Part One - Popular Culture and American Childhood

JASON BOOG
THE MILITARY.TOY.
INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
G.r. JOE V/AS ONTO TERRORTSM LONG BEFORE
PAUL'WOLFO'WITZ AND THE OTHER NEOCONS.
DIscussnn: Dr. Mindbender,The Inuasiort oJ Crenada,
Program-Itngth Cottmercials, Serpentor, Tirrordromes,
H asb ro, B arbie, D ep oliti ci ze d Enemie s, C ob ra,
Regan-Era Interuentionisrn, Ray Park,InSnalee
Eyes3
his first
paragraphs, Boog gives a sense of
what watching "GI Joe" is like. Using textual
evidence from a particular part of the cartoon,
he makes a quick sketch of the characters
(heroes, villains); he also manages to mention
that the clips are oft-viewed, which establishes
popularity.
nYouTube, you can {ind
hundreds
of
throwing spears and clad in sexy olive fatigues;
and Shipwreck, dashing into combat dressed
like one of theVillage People.
Then the Cobra villains emerge, blasting
away with laser guns: the mutated snake-man,
Serpentor; the leather-clad dominatrix, Baroness; and the mustachioed quack, Dr. Mindbender. Airplanes, boats, tanks, hang gliders, hovercrafts,jeeps, and a
supersweet aircraft carrier zoom through the fray. Every
image is paired with a shiny Hasbro toy in the Christ-
clips ftom
the animated G.I. Joe: A
Real American Hero. Itt
been rwenty years since
-u:re show premiered, but the gaudy palette
aad campy characters shimmer on the smallest screen.
Coilectively, these digital relics from an era when the real
Lr.S. military was busy invading Grenada and Panama have
been viewed hundreds of thousands of tirnes.
Itt fascinating to view the series's frenetic opening
sequence, in which righteous American commandos bat-Je the evil Cobra army. We meet G.I Joe, as he storms a
'oeach oulpost; Flint, wearing his cocked beret; LadyJaye,
mas catalog.
G.LJoe was one of the pioneering "program-length
comrnercials." By creating an entire television series
around a product, these shows dodged FCC regulations
20
Ilhttration
lry Tony Millionairc
Here Boog moves
into historical contex
I
Le
Note proper identification of affiliation and
project in all of these citations. Boog got
all of his "deep" history from these books.
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More stuff you'd need
to cite. Money!
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Back to textual
evidence. Boog
connects (in a joking
way) a GI Joe
character to the
criticisms that others
leveled at the
franchise.
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Previous POV
(note, he
identifies
the author, and
mentions where
the piece was
published)
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More historical
context. If you were
writing this, you'd need
to footnote the
numbers here.
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'Sursrt:a.tpe quarp[g] potrurq r?ql
Back to the critic from
the 1980s. Note how Boog
introduces this quote,
with a bit of a summation
of its meaning.
Research Boog did
(probably
on Lexis-Nexis).
Moving into deep historical context (as
opposed to earlier discussion of the 1980s)
More info about GI Joe sales,
with Newsweek article cited;
if I were Boog's teacher, I'd ask
him to include the date of that
article.
Despite early successes, Hasbrot
production
of toy
soldiers stalled
during the Vietnam War. According
to a l,Jewsweek aracle,yearly sales of
the original G.I. Joe line plunged
from$.22 million to $6 million during that unpopular conflict. As the
war dragged on, the toy company
billed G.I.Joe as a "man of action"
rather than a soldier..Instead ofbatding Vietcong soldiers, our hero
fought sharks, mumrnies, and other
depoJiticized enemies.
Here, Boog explores textual
evidence that supports
Engelhardt's claim.
create stories
Back to Woods (from
page 1) for some
facts
and figures.
for these action fig-
ures. Marvel picked Viernam veteran and up-and-coming comics
writer Larry Hama to handle the
new series. lJnder his direction, the
very first issue of the comic book
o crst of new characcers. Thking cues from the wildly
successfi:l Star Wars toys, G.L Joes
shrank &om foot-long dolls to 3
%-tnch-longaction figrrres. Cultural
critic Tom Engelhardt srudied this
toy-soldier renaissance in his 1995
book, T'he End of Victory Culture. In
a telephone interview, he fondly recalled visiting the Hasbro headquarters during the creation ofa brandnew plastic army.
"They were
a1l
an esrimared $40 to 950 million in
that first year. More than fifty dif-
ment, and defeatism that had crippled the toy line during Vietnam.
The book opens with the Joes
heat of batde---imulating the Iwo
Jima flag-raising in pop art colors.
soldier invasion with bloodless explosions and laser-beam shootouts.
jettisoned
the pacifism, disarma-
hoisting an Arnerican flag
in the
sol-
diers rescue a pacifist nuclear scientist 6om her Cobra kidnappers.
The peacenik doctor offers a curious apology at the end:"You risked
your own lives to save mine. I had
presumed so many horrible things
about you... and the army," she says.
"At least I now know that somewhere in the Pentagon... there are
people who care."
According to-W'oods, the first
year
of production went amaz-
ingly well for the new G.I.Joes. The
amateur military
strategists-they had decided at that
moment that the Russians werent
going to work as an enemy. They
were on to terrorisrrr before Paul
Wolfowiz and the other neocons.
If you think about Cobra, it's an
amorphous terrorism organizafion.
Itt not state-bound; it's a superhero
terrorist orgarization I don't rvant
to claim that they saw the future
comic book sold 250,000 issues in
good months, and the toys earned
ferent companies bought merchandising rights ro rhe G.I. Joe logo,
which appeared on roys ranging
from video games to kites.
The G.L Joe: A Real American
Flero television series ran from 1983
In the first comic, the heroic
I.Joe rose 6'om the dead
in 1982, sporting a vivid
Boog is about to agree with
Engelhardt by talking about some
specific textual instances that
support his thesis.
until 1987, conrinuing this
toy-
Still, this animated violence concealed a rraining-wheels version of
global politics.
In the episode "Let's play Soldier," the Joes head to Thailand to
foil Dr. Mindbender's atempts to
market a mind-control drug as
chewing gum. One generation before, similar anxieties that Communism would spread throughout Asia
ignited the Viernam War. One of
the G.I.Joes makes rhe connection
more expJicitly. Upon sporting some
homeless children, he says, "street
orphans. Kids fathered byAmerican
soldiers during the war."
That episode quietly revises the
failures of the Vietnam W'ar.'V/ith
the heip of these Arnerican love
children, the Joes destroy Cobrat
mind-control factory. The orphans
stay in Thailand, keeping G.L Joe's
ideals alive in a region haunted by
American aggression. A_fter stopping the insidious spread of Cobra,/
Communist chewing gum, G.I.Joe
returns home victorious from the
iit-
in essence these guys did
grasp the future-there wasnt any
money in the Russians."
Just before launching its toys,
Hasbro asked Marvel Comics to
erally, but
Boog uses a Standalone Quote from Englehardt here; okay
for him to do because this represents part of an interview.
317
jungles of Southeast Asia.
G.L Joet epic advertising campaign peaked in i985, when Hasbro had toys, cartoons, comic books,