Rambo is a boomer fantasy and victim parable. Rambo represents the boomer, who is a strong tough guy who killed fifty gazillion commie gооks in ‘Nam (even though the large majority of boomers avoided going to ‘Nam, but anyway) and is a rebellious free thinker.
The sheriff represents the boomer’s father, the greatest generation, which the boomer fears and hates more than anything else. The greatest generation dad is an authoritarian who probably drinks too much and is quick to take off his belt if the kids don’t grab him another beer from the fridge fast enough.
He might also have undiagnosed PTSD from WWII, which makes him even more of a dick. He’ll wake up in the middle of the night screaming that the trees are speaking German. Or he might forcibly shave off his boomer son’s hair because, “I didn’t fight the damn krauts for my kid to be some pot smoking quееr!”
So basically, the father is a traditional and strict authority figure, and the son is a cool rebel with a bunch of totally real and not made up war stories in a conflict that was totally serious and exactly like WWII.
Once you understand that the sheriff is a collective placeholder for the boomers’ fathers, everything makes sense. That’s why the sheriff is so incomprehensibly strict and evil, and Rambo is so insufferably pure and Christlike. Because he represents how the boomers imagine themselves and the sheriff is the target of the boomer’s lifelong resentment and inferiority complex. Rambo is pretty much a boomer revenge fantasy against their own fathers.
If you have an aging boomer family member who is annoying you, here’s a trick. Take off your belt and shout “Alright sonny boy, ya asked for it, I’m gonna whip ya like we whipped the nips at Guadacanal!” That’ll trigger a childhood flashback and the boomer will forget whatever he was whining about.
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Ian Kummer
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In the book Rambo kills all the police men and destroys most of the town with explosives, but the producers didn’t have the balls to put that in the movie. There were Russians and Vietnamese to be killed in the sequels.
In the book Rambo kills all the police men and destroys most of the town with explosives, but the producers didn't have the balls to put that in the movie. There were Russians and Vietnamese to be killed in the sequels.