exactly what a fourteen-year old kid needed: someone who threw all of the conformity and mundanity of adult life and said “Fuck this, man. Let’s behave as if none of it matters and laugh like loons at all the squares!” As an adult in his fifties, I can see that this lifestyle, this dogma of nonconformity and 1970’s SNL thumbing noses at the Establishment, wears thin pretty soon.

My guess is that the Gen Z kids out there will feel the same way when the re-watch some of their Woke heroes on film.

In my teens, I saw Winger’s perspective. In my fifties, I totally understand his girlfriend when she dumps him. In my teens, Sergeant Hulka was The Boot on the Neck of the Hero. In my fifties, he’s the hero. Or at least not the bad guy. I mean, Murray’s the hero despite learning nothing and maintaining his heathy disdain for humanity.

One part of the disconnect from films of the 1980s and today is that then there was less a need for every piece of film to have a political message of some kind. Today, whether the movie is driving at a message or not, the introspection of every film is to look deeply for the message it’s sending. In the black and white paradigm of Oppressors and Oppressed, we are no longer looking at the fun but the Good and Evil in every casting choice, every plot device, every line or joke.

So. Did it hold up? Probably not but I’m keeping my VHS copy until the day I die for the same reason I still keep Abbey Road and always have a copy of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. It’s simply a part of who I am and a benchmark of who I have become. It also still makes me laugh.

OVERALL

Scale of 1 to 10
1 = Classic
10 = Burn all VHS copies of it

For Me: Stripes gets a 2.
For Everybody Else: 7

Next Up: Amazon Women on the Moon (1987)