I haven't seen it yet. Life has been too hectic for my wife and me to see the long-awaited Top Gun: Maverick, even though we both really want to.
I was a huge fan of the original Top Gun when it came out in 1986. I was pretty young at the time, so I was only allowed to watch the "edited for television" version. But I remember being so enthralled by the dogfight scenes, my brother and I would recreate them by lining two kitchen chairs up as pilot/radar intercept officer in front of our computer desk where we'd play "JET" on our IBM PCjr.
I got a light-up toy F-14 Tomcat for Christmas and played the wings right off that thing, all with Kenny Loggins' "Danger Zone" playing from the boom box.
So imagine my surprise when I found out that there wasn't universal admiration for the original Tom Cruise flick. Apparently all the buzz about the sequel sent some people back to the video tape to reinterpret the first film through the lens of our current "enlightened" culture:
The comments on that observation reflected precisely what you would expect: condemnation of the rampant misogyny of the 80s, the horrible presentation of "power dynamics" that were modeled by the main characters, and one person even threw the old sitcom Cheers under the bus for similar moral turpitude.
To be clear, I'm certainly not defending or promoting the kind of sexual permissiveness or flyboy arrogance represented in the film. I grew up watching the edited version, after all. But on what planet can anyone living in 2022 America, bombarded with the type of depravity – sexual and otherwise – that fills nearly every scene of every offering emanating from the entertainment community today, find something as comparatively puritanical as Top Gun offensive?
It wasn't long after that perplexing exchange that I witnessed another that began to explain the answer. A progressive preacher named Thomas Horrocks shared his own retro repudiation:
Just as before, the commenting hordes found fault not only with how the affable family of brown bears flippantly treated things like "disordered eating struggles," but also the "problematic roles" of Daniel Tiger, and the dangerous – I kid you not – "productivity culture" promoted by Thomas the Tank Engine.
I think when I saw adult human beings disparaging a toy train with a face on it, it really started to sink in. This is religion. This is the very phenomenon that, ironically, these same progressive voices have been so fond of condemning in their conservative brethren for years.
For instance, when orthodox Christian voices warn against things like promiscuity or immodesty, they are routinely labeled everything from prude to Pharisee. "The legalism is strong in this one," is a refrain regularly lofted in the direction of any Christian parent who demurs from sending their daughter out in a two-piece swimsuit or allowing their son to binge watch the murderous mayhem of Netflix's Ozark, or the soft-core porn that is Game of Thrones. (Incidentally, the same Thomas Horrocks that rebuked Stan and Jan Berenstain lamented the end of Ozark just a few tweets later).
Notice that though their "values" are different, the progressive moralists who mock conservative piety exhibit their own judgmentalism that is oftentimes more embittered and far crueler.
- "You shouldn't care about Maverick and Charlie having premarital sex in Top Gun, but if you can abide the misogynistic abuse of those arrogant alpha males, you are a caveman to be shunned."
- "Don't be such a square when it comes to the coarse language, but if you can sit through the wildly inappropriate exploitation of workplace power dynamics in the film without a sick feeling in your stomach, you are part of the problem and should be marginalized."
- "Nudity is empowering and sex work deserves legitimacy, but if you don't burn all the copies of that despicable cartoon book that reinforces gender stereotypes, you are an enemy to equality and social justice."
This is religion. It is the attempted cultural enforcement of a narrow doctrine. It is the evangelism of the spirit of the age – just as rigid, just as unforgiving, just as merciless as the most rabid fundamentalist preacher has ever been.
When grace is lacking, religious dogma will fill the void every time, left or right.
