Not My President: Political Dissent in ‘Escape from New York’
Lessons for 2017 from John Carpenter’s 1981 Cult Classic
“I don’t give a f*ck about your war… or your president.” — “Snake” Plissken
We never find out what motivated Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) to go from war hero — “two Purple Hearts, the youngest man to be decorated by the President” — to outlaw in John Carpenter’s cult classic Escape from New York (1981). But it doesn’t take much imagination to come up with reasons someone might be disillusioned with its version of the U.S., set in a dystopian 1997, amidst a societal collapse and a world war with Russia and China. What’s Snake rebelling against? To quote an early movie anti-hero, “Whadda ya got?”
Emerging from the ’70s—a decade that gave us Charles Manson, Watergate, a demoralizing end to the Vietnam War, Carter’s “malaise,” and the Iranian hostage crisis—it’s no surprise that audiences connected with Snake’s nihilism and reflexive distaste for authority—a reflection of Carpenter’s own feelings.
“By the end of the ’70s there was a backlash against everything in the ’60s, and that’s what the ’80s were, and Ronald Reagan became president, and ‘Reaganomics’ came in,” Carpenter explained back in 2013. “A lot of the ideals that I grew up with were under assault.”
The director would go on to make more films criticizing Reagan-era consumerism, most overtly in 1988’s They Live, creating a body of work peopled with rebels and free thinkers. But the subversive political strain in his work that bloomed in They Live took seed in Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) and first flowered in Escape.
The early 1980s were a rough time for many American cities. Once-prosperous neighborhoods fell into decay as many wealthier, mostly white families fled inner cities for the safety of the suburbs, and police struggled to control drug use and gang violence. Heck, a recession began literally the same month Escape arrived in theaters.
Dozens of futuristic dystopias built this problem, imagining the ways society could have spiraled out of control, and the possible solutions the government might devise: either clamp down with increased force (and usually some new and terrifying use of technology), or run for its life and try to keep the criminals contained.
Many dystopian films of the ’80s and ’90s focus on some variation of the first solution, as it allows the government or military to be the heroes. Robocop (1987) comes to mind, with its mechanized police force, as does Judge Dredd (1995) with cops who are authorized to detain, sentence, and even execute criminals.
Carpenter’s Escape from New York presents the other approach, reimagining a violent, wayward city as a dumping ground for criminals, fencing in the entire island and its surrounding waterways with a fifty-foot wall (sound familiar?) along the borders of New Jersey and Brooklyn.
In this version of New York, there are no guards, “only prisoners and the worlds they have made.” No one ever comes out again — the government has locked up the prisoners and thrown away the key. Because there’s not a single civilian on the wrong side of the wall, the entire island can be allowed to collapse into squalor and anarchic violence. Sure, Brain (Harry Dean Stanton) and his lover, Maggie (Adrienne Barbeau), live in relative comfort inside the former New York Public Library, with their laundry hung on clotheslines strung between the bookshelves. But most of the inmates have not fared as well. Rape and cannibalism are commonplace, and utilities have all been cut off.
When Air Force One is hijacked by terrorists, the President (Donald Pleasance) survives by ejecting in an escape pod. It’s Plissken’s job to fly a glider into the lawless island to rescue the President (Donald Pleasance) before an important global summit ends. Plissken has no interest in the President or the summit, but Police Commissioner Hauk (Lee Van Cleef) leaves him no choice: He can rescue the President and be pardoned of his crimes, or he can live out the rest of his short life inside Manhattan’s walls, with no hope of escape. He has twenty-two hours to accomplish this; after that, two capsules implanted in his neck will dissolve and kill him instantly.
A less pessimistic version of this film would have Plissken making friends left and right, bringing a whole crew of them along when he finally escapes. But in Carpenter’s world, Snake can’t trust anyone, in or out of the prison. Brain has double-crossed him in the past and does so again, forcing Plissken to fight to the death in a match reminiscent of the Roman gladiators — a symbol of moral decay and a nod, perhaps, to another, earlier great empire that also rotted from within.
At the end of the film [SPOILER ALERT], Plissken rescues the President, but not without losses along the way. He approaches the President, who is being shaved and dressed for a TV appearance, to ask what he thinks about all the people who died rescuing him. The President throws out a few distracted platitudes about being grateful for their sacrifice, and then shoos his rescuer away.
When the President appears on TV a few moments later to play a tape that will end the war, he discovers Plissken has switched it out for one of big band music, and the film closes with Plissken tearing the tape out of the real cassette. Plissken’s heroism comes from finding a way to rebel against the president and his cronies, even when it looks as if he had no choices at all — and even if it means dragging everyone and everything down with him.
That’s Snake’s version of 1997 America. We may not know much about Plissken’s inner life, but Carpenter takes him on an intense and ultimately satisfying journey of political rebellion. Here, in 2017 America, we stand days away from a new president (and possibly months away from a new Escape), in a divided country that can’t even agree on what is fact and what is fake.
And while it’s fun to admire Snake Plissken’s IDGAF approach to civil disobedience, the real role model here is John Carpenter. Don’t like the world around you? Do what Carpenter did so well in the ’70s and ’80s: Create.
Stream John Carpenter’s masterful Escape From New York on Tribeca Shortlist now.
Bonus! Co-president of Lionsgate Motion Picture Group and Tribeca Shortlister Eric Feig explains why you should check out Escape From New York:
