First blood is on AMC right now. I looked up a synopsis of the book online, and neither that nor the movie is giving me an idea as to why the sheriff was giving Rambo such a hard time. As best I can tell, a guy from out of town comes to town looking to buy himself lunch. Then, he gets forcibly driven to the outskirts of town, only to walk back in.
Why were they so adamant on getting him out of town? Hating Vietnam vets? He looked scary? What was it? I turned on the TV at the point where he was getting hosed down in the lockup, and I never figured this one out.
From watching episodes of Cops set in smaller towns, police in the US just seem to like moving drifters on. Although they’ve never hosed anyone down on screen that I remember.
I thought they didn’t like his long hair(for the time) and his dirty look. Combine this with the fact he was a Vietnam vet, which they disrespected, and they wanted him to just move along.
In the book, the character was described as looking basically like a hippie (and was also described as looking a lot younger than Sly did in the movie. He was called “the kid” for like the first third of the book), and I don’t believe the cops knew he was a vet. In the book he is arrested for simple vagrancy (not arbitrarily stopped and harrassed), and the jail cell sends him into a psychotic flashback. I don’t think the cops in the book even knew he was a vet.
In the book (the first book anyway), Rambo was also clearly psychotic and crazy. He was not supposed to be the heroic figure the movie turned him into. In David Morrel’s novel, Rambo is is basically a monster, but a monster created by the war. The cops aren’t bad guys in the novel, Rambo just kills them because he thinks he’s back in the shit. At the end of the book, he and Trautman (his Captain) kill each other. The whole thing is an anti-Vietnam screed. The movie distorted everything to make Rambo into a good guy, and made the cops arbitrarily nasty just to give the character justification for killing them. It looks contrived in the movie because it WAS contrived.
IIRC, Rambo only killed the one cop who fell out of the helicopter and that was an accident. Possibly self defense. The rest of the cops he just fucked up real bad.
My take on it was that the cops were just a bunch of dicks who just messed with the wrong drifter.
In the book it was because he was a long-haired hippy vagrant, as Dio said above. Also IIRC the book was set in the late 60’s in one the more red-necky parts of the US - I think in the southeast somewhere. The movie changed the setting to Washington state in the mid-70’s, where that kind of anti-hippy sentiment was less realistic.
Stallone makes a big deal on the audio commentary that the Sheriff was a Korea vet, but in the film itself it is hard to tell unless you look hard at the stuff in the background in his office
No, but no one created a bunch of protests that brought the Korean troops back home. (I don’t know if that is accurate, but I know a lot of people believe that is how it happened for Vietnam.)
In the world of 80s 'Nam and military fiction, when soldiers leave The Shit and go back to The World, they are frequently called “baby killers”, spit on at airports and otherwise met with apathy, abuse and outright hostility. They will typically become disillusioned and become a homeless drug addict drifter or go back to the bush where everything makes sense to them.
The reality as I understand it was that Americans in general had a sense of shame and disgust over the war in general and especially our unceremoneous exit. As the war went on, it took a high toll on the morale and capabilities of our military forces. Violence and drug use became commonplace. The Mai Lai massacre also weighed heavily on the American public. And the reality was that a lot of returning soldiers did have a lot of trouble readjusting to civilian life.
IOW, by the timt John Rambo returned the the States, many Americans did not view soldiers as returning heros. They viewed them as burned out fuckups and psychos who lost an unpleasent and unpopular war most people would just as soon forget.
That was one of the things that really kind of threw me for a loop when I watched this for the first time a few months ago. I’m 34–my dad had been home from Vietnam for almost a decade when I was born, and I’ve never known any widespread social attitude toward soldiers but that we should all admire and respect and appreciate them for their service. It was almost culture shock–“Small town sheriff hassling a vet? WTF? Ooohhh, this must be some of that anti-Vietnam stuff Mom talks about sometimes.”
Even as a child, when I saw the movie I wasn’t so much moved by Rambo being a bad-ass as I was that war had turned him into a creature who couldn’t get along in civilization anymore. I found it moving, and even as a child I had an inkling of upsight that this had been lost in the transition to Rambo II, where it became a flag-waving and silly action film (which isn’t to say it wasn’t fun). The same thing had happened with Rocky - you have the moving story of an underdog that over the course of the series evolved into a sillier and sillier cartoon with flag-waving.
But I guess the era needed to explain away our failure in Vietnam. The impression given by many back-to-Vietnam films at that time was that we lost because of some betrayal from within our own society – politicians, hippies, the media. So, they made a bunch of films about America symbolically “counting coup” on Vietnam. It all seems to pathological now.
A lot of people don’t have experience with small town cops. Or how hippies were treated in the late 60’s and even through the mid 70’s. combine the 2 and the stage for Rambo was set.
I haven’t seen it since the release, but it was obvious to me the cop was a Korean war vet. My father is a WW2 and Korean war combat vet as well, so maybe that had something to do with it. I think the korean war vet part was to show irony. Honestly, at least all the WW2 and Korean War combat vets I knew growing up in the 1960’s and 70’s were completely sympathetic to Viet Nam vets. Sure I was just a kid but I never saw or heard anything less than sympathy if not outright brothers in arms among combat vets from every era. Shit, I even saw it with my father and Japanese imperial army vets when he visited me in Japan. YMMV
I think that the hick sheriff hating long-hairs as a plot device, was well worn out and discarded by the time Rambo was made, and I was curious for the reason myself. It was, however, the first time for Sly to have long hair, so, I think that he was feeling a bit ‘rebel with a causish’.
I’ve probably got the book and the movie all tangled up, and with my own interpretations as spice, but here’s what I remember.
Sheriff Teasle, decorated Korean war veteran and establishment figure, spots a long haired disreputable looking drifter, and decides to politely but firmly move him on. That sort of thing isn’t what he fought for.
Rambo, decorated Viet Nam war veteran and long haired disreputable looking drifter, decides not to be politely but firmly moved on by the establishment figure. He’s had a really fucking bad day.
Teasle (or his deputies) escalate, Rambo responds in kind, and eventually the Adult Supervision in the form of Trautman, who could have been in charge of both of them during their enlistments if he was the right age, finishes off the survivor.
Basically, it’s the hair. Had a short haired, squared away John Rambo showed up at Teasle’s station with his discharge papers and a resume, he’d probably have been hired.
As a wise man once said, “You never know who you’re fucking with, so it’s best just not to start.”
I’m about the same age as you. I think the attutude started changing by the 80s when Reagan started rebuilding the military to fight the Evil Empire. In 80s military films like An Officer and A Gentleman, Heartbreak Ridge and others, you typically had scenes where the hero (a solider) would get hassled by some redneck townies. They would usually kick the rednecks ass.