Reading (For Dummies)

GI Joe: Resolute review

I grew up in New Jersey, which means that as a child I watched entirely too much television. In September of 2001, I decided that I wasn't going to own a television anymore -- I thought that analysis of events at the time was zooming in on retarded.

I'm known to watch shows on Youtube or DVD from time to time. I recently watched a reboot of one of those shows that (in a silly way) entertained so much when I was young.

When GI Joe was one of my favorite shows as a kid, I had no hope of understanding it. It was at best a thinly veiled propaganda piece about communism: COBRA was the centrally controlled government that operated in a strictly top-down manner. When it's leaders made a mistake, everyone suffered. COBRA was not the Cult of Personality. Their leader was unnamed, "COBRA Commander." Their leader was also a bit full of himself, ignoring input from suboordinates often to everyone's peril.

Central control didn't work out so well for the real-world Ruskies either. Examples can be seen in their wheat crop production in Kazhakstan. Production was great, but the government had not thought through supply chains, and had no way to transport wheat to where it was needed.

Joe's team operated militarily, yes, but also somewhat democratically. Joe's suboordinates often raised concerns about a mission. Sometimes Joe would ignore them, but would often come to understand the wisdom of lower-ranked people by the end of the episode. The Joe team was all about the democratic process (handled a bit militarily, but nonetheless present). The premise was that if we at least listen to each other's votes, we'll come to a workable solution in the end.

The United States faces new and weird threats that we still don't really understand. This new breed of GI Joe reflects the world. Episodes 1-11 are available on the Tube. They depict a surprise attack by COBRA, stunningly coordinated. Their first attack, perhaps as an homage to the original GI Joe, is to destroy Moscow while paralyzing the only people that can help. The Joe team is alarmed and disturbed at this.

The Joe team relies heavily on their support staff of scientists and analysts. This is something that we haven't seen in the 80s version of the program.

In its eventuality, the Joe team ends up fighting COBRA on US soil, as it turns out that that is their secret location. I could read too deeply into the sequence: COBRA uses a facility in Springfield, USA (Simpsons jokes aside) to attempt to destroy Washington, DC. Joe comes in to save the day, by turning COBRA's ultimate weapon on itself -- the Joes use COBRA's weapon to destroy Springfield, where a trapped COBRA Commander is (hopefully) killed.

Using an enemy's weapon upon them is nothing new. In fact, you need only look at the current headlines to see what we've been up to: terrorizing terrorists through the use of torture and "alternative" interrogation techniques. What we're really doing when we do that is destroying a bit of ourselves (like Springfield). In the end, COBRA gets away, making us wonder why we went down that path to begin with. But, now we know, and knowing is, as a popular cartoon told me when I was young, half the battle...