"What Mean Expendable?

": Myth, Ideology, and Meaning in First Blood and Rambo by Frank Sweeney The year 1982 introduced to moviegoers a character that would eventually become a major popular culture icon, John Rambo. This is the year First Blood was released, which features Sylvester Stallone as an alienated and neglected Vietnam veteran who seems to roam the country until he enters the wrong town. Three years later, Rambo was back in full force with Rambo: First Blood, Part II (from this point on referred to as Rambo or Part II). This time, Rambo gets released from a prison camp he is sent to after the first film to return to Vietnam in search of POWs. The first film was a success, making approximately 13 million dollars, a respectable amount for the time. However, its sequel was a phenomenal success, pulling in over 150 million dollars, and planting the image and persona of Rambo into cultural history. Rambo's popularity was so immense that it spawned a Saturday morning cartoon, "Rambo-grams," candy bars, and a water gun based on his rifle-an ironic development because for much of these films he is without it (Goldman 60). President Reagan even referred to him in a press conference concerning the hijacking of TWA Flight #847, saying, "Boy, I'm glad I saw Rambo last night. Now I know what to do next time" (qtd. in Budra 189, 192). Why was Rambo so successful in both economic and cultural arenas? The first two Rambo movies are filled with ideology, American myth, and character representations that, consciously or not, appealed to a wide range of people. Carol Fry and Christopher Kemp put it aptly: "They give us a modern champion... who in his agony provides a fantasy victory over cultural and historical forces which are beyond the power of the audience to control" (368). In other words, the films tap into and incorporate different tenets and issues that, together or alone, feed a cultural desire that has resulted in the immense notoriety of their hero. Vengeance and Allegory First Blood is obviously a revenge fantasy with an unjustifiably abused victim giving his persecutors what they rightfully deserve. Rambo is arrested and mistreated by intolerant sheriffs, but he escapes into the forest. It is there that his revenge is obtainable, for Rambo is a master of guerrilla warfare. As John Hellmann points out, his revenge is realized through both Sylvester Stallone's "superhuman masculine power" and his violence drawn out as a cathartic response to the wrongs committed against Rambo (140). In this sense, the film appeals to anyone who has ever been a victim or oppressed even in the slightest situation. First Blood taps the natural desire people have for vengeance when their liberties or dignity are compromised. And Rambo certainly gets his revenge on the parochial sheriff's department of a town called Hope. Although only one man actually dies, and this essentially by accident (he falls out of a helicopter while trying to shoot Rambo), Rambo's utter destruction of the town at the film's climax and the serious injuries inflicted on most of the deputies, especially his nemesis, Sheriff Will Teasle, create enough satisfaction to appease the viewer and even Rambo. However, First Blood is more than just a revenge fantasy, because John Rambo is not just another underdog. He is a Vietnam vet, and an ex-Green Beret at that. This status brings another dimension into the film. Everyone knows about the stories of soldiers returning from Vietnam only to be looked at scornfully by an ungrateful nation. In fact, Rambo complains of this himself in his climactic monologue: "Then I come back to the world and I see all these maggots at the airport, protestin' me, spittin', calling me baby killer and all types of vile crap!" Because Rambo and the vets he symbolizes carry this grudge, his revenge is also payback for such treatment. Hellmann calls the film "a transparent, and disturbing, strategy of compensation for postdefeat feelings of frustration and inadequacy" (140). First Blood can also be viewed as an allegory of the Vietnam war itself. This view says multiple things

about American involvement in that war. Michael Comber and Margaret O'Brien note that Rambo, while the hero of the film, represents the Viet Cong both in their opposition to the "good guys" and their fighting strategy (258). Trained as a Green Beret, Rambo certainly knows the tactics of guerrilla warfare. In contrast, the sheriff's department, and also the National Guard who are called in later, signify Americans and their traditional style of warfare brought to the jungle. Rambo outsmarts his counterparts, much like the VC did, and could easily have killed all the deputies had he chosen to do so. Rambo's use of guerrilla tactics and his position as the bad guy suggest that America fought the war the wrong way. Similarly, if the sheriff's department's men are the antagonists, this ironic reversal would suggest that any American involvement in the war was wrong. The deputies, representing America, are the enemy who is unjustifiably pursuing a "war" against Rambo, who represents the Viet Cong. This allegory is perhaps at its most obvious when Rambo escapes to an abandoned mine shaft. This setting is symbolic of the extensive tunnels the Viet Cong used. National Guard troops are on Rambo's tail, and the tunnel is his only refuge. However, the troops still have to get Rambo out somehow, as orders call for his capture alive. The lieutenant orders a couple of his men to go to the front of the mine and is answered "screw that." He then orders another man to do it, but again finds only refusal. In the end, the men resort to firing a rocket into the tunnel, and Rambo is forced back and then presumed to be dead. This scene clearly echoes the reluctance of American troops in Vietnam who were forced to search tunnels before they could be destroyed. The soldiers knew the extreme danger of the job, just as these men knew the extreme danger that came with Rambo. This allegory can be stretched so far as to say that Rambo's destruction and capture of the sheriff's department is equivalent to the fall of Saigon. The problem here arises in that Rambo is captured and thus (temporarily) defeated, and the North Vietnamese were not. Regardless, the allegorical possibilities of First Blood at a minimum reflect the sentiments of disillusioned grunts. In his memoir, A Rumor of War, Philip Caputo describes his own realizations about the war: "[I]t occurred to me that we were becoming more and more like our enemy.... We could now move through the jungle as stealthily as they.... In fact, we had more in common with the Viet Cong than we did with that army of clerks and staff officers in the rear" (276-77). Rambo in the Frontier Another reason for the success of First Blood, and certainly that of Rambo, is the films' appropriation of the myth of the American frontier. Harold Schechter and Jonna G. Semeiks argue that the appeal of Rambo, as well as that of Platoon, is that they are "an archetypically American frontier adventure transposed to the jungles of Vietnam" (18). This is true not only in the plot elements of each Rambo film, and especially those of the sequel, but also in Rambo's attire and image. For centuries after European settlers first arrived, America was deemed a land of untamed wilderness, and until the end of the nineteenth century, the idea of manifest destiny and the frontier played a significant role in popular discourse. Because of the nation's past, the frontier and thus the frontier hero have been incorporated into American ideology, folklore, and myth. As defined by Richard Slotkin, a myth is "a narrative which concentrates in a single, dramatized experience the whole history of a people in their land" (Regeneration 269). Slotkin argues that the archetypal figure of the Myth of the American Frontier is Daniel Boone, as his story was told by John Filson. Boone's story qualifies as a myth because it incorporates into a single hero "all the significant strands of thought and belief about the frontier that had been developed in the historical experience of the colonies" (269). The same qualities that defined Daniel Boone, as Schechter and Semeiks point out, are also found in the character of John Rambo (23). Slotkin comments that Boone "must be stripped to the barest essentials for survival, in order to meet nature directly and without encumbrances" (281). The same is true for Rambo in both films. In First Blood, Rambo is a wandering loner with nothing but a backpack and survival knife.

After he escapes from the police station and is chased into the woods, he is alone with just his knife. Hunted by the sheriff's department, whose men are armed with M-16s (like the American soldiers in Vietnam), Rambo resourcefully uses what he has and what he can make out of his surroundings. Rambo's "stripping" is even more extreme in Part II. Equipped with the most high-tech devices available to do the job, Rambo literally has to cut them loose when his parachute gets snagged on the plane. When he lands in the jungle, he is left with a bow and arrows and, again, the survival knife. These are, of course, the traditional weapons of the indigenous inhabitants of the American frontier. Other traits that Boone and Rambo share are stoicism and solitude, a "career of semi-nomadic wandering," and a "sense of identification with the land" (Schechter and Semeiks 23). In fact, if there is one word to describe Rambo, the best choice may be stoic. Although he rarely speaks, when he does it is usually an unemotional, phlegmatic drawl (when he displays rage it is either through destruction, killing, or primal scream). This is further seen in Rambo's reluctance to answer his inquisitors, both the deputies in Blood and the Russians in Part II. Rambo is essentially a loner, Colonel Trautman perhaps being his only friend. In his monologue of despair at the end of the first film, Rambo tells Trautman, "I don't talk to anybody. Sometimes a day, sometimes a week." On what he has done with his life after the war, Rambo says, "I've moved around a lot." Furthermore, at the end of Part II, Rambo walks off into the jungle to live "day by day." Rambo's identification with the land is demonstrated throughout each film in his mastery over the harsh environment and his defeat of the enemy by using his surroundings as a tool for disguise and traps. This mastery is ironic for, as Charles Molesworth points out, it was a popular belief that the jungle was the reason for America's defeat in the war (110). While Rambo may embody the qualities of the traditional frontier hero, the plot of Part II appropriates that of a traditional American genre, the captivity narrative. This genre was among the most popular and prevalent of adventure stories during the eighteenth century (Slotkin, Gunfighter 14). The pattern of these stories involves a white woman, symbolizing the values of civilization, who is captured by the Indians, and by resisting their threats and temptations vindicates the values she represents (14-15). In Part II, the woman is replaced by POWs, the Indians by the Vietnamese, and Rambo is the hero that single-handedly saves them. Other elements of the captivity narrative that the film uses include the hero's capture, torture, and escape, chases and pursuits, and the hero's display of wilderness skills (Schechter and Semeiks 24). John Rambo: Victim The Myth of the American Frontier is just one possible explanation for the success and lasting image of Rambo. A second type of appeal the films may create is explained by Gaylyn Studlar and David Desser. In "Never Having to Say You're Sorry: Rambo's Rewriting of the Vietnam War," Studlar and Desser argue that films like Rambo try to cope with a cultural guilt that America suffers because of its involvement in the Vietnam War. They claim that the central historical question about Vietnam is "How can the U.S. deal with not only its defeat in Vietnam, but with the fact that it never should have been there in the first place?" (102). It is a situation comparable to that of the Japanese after World War II and the Germans after the fall of the Third Reich. Citing Freud, Studlar and Desser note that individuals find guilt intolerable and thus try to repress it, and that a culture will do the same. Because guilt always finds an unconscious "avenue of expression" in the individual, it should thus do the same for a culture, and this is why films like Rambo find wide audiences (102). One way a culture deals with an unsatisfactory event in its past is by the "will to myth." This, according to Studlar and Desser, is "a communal need, a cultural drive for a reconstruction of the national past in light of the present, which is, by definition of necessity, better" (103). The way in which America, just like post-World War I Germany, manifested this was through the "stab in the back" theory. This theory was enacted through the common strategy of the will to myth-the substitution of one question for another (103). Psychoanalysis calls this displacement, and it is responsible for scapegoating on both individual and cultural levels. In the series of Vietnam POW films of which Rambo is the best example, the question

of right or wrong is replaced by the question "What is our obligation to the veterans of the war?" (104). Validating society's responsibility to veterans is not the same as validating our participation in the war, but "answering the second question mythically rewrites the answer to the first" (104). By focusing on issues related to veterans, the sensitive and controversial subject of American involvement in Vietnam is avoided. Studlar and Desser argue that one of the key strategies in the displacement of the question of right or wrong is that of victimization. Many of the Vietnam films of the 1980s, both those of right-wing revisionism (Rambo, Uncommon Valor) and of a more realistic approach (Platoon, Full Metal Jacket), all portray American soldiers as victims (104-5). The right-wing films "justify a private war of national retribution for the personal sacrifice of vets," and the realistic films show the victimization of draftees or enlisted men (104). Rambo and other right-wing films use the rumor that American POWs and MIAs are still being held captive in Vietnam as mythic substitution. Studlar and Desser believe that the status of Rambo as the highestgrossing Vietnam film thus far and its cultural ubiquity "speaks to the power of the will to myth": The need to believe in the MIAs gives credence to the view that the Vietnamese are now and therefore always have been an inhuman and cruel enemy. Vietnam's alleged actions in presently holding American prisoners serves as an index of our essential rightness in fighting such an enemy in the past. (105) Rambo is filled with images of POWs as mistreated and abused captives of inhumane Vietnamese. Rambo enters the camp and finds a number of Americans in a large bamboo cage. The camera then pans slowly over their dirty, weak, unshaven bodies lying next to fist-sized spiders and overgrown rats. The tone of the score changes from excitement to sympathetic seriousness and shame. Rambo continues to search the camp only to find one other POW, complete with brown hair and beard, crucified. This immediately evokes the traditional image of Christ, thus associating him with the POWs. They are making a sacrifice for a country that betrayed them. Besides the POWs, Part II depicts victimization through governmental exploitation of Rambo (Studlar and Desser 106). He is given the opportunity to earn a pardon if he goes on a reconnaissance mission to photograph any possibly living POWs. The testimony on the issue by a veteran as decorated as Rambo, the bureaucrats hope, should appease the wondering public by showing them that if a man the likes of Rambo could not find any POWs, there must not be any. However, Rambo's findings have been predetermined by the government: no Americans will be found (106). When, much to the surprise of Murdoch, the bureaucrat in charge of the mission, Rambo returns to the pickup point with a living and breathing POW, the only alternative is to leave him behind for the Vietnamese who were on his tail. This is done, much to the dismay of Colonel Trautman, but as Murdoch later points out, he is just a "tool" as well. Thus, when Rambo tells Trautman before he boards the plane, "You're the only one I trust," it is really a message to the viewer: don't trust the government. Rambo is further depicted as a victim in both films because his vengeance "crucially hinges on his status as present and past victim, as neglected, misunderstood, and exploited veteran" (Studlar and Desser 107). In First Blood, Rambo is innocent of any crime when he is arrested; he is just a man passing through town looking for a place to eat. The sheriff tells him, "You know, wearing that flag on that jacket, looking the way you do, you're asking for trouble around here, friend." Besides villainizing the sheriff, this scene in a sense represents the treatment of all Vietnam vets because, in 1982, it would be more than likely that a man wearing a green jacket with an American flag on it, such as Rambo's, was a vet. It suggests that Rambo and all vets are wrong for loving their country and in fighting in the war like they were asked to. As Rambo says in his climactic monologue, "You asked me; I didn't ask you." In fact, this whole monologue tries to evoke sympathy for Rambo as a veteran and victim of the Vietnam War. He goes on a rant about how they weren't allowed to win (a claim that, of course, returns for the

sequel), how people called him "baby killer and all types of vile crap," how he doesn't fit into civilian society or can't hold a job ("I was in charge of million dollar equipment; back here I can't even hold a job parking cars!"), and how his best friend's guts were all over his body as the guy died in his arms. Although the film may want us to think otherwise, this was not the situation that most vets found themselves in. This depiction is important because it reinforces the idea that all veterans were victims of an unappreciative society and untrustworthy government, unable to cope in the "real world" and left with nothing but physical and mental scars. The idea of Rambo as exploited victim of the government is used to the fullest extent in Part II. On the boat ride to their destination, Co Bao, Rambo's female Vietnamese intelligence agent, asks him, "Is that why they pick you? You like to fight?" Rambo corrects her, "No, I'm expendable." When Rambo is left by the helicopter, his status as expendable is confirmed. His life is not worth the chance of the truth that there really are American captives in Vietnam leaking to the public. Rambo's findings contradict how Murdoch and the government he represents intend to handle the situation, and so he has to be stopped. Rambo's victimization is made quite obvious through the use of Christ imagery, as seen with the POWs. Tortured by the Vietnamese and then the Russians, Rambo's arms and torso form the "T" of a cross, and his head is often tilted to the side like Christ's. In one shot, the camera is at a low angle looking up at his propped-up body. The sun is in the frame and creates a sort of silhouette as Rambo is seen in agony. He is later tied up in a similar manner to a metal bed frame and electrocuted. Albert Auster and Leonard Quart point out that after he escapes, Rambo is "resurrected" as a superman, as he singlehandedly defeats the entire force of Vietnamese and Russian soldiers (109). Rambo endures his torture for the POWs, and is thus not only symbolically their savior, but also quite literally, for he later returns to free them. The dialogue between Rambo and Trautman at the end of Part II puts a close to the vet as victim motif. Trautman tells him not to hate his country because of everything that happened, and Rambo replies, "Hate? I'd die for it." Trautman then asks what exactly it is that Rambo wants, to which he says, "I want what they want [pointing to the POWs] and every other guy who came over here and spilt his guts and gave everything wants-for our country to love us as much as we love it. That's what I want." This statement, along with the resentment and anguish in Rambo's face and voice, tells us that America has neglected its vets and not given them the respect and honor they deserve for the sacrifices they made. Stallone confirms this in an interview in which he voiced his own take on what Rambo wants: "He's telling you that men who fought for their country...deserve to be honored" (Grenier). The film makes Rambo and the POWs look like rejected orphans that no one was willing to adopt. It would be hard to portray their victimization any more blatantly, didactically, or pathetically. They are the ultimate victims. After giving this lecture, Rambo begins to walk off, and Trautman asks him, "How will you live, John?" Rambo answers, "Day by day." This ending is a not-so-subtle copy of the ending of I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), in which the main character is duped by the government and not given a pardon like he was told he would. He escapes, and while on the run quickly visits his fiance, who asks, "How do you live?" He answers, "I steal," and disappears into the darkness of the night. I Am a Fugitive is a social-- consciousness film about the horrid conditions of the Georgia chain gangs (although the state was unnamed in the film). Studlar and Desser, as well as Gregory Waller, note the similar endings of both films, but fail to mention their connection beyond this (Studlar and Desser 110; Waller 125). Although ultimately unsuccessful, by borrowing I Am a Fugitive's famous ending, Rambo creates the semblance of a similar type of film. It tells the audience to treat Vietnam veterans better because the way they are and have been received and regarded has been unsatisfactory. Rambo and his fellow veterans are, just like James Allen of I Am a Fugitive, victims of an untrustworthy and deceitful government. Rambo, representing the treatment of all veterans, is a fugitive as well. Alienated, he is unable to return to the country he loves and is destined to be forever on the move. Taking on the Enemy and Its Instruments of War

Both of the first two Rambo films were produced within slightly more than ten years of Watergate and Nixon's resignation. Furthermore, the publication of the "Pentagon Papers" in 1971 revealed the extent that Kennedy and Johnson lied to the nation concerning what really happened in Vietnam. These historical events have created feelings of distrust and skepticism toward the government that are embodied in the character of Rambo. In the first film, the untrustworthy government is represented by the narrow-minded and intolerant sheriff and his deputies. As mentioned before, the sheriff won't even let Rambo eat in his town, which is ironically named Hope. The sheriff goes so far as to escort him out of town, and when he comes back, arrests him. The deputies treat him badly, telling him, "You lookin' for trouble, you came to the right place, buddy." After Rambo has implausibly jumped off the side of a cliff and broken his fall in a tree, the cruelest deputy shoots at him from a helicopter, but Rambo accidentally kills him by indirectly making him fall out. When he comes out to say he doesn't want anyone else hurt, the rest of the men shoot at him. Clearly they are not going to treat Rambo in a professional manner, the way in which a sheriff should treat someone who is surrendering. The sheriff's evil is epitomized in something he tells his deputies: "I'm gonna get that son of a bitch, and I'm going to pin that Congressional Medal of Honor to his liver." In Part II, the government is represented by the bureaucrat Murdoch. Rambo initially knows Murdoch is not to be trusted because he tells a lie about where he served during the war. An expert on the subject, Rambo knows Murdoch's claim isn't true and warns Trautman of it. But Murdoch's despicable character is fully manifested when Rambo and the POW are about to be picked up, but Murdoch orders the helicopter to abort the mission. Trautman tries to get them to continue, but another man puts a gun to his head. Trautman yells at them, "You goddamn mercenaries! There's men down there, our men." He is told, "No, your men." When they return, Trautman asks Murdoch, "It was a lie wasn't it, just like the whole damn war!" Trautman later calls him a "stinking bureaucrat who's trying to cover his ass," to which Murdoch says, "No, not just mine, Trautman, we're talking about a nation's." This exchange alludes to the revelations of the "Pentagon Papers," not just in the reference to the war as a lie, but also the infamous assessment of America's objectives in the war: "70 pct.-To avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat (to our reputation as a guarantor)" (qtd. in Baritz 159). Murdoch, who notably takes no offense to Trautman's charges, is symbolic of the perpetual attempts made by the government, both during Vietnam and after, to preserve its reputation and avoid letting the United States lose its first war. He does not want Rambo to find POWs because it will only open old wounds and remind the country of the many lives lost for what many considered a pointless and morally wrong war, that also resulted in humiliating defeat. In Part II, Rambo must defeat a hierarchical scale of enemies. Murdoch and the bureaucracy he represents are first, followed by the Russians, with the Vietnamese as the smallest threat. The film portrays the Vietnamese as both pawns of the Russians and "slow-witted victims of money, whiskey, and whores, not the experts at guerrilla warfare that they were" (Molesworth 110). Their depiction is racist, drawing on latent and not so latent sentiments Americans may feel towards the Vietnamese. They are like the Indians of the western, savage and always defeated. If the Vietnamese are like the Indians, then the Russians are like the venal traders who betrayed their race by selling ammunition to the Indians (Molesworth 110). Part 11 places the Russians, the stereotypical Cold War enemy, above the Vietnamese, but of course places Americans, represented by Rambo and even Murdoch, above everyone. Almost as abhorrent as bureaucracy to Rambo is technology. It was the "god that failed" during the war, and Rambo sees it as a tool of the bureaucracy that betrayed American soldiers (Budra 189). This is an interesting point, for it is contradictory to the myth that views technology as both a protector and savior of American values. That society is so dependent and reliant on technology makes Rambo's unfavorable stance toward it a peculiarity. Furthermore, much of Rambo's survivalism and lack of weaponry also ties back into the films' appropriation of the Myth of the American Frontier. However, his rejection of technology also has to do with its role in the war and what it represents, Because technology was the

"god that failed" and helped lose the war, Rambo forsakes it in favor of a return to a more old-time sense of virility and value. This rejection is displayed many times in the films. As mentioned earlier, Rambo fights his battles with just a survival knife, but then with a bow and arrows for the sequel. Although Rambo is not afraid to use a gun if he can get his hands on one, they are not necessary for him to survive or get the job done. Rambo even uses guns to destroy technology. In the end of First Blood, Rambo shoots up a large portion of the town with an M-60, most impressively a gas station which explodes in huge flames. It is worth noting that a gas station is, of course, necessary for fueling motor vehicles, another type of technology which Rambo does not seem to trust (in the beginning of First Blood, while he is initially seen walking to his dead friend's house, the sheriff literally drives him out of town, and so forth). Similarly, at the end of Part II, Rambo walks into the control room and shoots the many computers and devices that were supposed to be used for the mission on which he was betrayed. Perhaps the type of technology that, as Paul Budra argues, epitomizes the "intrusion of technology" in Rambo's world is the helicopter. It is the dominant image of most Vietnam War films, for it is a symbol of American power (191). Therefore, it is also a symbol of the technology that failed. Even with the extensive air power the United States had, it could not defeat the Vietnamese, who had none. Furthermore, in the Rambo films, helicopters are associated with the enemy (an ironic reversal carried over from the first film to the second). In First Blood, a deputy uses the services of a helicopter to shoot at Rambo as he tries to climb down a cliff (he ends up defeating it by throwing a rock through the cockpit window). In Part II, a helicopter is sent to pick Rambo up after his mission is completed, but of course leaves him there. They are also the weapon of the Russians, and Rambo must compete in an old fashioned shoot-out with the top Russian, only using helicopters instead of sixshooters. Postscript Three years after the success of the second film, Rambo was brought back to the screen yet again. This time, however, he does not return to Vietnam to rewrite the war that still plays such a large part in his life. Instead, he finds himself in the barren, sand-filled deserts of Afghanistan. Rambo is initially found living in peace amongst Buddhist monks and shows no interest in the mission his old friend, Trautman, offers him. Trautman is disappointed Rambo does not take the assignment, but attends to it himself. Inadequately supplied and supported compared to the Soviets, Trautman and others are captured and taken to their fortress-like base. A bureaucrat that Trautman had brought along informs Rambo of the news, and it is enough for Rambo to postpone his retirement from war in order to save his one true friend. Unlike the first two films, Rambo III was not a success, and there are multiple reasons to account for this. The most apparent may be the film's setting of Afghanistan, a country in which most Americans have little interest. Americans have much more emotion vested in issues concerning Vietnam than they do with a country that, as the film even points out, "most people can't even find...on a map." Second, Rambo is unable to display his mastery of the forested wilderness but is instead forced to fight in the desert and compounds of the Soviet command post. Not only does he again shoot explosive-tipped arrows but, in general, he is much more reliant on technology than in the first two films. Finally, before he accepts the mission, Rambo is warned by the bureaucrat that Trautman had earlier introduced: "I want you to know up front that if you're captured, if any of this leaks, we'll deny all participation and even knowledge of your existence," to which Rambo replies, "I'm used to it." This acceptance immediately frees the untrustworthy government of any responsibility for what happens to Rambo, but also eliminates an enemy that is an essential part of the first two films. Eleven years after the release of Part III, Rambo is still a prevalent icon in popular culture. In 1997, Roger Corman, king of trash cinema, was interested in buying the rights to the Rambo films (for a mere $550,000) from the bankrupt Carolco Pictures. In the end, Corman did not make the purchase. Had he

done so, however, he likely would have brought Rambo back to the screen, at least the small screen in directto-video format without Stallone (Harbrecht). If Corman had made a fourth film and learned from the mistakes of the third entry, his chances for success would have been high. America has become involved in numerous military situations in which one could easily see Rambo: rescuing the three pilots captured in Kosovo or helping the Kuwaitis flee from the oppression of Iraq. No matter where he is or what he's doing, however, the film would have to maintain the vilification of the government, a distrust of technology, and the ethics of the American frontier myth. -1-